Posts by doublelayer 11428 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Feb 2018
Could it be this? A company claimed to have developed new ways to do something really easy, realized it was embarrassing, and took their own post down? The BBC repeated it incorrectly, so that might explain where you heard it. Seems to fit the admittedly few details in your recollection.
There is nothing stopping you from getting a PAYG SIM, register to Signal with that (which is when your unique identifier is generated) and then swap back in your regular SIM."
There are several things that could stop you.
"getting a PAYG SIM,": Some countries don't have a way to anonymously get mobile service. You have to supply identification when you do it. If you're hiding your identity, providing your ID on a second SIM may be an even bigger red flag for the automatic find-possible-person-of-interest database. Even if it isn't flagged, the number can be traced to you if they want to. That doesn't help you much does it?
"register to Signal with that (which is when your unique identifier is generated) and then swap back in your regular SIM.": This brings up several problems.
First, mobile companies usually collect IMEI numbers when you connect with a new SIM. You could then cross-reference those to figure out which numbers the device in question has been used with. While some of the time, a device will change SIMs because it's been sold to someone else, database entries indicating "Used number 1, started using number 2, started using number 1 again" are pretty conclusive about what you did.
Second, what happens if you have a number registered with Signal, someone else gets the same number because you've canceled the corresponding account, and tries to put that on Signal? I don't know, but I suspect something breaks. In order to prevent that, you might have to hold on to the number for quite a long time. That's inconvenient and could be expensive. I've been looking at how to keep a number reserved without using it frequently, and the companies usually want to charge me a maintenance fee or impose a "must use every three months or we cancel for you automatically" clause.
These things might not be dealbreakers. I use Signal, with my phone number, and I don't care whether people know that I do. They can't read my comms; that's good enough for me. Signal has to balance the concerns of people who don't think that with the difficulty of running a system without phone numbers as identifiers. If their decision is that they don't care, that's a viable decision.
That's an option, but some companies like to adjust payment when people move to cheaper places, so the same amount of money would become a larger fraction of total income. Logically, the company shouldn't care as long as the people work at the same level, and the people would probably work more efficiently having gotten better sleep and more time to focus, but companies sometimes see a reason they can justify paying less and they take it.
"I tend to use the same words with my mouth-hole as I do with my tappy-hands,"
For efficiency, talking to someone can prevent you having to use all those words. If they already understand something, you can skip it rather than having them skim through text which doesn't tell them anything new. If they're confused by something you said, you can rephrase immediately. If they have specific questions that are more important, they can suggest that you restructure your address so you cover those things earlier or in more detail.
Take an email I recently sent, describing the performance of a system. I told the recipients that, in the interest of reliability of my measurements, I had tested the code repeatedly and reported average, median, and extreme values for the time it took to run. However, one of the recipients got confused based on the word "reliability", interpreting it to mean that the code itself was unreliable, either crashing or producing incorrect answers. This led to a second email where I clarified what I meant in a diplomatic fashion and provided even more numbers to confirm that the code always completed and produced the same results given the same inputs. My colleague also added an email of his own to ensure them that we had a large set of tests to confirm the stability and correctness of the code. I think that misunderstanding could have been resolved in about thirty seconds of conversation, because they could have said "What is unreliable about the code?" and I could have said "I see. The code is reliable. A better term would be sample size of time measurement. I'll use that for the rest of this conversation.".
Yes. The license for Google Play Services. Google charges manufacturers for these, and also requires that they refrain from installing any other variant of Android. It benefits Google in two ways: they get money off Samsung for the code and they prevent competitors from building around AOSP. Both give them plenty of cash. That's quite a healthy revenue stream.
Physical stores are not comparable. Some of the reasons are explained in the first reply to your post, but one other reason is simple: the people selling products to the stores can decide not to sell there and sell somewhere else. On IOS, that's not an option. On Android, it's not a realistic option. That is one reason this discussion is happening, because there is a lot of competition for physical stores, but next to none for Google Play and none at all for Apple's store.
When did I say that. I pointed out that they have a revenue stream for that stuff. It's from users. Who buy devices. Google and Apple get large chunks of profit every time someone does that. Google also gets revenue chunks when companies design new phones and licenses Google Play Services. The APIs you're talking about are earning Google money, and they only do that because app developers make them necessary. Without developers, the APIs in question would not earn Google money. As for Apple, they also charge every developer an annual fee for things like this.
You are saying that, regardless of any other revenue stream, any money that is collected must be necessary for development. The large profit margins demonstrate clearly that they could lose revenue without having to cut spending on development. Given that, the discussion then needs to consider fairness, which is what we could get to if you would stop telling me that anything and everything they do must automatically be justified because I, or rather mobile app devs which I'm not really, owe them so much.
