Posts by aks

Intel demands $625m in interest from Europe on overturned antitrust fine

Re: Anti-Competitive or just stupid competitors

It wasn't the lawyers who brought the case. The EU (and USA and UK) see such massive "fines" as a way to extort money from large, profitable companies.

India seizes $725 million of Xiaomi's cash

Re: Everyone does it

Corporation tax is a tax on profits.

VAT is a tax on turnover.

Many other taxes apply to a company with a footprint in the country.

At the end of the day, all taxes on companies are paid for by the end consumer.

Second Trojan asteroid confirmed to be leading our planet around the Sun

Re: XL5

L2 according to Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

Almost there: James Webb Space Telescope frees its mirrors and prepares for insertion

L2 Orbit versus second Langrange Point

The article's mention of the L2 Orbit made me wonder if orbit is the correct term. That goes of all of the Lagrange points.

L2, the second Lagrangian Point

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Herschel/L2_the_second_Lagrangian_Point

I wonder just how much stuff congregates at each of the points.

Offering Patreon subs in sterling or euros means you can be sued under GDPR, says Court of Appeal

Re: On the other hand...the corollary

On the other hand, the USA might be reluctant to make its currency less attractive as a medium of exchange. As I remember, moves by Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq under Sadaam Hussein were suggested as possible motives for his removal. China is moving to strengthen its own currency as a medium of exchange.

Re: On the other hand...

It's still not definitive. The pound sterling is used in a number of locations outside of the UK and EU. I don't know if all of those locations / jurisdictions have implemented GPDR.

What do you mean, 'Microsoft doesn't care about Windows on Arm'? Here's a cheap, underpowered test rig

Existing WoA hardware

A simple and cheaper option is to perform the development work using existing Windows on Arm hardware.

My first choice would be the Microsoft Lumia 950xl phone which already runs Windows (no longer supported). You could even use the docking station.

Second hand 950xl hardware is easy to find on eBay. I still use this as my main phone.

You might find this existing Github project useful. https://woa-project.github.io/LumiaWOA/

140 million Chinese punters adopt Digital Yuan and spend up big

Exchange rate

"can greatly reduce the cost of transfers"

That's a nice theory that isn't and won't be true in practice.

The rest of the world already has an effective international currency system through Visa, MasterCard and others. Most providers of debit or credit cards allow payment cross-border but the exchange rate used is rarely the inter-bank rate (there are those rare exceptions).

ESA and JAXA release Mercury eyecandy, courtesy of spacecraft BepiColumbo

Re: Another reason why Mercury may be interesting to Earthlings

"extract things and launch them back to Earth"

Why? All of that good stuff needs to be used to build ginormous spacecraft. :)

FYI: Catastrophic flooding helped carve Martian valleys, not just rivers of water

That's the theory about the formation of the English Channel, being scoured out by a catastrophic event.

UK.gov is launching an anti-Facebook encryption push. Don't think of the children: Think of the nuances and edge cases instead

I assume it's governments who collate all of that data, not Facebook and friends although such companies are presumably open to direct big-data mining of this metadata by such governments.

Microsoft does and doesn't want you to know it won't stop you manually installing Windows 11 on older PCs

Re: "old"

three SSD's totaling 2.75GB‽

should this be 2.75TB?

Zoom incompatible with GDPR, claims data protection watchdog for the German city of Hamburg

As far as I can read, the EU want all servers to be within the EU and no data to flow outside of it and its rules. Plenty of AWS/Azure/etc servers within the EU.

The second objective of Brussels is for the software (as well as the hardware) to be written in the EU.

It all reminds me of Apple's walled garden.

Taiwan president pokes the bear by saying the nation needs to lessen its supply chain dependency on China

Bear versus Dragon

It's normally "poking the dragon" for China while "poking the bear" traditionally refers to Russia.

Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?

It's always worth checking on abebooks.co.uk / .com / etc.

Tech spec experts seek allies to tear down ISO standards paywall

Re: Scam?

exceed?

Samsung Galaxy A52 5G: Sub-$600 midranger makes premium phones feel frivolous

Re: Spook Proof?

Maybe by default, but if you want to sell a product into a specific marketplace you will have to obey the rules of that jurisdiction. Many USA companies discovered that when selling into China.

My assumption has always been that Huawei refused to include USA Government spyware into their products and that was the major reason why it has been banned there.

