Posts by Wayland

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

Firstly the reason I won't have Android is I won't have a Google account.

Secondly Microsoft are not forcing the MS account they are just urging strongly. You can install with a local account.

Someone asked me for laptop advice for their young child. They had found a Windows 10 machine with 4GB RAM. I assumed that when they said Laptop they wanted Windows so I said that 4GB would be horrible to use. Instead we selected a Chromebook which was cheaper than the Windows 10 machine but worked much better. No complaints that it was not Windows 10, perfectly happy with what the Chromebook does.

I think Windows is only needed for legacy support. If the user does not have prior Windows requirements then they more choices.

Re: No choice at all

I'm running Windows 11 with a local account.

Re: KDE? Android apps?

Better if they run like WINE runs Windows programs on Linux. The programs run normally and not in a little box.

Re: Linux Subsystem - Android?

There are import apps available only on smartphones. It's annoyed me for along time that these don't run on a PC. I suppose I could get an emulator but I always ended up with something crap.

Re: I might upgrade in 2030, if I live that long.

All the amazing things of Windows 7 came from Vista. Congratulations on 54 months uptime.

I am a Linux user but from what I have seen of the leaked Windows 11 it's easier to use than Windows 10.

Re: TPM 2.0 spec is less than two years old

A DLL change in the installer removes the TPM requirement.

No true. Simply install with the Internet disconnected. Then you get the local account option. In fact on leaked Windows 11 they have put that option back on the screen.

Re: Almost Yawned

The PC has been left behind in this area. There are so many important things that only work on a smartphone. I should be able to scan a cheque and pay it into my bank but this is only available on a smartphone.

Businesses generally update to stay out of trouble. They don't want to find no one can support their computers because they are too far out of date. However many will take that risk and stick with what works, never looking to improve what's good enough.

The computer industry on the other hand is always excited about the amazing new things computers can do. In many cases these are worth while but only makes sense if someone is there to applied these new abilities to the business.

Re: Except you can't upgrade most devices running current Win10

With a few tweaks people are running the leaked Windows 11 on all sorts of hardware. On installation there is a window that pops up telling you the hardware is not suitable, however that's really the only problem. There are methods to get past that.

Re: Windows

The TPM thing is not needed. You can install it without this.

We don't know why it's there, we don't know what it does – all we know is that the button makes everything OK again

Re: The knob......

It would make sense as a comfort sensor. Not for setting the absolute temperature but for learning if the occupants were feeling too hot, just right or too cold.

Back in the 1980's when PCs were first 4.77MHz and then increased to 8MHz or even 16MHz they started fitting 'turbo' buttons to cases so you could switch down to 4.77MHz to play old PC games.

The games ran too fast at 16MHz.

My new 1989 Viglen 386DX33 came with a turbo button. The machine felt much faster on turbo. Then one day I went inside the case to fit more RAM and discovered the turbo button was not connected to anything.

Re: My suspicion

A progress bar that's really just a timer. Each time the button is pressed the bar resets and progresses slower.

It can display messages such as "Purging flow control buffers", "Re-linking event triggers", "Calibrating level sensors"

Global Fastly outage takes down many on the wibbly web – but El Reg remains standing

Sometimes when you share you have the thing all to yourself. If you're the only one in the park then it's much bigger than your own back garden. However when everyone turns up to the park your back garden may offer more space.

The thing with Covid is everyone started using the shared service. This may still have been a problem with Internet bandwidth using your on site servers but at least the servers would have been fine.

Re: At Savvo...

The Cloud can be handy for many reasons but mostly because you get excellent performance at a decent price. However you really can put in your own cables and run your own Internet servers from your own office. It's not difficult, you just buy a bit more bandwidth and a few extra servers. After that there is no difference between Cloud hosted or Office hosted servers, they are interchangeable.

If you're watching something load then that can be entertaining in itself. However what usually happens these days is a delay with nothing happening then it all arrives in an instant. If you're staring at nothing happening then you think it's broken and move on. Those gifs resolving themselves would keep you on the page because you could see it was getting there.

The Epic vs Apple trial is wrapping up, but the battle has just begun

Re: Colin Wilson 2 - Apple have got this right!

