Posts by low_resolution_foxxes

Brits turn off Twitter, although teens and tweens keen on generative AI

What 'messenger' service are we referring to? Facebook messenger, or does Microsoft MSN Messenger still exist?

Birmingham set to miss deadline to make Oracle disaster 'safe and compliant'

Re: Tunnel, lights visible at end, may not be oncoming train

Hang on, could they hire Microsoft to build a customized version of Excel to do this task?

Ransomwared health insurer wasn't using antivirus software

Re: It is called stealing

I usually justify it on the old "I was never in a million years, ever going to pay for this software or do anything commercial or personal with it"

Usually I would play with it for a few days, decide I couldn't be arsed with it and deleted it. Was quite nice having an array of design, video editing, music editing and music synths to play around with. Am I likely to pay a few hundred/thousand pounds to tinker with something? No.

Menacing marketeers fined by ICO for 1.9M cold calls

Re: Gum them to death.

It's one of those situations where you wish Panarama would follow the ex Directors around and hound their neighbours for information.

Oracle at Europe's largest council didn't foresee bankruptcy

Your point is factual, but boils down to:

Part time office workers earning less than outdoors full-time workers working overtime - who on earth could have foreseen this disparity?

Because from what I recall, most of the bigger bonuses were for working significant overtime shifts (road workers, bin collectors, grave diggers etc.), which wasn't particularly available to office cleaners.

I'll grant that they could possibly have run things in a more fair manner. But focussing on annual salaries, when comparing part-time vs full-time overtime shift workers, is just unethically stupid to compare.

Sometimes I feel people misrepresent what actually happened in those equal pay claims.

There were some trades that involved an element of danger and/or night work/overtime, where workers who were technically on the same pay-grade could earn substantially more if they were working longer hours in dangerous situations. A bonus scheme was in place.

From recollection, the two main complaints were that binmen and road maintenance workers qualified for bonuses that were not available to traditionally female roles, like dinner ladies and office cleaners. Arguably the core job is of a similar pay grade, but frankly I would have to sympathise with the council for a variety of reasons.

Namely, people who are routinely expected to work outside during heat/cold/winter/snow in an environment where the majority of workplace accidents/deaths occur should reasonably expect to be paid more, plus they were routinely offered early morning and evening work, within a controlled and hazardous safety environment.

I do cringe somewhat that the default mindset among legal claims lawyers is that because women traditionally do not choose dangerous workplaces, that office jobs should be paid the same as a hazardous location simply because they are populated by women.

Re: re: I haven't seen any evidence

We are entering year 7 of a "two year SAP implementation project" and still not properly live.

Always these things start with good intentions. But every stakeholder in these things ends up battling the system and timeline. Responsibilities, laziness, lack of understanding, the consultants eating up and promoting every daft upgrade "to help avoid risk and confirm compliance" and the inevitable crapshow when the system is launched and nobody really knows what they are doing anymore.

Then...the fun begins when they realise that all the old-hands who knew how to get things done in the old system, can no longer be bothered to learn how to grind things through the new system.

Don't think I've seen a successful computer transition, outside of perhaps companies that went into a Google Drive/SalesForce type thing where the system is already up and running.

Councils.....absolute s$$$-show for any IT project. However the government does have a habit of over-spending, but occasionally delivering a useful website.

So what if China has 7nm chips now, there's no Huawei it can make them 'at scale'

Re: Lay off guys

Ha, I don't know, I'm not exactly pro or anti American, but I sometimes question what the trigger point and desired outcome of these things are.

Are China a threat to US dominance in the tech markets? It's hard to believe that the US politicians are not wary that TSMC and Apple combined have a market cap/value of ~ $3 trillion dollars. Funnily enough the US power brokers keep finding odd little excuses to block Chinese tech.

When Huawei started looking like it was threatening Apple / Samsung back in 2020 (gaining 5 out 20 of the top selling phones that year), lo and behold a military connection was determined and pressure applied.

That said though, I'm quite willing to accept there may be shenanigans in the background that result in these export restrictions. Would be interesting to see how the Chinese have developed their 7nm technology, cause it appears that Intel are struggling to release 7nm processors, so it doesn't look good if the Chinse have released the 7nm chips already.