What you need to know about Microsoft Windows 11: It will run Android apps

Re: What . . . why?

In my recollection, they've been doing it for years, even Windows 7 with UEFI.

Re: What . . . why?

There won't be an auto-upgrade from 10 to 11. That's the entire point of calling it 11.

Re: Windows

Windows 11 is explicitly *not* Windows 10 so you won't be pushed to use it. Windows 10 will remain supported for a number of years.

Don't threaten to switch to Linux, simply do it. It's relatively painless, especially if you use Linux Mint Cinnamon. The UI is familiar enough that you won't have a large learning curve.

We're now waiting to discover whether our compatible hardware will be charged to replace Windows 10 with 11 or be a free upgrade as it has been from Windows 7 onwards.

FYI: There's a human-less, AI robot Mayflower ship sailing from the UK to US right now

It's not you they're trying to sell the technology to but shipping companies and governments. Autonomous cargo ships without crew, scientific research vessels, unmanned water-borne drone armaments, etc.

Mark it in your diaries: 14 October 2025 is the end of Windows 10

Re: MS will probably nuke any x86 code too

Microsoft have previous form.

16-bit apps ended up being supported in their own sandbox on 32-bit windows.

The word I heard is that the next Windows will have 32-bit apps running in a sandbox, maybe 64-bit Windows apps in another, Linux in another and the overall Windows management OS will simply become a hypervisor. It may even be Linux based.

If it wasn't for the fact that Apple would throw *all* their toys out of the pram, various flavours of Apple would be capable of running in sandboxes, as they do currently in a VM on Windows.

I'm more interested in whether Android apps would be supported. It would certainly be possible for Xbox to merge into this scenario.

LInux maybe, but Apple never.

Cloudflare launches campaign to ‘end the madness’ of CAPTCHAs

Re: Hardware dongles?

I fully agree with all of the above except regarding the Windows 10 UI. I much prefer the simplistic style to the gaudy one which came with Windows XP, and don't get me started on Apple's grey-on-grey style.

Re: ambiguous scenes

I remember reading somewhere that the CAPCHA system was designed for exactly that purpose. I think it was an old article here on the Register.

Google gets into the international money transfer business, one-way out of the USA

I've been using Wise (Transferwise) for some time. It seems to cover this field quite well already, with more to come.

GBP, EUR, USD as standard right now.

Known software issue grounds Ingenuity Mars copter as it attempted fourth flight

Re: Have you tried switching it off and on again?

AFAIR Ingenuity was always intended as an advanced prototype. It's there on this mission to learn what works and what doesn't. If it achieves any serious scientific results, that's a very welcome bonus.

Fingers firmly crossed that it does achieve those results, but it's already a tremendous success in this initial phase.

Microsoft demotes Calibri from default typeface gig, starts fling with five other fonts

Microsoft’s new default font options, rated

What do the new fonts look like?

https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/28/microsofts-new-default-font-options-rated/

UK's National Cyber Security Centre recommends password generation idea suggested by El Reg commenter

Re: annual student handbook at Brunel University

Way back when, as a student at the new Lancaster University and living in Morecambe, I was told that in the 1950s,one street had held 50 pubs. Pub-crawl anyone?

Amazon claims victory after warehouse workers in Alabama vote to reject union

Re: Why the need for a vote?

I'm assuming that anyone can join a union but the company doesn't have to recognise the union as representing anybody. With a positive vote, the company would be obliged to negotiate with the union as representing all of their members.

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

Re: Not necessarily.

We're served by 18-seater Dornier 228's and the weight allocation is done by weighing all baggage and humans eyeballing the passengers. I've even experienced the pilot moving people before takeoff to balance the weight-distribution.

Yep, the 'Who owns Linux?' case is back from the dead

Find yourself another court.

Australian ponders requiring multiple IDs to sign up for social media, plus more crypto-busting backdoors

I've always thought that 1 penny or 1 cent per email would reduce spam from the simplest random-name spam generator but less so from bought-in address lists. I have no idea how such charging could be implemented.

Re: False Dilemma...

Why do I feel that the creeps are busy building the panopticon as we speak.

1984 is getting nearer by the day.

Sadly, the catastrophic impact with Apophis asteroid isn't going to happen in 2068

Re: Wish upon a star

A small array of high speed cameras could capture it as it flies by, whatever its speed is.

