Posts by doublelayer

Brit ISPs get their marker pens out: Speed advertising's about to change

An option they could try

For misleading advertising, you can't discount the efforts of various gigabit fiber companies that go to a lot of effort to tell you what it would be like if you actually got gigabit service. Imagine how you could download a DVD-sized file in 4 seconds. Yes, they say gigabit but give you figures as if it was gigabyte; I think someone in marketing didn't think things through. Then they neglect to tell you that that's not how gigabit service works on the real internet with real computers and servers on it. Of course, for maximum profit from the advertising, you would have to be less stupid than the providers I've seen using this tactic, as they never have the advertised service available in my area (then why did you tell me about it?).

Microsoft returns to Valley of Death? Cheap Surface threatens the hardware show

Re: "Yes, the school environment is abusive."

Google has a chromebook-in-education project. I know of at least two school systems using them. I don't think it's a great idea, as it would be even easier for google to achieve total lockin than apple or Microsoft, but the schools don't ask me. At least on IOS and windows you can install applications from the app store and through side loading. On a chromebook, despite the repeated announcements, you have the web apps and that's pretty much it. Google's applications are going to work better because they've engineered them to work together. Result: a user uses google's OS, google's browser, google's search, google's office, google's mail, and nothing else.

Re: A business for someone else

The problem I have with that theory is that I don't really want a windows 10 tablet that is as limited as other tablets. IOS and android were designed for the phone and tablet form factor, and they work for some people and don't for others, including me. I'm totally in favor of a small tablet-sized device that I can use for actual work, but it will require some things that an android or IOS tablet don't have:

1. A full OS. Windows 10 on ARM only works as a full OS if they have emulation for x86 that allows virtually all applications to run and where they run fast enough. I intend to do actual work on this, and if I'm expected only ever to use applications that were designed for windows 10, probably using UWP, that won't work. If I will be limited to an app store, I might as well go with android tablets. They're cheaper.

2. A full USB port. The surface has this, but a small tablet might not. A standard tablet can do many of the things I use USB for, but flash drives are quite useful, I type faster on a true keyboard with actual keys, and sometimes I need to use a USB scanner, printer, or other interface. If I have to have a laptop to do that when necessary, then I might as well not buy this.

3. It has to be relatively updatable. I'm not asking to be able to disassemble it and change the hardware. I doubt that any tablet will be built with that functionality. However, I want to be able to reinstall windows or try to run Linux if that will help in my work. If the device is locked down so I have no chance to do anything with it, a laptop will serve me better.

I'm willing for Microsoft to make this and surprise me. I'm not always on windows, but if it exists, I may look into it. Until then, however, I'm not really going to hold out much hope that Microsoft will build this.

So, they think they'll make computers like phones

It seems people are willing to pay a lot for not very much power these days. Surface devices may have a design advantage, but they are impossible to upgrade with new hardware and I'm not exactly sold on the pricing model. For the cost of these machines, I'd expect more ports (there is plenty of room on the rim for some more) and either a significantly faster processor or a better battery. I'm also concerned due to my experience with trying to fix a surface for a friend, which had managed to kill its battery with a firmware problem, the patch for which would not install because it required at least 40% battery power. However, if you have a working surface and you're tired of windows, the one I was working on managed to run Linux quite well, with no driver issues. That was kind of nice.

Then again, laptop prices don't seem to have any connection to the technology that's actually in them. I've been looking for a cheap-ish laptop for my father that I won't have to replace any time soon. I see a lot of essentially the same computer, usually with a mid-range i5 and 8gb memory, ranging from $420 to $900. I'm sure there are many of these above the $900 mark, too, but I'm not going to pay that. I wonder how certain companies get away with charging $400 more for no spec change. In fact, many companies are doing that internally--I'm probably going to buy a relatively cheap dell inspiron something, but there are a lot of dell laptops that cost a lot more and I'm not sure why. The main difference I've noticed is that the cheaper ones have mechanical drives and the higher-priced ones include SSDs, which certainly provide a big speed boost, but the cheaper mechanical drives usually have 1tb of space, whereas the SSDs are either 128GB or 256GB at the highest. I figured that would balance out.

Microsoft's Azure green-lit for use by US spies

Re: Spitting, just because you can?

How is that not related? Basically, the story is:

1. Microsoft approved for use that gives them chance at big contract.

2. Amazon also has chance to get this contract.

3. Google wants chance to get this contract, but they don't have it yet.

The article is about the defense department's big contract, and the recent news is that Microsoft has gained an asset in their quest to get it. Information about other players doesn't seem out of line.

Also, I don't see this as an attack on google; they haven't met the U.S. government's requirements. That doesn't mean they are bad. The article doesn't claim that google are insecure. I could have used a few more details about why google doesn't meet the requirements, but it doesn't indicate to me that they have a problem that I would be concerned with.

Super Cali goes ballistic: mugshot site atrocious

Re: not obvious that the activity is extortion

Post: "It also is not obvious that the activity is extortion or involves money laundering or identity theft."

