Posts by katrinab

Apple's new MacBook Air: Is the jump to M2 silicon worth another $200?

Re: Not the main issue

The 512GB model has 2 x 256GB chips in a RAID 0 array. The 256GB M1 models had 2 x 128GB chips in RAID 0, whereas the M2 has a single 256GB chip..

Re: For Intel holdouts

Magsafe attracts me because I can connect it to a charger and still use the Thunderbolt ports for actual USB and Thunderbolt devices.

Having said that, mostly I connect to a USB-C monitor with a USB hub on the back of it, so I get pretty much everything including power from a single cable.

To paraphrase Alistair Dabbs from about 10 years ago, at that price, it better be the best entry-level laptop in the world. The thing is, it is.

If you want a gaming laptop, don't buy Apple. If you want a really cheap laptop, the cheapest that will get you by and don't care about performance beyond that, don't buy Apple.

But if you are comparing it to Windows laptops that give you similar specs to this, and a similar build quality, you will find that the price is about the same as what Apple charges.

Union tells BT: Commit to pay rise talks next week or else

Re: Proposal for a New Law

As far as I'm aware, the staff that come out when there's actual work that needs to be done on the line don't work for BT Openreach, they work for Kelly Services.

Re: Invisible raise

If it is one full tank per month, then they must live really close to their office / depot. I put a half-tank in my car every three days.

Re: Profit

No, it shows that the majority of wealth in the country isn't owned by pensioners.

Broadcom's VMware buy got you worried? Give these 5 FOSS hypervisors a spin

Another option, which is neither free nor open source, but then neither is VM-Ware, is Microsoft's Hyper-V.

Definitely not the most feature-rich option, but it is an option for some workload scenarios.

Elon Musk considering 'drastic action' as Twitter takeover in 'jeopardy'

Re: Burn

The other thing is that people out there actually willingly follow some bots because they provide useful information.

Re: Burn

Most of that $200bn is in Tesla shares, and if he tried to sell them all at once, he wouldn't get $200bn for them. The reason for the drop in value of Tesla is the expectation that a large quantity of shares are about to be dumped on the market.

Judge rejects another Microsoft appeal against surplus license reseller suit

Re: "Helping our customers move to the cloud improves productivity and security..."

Office 365 is built on exactly the same code-base as Office 2021. Just a different serial number that activates different features.

Microsoft rolls back default macro blocks in Office without telling anyone

The last update to VBA was in Office 2013, so it is looking like abandonware at this point.

IT reseller giant SHI International knocked offline by cyberattack

Re: <Insert company name here>

"a coordinated and professional malware attack"

Tech world may face huge fines if it doesn't scrub CSAM from encrypted chats

Will it happen?

This is Nadine Dorries's department, and she isn't going to be in charge much beyond today.

No sensible Prime Minister would appoint her to a cabinet position.

Pentester says he broke into datacenter via hidden route running behind toilets

Hello, this is the Lock-Picking Lawyer

and today I am going to break out of this piss corridor using a folded-up bit of toilet paper ...

Vendors are hiking prices up to 30 percent and claiming 'it's inflation'

Re: Ask for explanations is the best you can do ?

How about:

x offered to do it for £X

y offered to do it for £Y

If you don't match those prices, I'm switching to one of them.

The explanations are meaningless anyway. Markets don't care about how much money you need.

UK tribunal: App Store class action seeking up to $1.8b can continue

Re: Commission isn't even the biggest issue

Another concern I have is, if you want to produce a mobile app as part of a bigger system, perhaps along with a server app, then the App Store is not the best way to distribute it, because then you get people who find it in the App Store, and try to use it without the rest of the system.

Gtk 5 might drop X11 support, says GNOME dev

It is LGPL now, same as GTK.

The problem is that the long-term support version is no longer available under that licence.

Re: Gnome devs who drank the Wayland coolaid...

Aha, but the modern way to do applications over the network is a webserver and about 5TB of Javascript Frameworks.