At this stage Apple should charge what ever it wants. It's a business decision. It need have nothing to do with the running costs as long as they are covered. Does the Apple service provide enough value for people to continue paying. Clearly if Epic are trying very hard to get round the Apple payment system then it does not.

Re: no point

It's Apple's stranglehold on the market that allows 30%. Perhaps if there was more choice that 30% would look less attractive . You don't need the law to tell Apple what that percentage should be, market forces will do that providing they are allowed to operate.

Re: Why is 30% "way too much"?

Well 30% if the market will pay it, that's fine. However Apple have very little competition. Epic are big enough to perhaps create their own market. If Android are better then Fortnite players may dump their iPhone and buy something that can play their games.

Re: "Apple’s ironclad control of the iOS platform"

It's obviously it was just about worth it or else EPIC would not have stayed for the $700 million. It's not about whether Apple provided that much value that Epic would still have chosen them if there was a cheaper option, it the fact that Apple had seen to it that the choice was be on iOS or don't.

Re: "Apple’s ironclad control of the iOS platform"

If Apple has every right to police it's store how it sees fit then it has every right to charge what it likes. If Apple is charging too much for the market then they will simply go elsewhere. Oh they can't do that? Then Apple has a monopoly and does not have every right to police it's store this way!

NHS-backed org reacted to GitHub leak disclosure with legal threats and police call, complains IT pro

They deserve it. However the NHS is a sacred cow and the ICO would probably prosecute Dyke.

The NHS are arrogant and incompetent. This combination makes them very defensive. They can't admit mistakes and so spend a huge effort covering up. PALS, one of their complaints departments, acts as /dev/null with the occasional bit of feedback to make you think it's being looked into.

Re: Attorney fail

Locking the Castle Door after the horse has bolted. Why would you have a warm fussy feeling? The fact that Rob Dyke has a copy of your data is the least of your problems. I bet there are people who spend all their time creating a mirror of everything on github. They have a lot of hard drive space and are desperate for something to store on it. Data Hording is a known fetish.

Re: Sorry, Fail - Rob

Letting them know he had access was the step too far. How can he prove he did not download the data? Whether he did or not is irrelevant to him staying out of trouble. Fuck the morality, if he wanted to let them know of the problem he should have done so anonymously. Him playing Rob Dyke the hero means he gets the kick in the balls he deserves. The only reason he would put his name to this was so they could thank him personally. You don't need thanks if you simply want to do what's right.

I think at that stage the data is in the public domain. Rob may have kept the data securely in private but since it was on the Internet you can say it was public. Lots of people would have copies and spreading it around.

Re: My 2 cents

They are part of the NHS so let's hope they go broke along with the rest of the steaming pile of shit that is our health system.

Trusted bodies? Yeah right. You can't even trust the people you're helping so why should you trust one of the cover up agencies? Talk about wet behind the ears. This is a division of the NHS, the most sacred of all our institutions, beyond criticism and must be worshipped on Thursday nights. The loyalty of NHS staff is beyond reproach, their loyalty is to the NHS and screw the patients. Same goes for any threat even to the feelings of this corporate conglomerate. Every part of the NHS is on full defensive alert, shields are up. The trusted bodies are allies of the NHS.

Relevant Authorities? If he has loyalty to his old firm and he is trying to keep them out of trouble then bringing in 'authorities' is the same as dobbing them in. He was trying to be honorable (which turns out to be a mistake) but if he had sent a copy to the 'authorities' should he have asked his old firm first or told them or simply done it in secret?

Keeping a copy of the data securely was very wise. Telling them so was asking for trouble. If the purpose of keeping the data was an insurance against trouble Rob Dyke blew it.

Blessed are the cryptographers, labelling them criminal enablers is just foolish

That will be ready right about the time hot fusion power becomes commercially viable.

Re: Yup, it ain't easy.

Oh dear, that sounds a bit like driving fast on a mountain road when there is a barrier stopping you going over the edge if you get it wrong.

Re: Really ????

It tends to support the idea that this is exclusively for criminal activity if our government uses it.

Re: Really ????

My head is spinning. Almost all criminals exclusively breath air. I think the point the spook was trying to get across is Telegram is only for criminals and not honest people.

Re: Really ????