Extortion:

Definition: "Most states define extortion as the gaining of property or money by almost any kind of force, or threat of 1) violence, 2) property damage, 3) harm to reputation, or 4) unfavorable government action. ... If any method of interstate commerce is used in the extortion, it can be a federal crime." [source1]

In practice: We've put up information that you don't want out there. In many cases (see article) it's actually wrong information, but you can bet we're not putting that fact up. If you want this removed, or, we must reiterate, your true innocence vindicated, you'll just have to pay us, won't you? It'd be a shame if you got denied that job just because the police mistook you for someone else and released you after an hour.

Money Laundering:

Definition: "Money Laundering. The process of taking the proceeds of criminal activity and making them appear legal. Laundering allows criminals to transform illegally obtained gain into seemingly legitimate funds." [source2]

In practice: If the state is correct that this activity is extortion, then by definition the proceeds thereof were obtained illegally. Using those funds to purchase items is therefore money laundering. This relies on the state being correct about the activity being criminal. I cover this above.

Identity Theft:

Definition: "Congress passed the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act. This legislation created a new offense of identity theft, which prohibits "knowingly transfer[ring] or us[ing], without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of Federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable State or local law." 18 U.S.C. § 1028(a)(7)."

In practice: Perhaps this will hinge on whether the pictures of people collected through police procedure are "means of identification of another person". However, current law does hold that, in general, pictures of people does count as identifying. Assuming this holds for mugshots, they were used by these people in order to commit a crime, extortion.

I have no doubt that this does count as extortion. Money laundering can be argued depending on what they did with the money, but they're almost certainly guilty if the facts are correctly stated. Identity theft is more a legal issue. They can figure out the mugshots detail if they want.

Source1: https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/extortion.html

Source2: https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/money+laundering

Source3: https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/identity-theft/identity-theft-and-identity-fraud

Great Scott! Bitcoin to consume half a per cent of the world's electricity by end of year

Re: Wonderful

What would be their reasoning? I don't see that they would really care about some people valuing big numbers, or small ones actually, at a lot of money as a big issue. Also, it would be rather difficult to prevent cryptominers from operating, as it could be hard to tell if someone was using power for that or something else. It's always easy to find a country that cares less about something if you want--it seems that the Chinese miners find it rather straightforward to steal electricity, so if some other country tried to ban mining, you could just set up there.

Lawyers for Marcus Hutchins: His 'I made malware' jail phone call isn't proper evidence

Re: Miranda?

Sorry, but you have it wrong. Miranda rights include only those statements. Basically, it indicates that the interview you're about to have will be evidence if law enforcement find it useful, and lets you know that you can decide not to talk or to have a lawyer present if you want. It includes nothing about collecting evidence. Agreeing to your Miranda rights doesn't, in itself, grant law enforcement any right to tap your communications or go through your posessions or documents. They can ask you for permission for those things, or they can get a warrant to do those things without your permission. Given that limitation, I think those statements, which are about as literal as they get, are extremely clear. Whatever else the FBI may have done needs to be evaluated for legality independent of the Miranda statement.

Whois privacy shambles becomes last-minute mad data scramble

Re: I'm still waiting for e-mails from Facebook(*) and Google

If you have a google account, the GDPR privacy update email should have arrived about two to six days ago. I'm not saying its contents are useful, but they have been sending them to all gmail addresses I have.

Re: really, fear should be unnecessary

Sorry, I spoke unclearly. My comment on guidance refered to guidance from ICANN. Most of the registry-specific things seem not to be ready because ICANN put in roadblocks, perhaps due to contracts and their power over the registries. That gives me some level of sympathy for registries, if it is really the case that they now have to figure it all out. Therefore, if I am right in my guess, I see a reason for mild sympathy if the registries are trying but don't get everything finished in time. As before, I feel no sympathy for ICANN, no sympathy for any registry that doesn't bother to try to get this in line, and my sympathy will evaporate if it is the case that registries could have done this already and ICANN wasn't holding them up.

really, fear should be unnecessary

Registries may face fines in legal reality, but I think the people likely to actually look at requesting action be taken will be somewhat reasonable. I, at least, won't be expecting complete adherence on the date from registries that got no guidance. As long as it seems that registry X is doing its best to implement the regulations, I don't think registry X should be called out. Instead, call out the ICANN for ignoring its responsibilities and any registrations that choose not to care.

DOJ convicts second bloke for helping malware go undetected

Wait a minute

Don't a lot of services do this? I know many of them make you identify yourself, but it wouldn't be all that hard to start one of these. I'm surprised people who are willing to pay haven't just built one of those themselves, or that there isn't a convenient one that doesn't pretend to be a business and just stays hidden.

Also, exactly what do you have to do with a business like this to make yourself legal? Is it just the fact that they were being used for malicious purposes and they knew it, or is there something inherently illegal about the type of business?

Software development slow because 'Most of our ideas suck'

Re: "Safe experimentation"

Interesting. I didn't get that idea, where it sounds like they want to just test in production. All I read from this article was "think of new ideas. Test them. If they work, keep doing them". One possibility is bad, because it leads to code being almost certainly broken and nobody caring about it. The other one is also bad, because it sounds like they think we've never thought of the concept of brainstorming and testing ideas. Which is worse?

Surface Hub 2: Microsoft's pricey whiteboard gets a sequel

Re: I quite like ours...