And I don't think 5TB is too much of an exaggeration given the amount of [poop emoji] that abomination known as npm pulls down anytime I try to use it.

British Army Twitter and YouTube feeds hijacked by crypto-promos

Re: Building bridges?

Maybe.

But you can cyber your way to preventing the enemy from crossing the river.

Re: I have a secure computer.

It my arithmetic is correct, it is more like one bitcoin every 108,658,453 years.

Getting that syncing feeling after an Exchange restore

With volume snapshots, about 5 seconds plus disk io time.

But that isn't a test of the backup.

Re: Exchange...

In Outlook, export each individual mail box to a pst file.

Do this before setting up any new servers

Connect to the new server, and make sure it is an actual new server with a new name.

Use Outlook to import the mail box.

May not be the most efficient way to do things, but it does actually work.

Microsoft teases Outlook Lite for Android

Re: The main benefits of Outlook

Or, using Exchange Activesync on the standard mail app that comes with your phone.

China rallies support for Kylin Linux in war on Windows

Re: Kernel kicks

I'm guessing it will eventually, when it is sufficiently stable?

But I'm guessing it would be sponsored by them, in much the same way that Red Hat sponsors a load of stuff

Meta: We need 5x more GPUs to combat TikTok, stat

Re: They just don't get it.

No. For Tik Tok's target audience, 30+ is really old.

Cyberattack shuts down unemployment, labor websites across the US

Can someone explain

I don’t get this idea that “it is a really sophisticated attack, so it must have been a government”

Have they ever seen what government IT is like?

Of course logging in over ssh with “password” as the root password counts as a sophisticated attack, but that is a whole different story.

Intuit pulls QuickBooks from India, uncomfortably quickly

Re: Lobbying?

From a UK perspective, Quickbooks looks like American accounts run through a spell checker.

For example "Checking Account" is not "Chequing Account", it is "Current Account". And the general layout, classification of expenses, and so on is just plain weird.

If you are familiar with UK accounting standards, you could pick up a set of Chinese accounts and it would make more sense even if you don't know a single word of Chinese, than picking up a set of American accounts.

India of course does its own thing, not like British or American accounts, but it is certainly closer to British than American.

China's blockchain boosters slam crypto as Ponzi scheme

Re: Pension funds

You can only invest pension money in a residential REIT.

As far as I am aware, there aren't any residential REITs that invest in normal residential property. You can find ones that invest in things like student accommodation, homeless shelters, asylum seeker accommodation, specialist housing for people with drug additions and similar. Those have a very different risk profile to normal buy to let, not saying it is better or worse, just different.

Re: "You can't say that of crypto, it's right out in the open."

Except that it generally can, at the point where you cash out.

Yes, I know about coin tumblers. If the coin traces back to a tumbler, it has been involved in some sort of dodgy business, just maybe not that particular dodgy business.

Re: Ponzi scheme?

Buying and selling a thing at increasing price to create a false perception of market interest is usually called "wash trading".

Re: Ponzi scheme?

There are people who buy gold for reasons other than its resale value.

Because for example they think it looks pretty, or because it has good corrosion or electrical properties that make it ideal for incorporating into a product.

Re: Ponzi scheme?

With a stock, you have a share in the underlying assets of the company and its future revenue streams. So money comes in that way.

Of course there are scams in that sector as well.

Intel’s CEO shouldn’t be surprised America can’t get CHIPS Act together

I don't want the country to fail. I want the current regime to fail, and be replaced with something better. Something actually democratic and not captured by campaign contributions and far-right religious nutters.

Start using Modern Auth now for Exchange Online

Re: Hello trackers, now MS knows more accurately where you are

It already is.

At any rate, reading emails while on holiday is a challenge as the account invariably gets locked out because I logged in from an unusual location.

PowerShell pusher to log off from Microsoft: Write-Host "Bye bye, Jeffrey Snover"

Re: "Admins don't want command line interfaces"

Minimum wage employees are of course more expensive than shell scripts. That is the whole point of having computers.

