Posts by AndyMulhearn

Apple says if you want to ship your own iOS browser engine in EU, you need to be there

Re: we hate Android because of Google

It’s trivial to switch default search engine on iOS and iPadOS devices.

Post Office slapped down for late disclosure of documents in Horizon scandal inquiry

The vendor was claiming that this couldn't happen due to the way everything was digitally signed.

This and the claim that there are no bugs in horizon had my bullshit detector alerting firing on all cylinders

Apple redecorates its iPhone prison to appease Europe

Who benefits?choice. Yeah, you now have to pay two separate

I’m trying to work out who benefits here. If I want to use an app that’s on a separate store, I presume I have to install that store app, set up payment services (Apple pay won’t work I guess) and install the app. Err, yeah good luck with getting me to do that. Or my wife. So I struggle to see a benefit to users.

Apple don’t benefit, of course.

Do the app developers benefit? Well if the user community is like my wife, who is very rightly wary of sharing payment detail with any Thomas, Richard or Harold, that’s another obstacle becauseI don’t see they benefit either because users won’t be installing apps from third party app stores that require payments.

So the EU pass a new law, they look good, Apple comply and so on but who actually benefits?

It feels a bit like the balkanisation of sport coverage in the uk. When Sky had it all, you paid one fee to see all the sport you wanted. Not great but then BT Sport split the rights so you get the “choice” to pay twice or stop watching some sports. Calling that choice is, imho, taking the piss…

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

Re: We need more articles like this one

Wouldn't putting the source code for government IT projects in GitHub just make it all the easier for our "friends" with the black hats to find the security flaws and exploit them?

That may or may not be the case, but either way GDS policy is that all code, with some exceptions, should be made available. I think all the reasoning for this is that we are paying for it, so it should be publicly available for reuse if appropriate. Exceptions would be, areas where security could be implicated or services supported. For example, while the MOT service code is available to anyone to peruse with the bit that allows you to calculate certain validators for the MOT certificate is deliberately withheld. GDS guidelines here - https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/making-source-code-open-and-reusable

In a lot of cases, it probably doesn't make an awful lot of sense. For example, why would you want a copy of the source code for the MOT service? Other things, for example integration with payment services or SMS messaging services, may be of use to somebody depending on what they're doing.

The 15-inch MacBook Air just nails it

Re: Ok, I'll be down vote bait

My biggest gripe with MacOS (I've been using it for dev work for a few years) is that you can't do everything with a keyboard shortcut. There isn't even a 'Open the menu on this app' keypress. Unless I'm missing something?

From here - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 - ctrl+fn+f2 is your friend

LG to offer subscriptions for appliances and televisions

Re: Rent seeking

Apparently the crime writers of the 30s had a policy that the reader had to be able to work out who was the culprit based on the content of their books - all the clues had to be there. This seems to have fallen by the wayside on shows like NCIS, where facts that nobody was privy to earlier in the story suddenly appear and the bad guys are in cuffs before you know it. I still find it enjoyable, but the sudden reveal at the end gets to be a little bit irritating

Re: Rent seeking

Watching a time range of stuff recently has led to some interesting observations.

Star Trek; TOS episodes are 50 minutes long, so ten minutes of ads in an hour slot. By the time of Star Trek:TNG that’s down to around 45 mins so a 50% increase in non-show time. Series last of NCIS is at 43 mins or so, so a further drop in show time. Explains why the story telling on some shows has got very rushed and poorly developed…

After 11 years, Atlassian customers finally get custom domains ... they don't want

Re: Oldest ticket

changed the status to say it wasn't a priority and they aren't working on it.

The default response to stuff they don’t care about.

Oldest ticket

The oldest one I've interacted with is this one - https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-42158 which was raised on 20th Feb 2015. Rejected by Atlassian but still going strong for feedback...

People are coming out of retirement due to cost-of-living crisis

Re: Not just inflation

Not yet but I'm watching the markets and hoping - because there really is sod all else I can do - that it doesn't all turn to rat shit.