"so Google and Apple make $0 for the billions in investment creating the platform"
Wrong. They get money from hardware sales and software licensing. You know, from the people using all the stuff in the platform? The people who write apps aren't using very much of that platform; it's the users who are. People who write apps don't much care whether the built-in email client works or not. I do. The money for the upkeep of that app and all the other ones comes from the money paid for those things, which is embedded in the sale price of any phone using Googled Android or IOS. In addition, app developers are the main reason the platform has value. Without third-party apps, these platforms aren't so useful. The ones that had nice design but few or no app devs, well most of them aren't around anymore.
"and developing the distribution infrastructure."
Oh, yeah. The thing that has to respond to three requests: search, information page, download app? Extra feature of payment management, which if the developer uses it cuts the store in? Which gives the manufacturers a ton of power over what people download? I can see why they need to be rewarded for that. It's not like someone else might have implemented that independently using basically no resources.
"Epic also wants "an order requiring Google to remove or amend the technical restrictions to ensure that [...] those apps/app stores are able to operate in the same way as the Google Play Store with respect to app installation, app updates, and access to operating system features," something likely to ring alarm bells among Android security watchers."
Yes, it does ring alarm bells. The alarm is because Google has, to enhance its own store, poked holes in Android's security model for it to use. There's the anticompetitive aspect of that, which I'd expect to appear in investigations in the near future, but also the risk that someone could find a way to abuse those holes by impersonating Google Play. Unlike other ways to download apps, Google's doesn't have to negotiate to get the required permissions or prompt the user before making changes. Those prompts aren't just security theater or notices so users stay alert, they're also the best opportunity to spot something nefarious and prevent it getting started. A good solution to this is to lock down Android so that any method of installing apps has to go through rather than around the security model. This would apply to FDroid, Google, the manufacturer, the carrier, and everybody else.
I suppose we must live in different worlds regarding phones and laptops; I see phones charging, but usually from short cables which aren't stretched across rooms. The long easily-tripped-over cables I see are almost universally attached to laptops. Maybe it's just the buildings I spend time in. My other points for the why not on phones issue remain, though.
"And 'endemic' obviously means something different!"
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I didn't use the word endemic; you did. I just quoted you. I interpreted it to mean something along the lines of "prevalent" or "common". Did you mean it differently? My response was written for that meaning, and having reread your comment, it still seems to be the most logical meaning in context to me. You said the issue wasn't endemic, I counter that it is quite common.
What worries me is after the original handshake. If the magnetic connector doesn't support the 65W my work laptop expects, it might specify that and refuse to work, which would be acceptable, or it might not have that functionality and try to pass the voltage through until something burns out, which wouldn't. I don't know for sure what would happen, which is why I have to test it, but I'm afraid given the many manufacturers that there will be some unreliable ones out there which could cause a safety or destroyed equipment issue.
"Think about it, though: if the problem was as endemic as is implied,"
It is, and most of your questions have obvious answers.
"why don't other vendors come up with alternatives?"
They do. Microsoft's Surfaces use a magnetic charger for the same reasons. They're not the only ones who have done so. The primary reasons that companies choose not to do it are backward compatibility (E.G. most Dell business laptops used the same size barrel adapter before they adopted USB-C) or patent fears (Apple's sued people before for similar connectors and everyone was expecting them to do the same to Microsoft but it didn't happen).
"Why hasn't Apple put it on their phones?"
Two reasons. First, phones aren't usually as likely to have the problem. The reason is that phones have batteries which generally last longer, so people are rarely seen at a table, working on the phone, with the phone plugged in. Laptops do have that more often, so they need the protection more. Second, phones are already expected to fall more often, which is why people often put their phones in cases. Because they're small, easily dropped, etc. they've been designed for abrupt falls more than laptops have. It's usually less of a problem if a phone falls to the floor than if a laptop does so.
"(I previously mentioned my LG phone with a magnetic USB adapter)."
Which is useful, as is wireless charging, because they reduce wear on the charging port. Magnetic USB-C cables do exist, and I need to buy one to see if it can withstand long-term high-voltage charging. I'm afraid that they're not designed for that and will fail in a laptop where they wouldn't in a phone.
"Why don't the business laptop vendors (Dell, Lenovo, HPE, etc) address the issue you describe by making the power socket easily replaceable?"
