Posts by Mellipop

You get the internet you deserve

Re: Wikipedia

Please put them up somewhere. That’s what indieweb was created for.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/08/autonomy-online-indieweb/

I personally would love to read about them.

Re: To be honest

Ok, version 7, then.

At exponential rates that’ll be next week some time.

Sit back and watch this amazing revelation unfold.

Thanks for always being one of the best commentary sites of IT.

Long may you continue to bite the hand.

Starlink purchases 'Twitter takeover' ad package, Musk dismisses it as 'tiny'

FOMO

Think about it.

Startlink buys up Twitter ad space cheap because the "activists" are holding back.

Starlink will get good exposure.

the herd will come back to twitter. Lots of eyeballs. Too many to ignore.

Banks face their 'darkest hour' as malware steps up, maker of antivirus says

time to change design

PC design is still stand-alone.

It is possible to create secure client devices that dynamically verify through a chain of authority.

We have smart brains, and banks have the money and an incentive to resolve this.

Clean slate. Build on ideas like Secure Mobile Architecture.

Just don't use stand-alone thinking.

BT CEO orders staff: Back to the office or risk 'disciplinary action'

BT can do this, reduce commute and fill seats

BT has an amazing portfolio of properties, mostly empty.

They can (re) introduce telecottages. Staff select a site close to them, so short commute.

It’s then up to managers to tour the locations where their reports are working. As if they ever would.

Telecottages are well provisioned for conference calls.

And hints to a far more rational team building strategy. Hire locally to allow face to face meetings with white boards.

Huawei CEO reportedly puts company in survival mode

asking the customer what they want sometimes works.

Interconnect innovation key to satiating soaring demand for fiber capacity

What's the data for?

A few commentards mentioned the applications. Or how we control the infrastructure.

As each technological advance introduced a new infrastructure we made the same mistakes; initially we tried to control the infrastructure with a hierarchy.

As the volume of data overwhelmed it someone introduced a distributed and sometimes autonomous way to control the infrastructure.

Mr Lord thinks this fibre is going to support the centralised internet.

But we already have the edge. And applications will be distributed. Don't try to control that with your PON thinking.

I don't have the answers. I think I know where we have to look and it's not in the mega-corporations controlling technology.

Databricks promises cheap cloud data warehousing at an eighth of the cost of rivals

I pity the bit barn owners

True. Competing on price is a sure indication that a market is saturated. The product has become a commodity.

It's also incredibly wasteful of resources.

It is possible the "cambrian explosion" will not happen in data centres, but where the data is being generated; IoT.

Edge computing set for growth – that is, when we can agree what it is

Re: Everybody's already said what I was thinking...

Isn't that AWS Snowball - https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/

The month I worked for DEADHEAD: Yes, that was their job title

What about the Dyson Face-hoover

I could not believe that was serious.

I even thought they got the date wrong to put us off, it was that stupid.

CISOs face 'perfect storm' of ransomware and state-supported cybercrime

Security doesn't happen by managers creating a plan.

It needs constant planning. And that mean having a permanent officer whose job is test the resilience, the weaknesses, the entry points, the assumptions.

Because assumptions are the mother of all f**k ups.

Indian services giants target emerging technologies with PaaS plays

Re: difficult and time-consuming to upgrade?

I hired a tesla for a long weekend once.

It had a software update flag showing. I was warned not to start it off because it took over two hours to complete and the car wouldn't work during the update. And it needed to be charging.

Red Hat signals Intel's software-defined silicon will debut in Linux 5.18

writable control stores

Every comment appears to be about feature selection.

Intel has WCS - https://www.liquisearch.com/microcode/writable_control_stores

It might be they are coy about this because they are using this feature internally to create their application oriented chips sets, like the blockchain mining processor.

Just saying.

Google Cloud takes a gap year. It may come back with very different ideas

Waiting for ARM Server processors

Or Alphabet is waiting to replace their servers with lower power ARM chips. Think of the marketing coup that would be. It'll save millions in Lx bills and stop heating the planet so much.

Oh, you didn't mean to link to two stories together?

UK celebrates 25 years of wasteful, 'underperforming' government IT projects

Re: Competence

The private enterprise IT reorganisations waste far money. An order of magnitude more.

See what Simon wardley says in his blog over at gardeviance

It may date back to 1994 but there's no end in sight for the UK's Chief customs system as Brexit rules beckon

Re: Still. The Farage Garage will be open for business on time.

Ooh, back to the point.

I think these projects are disasters. And they are the government’s fault, subtly.