UK launches 'consultation' with EU over exclusion from science programs

I will admit to combining a facepalm with an eye roll at the news the residents of Cornwall, a majority of whom seem to have voted to Brexit, were asking if they would still get their EU funding...

Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols closes hailing frequencies

Cribbins and Nichols

Sad days for those of us of a certain age.

Re: UK Born in 1966

Btw, US TV generally pictured people in various shades of green in PAL countries.

I seem to recall fuzzy with loads of chromatic aberration

New York to get first right-to-repair law for electronics

The weakest link and can be attacked with a good dose of lobbying, bribes and the such.

The best politicians money can buy...

OpenVMS on x86-64 reaches production status with v9.2

Re: Memories?

I would argue that NT 4 is when the MS rot set in, myself. Moving the GDI into the kernel was an egregious error, trading design cleanliness for performance.

I remember being surprised at this choice at the time and it doesn't look any better looking back. I think DC had moved on before the change was implemented

Software engineer jailed for 2 years after using RATs and crypters to steal underage victims' intimate pics

Re: Funny how

Wasn’t the most egregious case of this the chap from Guinness - Ernest Saunders - who recovered from Alzheimer’s? Had his sentence reduced on the basis of a contested diagnosis and is still alive and kicking 20 years later.

Ever wondered where the 'cloud' was in Adobe Creative Cloud? Here it is in beta form

Re: They're fast when you want to do stuff...

There are two obstacles that I would need to overcome for me to move from Adobe - I'm on the £9.95 per month photography plan, doing all of my work on a 12.9" IPP.

First is I would need something that works as well as Lightroom when it comes to image management. I've looked at some of the possible alternatives for my use-case and they're all somewhat lacking - ON1 in particular came close but image editing wasn't stellar on the iPad which brings me to point second.

Second, I would need to re-learn all of the editing techniques that are so familiar to me from ACR and LR, things that I do without needing to really focus on until it comes to refinement. None of the alternatives, including Affinity Photo, work the same way as does LR which makes for me, any level of editing both painfully slow and hit or miss.

One additional point, the current version of LR CC on iOS has just gained some powerful mask selection capabilities as part of the rolling upgrades the cloud versions get. If I'd been on the perpetual licence I'd likely have had to buy a new version of LR to get it - Adobe being Adobe. That and the fact my plan includes 1TB of storage makes it far better value to me than any of the alternatives. As ever, YMMV.

How many Brits have deleted life-saving track and trace app from their phones? No idea, junior minister tells MPs

Because there is no requirement to *check out* of a place, so the app assumes that the infected person remained in a place from the time they checked in until either 23:59 or the time they checked into a different place (if they did).

Yep, this. No check out means as you suggest anyone that checks in after the case is detected is fscked. That’s always been one of my bugbears about how the app worked right from the start. I get that it was rushed out but there’s been plenty of time to add a checkout option to the app. At least that way if I forget to check out it’s my fault but no option to do it at all is an odd omission.

Nicely put with the potential but not actual infection. I was in Kew Gardens last week and walked past a number of sites where they wanted me to check in. On a sunny and breezy day with not too many people in, what risk did I face of contracting COVID? And if someone that had checked in had a positive test who would have been notified to isolate? The 20 people that just happen to have checked in around the same time or everyone that checked in in at the gardens that day?

Way too blunt an instrument now we have rapid tests etc.

Ex-Apple marketing bigwig tells Epic judge: Our revenue-sharing model is designed to stop money laundering

Re: APIs

I would guess it’s of benefit to the developer as it allows them to produce more capable and hence sellable games with less or similar development effort. Hence they get some additional value for their $99/30% rather than just all of the tooling and distribution offered.

As another vendor promises 3 years of Android updates, we ask: How long should mobile devices receive support?

Re: Android Automotive?

Not just Android, I have a 2015 Ford Focus and can find no sign of any software updates for it. It seems as this kind of software becomes more pervasive it’s level of support doesn’t keep pace.

Stale and past its best. Are you talking about Windows or the pizza you're waiting for?