It appears China is using deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV) which does involve issues with low yield and complications. I presume that is what this US politician is referring to - but if it works, it works!

UK judge rates ChatGPT as 'jolly useful' after using it to help write a decision

Has anyone got any opinion on what actually happened with the ChatGPT lawyer case? I am unclear how it managed to completely fabricate case law, unless of course the AI was fed with garbage data (intentionally or accidentally).

I am a cynical geek at the best of times. It strikes me that lawyers face perhaps one of the biggest impacts from the AI revolution.

Law and compliance is a staggeringly complicated area and these groups are charging £1000s per hour for their advice. If you can get 95% of the information from chatGPT they stand to get annihilated. So funnily enough it's a bunch of lawyers who first demonstrate the AI is capable of providing false information.

I mean seriously....did he really think you could just file any old nonsense and risk his entire career, on something created by a draft AI system?

I just ran two moderately complicated compliance/legal questions through ChatGPT to gain a feeling for how reliable it can be. It answered one question perfectly, but it had an understandable issue with my 2nd question. It technically provided an incorrect answer - apparently due to the regulation changing in 2022 - but to be fair to ChatGPT it actually opens the conversation by pointing out it was basing its answers on the dataset fed to it in September 2021. So it made me aware of the situation and it is my responsibility to check for directive changes since then.

UK flights disrupted by 'technical issue' with air traffic computer system

Re: It's an impressive sight

Yeah Heathrow has an impressive 90-120 ish second turnaround time.

One of it's biggest concerns with the two runways at Heathrow is that they are running at maximum capacity during peak hours. Something trivial like fog results in an increased time per landing due to visibility concerns.

When there is heavy fog dozens of flights get cancelled

Very strange walking around Hounslow on the flight path. The planes feel like they are landing on your head especially when the shadow zooms across your feet

US Air Force wants $6B to build 2,000 AI-powered drones

Re: They are getting part of a clue

Twitter and YouTube are filled with drone footage on the front-lines. Heck, remotely piloted seadrones are taking out huge marine infrastructure.

Cheap drones are having drop-bombs and explosives attached to them, often connected to local radio or Starlink satellite internet.

The sheer number of very expensive tanks and radar systems that are being destroyed by the simplest drone fitted with a few kgs of explosives dropped.

It looks like a computer game the way they are playing it. Although quite sad watching both sides attack trenches with direct drone strikes.

Like they say, if I had a choice between 1x AI powered drone-plane, or a swarm of 3000 fast commercial stunt drones all internet connected targeted the enemy with proximity explosives..... it would be a rounding error in the budget. Loitering drone-munition has been a challenge also (drones that sit around stationary waiting for the enemy to arrive)

Silicon Valley billionaires secretly buy up land for new California city

Re: So, not 'Rapture'?

Ha

I want my genetic enhancements!

Can you raise $100M+ from AI investors with no product? SEC says yes

Having browsed their website for a while, I can see a whole heap of marketing nonsense and spin about the power of AI, but I couldn't tell you explicitly what the product is or does.

They mention AI and machine learning a bunch of times. Apparently it could help you visualise your data with PowerBI and "enable unique data driven experiences and applications" and I'm still sat there missing the key ingredient - WHAT IS IT THAT THIS PRODUCT DOES?

If I was being cynical, I'd almost think this was just a ChatGPT portal that helps you analyse code and present data. But....that....is....already....available...

Reading back how the sales structure and payments are setup though, even to my non-financial mind, it does read like a pyramid scheme. Even if that is just a technicality on cashflow.

Oh god, reading through LinkedIn it becomes far more obvious. I have no idea as to the technical/legal liability in this area, but when I browse LinkedIn employees for an IT company and I haven't come across a single 'technical' person working for them in the first three pages? Endless numbers of employees titled things like "brand ambassador", "talent acquisition", dozens of "founders", "reseller of AI products", "affiliate marketer". Looks like 99% marketing and 1% technical description.