Tropical island paradise ponders tax-free 'Digital Nomad Visa'

Re: Tax free status doesn't matter to Americans

You will probably find that the private healthcare is a lot cheaper than what you pay in the USA.

Certainly, in the UK, you can go private for everything except A&E [emergency room], and because it is competing with free, it is a lot cheaper. In many cases, about 90-95% cheaper.

There's no law against private A&E treatment, it just isn't available because there's no market for it.

Indonesia I would imagine is a lot cheaper than the UK for private medical treatment.

Misguided call for a 7-Zip boycott brings attention to FOSS archiving tools

Re: A couple of points

Also, there are many dialects of English within Britain. I speak Scottish English. This is not the same thing as Scots. Scots is a different language. I understand it but don’t speak it.

US senators seek input on their cryptocurrency law via GitHub – and get some

Re: Like Bernie Madoff "Digital Asset"

If you are talking about Bitcoin, Ethereum and stuff like that, then yes. But the De-centralised finance organisations that promise 20% return per day or whatever, those are straight-up Ponzi schemes.

Meta agrees to tweak ad system after US govt brands it discriminatory

Re: wasted overkill

You've just bought a trampoline, so we will flood you with ads for the exact same trampoline that you just bought for the next 3 months.

Do you really want to be advertising pregnancy testing kits, nursery school places, and men's underwear[1] on El Reg, because some advertising algorithm has decided that is more appropriate for me than computer stuff.

[1] Yes, that is something that is targeted at women, because apparently men are incapable of dressing themselves and need a woman to do it for them.

End of the road for biz living off free G Suite legacy edition

No, you don't have to pay to use LibreOffice commercially.

A great day for non-robots: iOS 16 will bypass CAPTCHAs

Re: That's lovely, but...

In 2009, 13 years ago. It is called the Do Not Track header.

Know the difference between a bin and /bin unless you want a new doorstop

Versions of MacOS before Monterey had a trash can on the desktop, not a bin. I guess if you have your locale set to American English, you still have a trash can.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio: Too edgy for comfort?

Re: I wonder what the U in USB stands for...

When it first came it, it was called "Useless Serial Bus".

Re: 1.8kg is heavy?

There is a difference between using a laptop on your desk and carrying it around in a bag, and using it while holding it, which you would do with a tablet.

My 16" MacBook Pro is absolutely fine to carry around in a bag, but trying to hold it with one hand while prodding it with the other, then it would be too heavy.

Microsoft pulls Windows 10/11 installation websites in Russia

Re: Speed restrictions

You can technically run Windows 3.1 on a 286, but it is not a great experience. I would suggest sticking to Windows 3.0.

Inverse Finance stung for $1.2 million via flash loan attack

Re: Programming for smart contract execution... What could go wrong?

Most software-based workflows have humans involved somewhere in the process.

There’s also patches, bug fixes and stuff like that.

Google, EFF back Cloudflare in row over pirate streams

Re: about the aside

Microsoft [both Exchange Server and hosted offerings], Google, and Yahoo encrypt email by default, provided the other party supports it.

Outside of China and Russia, those three account for the vast majority of email traffic, so I would say that encrypted email is now the most common scenario.

Of course the Russian and Chinese email providers might also encrypt their email, I haven't looked into that.

Plot to defeat crypto meltdown: Solend votes to seize, liquidate whale account

Re: DeFi

Basically, it is Split Capital Investment Trusts, or Collateralised Debt Obligations on a Blockchain.

Or a ReREMIC (Recapitalisation of Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits).

These were the problems that blockchain was supposed to solve, not re-implement.

Will optics ever replace copper interconnects? We asked this silicon photonics startup

Re: The medium is the messenger

Also, I think I'm right in saying that because light doesn't go through fibre optic in a straight line, the end-end transmission time is actually slower than electricity, in the order of 0.67c vs 0.8c.

Fibre more than makes up for it in bandwidth, but if you want to get a small amount of data to its destination as fast as possible, wireless is actually the quickest way to do it.