Large projects like these can’t be delivered by a single supplier in case that supplier takes advantage of naive departments. And the multiple suppliers sabotage one another.

TikTok wins right to stay in America past current Art of the Deal deadline on November 12th

prevent key tech?

Can someone explain to me what key tech TikTok might have?

It does swipe left and right just like dating apps; tinder bumble & hinge.

Health Sec Hancock says UK will use Apple-Google API for virus contact-tracing app after all (even though Apple were right rotters)

good old compromise, the stuff of bad governance

it's like the parson's egg; "parts of it were excellent".

distance measurement by Bluetooth is an approximation. if the world beating algorithm is good, then it should be shared with the world.

beating covid-19 is not a competition.

Australia's contact-tracing app still basically borked on iOS, says new bug report – and GAPPLE API version tested

some tech journalism please

that bug report is not major and with updates happening as frequently as reported, it's probably fixed by now.

here's a novel idea.

instead of sensationalising the failures, why not be responsible.

this pandemic is something we all should be working to bring to an end.

an obvious question after reading the bug report was : What is the update frequency of TempID?

Could there be a failsafe mechanism, as well as change the keychain access parameter?

we read the Reg because we know, like and sometimes trust technology. please don't duplicate what other journalists do.

Lenovo certifies all desktop and mobile workstations for Linux – and will even upstream driver updates

Re: Vendor support is one thing...

good description of what needs to be done:

* content providers

* hardware manufacturers

* open source developers

can I add a fourth?

* open source OS support organisations

We now have red hat, canonical as big boys and a few independents pushing a "distribution".

I think all four are needed to support a supplier of ready built machines. I recently loaded Mint onto a Chuwi LapBook. now having new problems trying make all the hardware work on the same laptop using nomadBSD.

I'm making notes but the concern, as you point out, is that no one entity is taking responsibility for helping any change stick.

And that's sad considering the internet is at our disposal and has been such a catalyst of change.

Rich Communication Services: Nobody uses it, nobody wants it, but analysts reckon it's on the verge of a breakthrough

Re: SMS=( Free ), RCS=( Pay )

there is a single protocol.

It's called the internet. And it enables a rich and diverse OTT market.

don't you think that the mobile network operators have already lost?

They have spent far too long plotting to stop the inevitable. Trying to maximise their investment in their stupid Mobile Networ Architectures.

That is Internet and edge processing.

India to build contact-tracing app for feature phones that still use 2G, don't have Bluetooth and can't run apps

Re: Bluetooth is not baked into around a quarter of the world's mobile's

and Bluetooth is not needed, nor is WiFi or GPS.

Try this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_services

Singapore to open-source national Coronavirus encounter-tracing app and the Bluetooth research behind it

out damned commentards

It's an effort, and it's open source. Get behind it. Make it better. Help society instead of sniping. Just once, be nice.

Honor MagicBook 14: Nice keyboard and ports aplenty – but with a webcam forever fixed on all of your chins

Re: OS?

You can usually remove the UEFI tentacles of W10 and replace the OS with something pragmatic like Linux or BSD.

I've paid for one of these bargains:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aerobook-pro-15-6-timeless-elegance-with-4k-visual#/

Re: Sure, USB-C is way more versatile

Stop whining.

You're comparing a legacy power connector with a multi-function connector that has improved on the original USB connector based on experience.

All (four) of my portable devices have USB-C charging, and I've just bought a couple of USB-C memory stick.

It's already here, accept it.

India kicks off competition for home-grown video conferencing clone

Re: Open Source?

And here - https://opensource.com/alternatives/skype

Oh, the possibilities

Teams allows you to have subtitles. That's particularly valuable in one meeting we have in work where a participant is deaf. The AI/ML engine (a descendent of [Tay][1], no doubt) is being put to a good use because it also does a good job of interpreting this person's speech.

Now then, if only the Indian politicians had known about Kuhn's [structure of scientific revolutions][2]. They would have realised that they need to navigate to the [blue ocean][3]. Not to compete but to leapfrog.

We have speech recognition, we have still and video backdrops, we need total avatar synthesis. With translation. What a coup that would be for India.

I want speech to be voiced by [Peter Sellers][4]. Or perhaps like [this][5].

[1]:(https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35890188)

[2]:(https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions)

[3]:(https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/tools/red-ocean-vs-blue-ocean-strategy/)

[4]:(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nTBNHwar5o)

[5]:(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6h0lkq-Sno)

Having trouble finding a job in your 40s? Study shows some bosses like job applicants... up until they see dates of birth

age discrimination cannot be stopped

It's impossible to stop because most hirers or their agents want (or pretend there is legislation that requires) proof of identity.