CISA boss says US alliance with Ukraine over past year is closer than Five Eyes

Re: It's more than just IT data.

There are various reasons for the Ukraine war. Frankly it is hard to ignore the fact that the bulk of the fighting focussed on the Crimea and Donbas regions and Putin's miraculous discovery of "Nazees" in the exact same regions where Shell and our American cousins found some of the largest oil and gas wells in Europe.

In this context, we must remind ourselves that only the UK and the Nordic countries have good access to their own hydrocarbons - the rest of Europe is/was basically dependent on Russia and the Middle East for its energy. In case of an all out conflict they remain perilously dependent on 3rd party countries. While Russia itself relied on 20-40% of it's annual gas sales (and consequent government tax income) on the gas pipeline that runs through Ukraine into Europe.

I can only presume that Putin would be highly aware that European and US companies swarming around the newly discovered oil and gas fields in East Ukraine/Crimea formed an almost existential threat to Russia's export economy and has presumably seen this as a cause worth fighting for (it's notable that Joe Biden's son was a director at the Ukraine state energy company, an awkward link in hindsight given his personal vices).

No idea how to ramp down the conflict now? You would need to pacify Putin and show him an alternative, which would probably need to include the creation of multiple gas pipelines to Asia and Turkey/developing countries. Will the EU ever trade in Russia petrochemicals again? Not in the short term. But even if the conflict calms down, which company will spend billions on oilwell development in a military hot conflict region? That would almost require some Russian % split to encourage friendly terms. It's just too close to the Russian border and too inflammatory for the Russians to accept.

Lawsuit: We've got the stats to prove Twitter ax fell unfairly on older, female engineers

Re: A tough sell

It makes me cringe when people use statistics like this.

If anything, the use of statistics in this context indicates to me that the person does not fully grasp statistical analysis (or intentionally abuses it).

Yes, I'm sure there are differences in the data, but these aren't causal indicators. But to make the assumption the differences are directly because the person has age/racial/gender characteristics is so painfully stupid it hurts.

I suspect it's more likely to be about older technical employees earning high salaries, with the rest split out between attitude, key technical staff ratios and work ethic.

Two US Navy sailors charged with giving Chinese spies secret military info

Re: Does the US pay that badly?

You just have to hope with Russian security services that they use an English speaking native to translate the meaning of "I want my family taken care of"

"Igor, he says his wife is a pain in the ass, she needs to be wrapped in carpet and buried in the woods".

Google toys with internet air-gap for some staff PCs

I could possibly get behind this to a certain extent

Cutting off the distractions can be a pain

But my task manager is web based, so that is a concern

Samsung’s midrange A54 is lovely, but users won't feel seen

Re: "But at $450, outright, its flaws are easy to overlook"

The Xiaomi POCO range has decent pricing on Amazon.

There's something about Samsung that I just haven't liked about smartphones for a while now. At one point it was the early attempts to get rid of the headphone jack, weird forced apps that could not be deleted, overpriced stupidity etc.

I recently picked up a Pixel 6a and it has the fingerprint reader in the screen. I'm really not liking this solution, I had become very used to using a button on the side which helped me multitask (I could unlock the phone one-handed). The fingerprint scanner in screen really needs to be a two handed operation (or a fiddly and annoying single handed effort)

China admits local semiconductor industry can't match world class reliability

Re: Step it up!

Culture is a thing indeed. But often it's simply down to the reality of taking a pricey Western component, trying to make it as cheap as possible in high-volume, but relatively few individuals know how/why the full process. But since you're using lower skilled lower paid staff, this usually tends to result in an initial poor quality phase during ramp-up, but in theory they will learn from their mistakes and invest wisely over time.

You would expect them to have caught up after 10 years. Honestly I tend to see the same thing happen when new products/processes come out at big software/engineering forms. The product is usually wobbly and full of bugs on day 1!

Uncle Sam cracks down on faked reviews and bad influencers

Re: Amazon fake reviews

The best way to evaluate a product is to look for reviews that avoid short hysterical arguments. Protip: if someone is being paid to promote a product, they will generally NEVER criticise the product. So if you can find some "average" reviews that provide pros and cons in a balanced way, you know you can trust those reviews.