I’m not a huge fan of chicken on a pizza, it’s dry enough as it is, but wouldn’t want to fall out over having on the ingredient list.

On homemade pizza I’ve come to be a big fan of chopped celery. I’m not sure why I even tried it (You may well have been pissed at the time, Ed) but it’s become a firm favourite on my pizza efforts.

Docking £500k commission from top SAS salesman was perfectly legal, rules judge

Smells of fish then it’s probably fishy...

So let me understand this, there was no 300% cap just referral to higher authorities at which point questions would be asked about why targets weren’t set higher. Sounds like it has more to do with embarrassment of the local management than anything else to do with the actual sale.

Then on top of that we have the question of OTE for the salesman and his targets being set too low. The deal is worth approximately £5m per annum on a turnover of £121m so his contribution in year one on this one deal alone is around 4% of annual turnover. Not having been in a sales position myself I can’t assess how rational it is to have one person set sales targets of 4% of total revenue in a year? So what questions would be coming back about setting his targets too low? And that’s without considering contribution to annual sales rather than just revenue.

Agree with all the other comments though, the Judge should not be considering profitability of the employer just whether the contract was complied with and if they didn’t refer to US management as stated then that should have been more of a consideration.

Groupware is not dead! HCL drops second beta of Notes/Domino version 12 and goes all low-code and cloudy

Re: Been a long time.

Yep, there was definitely FUD involved. And wasn’t one of the Microsoft mantras at the time “Windows isn’t done until 123 won’t run”?

Re: Been a long time.

That and the option to disable forwarding which was also handy.

I worked with Notes a lot in the 90s before it became better known as Domino and could never really understand the draw of Outlook/Exchange (still can’t really tbh but that’s another story) particularly as Notes was as much about building workflow apps as it was email.

Salesforce: Forget the ping-pong and snacks, the 9-to-5 working day is just so 2019, it's over and done with

Re: ...and another thing

That and everyone else will have moved to the country with WFH so house prices in the Highlands will be like London prices; you'll get a London townhouse for pennies though

With the option of a nicer, bigger house in exchange for a longer commute for possibly two days out of five as opposed to the full week, people seem to be moving out of London already. A friend is doing this at the moment - from London to Chippenham - and he says prices are very soft in London and late-negotiation demands for discounts are rife.

Unis turn to webcam-watching AI to invigilate students taking exams. Of course, it struggles with people of color

Re: "racist technology"

The difficulty with Face ID is that it doesn’t depend only on the kind of limited camera fitted to most laptops, including Apple kit. It uses an additional “TrueDepth” camera working in tandem with the standard camera. And allegedly Face ID won’t come to laptops any time soon - possibly until Apple wind back the ultra thin screen surround fetish - because the camera is currently too big to fit anything other that an iPhone or iPad screen bezel.

So yeah it can be done just not on commodity kit, which doesn’t negate the poor performance of the setup mentioned in the story in any way.

That long-awaited, super-hyped Apple launch: Watches, iPads... and one more thing. Oh, actually that's it

Re: understatement of the new decade

Spar = Spaff, spotted after the 10 minute timeout for edits.

Re: understatement of the new decade

The slightly bigger screen is also nice. It has the option to use the pencil 1 - but I've not been willing to blow £120 on one until I'm convinced that Apple now properly support handwriting in apps like email. I seem to remember that the next version of iOS might do this - but have lost track.

You don’t have to spar £120 to get pencil goodness, there’s a Logitech Crayon which can be had for £59.95 from Curry’s and works as well if you don’t want some of the more esoteric pressure/angle functionality, i.e. just for notes and stuff.

I believe handwriting works everywhere but can conform once my IPP gets the iPad OS 14 upgrade later today...

Putting the d'oh! in Adobe: 'Years of photos' permanently wiped from iPhones, iPads by bad Lightroom app update

LR Backup

I seem to recall that when I installed LR on my first iPad Pro, i had to explicitly disable the iCloud backup because it meant I was doing the backup up twice - to iCloud and to the Adobe repositories - which due to the way LR manages local storage with the Adobe cloud sync was also pointless.

