Posts by katrinab

File this next to Mars bars under 'things that should not be deep-fried': Marks & Spencer's Colin the Caterpillar

I too have never seen a deep-fried mars bar, though I am reliably informed that if you go to the Royal Mile tourist traps in Edinburgh, you will find them there, alongside lots of other "Scottish" tat that normal Scottish people don't buy.

Googler demolishes one of Apple's monopoly defenses – that web apps are just as good as native iOS software

Re: Detailed but also quite biased.

Geekbench wasn't written by Apple.

Re: Detailed but also quite biased.

The iPhone 12 held the world speed record for single-threaded workloads at the time of launch, faster than any laptop, desktop, workstation, supercomputer, etc. The iPhone 1 most definitely did not?

No I don't think that web apps are a viable replacement for native apps in most situations, and definitely not for games. Just thinking about how they might respond.

Big Tech bankrolling AI ethics research and events seems very familiar. Ah, yes, Big Tobacco all over again

Re: Racial bias

I think you need to stop thinking about "AI" as some sort of intelligence, and start thinking of it as a type of compiler that compiles training data into a computer program.

So your training data is your computer code, and if your code is racist, your computer program will be racist.

Also, I feel that in many cases, trying to find correlations between input data used is no more scientific than examining a goat's entrails or examining the position of the stars.

AWS on track to be bigger than IBM by Christmas, once Kyndryl is spun out

Re: AWS generated $10.2bn of revenue...

Isn't most of the intellectual property created in India these days? And India isn't the first country that springs to mind when looking for an example of a low-tax economy.

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

Re: Remote server, extreme edition

Especially when ping times to Mars are measured in minutes.

Google to ban emoji, deceptive marketing, and ALL CAPS from Play Store metadata later this year

I don't have a problem with apps describing themselves as "ad free" provided they are actually ad free.

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

Or those people who use Outlook as an Excel file transmission tool, and Excel for everything else.

Re: Default fonts

Do you want to require everyone to select a font before they can start typing?

I would not consider that and improvement, and I don’t think many people would.

Re: Copyright

Copyright applies to "font software", ie all the hinting stuff that makes it look good or otherwise at low resultions. Trademark applies to the names.

India’s massive COVID-19 wave slows VMware desktop hypervisor development

There is a developer preview of Windows on Arm which you can sign up for. And you can install it on a beta version of Parallels. It works as well as can be expected for pre-release software, and doesn't require you to find keygens and install images on torrent sites or anything like that.

I'm pretty sure Microsoft will make this available for purchase at some point, possibly as something you can buy from Parallels / VMWare as an add-on for their products. There is certainly a market for it, and I'm sure they won't object to making money out of it.

Ransomware crooks who broke into Merseyrail used director's email address to brag about it – report

Re: Does this prove....

All the evidence I have suggests that Darktrace is mostly a LinkedIn spamming operation.

UK government gives Automated Lane Keeping Systems the green light for use on motorways

Re: Thought experiment

Do you think a human would be able to go through that thought process and make a decision in the time available? More likely they would see "hazard ahead" and slam on the brakes.

Re: 37MPH

And about 1/3 of the speed of the M40 or 1/4 of the speed of the A74(M).

If you are driving at 37mph on the A74(M), you are driving dangerously, and if you are caught doing it, you will get a more severe punishment than the person doing 120mph.

Vivaldi update unleashes the 'Cookie Crumbler' to simply block any services asking for consent (sites may break)

Re: This.

It is supposed to be opt-in, not opt-out. If it is one click to opt in, and anything more than one click to not opt in, then you have an opt-out system.

The GDPR doesn't require consent for "cookies", it requires consent for "tracking technologies" of which cookies are one implementation. Cookies used for purposes other than tracking are not tracking technologies, and therefore not covered by the GDPR.

A trip to the dole queue: CEO of $2bn Bay Area tech biz says he was fired for taking LSD before company meeting

I park with the back facing outwards at places like B&Q, because it is easier to get the trolley to the back of the car to put things in the boot. With my car, I don't think it makes much of a difference in terms of sun exposure which way round it is parked, but I might look to park next to a tree or something if that makes a difference in the particular situation I find myself in.

Traffic lights, who needs 'em? Lucky Kentucky residents up in arms over first roundabout

Re: Britain's Scariest Junction

And there are quite a few cases where the Underground passes over the Overground.