Why don't they make the hard drives easily replaceable? Or memory? Or WiFi cards? The usual answers are that they can save themselves money, produce a thinner machine, and so on. Also, few of their customers are planning to resolder a power port anyway, so they probably figure they don't have to worry about the issue costing them customers. If it leads to a faster replacement cycle for the laptops, I doubt they'll complain.
The cables that look the same but are not is a really important issue. Have an upvote.
I don't buy new equipment all that frequently, so I've still got a lot of stuff not on USB-C. Those things I do have though... I have a laptop from work with a USB-C socket for charging. It comes with a power adapter for it. I have a portable device which also charges via USB-C. Its charger can't charge the laptop because it doesn't produce enough voltage. Fine, no surprise there. However, the cable which connects to that weak charger doesn't appear to be able to charge the laptop when a proper power supply is placed at the other end. I don't know why. Also, this is one of the few cables I have with USB-C on both ends, but I don't know whether it carries data at all. Also, there are cables which work with Thunderbolt and ones which don't. The Thunderbolt ones are supposed to have a logo on them somewhere. So perhaps one can determine which kind they have if they have a magnifying glass on them, but in reality, the cable that fits the port gets used and people generally won't find out that it's causing the system to run slow until they've experienced a lot of pain.
If USB-C is to be our one standard, I suggest we force one standard on all the people using it. It goes something like this:
1. All cables carry data. No cable will ever be produced lacking data pins. If we find a cable you've manufactured which lacks the data lines or in any other way has data intentionally disabled, you will lose your license to produce USB cables and we tie all the power-only cables at ankle height around your office before killing the lights. If you wish to produce cables which don't carry data for security reasons, you probably don't need to, but we'll accept cables with a switch on them which cuts them.
2. All cables with USB-C on one or both ends will be able to carry power at 5 V and 3 A. They should be able to do more, but nothing less than that.
3. Any wall adapter with a USB-C socket must be able to provide power at 5 V and 3 A. This holds whether the device they're shipped with uses that or not. If the device only uses 1 A at 5 V, the adapter still has to be able to produce 3 A if called upon to do so.
4. If a device uses USB-C to power itself, all the USB-C sockets on it will work to charge it.
5. All devices with at least one USB-C socket have to state in their documentation if not written on the device itself whether the sockets are data-only, power only, or data and power.
6. All devices using USB-C to power themselves must state in their documentation if not on the device itself the voltage and current required to charge them.
I'm sure there are more necessary rules. Without them, we have the situation we had before, with cables that only work on some machines and you might have to get an unusual one if yours breaks, but now they don't even look different to make this clear.
And using a subsidiary based in Ireland. I mean, we have to list all the countries that have nothing to do with Portugal so we can get the full effect of the "Why?" feeling. Maybe they've got servers there or something? Facebook's going to have to provide a good reason when the courts start to read their complaint.
The targeting of Xiaomi doesn't make as much sense as other companies do. I don't agree with the banning of Huawei because each time public information gets released, it paints Huawei as a place which writes crappy code but not a place which backdoors the equipment it sells. Still, I can conceive of a justification for its ban. The hardware it makes does go into the backbone of a critical resource, and if someone could disrupt, intercept, or disable that resource, there would be big problems. If someone knows that Huawei has capacity to do those things but doesn't want to tell us, it could make sense that you'd have to ban it. I'd like to see the evidence, though.
Xiaomi doesn't have that justification. They don't make infrastructure; they make consumer electronics. Sure, their electronics might come with malware on them, but so could any other company's. If there is a risk of malware-laden Chinese electronics coming into a country, that country would likely have to ban all the companies' imports, not their shares. There appears to be little or no justified security concern, which makes previous bans dubious as well. If it's a trade war they want, they should just do it the normal way, with broad tariffs. Doing a trade war by picking victims and turning the cannons on them alone is not only strange and erodes trust, but it probably isn't going to do all that much about the problems people have with the trade relationship either.
They were deleting after three years*. That's not GDPR. That's other regulations. Specifically, it appears to be from the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. At least the biometric information is covered there. That is what the article talked about, but there's other information the police get, such as full images of computers and phones which they like to extort out of victims for reasons I don't understand. I'm not sure where that's stored or which laws the police use to set the data retention policy for that.
*Well, they claim to delete after three years.
"If the backup system has been replaced and is operational, what's the point of mentioning the fire in the story?"
Some options:
1. It demonstrates the age of the system I.E. "it was around in 2005 to have this happen".
2. It demonstrates that the operators are likely to have backups I.E. "we know they had backups in 2005, so they probably have them now even if they don't give us the details".
3. It demonstrates that there has always been a problem with maintenance of this system I.E. "as far back as 2005, it's been known that recovery will be difficult".