I feel for the people who’ve lost their work like this but if disabling the backup to iCloud has some part of their loss then I’m not totally sympathetic to their plight.

ALGOL 60 at 60: The greatest computer language you've never used and grandaddy of the programming family tree

Re: No love for CORAL 66?

Spookily my first programming experience was of Coral 66 running on a PDP 11/44 so way more congenial than yours. Those were the days.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, health secretary Matt Hancock both test positive for COVID-19 coronavirus

Re: The emergency regulations...

Are you suggestng to use our glorious PM as some kind of biological weapon in a premptive strike against our old ally The U. S. of A. ???

You say that like it’s a bad thing,

Going Dutch: The Bakker Elkhuizen UltraBoard 950 Wireless... because looks aren't everything

Re: That's what we need. Bakelite keyboards

And with frequencies marked for Hilversum and The Light Progamme.

Shit, remembering that makes me feel old.

Early adopters delighted as Microsoft pulls plug on Mobile Backend as a Service. Haha, only joking – they're fuming

Re: Yea - give me that random stuff

I'm very well aware of that. The vast majority of what I make doesn't go to customer. But it still needs to work and including random versions of external libraries that might change at any time is, quite frankly, a bonkers way to proceed.

Well don't allow your build tools to use un-versioned upstream dependancies. All of the build pipelines I've worked with have the facility to define package versions to be used in a build and lock on those versions until you decide to upgrade. If you're not doing that or have dependencies that are only defined as version-latest then it's not the fault of your build pipeline...

Call us immediately if your child uses Kali Linux, squawks West Mids Police

Do you know someone that owns a knife?

Do you know someone that owns a knife?

if so, call 999 immediately as they may be on the verge of becoming a knife murderer.

Jeff Bezos: I will depose King Trump

Re: 3 words

How about two of the words you quoted - Judicial Review. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_review which is a link from the page you reference.

Judicial review is a process under which executive or legislative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with authority for judicial review may invalidate laws, acts and governmental actions that are incompatible with a higher authority: an executive decision may be invalidated for being unlawful or a statute may be invalidated for violating the terms of a constitution. Judicial review is one of the checks and balances in the separation of powers: the power of the judiciary to supervise the legislative and executive branches when the latter exceed their authority. The doctrine varies between jurisdictions, so the procedure and scope of judicial review may differ between and within countries.

Does that not suggest there are controls in place to prevent this kind of unilateral action?

Ever wondered how Google-less Android might look? Step right this Huawei: Mate 30 Pro arrives on British shores

Not in the market but...

It's an interesting looking blower, though the price is s bit high, and not having apps like Maps some of the more worthy music apps would be a bit of a drawback. Having said that, a moments duckduckgoing found a legit Opera apk that can be downloaded - from Opera themselves - for sideloading and includes Whatspp and FaceBook messenger built in and on desktop at least supports the Spotify browser client. Combine that with web access to email and that feels like most of your basic needs met without going anywhere near Google.

HPE's orders to expert accountant in Autonomy trial revealed

Re: Why is it moot?

However, it is possible that the extradition request (and all its supporting documentation) can be taken to be new evidence and so cause the current case to be re-opened...

What a mess that would become, particularly after a trial that’s been going on this long,

Re: Why is it moot?

Lynch's chances of avoiding extradition likely depend on the outcome of this case - something HP may choose to delay if they can to get a better verdict in the US.

Which strongly suggests Lynch should be lobbying for extradition to be delayed until the current trial is completed. I suppose it comes down to which court has priority.

Re: Expert witnesses are supposed to be independent

Very poor work from the expert, very poor!

Actually I'd say the reverse. HPE's expert made the assumptions he was required to work under clear to the court and seemed to me to state clearly when questioned that his own view was that Autonomy had not acted against accepted practice.

Scarcely very poor.

Why is it moot?