I wonder how this works better than your standard big screen if you're using it to display remote conferences; I've known people to use big TVs and a camera for that, which is cheaper. If the processing directly on the screen does help, what does it provide that using a windows computer connected to a similar screen doesn't do. Finally, does anyone actually touch the screen, because I'm going to go on record and say that I don't want to deal with an 84-inch touch screen.

People like convenience more than privacy – so no, blockchain will not 'decentralise the web'

Re: Historic revisionism

The problem I notice is that the early internet wasn't exactly private and secure by design. It was decentralized in that you didn't have a few main backbones, but there were central authorities for how you got connected to it if you wanted to host, how you obtained your domain name for identification, what information you had to provide, etc. That doesn't really strike me as a problem, but if you want a network that works like the internet but is actually decentralized, the tor deep web is a lot closer to it than was the internet of the 1990s. Of course, the actual network infrastructure is still rather centralized, but almost nothing else is.

Hey cool, you went serverless. Now you just have to worry about all those stale functions

How about no?

"[...] posting production functions straight from a hackathon, because... why not?!"

I have a reason why not. Let me get your opinion. Perhaps a reason not to do this is that no good code gets written at hackathons. Sure, they're fun. You get to play around and come up with good ideas. You get to work with people you like, and depending on who runs it, you may impress somebody and get a job out of it. But eventually, after you've gone home, fallen asleep immediately, and gotten up at 3:30 AM because that's just how things work when you just stayed up far too late, then caught up on the things you need to do, you sit down to look at the code you wrote. And most of it now has to be fixed. Features need to be made into ones that work, rather than ones that work under certain conditions and crash under others. You need to actually make good systems you had placeholders for. If you take code that you wrote at a hackathon, which is by definition first-draft, under stress from the time limit, and proof of concept, and you immediately put it into production, then you are showing me that you don't understand how the process of writing secure software works.

"Last, and potentially worst, most functions contain open-source application dependencies. These libraries are statically embedded inside the function, and so they grow stale even as new versions of the library are released to the public. Over time, vulnerabilities are discovered in these older versions, including some that are very severe, and yet nothing in the serverless flow informs you they exist."

You know? That's terrible. I think that's such a big problem that we probably want to modify the serverless system to make that not a problem anymore. Let me run this past you--how about we keep some dependencies on site so that we can update them. We could just slot in the new libraries when we have to. And we'd have to be careful to ensure that all the dependency trees work well. Actually, if only we could have a repository of code that could be updated independently of the software. Those who can't keep up with new releases could include them statically, but if you could just load them when the program starts, that'd be great. Why don't we have a command on the system that just updates the database and then downloads the new approved versions of the libraries. I have a suggestion for what we should call it. I'm thinking "pacman -Syu". Pacman stands for the Performant Agile Computing Management of Advancing Nodes, and the -Syu command stands for "see you, uberrisks". Can this suggestion be covered in the next DevOps article, please?

Sarcasm note: Obviously, I'm arguing for using a standard operating system that manages libraries automatically and can be patched easily. In case some are not familiar with the command, "pacman -Syu" is the command used to automatically update all packages on arch linux.

Zero arrests, 2 correct matches, no criminals: London cops' facial recog tech slammed

Re: Numbers

Even if we go with a 98% FDR, the time wasted trying to keep up with the useless flags will be rather irritating. If, for every person we want to find, about 49 people are incorrectly flagged, and it takes five minutes to track that person, accost them, and question them enough to realize they aren't someone you're interested in, then over four person-hours are needed for each person you want to track just to deal with the mistakes from the system.

Now, we have to ask if five minutes is really going to give them enough time to track and exonerate each person. I'm assuming the tracking process can take a while, especially if they are running this in crowds, and that questioning them isn't as basic as saying "Aren't you that guy we're supposed to arrest?" I have no statistics on this, but I'm assuming that they have to verify documentation of identity and question the person as to their links to the person they want to find. I would also hope that paperwork is required to explain what the officer was doing at that time, which would take further time. I really think it will be longer than five minutes.

By the way, to those who say that many of the false detections can be removed just by having a police officer look at the pictures, that is almost certainly not the case. If the system matches the faces, the picture is either similar enough or of poor-enough quality as to make detection difficult. If we could just use humans to compare faces from indirect and low-resolution video with better accuracy than this system, we probably wouldn't even need this system.

You're in charge of change, and now you need to talk about DevOps hater Robin

Way to be completely unbiased

"Robin sits in the stand-up meeting, arms crossed, each morning mumbling "Well, I wrote some code" and then takes that long, loud sip of tea."

OK. You clearly went to some effort to always mention Robin in a nasty light. That's not going to help you convince those of us who think devops is pointless to like your argument. Maybe next time, you could grant that there are valid questions such that the most positive term for someone who didn't buy in immediately isn't "justifiably crotchety".

Here's the major problem with devops. We're not sure what it really is. We understand that you think it's a thing, but your articles seem to contain sections that were written by the "big buzzword generator". To me, a lot of them seem to say, under the jargon, that there are problems and we need to make them into not problems. It doesn't say how to do that, other than making some suggestions that we already know about. For example, having meetings and discussions seems to be a major part, with the various sections having contact with each other so that a problem noticed by one can be made known to the others so that one of them will make it into a not problem. That's not new. The reason a lot of software is crap isn't because people were thinking "I never thought that one group should note problems to the responsible group", but because the responsible group didn't care, the problem went to the bottom of a pile of papers, or management pushed the software through.

