Posts by Doctor Syntax

M365 Family users wake up to notice 'Your subscription expired'

Re: And that's why...

But remember off-site does not mean somebody else's computer.

Re: And that's why...

Directories where I'm doing work are synced to NextCloud which not only has a backup of the last version but the version before that and before that.... Which has been handy from time to time.

Actually I don't keep local systems up 100% of the time. Laptops are switched off when not in use ant not even NextCloud is up all the time, thanks to the local electricity supply. It helps that updates aren't a monthly source of angst. They Just Work. The doffing of your hat is only occasioned by making sensible choices in the first place and those choices are also open to you.

Re: We need a new naming scheme

Office <365.

Re: Fixed now?

Not needing to blame someone is better than having someone to blame. As soon as some remote server enters into the mix there's a whole extra universe of things that can do wrong and give rise for reason to blame. Is taking a one-off effort to learn something new better than having frequent failures to work at all?

And how often does the commercial version require new ways that have to be learned? Genuine question since the last version of Office I used was not noticeably different to Libre Office - at least I moved from one to the other with no sense of effort. The big issues I did find with use of previous versions of Office was that being given a file from a slightly newer version would be unopenable by the older.

OK great, UK is building loads of AI datacenters. How are we going to power that?

Re: Nice work for some

The AI Energy Council (an oxymoron if ever there was one) are goingto be among the last people to admit that.

Re: Hmm

"Or we dig it up here and the journey is shorter."

But if we dig it up here people will see it being dug up and get freaked out. What he eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over.

Fear of tariffs made the PC market great again in Q1 as vendors emptied factories to dodge price future hikes

Re: What about Q2/3

I'd guess the factories have been prioritising US deliveries for Q1 kowing they have the rest of the world to sell to for thethe other quarters.

Trump thinks we can make iPhones in the US just like China. Yeah, right

"will there be anyone left in the US who can afford an iPhone anyway?"

They can make them to sell to China.

Look for the convergence

As the cheap labour countries get better off they can afford to become less cheap. Eventually all the existing ones will be gone. The US on the other hand...

"All you need are peasants."

Takes one to know one as they say.

Re: Attrition

"the owners will lose quality and volume of production for some time."

And at considerable investment.

They could just take the hit in sales and write off the US as a significant market.

Re: Trump doesn't think

"I tell you you're getting 30% tariffs so you and your supplier work out an agreement to split it in half and cover the costs. 15% each."

Who's "you"? The tariff gets paid at customs and passed on to the customer. There needs to be a substantially higher mark-up than 30% for the trade to be worthwhile otherwise.

Either the US customer gets nothing or they pay a 30% tax to the USG which is indistinguishable to them as 30% inflation.

Trump. That's why the US can't have nice things.

Re: Trump doesn't think

"he promised the Tesla phone a few years back"

It turned out to be too trivial a job to bother with.

Re: Trump doesn't think

I'm afraid the presidential system makes it harder to dislodge a POTUS than a PM. Even more so when there's an advance problem.

Re: Trump doesn't think

Even Pollock which I've seen described as "like eating cotton woll with pins in it"? (Somerville & Ross)

Microsoft puts $1B US datacenter builds on hold amid AI, tariff uncertainty

Didn't some head honcho of Microsoft's buy they way to Trump's inauguration? That must be looking like money down the drain already.

DOGE dilettantes 'didn't test' Social Security fraud detection tool at appropriate scale

Re: Hey, single downvoter

Downvote for answering your own question.

AI entrepreneur sent avatar to argue in court – and the judge shut it down fast

"Easily ten thousand bucks of exposure."

On the basis that bad news is better than no news?

Musk's DOGE muzzled on X over tape storage baloney

Re: leader of the free world

"And the European commission cared more about it's citizens than the UK government of the time did."

That's why your membership was taken away. They didn't want grownup supervision.