4. It is intended to suggest that the police should have learned by now I.E. "they should have learned in 2005 that massive data loss events will happen and built a faster recovery system accordingly".
5. It is intended to suggest incompetence I.E. "at one point, they built their backup system near a place that can explode. Who knows if they've done something as risky now".
6. It's an interesting event that happened, and they think the story might intrigue the readers.
More options are available.
Not really true. Depending on the location of the phone or camera, it probably has more padding insulating it from shock, whether that be a protective case for the camera or your leg if your phone spends its time in your pocket. SD is a bad idea for a number of other reasons though, which I've just posted about. The short version: not good for lots of rights, can't predict failure, not easy to confirm reliability, and NEVER make it feasible to remove something safety-critical while the system is running. Reservations about SD as an option aside, the storage should certainly be replaceable.
"I'll bet they wish they had built a microSD card slot into the bezel of the infotainment system."
The storage should definitely be swappible, but never like that. It shouldn't be easy to accidentally take the storage out, and it really shouldn't be feasible to take it out while driving. Similarly, consumer-grade EMMC inside the dashboard isn't great for reliability, but if you wanted to see what significantly worse looks like, trusting SD would be a good way to get there.
I would instead suggest a container for a storage device which is modular but installed beneath the screen panel. Users who are knowledgeable enough can get to it by disassembling the car, but nobody will accidentally take a card out of the display thinking they must have put it in a while ago. That also makes it possible to insulate the storage device from shock, temperature, and other possible damage. While specifying this storage system, the manufacturer should ensure they use storage which supports a SMART-style health check so they can warn the drivers to get it replaced. If they want to be extra careful, they could have the module include two mirrored disks so not even a relatively rare unpredicted failure can crash it. Even requiring all of this instead of a basic EMMC module wouldn't change the price all that much, and the service center could probably charge the driver for the replacement part instead of being forced to replace it at their expense when it causes a safety issue.
"So what's the deal? Have I just been lucky, or has Tesla cheaped out on the components in its cars?"
A little bit of both. The storage was consumer-grade EMMC, which isn't the greatest out there for really anything from speed to reliability. That doesn't help. But another aspect is that you don't write to your flash like the car does. That's often a critical factor, since writing to flash is more intensive than reading from it (mostly unlike spinning disks). I'm guessing that many of the flash-based devices you have don't write a lot. Some may be powered off, some may not store much data and primarily use the flash to store the firmware, and some may not get used as often so they don't need to change so much data. The car's system will write to the storage automatically, including updates and entertainment data. When used consistently for eight years, that's a lot more writes than you'd normally find in other devices. Simultaneously, only 8 GB of flash is provided. While there's some more to handle hardware problems, that's a relatively small chunk to be constantly rewriting. I don't know the size of files that get written to that routinely, but given that the infotainment system which runs on that screen seems to have many features, it gets updates somewhat frequently to support them, and at least one of the features appears to be a navigation system with offline storage of some map data, I'm guessing it gets written a lot. If they also do things like storing logs there, that could be even stronger. I'm pretty sure they don't use it as a cache for autopilot images because EMMC is too slow for most of that.
That's a bit optimistic. Now I'm biased, because I already had to replace one failing SSD in my primary laptop and now another one is failing, but still. There's a lot of writing that can't easily be controlled, and that will wear out storage. The more writing takes place and the less control one has, the more likely this is to become a problem. Depending on what people do with their computers, they can do some write-heavy things. Browsing, for example, often includes a lot of caching stuff to nonvolatile storage. Editing image or sound data also usually has a largish disk usage, depending on the editor in use, to support things like autosave with undo. And that's without including things that the operating system might do, like downloading an update, failing to fully get it, deleting the failed download, and going again. Then updating all the OS files from that update.
Disks wear. Whether it's an old mechanical drive whose moving parts have worn down or an SSD which is nearing its write limit, they can be expected to fail with more frequency than other components. For any sufficiently important system, there should be a plan for replacing them when that eventually happens.
I'm sure Dan knows that. Haven't all of us at some time worked for someone who isn't known for their IT prowess, doing IT? I have (note to employer, I'm not doing so now). All we can do in that situation is try not to make the reputation of the IT prowess worse; dreaming of improving it is often a wasted effort. Still, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's our fault. Put the wrong person in charge, have them ignore the people below, and you can take skilled techs and still make a mess.
To some extent, it comes from a desire for a product that nobody else makes and trust in a company that has successfully accomplished a product release before. In this case, for example, I would have had little doubt that Planet could make the product because they've already made two products which still exist. Not that I'd have necessarily liked the product if they'd made it, or that it would be identical in every detail, but I wouldn't fear losing my money in a scam. With a different company though, that would be a stronger worry.