In addition, devops seems to be a project that, whatever else it does, will generate a lot of paperwork. I hate to inform you of this, but having systems requiring a lot of incidental work just to keep the system running makes things bog down. For example, the company I used to work for, where we all had to get up and have a meeting that often lasted at least four hours, during which everyone discussed their projects, was counterproductive. I had nothing to do with many of those projects, so while I listened to details that I couldn't use and problems I couldn't help to solve, I was not actually doing my job. That meeting system has, I'm told, been canceled.

Here's what you have to do to start to satisfy me with this devops system, if you're interested. First, stop using clearly biased language, perhaps to try to sound humorous. It's irritating me, at least. Second, be really clear about what each thing is that you're talking about. If a theory says do small unit tests, don't phrase it in several paragraphs of explaining what incidental systems are required, say "run many small unit tests". Finally, explain not just what the system is, but why it's going to work in practice in the real world. Explain how someone explains the philosophy to a manager who actually listens and wants to understand, and how to use it to avoid the problems that actually exist.

Your software hates you and your devices think you're stupid

Re: Older stuff WAS simplier...

On most microwaves I've seen, the door is attached to a switch. You still have a standard hinge and handle to pull open, but if you do that the microwave immediately turns off. It won't let you start it unless the door is closed. So as long as the door keeps itself shut, radiation shouldn't be a problem. That said, I don't really have anything against a specific control for opening the door, as it at least serves a purpose, unlike the many buttons I have on my microwave and have never actually used.

Re: Older stuff WAS simplier...

That's the control you don't need. Do what every microwave does, and I assume did, and just have a door. You pull it open. However, while I'll be the first to agree that I need very few microwave buttons, I'll take a number entry pad over logarithmic dial every time. I'll find how long I'm going to heat the things I typically do. Entering it at that point does not require me to look at the labels. Sure, there's an element of muscle memory in the dial which may make it more straightforward, but I find pressing 1, 5, start is pretty easy.

Re: There's an island somewhere...

I've produced audio tracks for cars before so that people can listen to audio books. Often the problem is that the car will forget your place and send you back, so my main task is chopping the audio up so that you can use the fast forward button to jump through sections as if they were separate tracks. I've written a piece of software that chops during long periods of silence which results in pretty good breaks and there isn't any weird popping noises and ... I'm off topic. Sorry. My original point was that these small portions were useful because pressing the fast forward button to jump from track to track was better than holding it down to try to move inside one. That never seems to get you anywhere. Either it moves forward at about 3x normal speed, so you have no chance of getting to the middle without having held your finger on the button for a minute or two, or they made it exponential. That seems logical, as usually you just want to jump a bit, but if it gets to the point where it's skipping five minutes at a go, the function is once again useless.

Of course the cars learned that I was about to defeat them, so they suddenly seem to have adopted the tactic of sometimes jumping to a completely random track when they finished with one. I've moved on to suggesting that people just get a car with an analog audio connection and use something else that will actually read the device and play the files in order.

Artificial intelligence is good for at least one thing – making hardware important again

Re: "Treat the AI as a team member,"

I can only hope that when these companies finally get the technology to create a sentient program, which will have a few tasks but will be rather useless, that they have learned enough not to make it. For now, I don't care that the process to improve the mathematical basis is called training--it takes in data of one format and outputs data of another format. That's not a colleague. If it starts giving me wrong answers, I'll fix it by deleting recent training data, not asking it questions. If it never works right, I'll fix it by throwing it away and starting over after an analysis of what went wrong. Maybe we want to do that to coworkers who aren't being helpful, but we don't actually get to try it.

IBM bans all removable storage, for all staff, everywhere

Re: Two use cases

That's fine, but you're likely to destroy a rather large quantity of USB disks. I might suggest using DVDs as much as possible. Not only would they be much cheaper to use even if you destroy them, but you would be rather certain that nobody has modified their contents, which you could encrypt rather easily. Of course, that doesn't help if you need more than 4.3 gb of space, but perhaps sometimes. I've considered using read-only USB devices under some of these circumstances, if only to prevent overuse of hammers.

Industry whispers: Qualcomm mulls Arm server processor exit

Re: Why should ARM Holdings help?

"[T]he WHOLE point of cloud is too pool customers at such scale that they can keep all cores utilized."

Is that really the case? Even cloud must have comparative downtimes. If some data center in Europe needs 100 units of performance for peak consumption by clients, which probably happens during working hours if these are business clients, then what would the requirement be at 3:30 in the morning. I don't doubt that there are people using those systems then, nor that there are tasks the servers perform off hours, nor that there may be businesses in other areas that are operating during the day and therefore using more power at European night than in European working hours, but even so I'd guess that there is a noticeable difference. If only 85 units are required, then using 85 or 90% of the cores and shutting the rest down for power savings can't hurt, right? Also, this could be a factor for companies that have systems not on the cloud but still need quite a bit of performance.