Trump tariffs thwart TikTok takeover as China digs in heels

Re: Yes no one should trust Trump

The rule with politicians is ignore what they say, look at what they do.

Re: Yes no one should trust Trump

The "Good Faith" in the quote in TFA was an outstanding gem.

Scattered Spider stops the Rickrolls, starts the RAT race

"Yes, we've seen some of our guys being prosecuted but we're smarter than them so we'll never get caught."

EU may target US tech giants in tariff response

Re: Wouldn't a tariff on digital services be easy to circumvent?

A good point. Tariffs are charged on the goods arriving at the border and paid by their recipient. It doesn't matter who the recipient is and most likely for, say, EU car makers iit will be their US subsidiary. But the cars have crossed the border at the port consigned to them and the tariff becomes due. Stuff arriving by post generally gets through on de minimis rules or else it goes through an import handler who adds a handling fee (experienced this buying on eBay from the US).

But what are the practicalities of tariffing internet service deliver?

How does a streaming service cross the border? Delivered to the user de minimis would probably have to apply.

What about services free at point of delivery paid for by advertising?

It might be possible to work something out on subscriptions but non-tariff measures such as enforcing GDPR and going beyond it to require storage of user data onshore and not under US sovereign or commercial control. Going further still, moving at least government IT onshore and strongly encouraging commercial and home use of onshore services and technology might be even more effective in the long run.

Short answer:

1. Despite Leave's bleatings the EU isn't a federal state. As a trading bloc/customs union VAT rates are unified but countries are allowed to set other taxation.

2. For multinationals there's a global market in corporation tax. Small countries (including Luxembourg) do very well out of this by setting low rates. It enables them to attract a lot of multinationals who per relatively low tax on relatively very large sums with the additional benefit of low tax rates enabling local businesses to prosper.

If the small countries in the EU didn't play that game they, and the EU as a whole, would simply lose that business to small islands elsewhere, even if the corporations there were little more than than brass plates on a small office.

Re: Reserve currency

'What is more worrisome is that the US might be moving towards the Orwellian world of "Empires" where the USA controls the Americas (and the UK) and the two Oceans, and Europe and China divide Eurasia and Africa.'

More likely he's thinking of himself and Putin which is whcy I think this need only as light modification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Caricature_gillray_plumpudding.jpg

Re: The winners.

As you said, only for a few months. Courts take time to work and those ignoring court orders may yet come to regret it.

Re: The winners.

How taxation is perceived may depend on how its applied. Tariffs are effectively sales taxes and are perceived as inflation. So far that hasn't occurred to the MAGAts. It might never occur to them. But one of the jobs expected of governments is to reduce inflation so they might end up cheering him on for sticking it to the RotW but blaming him for inflation.

Re: A good lesson ..

"I'm just an unwilling participant."

So are those of us who voted against Brexit but we're lumbered with it so you have our sympathy. But we are so lumbered with out burden as you are with yours.

Re: It’s one way of doing it

Non-tariff moves would be better. Enforcing existing regulations instead of providing privacy fig-leaves would be a start. But mandate that government IT move over to non-US vendors and, as far as possible, technology within, say, a couple of years and that customer data should also be held outside of US sovereign control within the same time period.

Re: "As a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good"

"he value will return just like it always does"

What part of the OP's "in or near retirement" did you not understand?

Re: "As a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good"

The only political point that matters is what's happening now. Your whataboutism is irrelevant.

Re: "As a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good"

Pension funds holding US shares aren't limited to the US. Apart from those who saw this coming and bailed out early just about all funds will be hit to some extent and, of course, the value of businesses world-wide will be hit by the effects of trade with the US.

Re: "As a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good"

Best check how your pension fund is invested.

I'm still of the view that the best thing would be to wait for a while and see what sort of backlash meets the inflationary effect. Giving him excuses, however invalid, to deflect the blame will help him. In the meanwhile there are a few non-tariff actions that could be taken such as governments demanding resident's personal data be housed not just locally but also outside US control and generally removing dependency on US IT services, at least for their own use and preferably for commercial and private use.