I use Telegram to talk to my friends about all sorts of things some of which might be considered criminal in <current_year%>. It's actually not that secure because someone could get hold of my computer and all the messages would be visible. If I was really interested in security I would spin up a brand new virtual machine which I would delete after use. There would be no computer with saved passwords.

Portable Oxy-Acetylene kit. I used to use a little kit to work on my mini. The chap who lent it to me said always secure it away because robbers want them to break into safes.

Bitcoin is ‘disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization’ says famed investor Charlie Munger

Re: Insert meme here

In order to get power over Bitcoin you need a huge amount of computing power. You'd need as much computing power as is currently mining the coin plus a bit more. Now maybe you could take control of the existing power which I think has been tried but the conventional route would cost a fortune. So no, unless there are backdoors into Bitcoin no one "can take control any time they want".

I will say that crypto based on CPUs or GPUs should be more secure against that since every gamer has the hardware to mine where as the dedicated ASICs is something only miners have. Power to the people rather than the corporations.

After Monero based Electronium took their mining private and implemented Know Your Customer the coin crashed in value. It was no longer what you'd want from Crypto.

Re: Insert meme here

Fiat money is created in the form of loans that must be paid back. That saddles the borrower with a load of work to do. He has to work his arse off to pay that money back. It's the work that he does that gives the money it's value.

However Fiat money can be generated as loans and no one does any work. That causes inflation as value is drained from all the existing money. You can't do that with crypto, it costs too much to produce.

With crypto the value is in the cost to produce the coin verses the cost to exchange it for something. If you want some crypto you could sell something in exchange. If you have some crypto you could buy something with it.

Why would any one want crypto? The same reason why people want money, so they can buy things they want.

Re: Insert meme here

That's not how it works. Blocks can only be generated at a fixed rate no matter how much compute power is thrown at it. If you personally have more compute power you will get more of the reward, proportionally.

The less electricity cost you spend then the more profit. When the value of the coin is less than the electricity to mine it then you stop mining.

Everyone keeps expecting it to crash, which it does sometimes but it won't go away until there is something better.

As for your graphics card value it has a cost to produce and deliver with a sensible mark up, that's the recommended retail price. Then it has a value depending on who wants it and what it can do for them. Right now an RX 480 8GB is £350 and an RX 470 4GB is £200 on ebay. They are the same card and in games they are practically the same yet one can mine Ethereum and the other cannot. In November the RX 470 4GB was £70 and the 8GB was £110.

People are always looking for weaknesses in the market in order to make a profit. For instance at one time it made sense to pare an RX 470 with a Core 2 Quad for a cheap system. You did not get the full speed from the RX 470 but it made for a workable system. However with the same GPU now costing £200 it makes more sense to pair it with an i7 or better CPU because that gets all the performance from the most expensive component. Consequently the i7 chips fetch good money where as the Core 2 Quad have crashed out of the market. Also due to the fact both would use the same DDR3 RAM which is better invested in an i7 system.

So no, the value of something cannot be taken in isolation. What can it do for the various people who might want to buy it? What else would they be spending their money on that might be better value?

What happens when your massive text-generating neural net starts spitting out people's phone numbers? If you're OpenAI, you create a filter

Re: Backwards tracing?

I was thinking the same thing. Computers are deterministic in that given the same state, data and inputs they get the same result. The problem is the AI computer scientists have lost track of what 'state' their AI is in and what processes are happening to return an answer. No one knows why it gave that answer. We dumped a load of data into it, not quite sure exactly what data and it did some 'learnin' and now it says this when you ask it a question.

Partial beer print horror as Microsoft's printer bug fix, er, doesn't

Re: Ah yes

It sounds like one of the buffers holding the image as it prints actually goes nowhere.

A bit like when the NHS can't cope. The NHS is fine, it's the patients who die to ease the problems.

Microsoft quantum lab retracts published paper: Readings that cast doubt on crucial discovery went AWOL

Re: Fooling themselves

I built a little hover craft at school once. It did sort of hover and I claimed that the air blown by it's electric fan gave it a cushion of air. It actually hovered because the fan was so unbalanced it vibrated the whole craft.

Re: I found the problem

Drained all the truth out of it. Ooops, it was perfectly fine until you looked at it, now it's dead.

Sinclair already did Quantum computing back in the 1980's

Motorola 68000

Re: What I don't understand

MMR I think is a case of politics triumphing over science.