The worst offenders are:

5-star! Perfect!

Amazing customer service!

You need to buy this product!

Best/worst thing!

Faultless product!

There are literal websites devoted to developing niche content that are entirely fabricated to establish click-through revenue from ad programs.

A friend of mine made a few million pounds setting up 'affiliate programs' or whatever the hell they called it. It was basically just lying about a borderline-useless product and writing reviews in a really manipulative way. Often the end website doesn't even write the content, they just copy and paste articles directly from the advertiser

Biden lines up $42.5B for US broadband boost

Re: “Whether BEAD will be vulnerable to the same failures remains to be seen”

Amusing, in the urban areas in England you can typically get an 80meg DL service for £25pm ($32).

Sure, you can go all fancy, but even if you choose premium services you can get 1000 meg FTTP for ~ £30-45pm ($38-57).

We have ~73% gigabit internet coverage in Britain now. It's getting pretty sweet and rolling out fast

False negative stretched routine software installation into four days of frustration

We must form a steering committee to investigate.

US senators and spies spar over Section 702 warrantless surveillance

Re: Do not expect 702 to die

I think it's kinda the attention and sunlight effect that has more of an impact here

Imagine you gave all 35,000 FBI employees access to everyone's sensitive data, with no particular oversight, except that when you need to know some information you can go look for it.

Every incentive is there for the system to be abused.

Now I've always been a fan of saying, "ok, well, if you truly need access to this data, make a request to a relevant suitably trained person who has to review your request, what data you require and why it is relevant to the case". Now if that gets recorded and the individuals have to explain their actions in the future, that is a better system. The investigator has to justify their requirement and the data access engineer has to believe it is justifiable.

Man sues OpenAI claiming ChatGPT 'hallucination' said he embezzled money

Oh I don't know, if the journalist uses a tool to publish a lie in a supposedly factual context..that's pretty bad.

A chatbot warning you it's data might be rubbish being used by a human and presented as fact...

It's a tool. You can beat a man to death with a spade, but the spade is still simply a tool being used in a bad way.

Moral of the story - double check your statements.

The future of digital healthcare could be a two-metre USB cable

Precisely.

My NHS GP clinic is useless. It is a moderate sized practice with 5+ Doctors. The waiting time is currently 3 weeks.

Sure, when they have given me service, it was acceptable, but largely felt like a sausage factory churning me through the system.

I recently watched my partner register for a mobile NHS GP app available on a mobile app. She was registered within 24 hours, an appointment was available "within minutes" or at 20+ appointments available through the day until 8pm. The person she was talking to specialised in the exact unusual thing she was calling about (OK it did feel slightly "call centrey" as there were 40+ staff available to talk to).

The traditional GP practice will die from this technology.

Pornhub walls off Utah in age-verification law protest

Re: mass debate

To be fair to those entitled men you speak of, they are at least fighting for policy measures that predominantly affect and make life harder for other men.

Remember those millions of fake net neutrality comments? Fallout continues

Just so I understand, there is no legal recourse to a company:

--using the names of real Americans

--name that were obtained through leaked hacks from major stock-market listed companies

--using those details to lie and influence the government?

Just quite where do you have to draw the line? There needs to be a director somewhere who goes to jail, because you cannot simply spam 7m comments to a controversial law debate using other people's details, and not expect them to be punished.

Now, my preferred solution would be to take the owner of these companies director information, and sign them up for something they might not approve of....

Court gives FTC 30 days to swing again in privacy bout with location data slinger

"We sell personal information about where a user sleeps at night in their home and where that person goes throughout the day.

We sell this data to anyone for money. But honestly sir, it's not creepy or a breach of privacy"

And this is why I try to avoid installing apps. I vaguely trust something on a website - I know they can monitor me from a distance, but if they write their own code and encourage me to install it on my phone - I have no idea what information its shipping back to them.

Future of warfare is AI, retired US Army general warns

Re: Swarms of aircarft?