Re: Signs ...

"At least the UK has one agency planning the stuff."

Not really. In London for example, it can be Highways England, Transport for London or the local boroughs.

Re: Er ...

France formed the first ever military alliance, with Scotland, against England.

China claims it has stolen a march on 6G with colossal patent portfolio

Re: Diminishing returns...

I didn't notice the upgrade from 2G to 3G, or 3G to 4G. What I did notice is the improvements that later revisions to the spec brought, and I think 5G will go the same way.

Apple's macOS Gatekeeper asleep on the job: Exploited flaw put users 'at grave risk' of malware infection

Re: Mavericks

I'm guessing old hardware that isn't officially supported in later releases.

My mid-2010 MacBook Pro isn't officially supported beyond High Sierra which is no longer in support, though it is possible to hackintosh Mojave onto it.

PCs continue to sell like hot cakes and industry can barely keep up with demand – analyst

Re: I kind of agree...

Laptops have webcams. Generally very rubbishy potatocams, but webcams all the same. When I bought a decent webcam, the backorder on it was a couple of months. I'm not sure if it is any better now.

"In addition, there are over 400 million PCs running Windows 10 that are over four years old today, which is an enormous PC refresh opportunity."

4 years ago we had Kaby Lake. How much of an improvement is Rocket Lake over Kaby Lake? Not that much, and Kaby Lake is absolutely fine for remote working, Zoom, Netflix and so on. Even Ivy Bridge is fine for that task.

Scam victims find same fraudulent ads lurking on Facebook and Google even after flagging them up

Re: Ads make money ...

Because if people get the idea that things advertised on Facebook and Google are scams, they won't respond to the ads in future, and if people don't respond to ads, advertisers won't pay for them.

We admire your MOXIE, Earthlings: Perseverance rover gizmo produces oxygen for first time on Mars

Re: I don't get it.

And I'm equally sure that your code compiles on the first attempt.

British IT teacher gets three-year ban after boozing with students at strip club during school trip to Costa Rica

Re: What's going on in Northumberland?

Same as in the rest of the UK

Penguin takeover: We tried running some GUI Linux apps on Windows the official way – and nothing exploded

Such a developer is probably also going to want to target MacOS. So you would want a Mac with virtual machines for Windows and Linux on it.

Re: What about existing WSL files, code, etc.?

You can run multiple environments. Not tried it, but the help file gives command line options like:

--list, -l [Options]

Lists distributions.

Options:

--all

List all distributions, including distributions that are currently

being installed or uninstalled.

--running

List only distributions that are currently running.

--quiet, -q

Only show distribution names.

--verbose, -v

Show detailed information about all distributions.

--set-default, -s <Distro>

Sets the distribution as the default.

--distribution, -d <Distro>

Run the specified distribution.

Re: Comparisons please? Benefits please?

"And if the numbers are large, why would anyone go through the hoops described in the article simply to get gedit to run?"

Especially since, if you are a huge gedit fanboi or fangirl etc, a native Windows version of gedit is available on choclatey.

Are there any desktop apps that are available on Linux, but not on Windows? Do they work reliably on WSL?

Yes I know about server and command line stuff. There is plenty of that on Linux that isn't available on Windows. If you want to run server stuff, just use a regular Hyper-V virtual machine.

If you have a QNAP NAS, stop what you're doing right now and install latest updates. Do it before Qlocker gets you

Re: I have a Qnap

Get a cheap PC, retired ancient desktop is fine. Put FreeBSD or TrueNAS (FreeBSD variant with a nice web interface) on it. Populate it with as many disks as you can fit inside. Use that as your NAS.

I have a pair of i7-3770s each with 32GB RAM. That is waaaaay more computing power than you need to run a FreeBSD NAS.

Re: "follow the 3-2-1 rule on backups"

Set her up with a timemachine backup. Then it will just do the backup anytime the laptop is connected to the same network as it, without her needing to do anything.

Re: Presumably...

Sure, but if there is a fire, it will take out both your NAS and your backup disks.

Watchdog 'enables Tesla Autopilot' with string, some weight, a seat belt ... and no actual human at the wheel

Re: “Standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have,”

Can eye tracking cope with people wearing sunglasses?