Re: RISC-V is the future

>Perhaps the downvoters could explain to us just why RISC-V is not the future?

I didn't vote either way, but I'll take a crack at it. I have nothing against that ISA. It's fine, and it shows some promise. That's not enough. We don't really need to keep inventing new ISAs for us to decide between; if we can get the ones we have running faster with less power, that gives us what we want. If this one will run really fast with low power and is relatively cheap to make, we will probably want it. However, it's at such an early stage that nobody can run on it now nor realistically plan on it for the near future. There have been enumerable new technologies that would have been great, if everything people said about them was true and we actually got it, but turned out never to become reality or was not that great compared to what we were told. For example, I've heard that basically every new file system for Linux/BSD servers would be the future. ButterFS was going to solve major problems. ZFS was nearly perfect. Even apple and microsoft did that. APFS will speed up the mac. REFS will do, actually I don't really know what it does but microsoft sent me a document about it, and I'm sure that it has some new features. Some of these will end up being very useful. Others won't be used in the longterm.

Thus, when you tell us that something is the future, without evidence of the future getting started now, a lot of us will assume that, whatever happens, it's not relevant now. In many cases, it won't be relevant at all. Everyone has at least one time where they said that something would be pointless and turned out to be wrong, but unfortunately everyone usually has many times where that turned out to be right.

Making calls? Ha, not what most peeps use phone for – Ofcom

Maybe, but

I'm sure a lot of smartphone users willing to and comfortable with installing apps, which is all that was measured, would like web browsing to work, but how much of that is for browsing data-heavy sites. Might it be that they wanted things like email and push notifications to be available all of the time? That would back up the findings from Monday's article on voice being considered more important and reliability being rated above speed, and it is definitely how I view my data connection.

Measure for measure: Why network surveys don't count what counts

I don't find the web to be most important for me. My primary web use case is e-mail, which doesn't take much data. Even those who upload a lot of photos won't need consistent bandwidth. In my case, if my data gets killed, then I have to wait to read my email until I'm in WiFi range. It could be annoying if I'm on the road for a long time, but that rarely happens and I can almost always wait. If I can count on being able to have a voice conversation that doesn't drop out and where people can hear what I'm saying, and that my text messages will arrive without being forgotten, then my main uses for my phone's wireless capabilities have been met. For those who use online apps more often, or for those who actually stream on data plans, the factors are undoubtedly different. For me, it's not that critical.

Microsoft vows to bridge phones to PCs, and this time it means it. Honest.

sorry microsoft, you had this already

I remember the days of Windows CE and windows mobile 6 devices. That's the closest they ever got. While those devices had very little connectivity, couldn't store much data, and had annoying restrictions on programs, they had a basis that could lead to what would be useful. At that point, you synced all your data over a cable, so that was annoying, but the theory was there: keep the same documents, e-mails, calendars, etc. on each device and make the programs to use them similar enough that you don't have to learn two, but not so similar that the interface for one of them is terrible. If they kept up with that theory, eventually uniting the two operating systems enough, they would have what people want if they want the two devices to be essentially the same. And people bought those devices, so they had an existing user base.

The hardware of today and of five years ago would be perfect for this. Extra storage would allow for keeping all the documents stored, at least for most people, on the mobile as well as the desktop or laptop. WiFi and bluetooth would ensure sync was fast and occurred in the background, so things wouldn't be missing from one. That'd also lead to a ton of cloud customers for a your data is completely backed up a la dropbox solution. It would have ensured customers for microsoft, as its control over the desktop and office areas would have helped to drive the sale of "completely connected" mobile devices.

They had the basis they could build on. So what did they do with it? They wrote windows phone 8. Well, I give up.

Risky business: You'd better have a plan for tech to go wrong

Re: @Doctor Syntax

I'd rather have the many different systems approach. If you have the one integrated system, you're benefits are that the manufacturer should know how it works, and if it breaks it's probably on them. This probably means that they have total control, and if you manage to break it in a way they dislike, they can put a lot of pressure on you. If I am running some piece of software and it turns out to be bad, I can more easily replace it. Depending on what it was, my reconfiguration time may be low or high, but I almost certainly won't have to reinstall my OS, let alone replace my hardware. As for the issue of loading java script from remote locations, I agree that that is crazy. I'm perfectly happy to use such libraries, but I'm going to check them out first and they will be hosted on my system. My issue is not with the fact that now I'm using someone's code, as I assume it's been tested by the other sites that use it, but that the approach to receive it is ill designed.

Google Pay heads for the desktop... and, we fear, an inevitable flop

Re: Google and android

That could be, but they have a lot of search and ads clients that don't have android, from their having chrome installed on everything, the default consideration of google over any other search engine, and google being default on firefox and safari (both IOS and OSX versions) and the google ad frames on many websites. I agree with you that it would be hard to undermine google's near complete victory in that realm, but if a business came up with a better ad system and people started installing that one on their sites, google could lose some without needing android to be weakened. Meanwhile, android, while it has large market share, has a distinct rival IOS and mini rivals in the mods for phones and the chance that eventually I will find the cheap feature phone I'm looking for. I think google could do a lot more to kill those than they have done, and the fact that they haven't suggests to me that they're pretty much fine with the smaller castle across the street because they know no cannons are going to take aim at their search and ads.