Re: Skidmark across the pages of history...

Also Cameron wasn't alone. After May wondering what to do with it BoJo took the baton over the line. In fact, Cameron was only responding to Major's Bastards, AKA the Dunning-Kruger wing of the party. I don't think he actually expected, let alone want, Leave to win even a slim majority. If he had bothered to plan for that eventuality there's a good deal he could have done to defang the whole proceeding.

It's the tariff on the H/W part of the bundle that will be really damaging to overall sales, even if the licence itself were to escape. I don't thing theyd get away with claiming that a PC was several hundred dollars of Microsoft licence and $10 of harware and packaging.

Boffins turn Moon dirt into glass for solar panels, eye future lunar base power

"radiation shielding and mechanical durability comparable to conventional panels"

In a lunar environment they'd need to do better than conventional panels.

Oracle says its cloud was in fact compromised

You must be wrong. The omniscient genius in the White House says the standards are unscientific. Definitely unscientific. And UNFAIR!!!!!

"US companies don't like EU rules because they make them accountable, and they want only profits, not accountability."

The thing about making profits is that people need to trust them with their data. Their reasoning is that if people don't hear about abreach they'll continue to trust them so if there is one and they can hide it by keeping shtum. The flaw in that reasoning is that if they try to keep shtum and get found out it makes them look like ... errm what? A shower of weaselly, untrustworthy nuppits? In the long run, sticking to the rules isn't a bad way to do things.

UK data watchdog seeks fresh blood as more complaints lie unanswered for up to a year

Re: Response, or meaningful response?

If a few offenders were made a public example they'd need fewer staff in the future. It would help get to that point if they were allowed to use the fines to finance their operation.

Brit universities told to keep up the world-class research with less cash

"Despite ambitions to position itself as a science and tech superpower, the UK has cut the budget for the government body responsible for university research funding."

A basic misunderstanding here. All a government has to do is announce that the country will be a world leader in science, tech, AI and a few other things that have slipped my mind at the moment it will happen. It certainly won't need such inconveniences as investment. Same with decreeing net zero and EV adoption. So cutting budget won't make any difference and that "despite" is entirely misplaced.

Samsung trumps USA's tariffs by making displays in Mexico, and elsewhere if needed

"a range of new AI-infused televisions"

As if "smart" ones weren't bad enough!

Trump doubles down, vows to make Chinese imports even more expensive for Americans

Re: Importing more than exporting?

The comparison is also being made only in goods and the US tends to have a trade surplus with a lot of countries on its hit list. And that's where those countries are likely to hit back. Those feeling the pain of that aren't going to be the MAGA men, they're the money men and likely to be a whole lot more trouble for him in the end.

Re: Fascinating

Withdrawn might be a diplomatic problem. Expect some scheduling problems.

Re: Fascinating

"It is not about whose economy is the biggest"

The tense of that second verb might already be wrong.

Re: I bet

In a parliamentary system the head of government as party leader is ultimately a creature of the majority party if they think the leader has lost the plot they can replace them. Truss was more easily toppled than Trump. If the majority party doesn't have an overall majority they can be toppled by a confidence vote. The presidential system entrenches the president.

Trump tariffs to make prices great – a gain

Any poster producer looking for an idea? Trump's face with the caption "This is why we can't have nice things."

Re: High wages can be lowered

"This isn't about doing some dishonest property deal, your actions threaten people all over the planet."

And Chapter 11 doesn't work at national level.

Signalgate solved? Report claims journalist’s phone number accidentally saved under name of Trump official

Re: Cockamamie

I don't think the problem is the app, it's the choice of platform, the phone. And the choice of platform comes down to the users. It's always the weakest link you have to worry about.

Re: An authentic failure

All too complicated for those involved.