You might as well ask though why anyone would invest in a risky venture. If you have money, why put it into a business which might fail, or invest it in a stock or bond which won't help much if the company goes bankrupt. In each case, someone is willing to risk that their investment may decrease in value for the chance that they'll get something better than their investment after waiting, whether that be a larger amount of money or a product they want.
They don't have to release new Android versions, but if the 2018 figure means security updates, that doesn't take so much effort. They can use a lot of the same code that gets made available because it doesn't do anything to their keyboard or custom hardware. After all, custom ROMs seem to be able to do that without much difficulty, and they usually don't get paid to do so. A manufacturer which doesn't do that gets sent down my list of trustable ones. One who advertises to tech-literate people and still doesn't do it gets themselves a nice hypocrisy debit as well.
I disagree entirely, though I didn't back this phone. The reason is that this was supposed to eventually also have Linux on it. A processor can be quite important if it's running a desktop OS and potentially intensive software on it. Unfortunately, Android can also be CPU-hungry, especially if they don't have Lineage OS or a similarly trimmed version.
Meanwhile, 6 GB of memory is, in my experience, fine for a lot of phone tasks since it doesn't need to multitask as much as other machines. Opinions will vary, but many have devices with 3-4 GB and rarely use that much. Also, backers knew they would have 6 and presumably were fine with that since they chose to back at that level. Other improvements, such as a better camera, are meaningless to me; if it has a camera, it's probably fine for the few times I will use it in its lifetime.
I would be unhappy with this change in specifications if I had backed it.
But the question is why a U.S. tariff and mainland Chinese retaliation should change the negotiations between a Taiwanese company and a British one. If China put a tariff on Mediatek to punish Taiwan for having companies which got restricted by the U.S., it wouldn't really make much sense because a lot of Chinese phone manufacturers use Mediatek SOCs heavily. Also, I think we'd have heard of the tariff. But even if they did that, the restriction would likely be on Chinese purchase of the chips. Or, if Mediatek agreed to make things harder for American manufacturers so China wouldn't do that, there'd be problems between Mediatek and American clients. Planet is British. Why would either Mediatek or China want to do anything to the British to retaliate against American tariffs? If they did want to, they'd be able to make it happen, but it doesn't make sense given the current state of relations between Taiwan and the UK.
"So if Facebook, for example, decided to only one side of any story/news item so as to direct the narrative you're ok with that? Can't have it both ways."
I think I can. I view that as their right to do, as it's the right of any terribly biased media source to do. I am not happy about it though. I'll complain. If I have the ability, I'll try to convince them to change their policy. Then again, I'm already unhappy about their data collection, and I've complained, and I've refused to set up an account, and that's not had any effect on their policy. Still, I'd try.
Leaving the rest of your comment aside. I only want to respond to this chunk:
"Surely you agree that all competitors in the social media market should follow the same rules on free speech?"
No, I don't. Social media companies, like other companies, are private entities. They should have the ability, should they choose to use it, to decide how they want their system used. If that means no discussions or pictures of cats because that's so last decade, then they can make it the no-feline-content zone. If that annoys the users, then that's a commercial failure; they probably won't be mourned. In terms of monopolistic behavior, I want to limit social media's influence in such a way that they can't prevent the creation of alternatives. So if Twitter started to buy the internet so I had to abide by their rules everywhere, I'd have a problem. If the only place I have to abide by Twitter's rules is Twitter, I view that as their right. If I don't want to abide by Twitter's rules, I find or create an alternative and go with it.
The same rights apply to any other company which makes something that I use but doesn't sell that thing to me, only allowing me to use it under a contract. A rental property may tell me that I'm not allowed to make loud noises at night. A rented car may come with a contract telling me that I must not drive it too far away from the place I'm going to return it to. A cloud server company may specify that I'm not allowed to mine cryptocurrency on a shared CPU. None of those things are required because they're against the law. They're required because the company owns the resource and I don't and they have specific conditions under which they're willing to let me use their thing.
There are already ways to make a phone relay its camera to something else, so you could already configure that. It would involve some work on the system which takes the video from the phone and makes it useful, but that's the same problem you get with any other camera. The problem with a phone used for this purpose is that they're usually not so designed to be taped up outdoors. Even the ones sealed for water resistance aren't expecting long-term exposure. Anything on the outside of the building is likely to be exposed to sunlight, solar heating, cold not often seen indoors, and precipitation. The hardware may not enjoy those conditions, and at least two of them have been known to create battery problems.