Google and android

"Of Google's dozen, or more, monopolies in online markets and services, Android is one of the most significant."

I'd argue that search and ads, and arguably gmail, is their major thing, and that google will live or die on it. Android's nice, but it's further down the list with maps, docs, and cloud. Stuff that's important, but not critical.

"Over 80 per cent of the world's phones run Android, and it is estimated more than two billion Android devices are in active use every month globally."

Can't we find a better system for cheap phones? Really. I've been trying to find a straightforward feature phone for my father that has good battery life and can make calls, and the ones I'm finding that aren't used or nailed into a contract cost more than $50. I can get a pretty crappy android phone for that that will do a lot more. Why can't we make cheaper phones?

"And on Android, 19 of the top 25 apps downloaded more than one billion times are Google's own apps."

Well then, stop putting them on my phone. Do you know how frequently I use street view? Zero times. That's how often. Why is there a street view icon in my apps list. That wasn't there when I bought this phone, and I certainly didn't ask for it.

Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update downs Chrome, Cortana

Re: Try Linux. - Or DON'T! (My love/hate Linux rant.)

The language indication in the task bar refers only to the language of the keyboard at the time. It is possible that, while enabling the Slovak keyboard, the Slovak language pack was downloaded too and set as default. I'm not sure why that could set only some of the labels, but it's the best theory I can think of for the result.

Re: It it ain't broke, you're not trying

High sierra installs have become very unreliable. Some people have no problems at all. Others have some difficulty getting the install back into working order but once that's accomplished, everything works perfectly. That's my sister, whose mac I had to reinstall and restore from backup but there has been no problem since. Others have noted frequent application crashes and operating system instability. And then there's me, where something that happened at the update has put my machine into a seemingly endless loop of bricking itself for about two weeks before restarting fine for about a week before starting again. This issue did not happen before the high sierra update and it persists through clean installs of high sierra, sierra, and el capitan, so I'm presuming some kind of firmware problem. In addition, various security bugs have been found in High Sierra which has led to questioning of the quality control on this release. I assume some corporates are dealing with these problems and have become perhaps excessively irritated due to a small sample set of machines that failed. Then again, I'm the same--I'm not sure I could buy another mac, given the fact that apple has failed to make any change or diagnose the problem that my machine has.

Re: No issues so far

Are you running one of the affected GPUs? It seems the bug will not affect many users, as these GPUs are only some of the many intel make. If indeed you are running one of the mentioned chipsets, then maybe it requires more specific stress.

Re: Try Linux. - Or DON'T! (My love/hate Linux rant.)

If you want to change the language back, you should be able to do the following steps:

1. Open the new windows 10 settings thing. If typing "settings" in the search box won't access it for you because of the language change, try using the quick tools menu. Press windows+x, which should pull up a menu of some more useful tools. Settings should be sixth from the bottom. Second from the bottom is a submenu with shutdown options, so settings is four above that.

If that doesn't work, try to use the command prompt. The system settings executable is well-hidden. First, cd into

c:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\SIH\bin\cbs

Then, try any subdirectory of there. Hopefully, you're like me and you just have one subdirectory. Once you've entered it, you need to enter another subdirectory. It starts with "amd64_microsoft-windows-i..ntrolpanel." and includes some numbers, so enter that much and press tab for the rest. Then, try to run the command "start systemsettings.exe". Hopefully, you'll never need to do that.

2. Select "Time and Language" from the settings screen. On build 1709, it's the third element of five on the second row. On 1607, it's the one in the middle (second row, second column).

3. Select "Region and Language". That is the second of three.

4. This screen should have a list of languages, all of which are written in their own script, so your desired one should be available.

5. After clicking it, if it is not set as ddefault, there should be three buttons. The first one is the one to set as default, so click that.

6. At that point, you may want to click the other language and remove it from the system.

If these instructions are not helpful enough, you can describe what has happened and I'll try to correct them. Otherwise, I believe I have a friend who speaks Slovak, so she may be able to help me provide exact translations of UI elements you will need on your way.

Yes, this has been derailed by discussions of Linux. Yes, the discussions aren't exactly covering new ground. Yes, said discussions are relevant. The article is discussing a windows problem that breaks components, and people are commenting with a suggested alternative, albeit one that is a tad unoriginal. Is your preference that more people just comment on all the other microsoft problems of the past? Many posts here are doing just that.

Silicon can now reconfigure itself with just a jolt of electricity

Yeah, that'll work

How exactly is a chip made of this silicon dust going to fix security problems in chips? Unless you're considering that an update could just zap your processor into line, which will never happen. Just consider how this would work with the entirely fictional processor manufacturer Entil and the equally fictional design flaw called FreezeUp.

1. Entil looks into FreezeUp and figures out that it's their fault. They design a protocol for fixing their chips to avoid it. This requires changing the gates on the chip because the microcode's just not good enough.

2. They send a command to your chip, because they will have gone to the effort to repair and make available to you a patch requiring molecular reassembly, using thousands of valuable worker hours, keeping chip design specialists, electrical engineers, microcode programmers, and the many, many molecular physicists they have employed away from their profitable job making new chips, but that is just the kind of company that Entil is.