My driving licence and passport both have my date of birth on them. Ironically my free senior bus pass doesn't have DoB.

With age should come experience and as far as i am concerned the most important is the experience of failed projects. Actually, in IT, most people older than 25 will have plenty of those experiences. The older you get, the less you get fazed by crashes caused by off-by-one, OOB, uninitialized variables, permission errors. You will smell problems and you know KISS works.

There are disadvantages to age, which can be compensated for by better use of practices and tools like...

What was I talking about?

Four go wild for wasm: Corporate quartet come together to build safe WebAssembly sandbox

It's a new ecosystem

Read about WASM as much as you can. It is the future of mobile devices. Look at this bit from the article:

"Without Apple, Google, and Microsoft on board yet, it's difficult to guess whether wasm will soar or sink for lack of support."

They all make proprietary mobile operating systems, or pretend they are open source, or failed to make a dent in the market. They know that a micro-environment is a replacement for their OS. And WASM is safer than the dominant mobile device makers telling us they are policing their app stores.

Re: closed source

WASM is a back end and has many front ends. Including Flash.

https://medium.com/leaningtech/preserving-flash-content-with-webassembly-done-right-eb6838b7e36f

War is over, if you want it: W3C, WHATWG agree to work towards single spec for HTML and DOM

Re: Why not save the planet at the same time?

I agree. HTML and the DOM are legacy artefacts that should now be allowed to die. They are holding back another step change in society's adoption of technology. It's like high priests of the SQL monsters have done all they can to block enterprise adoption of simpler and more efficient data storage and retrieval systems.

YAML is better than XML (an exercise left to the student, but it's to do with functional decomposition), but let's not stop there. Scene description languages will allow us to describe all audio-visual actions from static pages to full motion immersive three dimensional imagery suitable for Augmented Reality displays.

Even if we get the specifications wrong the first six or so times we can fudge it with edge code. We have web assembly that provides an order of magnitude improvement in client processing performance. Why allow a pedestrian interpretation of a simplistic marks on a page description language to bind us?

Drop HTML, drop CSS, XSL, and most important drop any pretense that we live in a two dimensional world.

Twist my Arm why don't you: Brit CPU behemoth latest biz to cease work with Huawei – report

Globalism versus protectionism

Vested interests will win either way.

Oh cool, the Bluetooth 5.1 specification is out. Nice. *control-F* master-slave... 2,000 results

Let's face it. The reviewer was never going to *read* the whole spec. I did it for version 1 and it took 10 days of two hours a day. I remain deeply scarred by the experience.

As originally specified, Bluetooth was meant to be a point to point solution. It was only when the specification was merged with Motorola's "Piano" piconet protocol that the problems began. It adopted "big" networking and was only saved from implementing IBMs SNA by adopting OSI.

Actually removing some terminology might be useful for changing design thinking. In a nod to Mel Conway seminal article "How do committees invent?". If we can remove any reference to "master", "parent" or "manager" we could avoid command and control thinking pervading designa that should be as autonomous as possible.

Hahaha, actually it's pointless mentioning new and interesting use cases because the flabmasters that plonk themselves in front of desktops will always see bluetooth as a pointless technology.

Begone, Demon Internet: Vodafone to shutter old-school pioneer ISP

Re: And another old name is discarded...

And many of us still have CIX mail accounts.

And the next 7nm laptop processor will be designed by In, er, AM, um, Qualcomm: The 64-bit Arm Snapdragon 8CX

Chrome books?

I don’t care about Microsoft software.

And if business/dev needs are to get through a secure pipe to their services then they shouldn’t be bothered about Microsoft software either.

The 8CX will be great for chromebooks.

Health secretary Matt Hancock assembles brains trust: OK, guys. Let's cure NHS IT

Re: Bits where it matters.

> clunky web interface with no simple export

There’s a reason for that. The suppliers know NHS IT procurement is naive so they only sell a web front. They can charge more for “integration” with other systems.

The main reason NHS IT is a mess is because patient data is under control of primary healthcare providers; the general practitioners. Until patient data is wholly owned and controlled by patients themselves we can never have multiple operating models, such as gp->consultant, independent service provision, hospital@home.

Anyway, hospitals are just hotels with attending physicians. Best to separate out the services.