The black market may add that premium, but it's a lot easier to sell something to the black or gray markets than it is to sell a knife to a murderer, and if you're prone to rationalizing, there are people who might use an exploit purchased on the black market for purposes you don't consider evil. For example, there are people who will pay a lot for IOS exploits. Some of these are creepy companies or governments who want to break into citizens' equipment, but another category is people who want to jailbreak. So Apple probably has to offer quite a bit of money to compete not only with malicious people willing to spend a lot of money, but also people who aren't as unsympathetic. Another reason it's different is that selling an exploit isn't illegal unless you know or have a strong enough suspicion that it will be used for illegal purposes. Using the same example, it's not illegal to jailbreak a phone, so it's not illegal to sell an exploit to people who will use it to jailbreak a phone. A lot of ethical researchers will never consider selling exploits, but there are many researchers who might not mind so much. Companies who don't want to see others with the exploits would be well-advised to consider price competitiveness.
"doing 32 bit stuff is always faster then doing 64 bit stuff on the same computer, simply because you are moving half the data."
Er ... no. Not at all. Everything's the same size, so you don't move any more data. Only for pointers do you need to move more data, and it's a load using a single register, so it's not really any different there either. Crucially, your strings, byte arrays, integers, and floats are the same size. And, as I pointed out, some of those things can be processed by a single 64-bit operation when they couldn't be processed by a single 32-bit one. Fewer instructions to do the same thing speeds you up unless someone's been fiddling with the microcode.
The 286 was discontinued in 1991, and even if "early 90's" means 1995, that's only a four-year gap. I can buy a processor that's four years old and do much better than a 486. A lot are ARM-based, but I could use MIPS boards, Intel Atoms, even some newer RISC-V options. Or I might canibalize someone's old computer they asked me to recycle for them. I'm not even sure where I'd get a 486 today, and no clue why I would want something with that performance-to-power level.
That's true, but before you go to the conclusion that that's generally applicable, let's discuss what that was. Pointers are twice as long. So a program that uses pointers (all of them) needs more memory to store them. However, most programs don't hold most of their important data in pointers, so that's not a large increase. One program does store most of its data in pointers: the operating system. In order for process-specific memory to work, the OS needs a big table of real pointers and virtual pointers. The OS has a lot of other tables containing pointers too, but the memory tables are among the largest. So it can be generally assumed that a 64-bit operating system is going to use a lot more memory than a 32-bit one, but a 64-bit user-level program probably won't have a similarly-sized increase in memory usage. When operating on a memory-restricted system, the increased usage may mean that the performance hit of a 32-bit OS is necessary.
"But it's worth pointing out that, on platforms that can use both 32-bit and 64-bit [most x86 and ARM64], the 32-bit code is probably going to be a little bit faster, and a little bit smaller, due to 64-bits vs 32-bits for memory addresses."
No. It's worth pointing out the "little smaller" part, but the "little faster" part is almost always dead wrong. If you write something and compile it to a 32-bit instruction set, anything you use that's larger than 32 bits must be chopped up to fit into 32-bit only operations on the CPU. Some may have 64-bit registers, but if the major operations can only handle 32 bits of that at a time, you have to do some more math to put the pieces back together. In 64-bit instruction sets, you can use values that are double the length. Some instruction sets implementing 64-bit operations also have some ability to natively handle 128-bit values. A lot of programs use things that can't fit into 32-bit registers. Long integers, double-precision floating points, etc. Even more use things that can't fit into 64-bit registers either, so they still need chopping, but they need half as much chopping as when they have to be used in 32-bit ones. If a single operation can do what four were needed for before, the processing is faster. If the operation can use two registers when it would have needed three, the program doesn't have to do as many cache and memory requests. Recompiling standard code for 64-bit is likely to make it faster, at the minor cost of increased binary size.
The "for free" is because people keep assuming it's going to be used to connect very much underdeveloped areas. And no, that doesn't include the United States, even in a disaster. It includes places where people have little access to electricity, let alone communications. No wires to carry the signal, so satellite would be the fastest way to get connection there. That's what people always say is the main reason I should accept this system; it's a humanitarian dream, connecting all the world together to lift everyone from ignorance, bringing education to those who can't afford what I have, yada yada. That dream is great. If they did it, I'd be very happy and I'd give them all sorts of licenses so they could get it done. I might even buy the more expensive service to make it easier for them to give the hardware to people who can't afford it.