3. Your computer, running the old, but still serviceable, "Entil Care Ls" processor from the six-year-old "gravel-covered causeway" family receives the update file from Entil's system. Nothing can get in the way of that. Not the operating system writers, who might want you to update to the latest edition, portholes 11, who might conceivably use this as leverage to make you update. Not the device manufacturer, who might want you to buy another machine and could deprecate this one from support on the basis of FreezeUp. Not from Entil, because they made sure to include drivers that can handle their updates in every single operating system out there, with teams of people designed to make the interoperation of their processor and your system as worry-free as possible. And certainly not from your system that could interfere with the process silently or corrupt the file.

4. The update gets your permission to install. It came with an easy-to-manage control system, after all. One that would allow you to easily decide whether to try the update or take your chances. It also came with a system that would make it easy for nontechnical people to manage the update. No work required on their part.

5. The processor sets up its update environment, making sure that it doesn't have any problems at all, as the chip was built with special safety systems to make sure that critical security updates could be run without problems. It also prepares its automatic rollback system. Entil, knowing that this would happen, built the chip to recognize any time it was failing and roll back parts of the update. If the partial rollback didn't work, the chip is rescrambled and they try the update again. If it still fails, they return you to your original configuration, which they protect with very strong measures. This process takes only two seconds.

6. When activating the chip's components, the chip manufacturer has already thought of weird environmental things. The particles are limited to a zone. They can't possibly be affected by anything. Not even that big magnet Dad has stored under his work bench, on top of which is the computer. If they hadn't thought of that, imagine what could happen. Particles could fly away from the processor when they are reconfigured by that system. They could lose some. Those could go flying off at high speed and get into stuff. Hard drives, perhaps. They're small particles, so they can get inside those cases. You could only hope that they'd land somewhere that wouldn't kill the drive. But don't worry. Entil thought of that, and they are good at making sure nothing can go wrong, FreezeUp excepted.

7. While they're at it, your Care Ls was designed with extremely strong mechanisms for keeping all those particles together and in line. There is no way that Entil didn't think of conditions that could put stress on a chip that is essentially made of dust. You can subject your chip to extreme temperatures, high winds from real wind or airflow, magnetic fields, physical jolts, electrical imbalances, and your nephew repeatedly touching it as you assembled your motherboard, all without losing any of the chip's structure.

8. The chip, once it has installed the update, will run everything perfectly. How could it not? All the instructions are the same, after all. Never mind that the whole chip was disintegrated to fix the problem and the microcode wasn't good enough to solve it, meaning that that has almost certainly been changed, too, and that now your chip has not only a release version and a microcode version but now also a molecular design version.

9. Entil immediately informs you about security problems. After all, if they didn't, you'd find out anyway from the announcement when your chip updated itself. Therefore, you have a full history of all design problems in Entil's chips. There is no way that anyone would collect those and make exploits for major ones, because they would grab the molecular composition version number and run those exploits that haven't been patched yet. Entil is just that good; any attempt to do that would fail, because the updates have already been run successfully on every Entil chip on the planet and, by the way, those chips in orbit on the ISS or in satellites. Radiation and gravity being basically zero doesn't affect this chip design, either.

10. There is absolutely no way that the ability for Entil to change their processor's mechanism would be used to send out processors before everything was ready, with the company trusting that they will fix them in the field. The company doesn't have that type of culture.

11. On that topic, the company also doesn't have the type of culture wherein they'd "accidentally" break your chip when it was too old and you should buy a new one, or you had found a way of overclocking it or enabling disabled features (or, for that matter, disabling the wonderful Entil chip component known as the Execution Mechanism which by the way has no security problems whatsoever because it gets updates too in order to fix any possible security problem) to encourage you to stay away. That's not how companies work anywhere, but if a company were to act like that, it would definitely not be Entil.

12. There is no way for an attacker to forge a processor update from Entil. Not even if a big bunch of armed spies from a hostile nation that probably wouldn't want to do so anyway, but if we had to name them we might suggest the Republic for the Democratic Governance of the Rakeon People, were to break in and start copying disks left and right. Only Entil can send out those updates, and they will be tamperproof at all times. There is also no way for an attacker to trigger a problem in the processor, for example, part of it that would convince it that there was a problem during the last update and its intelligent problem resolution system needed to roll back, then using that opening to infect it with the security exploit that the most recent update was designed to prevent. That could never happen.

Actually, it all seems fine. I withdraw my previous objections. All steam ahead.

Nvidia quickly kills its AMD-screwing GeForce 'partner program' amid monopoly probe threat

Not exactly. It sounds like they were forcing manufacturers to decide whether their flagship brand would have nvidia chips only, or only non-nvidia chips. The companies that have gaming brands have to choose one, because their brands that have former knowledge will sell better than new ones just started. Therefore, they have to essentially choose to give nvidia a guarantee of placement in all their models, or settle for the likelihood that nvidia wouldn't let them sell any of their GPUs. That hurts the computer manufacturers a little, nvidia a little but they were thinking longterm, and customers a lot, both now and in the longterm. It's not about expecting one type of GPU and getting another, because you can easily determine what you're buying, it's about how much you paid for it and how much choice you will be offered to have whatever GPU you'd like to buy.