With the US Department of Justice starting extradition proceedings to force Lynch out of the UK and into the hands of American prosecutors, there is a possibility that the entire High Court proceedings may become what lawyers call a "moot point" – or, as you and I might say, "irrelevant".

I'm not clear why this should be the case. If the Judge finds against HPE then why would we look favourably on a extradition request for something our courts have already found against? Alternatively why would we consider and acquiesce to an extradition request when our court hasn't completed consideration of the case?

Personally I'd think long and hard before turning Harold Shipman over to US "Justice" as it stands at the moment, never mind someone in a case like this where the facts are so clouded in technicality and doubt, on both sides.

Hear, hear: The first to invent idiot-cancelling headphones gets my cash

Re: Selective attention

My wife just said "OMG you never listen to me" which seems a very odd way to start a conversation

I once got a very hard stare, almost Paddingtonesque, for saying "It's not that I couldn't hear you, I just wasn't listening to you".

Still married fortunately.

Yahoo! hack! payout! nearly! approved! and! the! question! is! how! to! spend! 60! cents!?

Re: In order to qualify

The Emil I got says "... if you are a citizen of the United States or Israel..."

Lets me out then

Not call, dude: UK govt says guaranteed surcharge-free EU roaming will end after Brexit transition period. Brits left at the mercy of networks

Re: Transition Period?

what could possibly go wrong...........

My first thought would be everything...

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

As the old rubbish amstrad internet phone? That was a real rubbish.

Alan Sugar used one of them on the Apprentice IIRC and that was the only time I've ever seen one.

It would be a brave candidate to interject into one of Lord Sugar's "I am the god of product development" diatribes "Internet phone Lord Sugar?"...

No horrific butterfly keys on this keyboard, just you and your big, dumb fingers

Re: Chorded keyboards

I remember these! Specifically, I remember some bloke claiming he could type with the device INSIDE HIS POCKET.

Well, he said he was typing. Imagine standing talking to someone with your right hand twitching in your pocket and a broad smile on your face. I can't imagine that ever being a good look...

Poor, poor mobile networks. UK's comms watchdog plans to stop 'em selling locked-down handsets

Re: And the OS too

The 'latest' stock from LG was a completely knackered heap of unusable turds. Lineage gave it life and usefulness again, but jeebus it was a ball ache just to get the bootloader unlocked.

With the way some of these companies behave - and Apple I am looking at you here as well - you'd think they still owned the hardware you'd just purchased. If it's my phone and I want to put something else on it, lineage for example, why should you be allowed to make that difficult for me?

I can perhaps understand carriers getting a bit edgy but the folks at Lineage are essentially just doing what all the manufacturers are by talking Android code and customising it for their kit.

And the OS too

Seems like a sensible move and while you're at it make them stop installing their own branded versions of the OS on phones they do sell. Hopefully that may lead to fewer phones orphaned in terms of software support because the carriers can't be arsed.

What do you mean your eardrums need a break? Samsung-owned JBL touts solar-powered wireless headphones you don't need to charge

Re: "68 hours of playtime from just 1.5 hours of sunlight"

Yeah, it's not as simple as the headline suggests - see https://reflect.jbl.com

Start fully charged, listen to music for 3.5 hours per day and change for 1.5 hours under light at 50,000 lux and it's claimed you get 68 hours of listening time. A bit like fully charging your normal pair of headphones then topping them up for half an hour each day.

Still not too bad but a bit too marketing speak for my liking.

Creative cloudy types still making it rain cash for Adobe

Re: F*** adobe

I disagree that there are few viable alternatives but whether they're actual alternatives when you come to use them is a different story. For me, I have way too much invested in muscle-memory when it comes to photo editing and raw processing on products such as Affinity Photo is just too much of a learning curve for me.

A couple of years ago I went completely iOS for my personal compute - 10.5" and then 11" iPad Pro - so my choices are more limited but even so, I much prefer the LR CC package with DAM, editing and offline storage all bundled into one option than any of the alternatives. Yes, the subscription doesn't work for all but it does for me. Add in freebies such as PS Express and PS Fix and I find it quite a usable, portable approach.