They aren't doing that. They haven't even started to talk about any of the gnarly issues involved in doing that. Some nice chunks of speeches have mentioned it, and bunches of people online parrot back the arguments. I would like those who do so to realize that I don't believe they're going to actually realize any of those dreams, and I'll need proof. Until I get it, I can't give them any credit for humanitarianism and consider it only as a commercial product. As a commercial product, it has negative externalities that make it harder to swallow. The balancing positives need to be proven to me and likely to others before we would stop our objections.
Right. For a price significantly higher than every other connection option. I'm sure they'll be providing them for free to any village without a cable any day now. I've seen this argument trotted out so many times; maybe we should actually see it done before we give them the credit for their humanitarian action? No? Maybe you can at least show me the documents where they've been getting them approved for developing countries where internet access is sparse?
Nobody says they should get the software without payment. They say the audit to make sure they didn't steal it should be postponed. Keep in mind that the hospitals are already paying for a bunch of licenses, so the companies are already getting quite a bit of money. I trust hospitals enough to pay any additional license fees, and I also trust them to have already done so in most cases. The audits are the difficult bit, and now is a really bad time to make people do that when those people are also saving lives.
As I see it, the companies have a couple of likely options. They could voluntarily relax their auditing requirements now and get a nice press release about it. Or they can not do that, get a bunch of stories like this printed in papers with a higher readership, and take the risk that people hate them. Or keep doing it after that and take the risk that a law is passed forcing them to relax their audit requirements, but no nice press release. Only one final option works out better for them, which is to hope that nobody else cares enough to write about the problem. Doesn't strike me as likely, but people ignore a lot of problems, so it might work.
Somehow, I think the hospitals will probably be trustworthy enough to state the number of licenses they used later. That's always assuming the license system allows them to increase their usage without asking for payment anyway, and if the licensing model says they have to pay per computer, the software will likely enforce that. More importantly, the audit itself is going to cause a lot of problems for the hospital, while the theoretical delay in payment will probably be a drop in a bucket for a big software company who already gets paid for existing licenses. If they want to fight in the court of public opinion, it will end badly for them.
I was assuming that the people doing the audit were doing so remotely by sending lots of communications to the staff and demanding information about the network and machines running the software. If they did show up, there are all sorts of unpleasant things that could befall someone willing to endanger others when it's not necessary. I'd especially enjoy mistaking them for a cleaner and sending them to the least pleasant section, having previously informed all the staff in that area to be very busy if they have the miracle of not already being so and never acknowledge the questions of the new cleaner except to prevent them from leaving and occasionally reprimand them for not cleaning. Maybe it's a good thing I don't work for a hospital.
Do the anti-shutdown-Parler contingent not know what free speech is?
Here's a hint. It means the government doesn't get to prevent you from talking (limits apply). It doesn't mean that I have to give or sell you any resources to use while making your speech. So long as the government doesn't name you and say you can't speak, or name you and ban me from selling stuff to help you speak if I want to do so, the government hasn't breached free speech laws. If I independently decide that I'd rather you not speak, and I'm going to refuse to help you speak, that's my right as well.
So, given this definition, let's review who did anything against Parler's speech. It's Amazon, Apple, and Google. These are not the government. They're not doing it because the government said so. There's a reason the lawsuit is trying to make an antitrust claim; free speech doesn't apply to cloud services vendors. You want to make a point about that, go ahead. Rabbiting on about free speech when the government hasn't restricted speech only proves that you're missing the point.
I thought the same thing when reading it, possibly because I'm currently considering whether to buy the custom SSD to repair an Apple laptop or just put it aside for later. I really hope they haven't done that, and I've misread things like this before, but hopefully there will be extra details about it somewhere. I looked around for someone who bothered to ask this question when they got the press release, but all the news articles I find just say "replaceable" with no more detail.
Almost certainly not. That's not a problem as I see it. Even if you have the space, power, and the massive desk needed to support five screens, they'll be very large and difficult to move around as you like them. These glasses could be used in much less space and you could also move them with you to have that much screen real estate wherever you work. It depends how you want to use them, but there could be several advantages to having all your screens in a portable unit.
There may be people who don't believe PayPal is a good method of storing value. Since a PayPal account doesn't have any external guarantee that it will retain its value, people who store money in PayPal because they think it will continue to hold its value are doing so only because they trust PayPal. One of the primary benefits of cryptocurrency is that you don't have to trust various participants in the system. If a structure for a cryptocurrency expects the users to accept that it's useful because they trust a backing organization, it's no better than any other company who will hold value in a database and promise to give it back some time; that's not necessarily a problem, but we already have those. Cryptocurrencies which don't have such a backing system may be more volatile, but none of them expect me to blindly trust that someone somewhere will keep a bunch of valuable stuff around so my money will hold its value.