Helicopters are worryingly obsolete in the face of modern threats. Too slow, too big and hard to fly without a human operator

There is a genuine worry that helicopters could only really be applied to semi-controlled regions due to the risk of loitering drones at close contact

Re: Buhahahahahaha!

Frankly these days it's better to strike high profile targets and infrastructure in a current war situation, than going purely on splattering some low-level meatbags lying in a ditch. Much more effective return for your dollar/pound/euro.

Striking an oil depot/ammunitions depot is devastating for the enemy - if the AI allows for systems that can fly lower, with less chance of detection, in smaller aircraft that are easier to apply stealth materials on? These areas are well guarded, but imagine a situation where it is attacked simultaneously by 50+ commercial drones from all directions in kamikaze mode with low level explosives and a GPS location target, all used to confuse the defence radar. Then imagine a secondary wave of higher power stealth drones striking 10-20 seconds after initial engagement - all with live satellite video feedback to a fleet of humans providing strategy/explosive input. Heck it's quite foreseeable the commercial drones could simply drop dozens of small explosives around the target from height to really up the damage.

Compare that situation to 3x F22s flying into engagement mode with sophisticated air defence systems where a single shot can down the plane.

Just imagine a serious conflict like this taking place between Russia and Poland, with active support from the US/Germany, the mess caused by drones in such a high-impact attack would be ridiculous if both sides went at it.

TSMC wants to cash its US CHIPS but seems unhappy with the red tape

Re: Largely a waste of time

The Chinese economy is impressive in many ways, but it's laws have some seriously unusual quirks.

For example, they have blocked various US technology companies from operating for decades now.

They also require a 'local partner' to create manufacturing chains. One of the reasons there are so many Chinese billionaires is mainly because a large British corporation will need to take on a local engineering part in a 50-50 venture. Hence what tends to happen is that well connected Chinese engineers become tech billionaires very quickly during the boom years.

Many Western companies hate this situation, but appreciate there is no current alternative. To be fair to the Americans, the embargo on US tech companies and the peculiar partnership situation made sense in the early 2000s, but is becoming a joke in the global economy of 2023. Trouble is - none of the powerful Chinese billionaires want to let go of the partnership system.

So yes, I love to dunk on the Americans, but there are some aspects to their criticism of China that is quite valid (and for sure, Chinese criticism of America has some equally valid points).

Royal Mail wins worst April Fools' joke 2023

Not entirely true.

The problem with the NHS is largely a function of how it is structured. The only way to secure a payrise is to change bands - therefore after 12 months every single employee is incentivised to apply for alternative internal positions to hop up the ladder. Entire departments can exist where the staff have less than 18 months experience and half are looking for the next move.

Then you realise that all the most competent senior people are generally working in people management - due to the above salary banding. So you end up with the least experienced and lowest paid staff actually performing the main work. With lawyers constantly circling the ambulances looking for a payout, with inevitable mountains of paperwork created to mitigate against the lawyers.

Then you get into the surprisingly good pensions that are generally applied to people who may be earning £50-200kpa. The NHS pensions bill is astronomical. It is not unusual for a 40yr old NHS middle manager to have a £250k pension pot. Double or triple that for a 60yr old... And since NHS pensions are paid directly from public taxation (it is not cash invested in a share fund), you may be surprised to hear the taxpayer owes £650b to NHS pensioners

However, frankly it somehow works better than the ridiculous US system, so I am somewhat fond of the NHS despite its myriad of problems.

Bank rewrote ads for infosec jobs to stop scaring away women

Re: The last interview I had

I'd struggle to convince myself to employ a humanities graduate in any business or technical field

We all know that public and charity sectors are the places the humanities crowd aim for

Re: So

The presentation appears to be saying that women are put off by job adverts when asked to display experience and skills that are relevant to the job at hand.

But he is happy to hire women because they can talk to other human beings. More or less what he said ;)

It appears to be a crass sexist statement to claim that male IT workers are shy, introverted geeks. That would be institutionalised bias! Pfffft.

Tech giants looking for ways to wriggle out of UK digital tax, watchdog warns

Bigger question: why are so many high street shops empty - with the exception of so many charity shops?