To take a sample, you'll need to start moving soon to be able to match speed. Apparently, the Chinese plan to shadow it and maybe sample it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis

Microsoft 365 tries again at filtering swearing, bad behavior: Classifiers for seven languages offered

Re: minimize comm risks by helping you detect, capture, act on inappropriate messages

Somebody would have that authority. What's the chances it isn't you?

Seagate UK customer stung by VAT on replacement drive shipped via the Netherlands

Surely the solution is for you to deal directly with Seagate UK. If they acquire replacements from the EU, USA or China that should not be something you need be aware of.

As someone living outside of the UK and EU, when we post any items to the UK the Post Office imposes VAT on that item.

Death Becomes It: Who put the Blue in the Blue Screen of Death?

Straight to Windows 2000 as soon as possible, for me.

Healthy 32-year-old offered COVID-19 vaccine because doctors had him down as 6.2cm tall with BMI of 28,000

Re: people replaced by algorithms ... or just poor coding...

The coding is the easy part. I discovered during my first job writing programs that the data validation code occupied at least as many lines of code and a lot more brainpower than coding to the algorithm.

Later, when doing support, I discovered plenty of examples of gaps (even in my own perfect code). I then immensely enjoyed testing code to destruction, especially common in edge-effect tests. Divide-by-zero exception anybody?

Australia facepalms as Facebook blocks bookstores, sport, health services instead of just news

Re: Screw Australia's clumsy attempt....

Facebook (which I don't use) have simply said that they can't guarantee to filter out news links from any other links and don't want to risk being sued for a link that is later judged to be news.

They will *not* pay for the privilege. If Australia succeeds in getting money from them then other countries will follow. Google have gone a different way by striking a deal with Rupert Murdoch.

Previous attempts to force money from Google exploded in their faces. Not linking meant that users did not follow the links and the website in question became invisible and therefore lost money. The website then asked Google to link to them with a simple headline and abstract.

European Commission redacts AstraZeneca vaccine contract – but forgets to wipe the bookmarks tab

Re: And the EU still can't understand why the UK left.

This may be why the UK were the first to identify this strain.

(paywall, but enough to get the idea and research further)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-u-k-became-world-leader-in-sequencing-the-coronavirusgenome-11612011601

In a trial run, Google Chrome to corral netizens into groups for tailored web ads rather than target individuals

The options seem to be, advertising funded, subscription funded, state funded, and special interest group funded. This applies to the web, radio, TV, etc.

I'm not sure if one-time purchase funded fits into this breakdown.

BTW, I don't have a solution to the question.

When it comes to taxing tech giants, America is out, France is in, Canada and Indonesia are going their own way

A tax on turnover is pretty much what VAT does.

Dell online store charges 16 million dollars for new laptop with paint job

Pedant Alert

<pedant>

£12,000,558.98 includes VAT

That converts to £10,000,465.80 without VAT

£10,000,465.80 in USD is $13,288,618.96, which would attract local sales tax.

I assume the correct price would be £465.80 without VAT and £558.96 for those of you who need to pay it.

</pedant>

You can now pepper your Windows 10 desktop with Android apps... if you have a Samsung phone, that is

Black text on a dark background. Is this Microsoft's answer to Apple's pale grey on a white background?

The truth is, honest people need willpower to cheat, while cheaters need it to be honest

Re: Theft is taking with the intention of depriving the owner of the thing stolen

It is rarely the musician or other creative person who benefits, but the organisation behind the product.

Few composers or performers retain the copyright to their work.

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data

Using CSV? That's far dumber and open to misinterpretation than Excel's default of interpreting text strings as dates or numbers using Standard format rather than Text.

Use Tab-separated files rather than CSV wherever possible.

First rule of Ransomware Club is do not pay the ransom, but it looks like Carlson Wagonlit Travel didn't get the memo

"I still contend that any non-sovereign government backed currency is a scam and waiting to be unloaded onto the next sucker"

I'm not sure why you regard sovereign government backed currency as not being a scam.. If it quacks like a duck ...

Someone made an AI that predicted gender from email addresses, usernames. It went about as well as expected

Re: Artificial Idiocy

My pet rock is offended by your derogatory insinuation! How very dare you!!

Re: 100% foolproof gender identification method

Would I lie to you‽