The person you are replying to is expressing skepticism, not that it's possible, but that it would be done. Whatever resource is used, how do you know the backing organization has the resource in the necessary quantity? Even if you can prove that they had it at one point, how can you prove that they still have it? If a backing organization had a bunch of cash in an account to back their coins, how would you detect it if someone decided to take a bit out to spend on something else on the theory that not enough people will use the backing that they'll need it all? Or used it as a resource for something else putting the coin investors lower in the debt cycle should the backing organization go bankrupt?
Essentially, the question is why should a backing system be trusted, because otherwise it's similar to any unstable investment which has the possibility to crash without warning with little recompense. The usual argument is that these coins will replace cash, but even under hyperinflation, cash can't become worthless in five minutes.
I always do it. Yes, I'm sure it won't help, because I've done it at least four times before I called them. I still do it. I'll mention, while I'm waiting for it to reboot, that I've done it before, but I'll do it.
The reason? I hate it when someone tells me they've already done something, I believe them, they're lying, and it could have saved me time. That happens very frequently, so I know why they don't trust that I've done it. Now if I can make them not ask for it by providing them a lot of information in the initial request, I'll happily do that, but if they're giving me instructions I've already tried, there's always the possibility that it will turn out to be just slightly different from what I did and will actually help. It hasn't happened yet, but it might. I have to give them the same benefit of the doubt that I want my family and friends to give me when they tell me that they really have tried forgetting the Bluetooth device and repairing, but actually they just turned Bluetooth of and on.
Valid points, but some of them are quite limited. For instance, you spend some time on the power of a private company to ban someone. Specifically, you say "If Trump can be banned from these products, then any of us can for any reason - is that the world we want to live in?". That's already the world we live in. Facebook can ban you for violations of their terms of service, and they get to write the terms of service. That's because Facebook built and run the entire network. They get to choose, subject to laws, who they want or don't want. If you don't like this, don't post on Facebook. If you do like this, don't post on Facebook; they're really creepy.
In general, I am willing to accept a lot more misinformation than I or anyone else would like, but primarily because every mechanism I can think of that suppresses the misinformation will either get abused or neglected. Probably both. However, places you can post stuff shouldn't be under an obligation to give me their platform if they don't want to. If The Register's moderators don't like my comments, because I'm abusive or offensive or I like Python and they hate it, they have the right to ban me. They have this right because it's their comment section, which they have no obligation to provide for me. In the same way, I sometimes allow comments on blogs I write. If you come to one of my sites and post one, you have no freedom of speech whatsoever. I will read your comment, and if I don't like it, because it's spam or offensive or I'm feeling grumpy, it doesn't go up. There are places on the internet where you can post anything you want and it basically never comes down. You want to post something which others keep taking down, go there. Or you can set up your own site, which is pretty easy and has very few restrictions. If Facebook tried to control the entire internet and lock you out, I'd have a massive problem with it. As long as the thing Facebook locks you out of is Facebook, that's their right.
Usually, people who want to run Linux on a Mac bought the Mac at least partially for Mac OS but also want to use Linux for other tasks. If you already like Apple software, running Linux on the hardware is still useful because you have the choice of both environments. At least it was when Linux could be installed without much hacking, maybe with a few less important hardware not having drivers, but mostly functional out of the box. It might not be so useful when it has to be custom untested code to work with Apple's new processors. If people buy Macs just to run Linux on them, they must really like the design of the laptops. I don't think that's often the intent.
"I thought properly Linuxified Chromebooks were a thing. Maybe they're not powerful enough for Linus."
The most powerful one I've seen has six cores, 4 GB of RAM (maximum supported), and relatively slow access to storage. If you are hoping to do serious development on that of something large, compiling alone will take a very long time. If you want to use it because it's thin, light, and low-power, that works. If you want to develop small to medium projects on it, it will work but you'll notice a speed problem. If you want to develop a big project on it, you should have a good reason for not wanting to use anything else because you will have to sacrifice a lot of time and inefficiency. When compared to the Apple M1 chip, performance is not even comparable. It all comes down to the purposes to which the device will be put.
It exists, but in each case it includes a bunch of system-specific cludges which might work. If you want to port, you can start with some of the OS code from the PineBook Pro, which is effectively the same kind of hardware as a Chromebook so more of their code is portable. Still, you'll have to get into the bootloader yourself, and the GPUs on ARM-based SOCs often lack driver support, which you'd have to fix. And then there's the drivers for other things, which should be standard but probably are not. So on second thought, you could always just buy a PineBook Pro if you want an ARM-powered light Linux laptop that you can be a little sure will work.