Mourning Apple's war against sockets? The 2018 Mac mini should be your first port of call

You need a mini

You had to be reasonable otherwise you would appear needy:

"you can only reasonably do so via an up-to-date XCode, which usually needs and up-to-date MacOS"

Macs are the only machines you can work on to develop software for any device.

Admit it, deep down, you would love to own a real Mac. Not a hackintosh.

Windows 0-day pops up out of nowhere Twitter

Re: Who gives a shit anymore

Oh don't say that. I bought a new W10 tablet last week.

I'm gonna cry.

Stopped now. Just realised I ordered a Pi3b to use as a dev server with my Chromebook.

Anyone want to buy an Alcatel 12+2 with a known 0day hole?

Orchestral manoeuvres in the Docker: A noob's guide to microservices

It makes commercial sense. Instead of microservices, think of it as "billing by function". The bean counters will understand scaling then.

Hate to add to the wanky jargon – but your digital transformation is actually a bolt-on

Re: Usually a cover for more deep seated problems

I think the term for what you propose would be reincarnation, not transformation.

"adorning themselves with digital bolt-ons." Just like the cargo-cult followers they are.

The phone OS that muggers wouldn't touch is back from the dead

Re: What it needs would be a "secret" way to install your own applications

Erm, that would be http://webassembly.org/

Re: Dear Mister Simon Sharwood...

Hahaha, truly of a functional mindset.

Learn Haskell. Change the world with a true bare metal VM:

http://uhsure.com/halvm3.html.

The Gemini pocket PC is shipping and we've got one. This is what it's like

Re: OPL

Sigh.

So you're 'agile', huh? I do not think it means what you think it means

Re: The main issue are those who turned it into a sort of religion...

Look how much your well meaning comment has been voted down.

The commentards here wouldn't know what team working is. They are, by their own proud admission, the loner in the corner. Not wishing to pair up with less experienced developers to help them with insights. Not wishing to participate in model storming sessions with customers. Refusing to refactor other people's code. Hoarding code until they have crafted an over-engineered monolithic lump that only they can maintain.

Agile is a way to classify a number of development frameworks or methodologies that mostly exhibit the principles of the agile manifesto. They are usually founded on the theory of constraints and software is development using XP techniques.

There is not one specific Agile methodology.

Just like there is not one specific Waterfall methodology. Just a set of specific, clearly defined phases.

Unlike the Agile haters here, I know when waterfall phases are needed and when Scrum will be ambushed.

OpenAI uses cunning code to speed up GPU machine learning

Re: Deep Learning Is a Hindrance to Progress Toward True AI

And once we've solved "intelligence", what do we do about "consciousness"?

Apple quietly wheels out 'Voxelnet' driverless car tech paper

I don't suppose there are too many kangaroos in California.

Back to the Fuchsia: The next 10 years of Android

Fuschia is a container OS

There's a success story bubbling away with Fuschia.

Get a touchscreen Chromebook that runs android apps and you'll glimpse the future.

Android apps on Chromebook give you low footprint yet functional and offline capable improvements over browser based services like email, office apps etc.

If you look carefully at the Fuschia documentation you'll find an OS that is all about data flow.

Ledger allows data to be offline with sync.

Flutter, according to the Fuschia glossary:

"... is a functional-reactive user interface framework optimized for Fuchsia and is used by many system components. Flutter also runs on a variety of other platform, including Android and iOS. Fuchsia itself does not require you to use any particular language or user interface framework."

Fuschia, providing some simple Android porting tools, will replace Chromium.

Google emits tools to make cross-platform HTML apps less tragic

Re: Why don't they make they make a separate Web-App plattform?

I agree. Eventually there will be one. Interactive add-ons are a disaster.

Each mobile platform has its own way of describing the page and then its own way of updating the current display when things change.

Eventually we'll recognise HTML/XML to be the descriptor equivalent of a programming language without sub-routines, functions, or even gotos. How insane are we? There are better descriptor languages, even now. YAML has the descriptor equivalent of functions.

This kludging HTML is just the last deathroes of an irrelevant UI framework.

You're designing an internet fridge. Should you go for fat HTML or a Qt-pie for your UI?

Re: The code!

A crap implementation!

The light won't come on if the fridge is not up to temperature.

Most OS have a "Big loop". All the events get tested in that loop. Trust me, even interrupt driven systems use an event loop to dynamically change priorities.

This article is about UIs. They need high update rates so screen interactivity appears smooth. Sliders for example. Or how I'm writing on this tablet using a swiping keyboard.

With embedded stuff it's all about the non-functional or system qualities.