But can it run Avid? The Reg hands shiny new M1 MacBook to video production pro, who beats it with Blender, Handbrake, and ... Hypercard?

Re: You can do emulation on M1

It has already been done on older iPads, with emulation rather than virtualisation.

I've run Windows 95 on my iPad Air 2 with a javascript emulator running on a web page. It was extremely slow, but it did boot up. Not tried it on my Air 4, but I do have an electron-js emulator running Alpine Linux, and that runs at a pretty decent speed. All the command line stuff works. X doesn't.

You can do emulation on M1

with a developer preview of Parallels with a developer preview of Windows 10.

It runs about as well as you might expect from having a developer preview running on another developer preview, so not an option for a production deployment right now, but it is on the way.

Huawei wins big intellectual property case in Europe – against fashion house Chanel

Re: I have to agree with Huawei here. Uurgh, now I feel dirty.

If the logo is on the lid of a tub of moisturiser, then you are not necessarily going to be looking at it in the correct orientation.

Someone has to pay to keep the lights so data-viz outfit Grafana switches licence regime to AGPLv3

There are non-free variants of FreeBSD, such as PlayStationOS and MacOS. That wouldn't be possible with the GPL.

UK.gov wants mobile makers to declare death dates for their new devices from launch

Sale of Goods Act says 6 years for other things, so I would go with that.

Not saying you should but we're told it's possible to land serverless app a '$40k/month bill using a 1,000-node botnet'

I'm pretty sure this already happens in the advertising sector, which seems to be riddled with fraud at every level of the supply chain.

We need to talk about criminal adversaries who want you to eat undercooked onion rings

Re: Hmm, yet another company...

I think it is more that they are kitchen appliance manufacturers who just don't understand what selling computers involves.

Cisco's infosec arm advised that folks using open-source network intrusion detection system Snort to sniff out suspicious traffic [...] could detect exploitation attempts using the 56729 rule.

Katrinab advises that people could avoid this hassle by using a dumb airfryer.

It doesn't have robotic arms to take the chips or whatever out of the freezer, and put them on the plate when cooked. So you still need to physically operate it. Once you are finished putting the chips [etc] in it, it is surely far easier to press the physical on button on the thing than mess around with a smartphone app to do the same thing.

Bank of England ponders minting 'Britcoin' to sit alongside the Pound

The vast majority of £ are already digital money. We have £94.6tn of notes and coins, and £284.2tn in bank balances.

What is Britcoin going to do that we don't already have?

Microsoft OneDrive for Windows 7 drives off a cliff for business users

Re: What's going to cost more?

I would strongly recommend a clean install. When asked for your serial number, enter the Windows 7 serial. It should work. On an i7-3770 with an SSD, it runs at a very useable speed, and when paired with a semi-decent modern graphics card, for example the RX 5700XT, modern games are reasonably playable.

Anything with a mechanical hard drive is going to run like treacle.

Will tech show IFA really return this year as a 'full-scale' shindig? Place your bets now

Re: "nations like Finland and Italy lagging far behind"

Far behind Gibraltar at 196.52 ...

There's 45 countries (with all British countries counted separately) ahead of Finland.

My data source doesn't include The Vatican, which I believe is at 200.

Home office setup with built-in boiling water tap for tea and coffee without getting up is a monument to deskcess

Re: Fridge

Waaaaaay too 20th Century

You should be using paperless cloud documents stored on a blockchain with AI smartcontracts.

I’d rather use my iPad than a built in tablet, then I can pick it up and move it around, and it is probably far superior to the one they provide.

Patent battle over Facebook Live and 'walkie talkie' tech rattles through High Court in London

I side against software patents, regardless of which side that is on.

Irish privacy watchdog sticks GDPR probe into Facebook after that online giveaway of 533 million profiles

Re: Googlified

It is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act 1998. A US federal law that applies to American companies interacting with children anywhere in the world.

Zorin OS 16 beta claims largest built-in app library 'of any open source desktop ever'

“ For users migrating from Windows it does, of course, make sense because it provides familiarity.”

I disagree, because the resemblance is superficial. In many cases it has to be, because Linux is not Windows, so administration is different, the file system is different. Someone expecting it to work like Windows will very quickly find that it doesn’t, because it isn’t, and system administration is something you do a lot of when you first install a new OS.

Much better to have a well-designed UI that actually makes sense for your OS.