Council rates are charged on rent. So typically if you pay £10kpa in rent, you have to give the council £3-5kpa in tax.

If you can buy something online, at scale and with fewer costs/overheads, it's no wonder that the high street is considerably more expensive. And of course, the council does not charge charity shops, so the net result is our high streets are cluttered with charity shops.

My favourite example is the Northern lad who converted a disused underground public toilet into a small cocktail bar. Only to find the council changed his tax rate from £3kpa to £24kpa.

He'll need to sell 5000+ cocktails annually just to cover the council tax rates.

That is what the councils are fighting for. They are fighting for their right to gouge the public by forcing them to use the shops. It's only mafia-like. The difference being that Amazon can happily put their shipping locations in the middle of nowhere and the cost per package ends up being relatively low.

School principal resigns after writing $100,000 check to Elon Musk impersonator

Re: Too good to be true?

As with most things in life, particularly relationships, if it looks too good to be true...protect yourself.

Re: "I am very smart"

I'd like to think I am 99% immune to this type of scam, but heck, I am not sure anyone is 100% immune.

You hear about the classic IT/Microsoft/bank/catfishing/romance scam and I'm not sure I could easily fall for these types of scam (I am naturally cynical of anyone who contacts me out of the blue). But if the scammer put in some serious effort, of course, anything is possible (you hear about scammers who physically start a relationship for months before putting the next phase of their scam into action).

I recall my great uncle falling to many of these scams following a decline in his mental health. The poor sod posted them cheques for £25k over the space of a year trying to claim a "lottery millionaire/betting" type of scam. We only twigged when he asked me to drive him to an award ceremony in Birmingham to collect his million pound payout in a few weeks time, but only after bragging about how he'd invested all this cash and just had to send one more cheque through the post...

Re: "I am very smart"

It took me too long to understand your post..

Nicely played.

Germany clocks that ripping out Huawei, ZTE network kit won't be cheap or easy

Re: Is there any proof?

It has been commonly reported that US technology companies were doing precisely what the US government is accusing China of.

It stands to reason, that the Chinese would have the desire, motivation and capability to do so. So in principle we have to assume they are doing so, much as they publicly admit they do on their own citizens (although presumably more targeted abroad).

I seem to recall that the UK government had a specific software team that had the explicit role of studying Huawei software and electronics for suitability/backdoors.

Workday sued over its AI job screening tool, candidate claims discrimination

Re: You don't need AI for this

I'm also going to take a wild guess here, based purely on guesswork and the nature of the class action lawsuit.

The individual does not mention the specific cause. Yet claims to be a victim. Being a "victim" would neatly allow him to take part in the class action payout. But harder to tell if it's being driven by the individual, or the legal team seeking to manufacture a lawsuit

Re: You don't need AI for this

I dislike these types of legal claims because it smells like 1) the actual cause/complaint of the bias has not been disclosed, 2) it smells like the legal company are shouting 'bias' to shakedown Workday for a payout in a class action lawsuit.

I've tried reading the court case documents. His claims are woolly do not appear to mention any single factor or specific claim - it merely says that an AI/machine learning model has the "POTENTIAL" to include bias against African Americans, disabled people and "people over 40". I must be honest, I am not aware of any specific reason why an IT company would not want to hire a 41 year... but anyway. It essentially reads: "AI didn't hire me. This must be due to structural racism." and while I admit structural racism exists, you should at least outline how/why it exists.

It seems to me, on the surface, that it is a fishing exhibition to see if there is any potential inherent AI bias. I could imagine a system perhaps, that could detect significant gaps in a CV, which could be flagged as a potential for someone having less experience in a role, but could also accidentally discriminate against people who have taken a career break or a long round of sick leave.

I'm not entirely sure how it would discriminate against African Americans or 40+ people. Unless you personally believe that hiring people based on qualifications is racist because certain demographics do not perform as well in college (I don't even want to venture into that quagmire). I doubt it has a button that says "no 42 year olds please". But I could imagine it might have an option for "hiring junior staff for junior roles" because of salary implications. Ultimately, it may just boil down to the fact that the AI does not have a "diversity inclusion process" baked into it, which would possibly be interpreted by some types of people as being racist in itself.

Results are in for biggest 4-day work week trial ever: 92% sticking with it

Looking through the majority of companies, there really are not many surprises among the type of companies involved.

Indeed, it is a 'not for profit' group that is largely checking whether other charity/public sector/linked businesses enjoyed working 4 day weeks.

In exchange for reducing their work days by 52 days per year, they did not a typical reduction of 2 days per year sick leave.

So yes, as expected, those funded by charitable means and via council/government cash, found that their employees liked working 4 days a week for the same money.

Notably, no plumbers or manufacturing firms chose to join the study, although I will admit the curiousity that 'Atom Bank' did actually take part.

I don't think this will gain any traction in the so-called 'dirty trades' where pay is based on actual work output.

UK tax authority nudges net 'influencers': You may owe us for those OnlyFans feet pics

We only trade with sea shells here.

If you have a fan, and want this company to stay in business, bring it to IT now

Re: air CON

The problem is usually that the aircon is often blowing hot or cold, so people near the fans usually end up having chilly air blown over them

Adobe's $20b buy of Figma in crosshairs of Europe's antitrust cops

It strikes me that the $20bn is less about the value of Figma as a business entity and more about the potential damage that Figma can issue on Adobe.

You can't compete against an essentially "acceptable" product that is free.

Adobe Photoshop is/was a great tool. But it has become a complicated, pain in the butt for novices, aimed at corporate/business users.

Just look at the numbers - Adobe earns $18bn revenue per year and $6bn profit.

Figma earns $400m per year revenue. It's a pure annihilation of the competition situation. Give it two years, some free features will be scaled back, you'll need a new account style. They will relaunch some features...

If only someone else takes the initiative and creates a freemium Figma clone......DOOO IT!

Intel wants another €3.2b from German gov for Magdeburg mega fab

Just sounds like PR fluff bargaining to justify asking EU countries for higher subsidies.

I suppose it looks bad from a distance, but if inflation costs have added 40-50% onto fab pricing, then perhaps it is reasonable to start a conversation about it.

It depends what EU countries want. The global position is that yes, it is far cheaper to manufacture in Asia, but for global security reasons it is desirable to have a global supply chain. If the EU countries want an EU supply chain but will not force companies to buy EU products, then the only way this works is to provide subsidies. Imagine a war breaks out with China over Taiwan, China immediately switches off all electronics export and the subsequent risk to global technology groups is immense. The US recognises this and encourages trading that isn't 80% (or whatever %) based in China.

Google ready to kick the cookie habit by Q3 2024, for real this time

Out of curiousity, does this mean Android/Chrome will stop allowing Google cookies, or they will stop using cookies for all internet traffic?

What will happen to all the spammy click happy/cookie companies that try and save their spammy cookies on my browser? Will that all come to a crashing halt?

UK spy agency violated Snooper's Charter with 'unlawful' data retention

Re: Mismanagement

"Shockingly negligent" could also be read as "have no interest in complying with the regulations, and are under intense five-eyes pressure to ignore such laws".

For sure, they are almost certainly aware of what they are doing. The fact they resist so hard to stop doing so in the future, hints at a larger problem.

If they are snooping on a targeted individual for an extended time period, I am not particularly concerned. If they are snooping on 100% of citizens 24/7........

Twitter engineer calls out Elon Musk for technical BS in unusual career move

Re: Bit klunky, but...

It comes down to respect.

If I call my buddy an asshat in the pub, there are no consequences.

If I drop a Teams message to the CEO, to politely inform him that he made an error in a statement and what the situation really is - this is OK.

Heck, I even thought Musk took the comment in his stride - to be fair he did ask to be corrected?

You never quite know after this point, if Musk fired him, or if his local manager/PR department has realised what a clusterf*** has been created, and they fired him because he had created a mild social media storm (optics are always good within a company, so anyone causing a ruckus on social media must considerable themselves expendable).

Personally, I wouldn't correct my line manager on Linkedin, yet alone a CEO of a billion dollar corporation on his own platform.