MacBook Pro petition begs Apple for total recall of krap keyboards

keyboards

I have noticed this as a result of moving back to my old macbook (the plastic version) owing to apple's bricking of my newer pro. I didn't have these low-travel keys, but I had the version before that. Now that I'm typing more often on a keyboard with more key travel owing to the deeper case, it feels so nice to do so. Of course, the machine is showing its age--the battery lasts about three hours maximum and the core 2 duo doesn't exactly cruise when running VMs, but at least the keyboard will be a nice factor while I prepare to obtain a newer machine.

Blame everything on 'computer error' – no one will contradict you

Re: Don't give your opinion!

"Our company noticed that many problems that were reported - didn't get followed up and resolved. So it was decided that anyone who reported a problem became its "owner"

No. Can something, even a company, be that stupid? They made "That's your problem" official policy? I need hope. I'm out of hope.

Whoa, Gartner drops a truth bomb: Blockchain is overhyped and top IT bods don't want it

Re: Your all missing the point.

If there comes a need for a relatively tamperproof system for auditing, my suggestion would be to buy a ton of blank CDs/DVDs. If you live near me, I'll give you some because somehow I ended up with like a hundred of them and I don't know where they came from. Then write the audit data, along with checksums for all preceding data stored on disks, and keep multiple copies. Label them well. If you're afraid that someone sneaky will overuse hashing power to find a way to hash incorrect data on a disk, store the original data plus encrypted versions of it with predefined keys so that you'll never get a hash collision while the universe is in existence.

Total network costs: 0.

Total data storage costs: Lots of blank CDs. Call my friends; they must be putting them in my house.

Total infrastructure costs: Four or five cardboard boxes on shelves in different buildings.

Total recovery costs: USB Optical drive ($10)

I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space

Re: I disagree...

"It's only when you leave school and you're expected to move out, pay your own way and actually find yourself HAVING to do your own washing, cleaning and such, because there's nobody there do just do it for you, that you finally develop an appreciation for the need to do it."

The history of people going to far-off places, where either there weren't any people or they killed a lot of the people through enslavement, where technology was not advanced enough to connect these places, effectively making it similar to the planet scenario, is not on your side. Those places aren't doing dramatically different from other places. The problem you run into is that there are a lot of things that could cause you difficulty getting there in the first place. If, for example, some resources could be put into making life feasible for more people here on Earth, the likelihood of a major war with major weapons obliterating your launch sites before sufficiently advanced craft can launch you to a new planet will be decreased. Even if you consider travel to other planets being a major concern for right now, you might want to look at earth a bit before you go all in on the new tech.

AWS sends noise to Signal: You can't use our servers to beat censors

Re: Yet another reason

Good point. I can only hope that they come up with something else that'll work, as it seems that if domain fronting isn't shut down fully yet, it will be soon. I'm sure they have some tests ongoing.

Re: Yet another reason

I am skeptical about the cloud, too, but how would signal do something to circumvent censorship in this way without using it? The best I can come up with is that they start their own cloud and then allow this to function through their clients' sites, meaning that instead of signal being blocked, signal and all their cloud business clients that signal doesn't really want get blocked. You can't hide and be active if you aren't in a group with lots of other people, hence their cloud usage.

Scammers use Google Maps to skirt link-shortener crackdown

I use a different system

I know that short links are usually somewhat helpful, so I usually reserve a directory at root of the web server for such a system. For example, example.com/url/* is a shortened link, and I can make it clear what they'll see at that page and logical. People still know that it's my site they're contacting, and although the links may be longer than some of the shorteners out there, they can be quite short because there is no competition that drives up the key length and they will fit into tweets or short messages should someone want to send them.

Virtual desktops won’t save cash in clouds or on-prem. So why care?

Yeah...

I don't think that will work well. The benefits they cite seem to be mostly useful for locations where you want a lot of remote access, but RDP seems to serve that well. Otherwise, I don't see pretty much any of the benefits of the system. The sentence that most concerns me is the statement of less need for IT people to go to the desks and fix machines. What, pray tell, do they think the users are using to access their virtual desktops? Whatever it is, it looks a lot like a computer and it's on or under the desk. Users can mess that up just as well as they could a traditional machine. The main difference is that there is less access for the IT person if the user has managed some calamitous software problem. True, you can easily reboot it after you correctly plug in each cable, then reconnect to the virtual desktop, but if the issue is worse than that you will have to play around with whatever thin client it is to find it. Traditional desktops work fine most of the time, because they are straightforward to manage. If there is a location where repeatedly destroying or reimaging virtual desktops is a routine thing, there are probably problems that virtualization won't fix.

DIY device tinkerer iFixit weighs in on 15-month jail term for PC recycler

They are all wrong

I've read a bit too much about the case and I now think everyone and everything about it has several wrong elements.

Lundgren: What were you doing faking the disks to look like official microsoft or dell ones. I'm not saying leave them unlabeled, but it doesn't cost that much to change the label you put in the disk printer from "official dell/microsoft" to "windows restore disk for dell computers", and you could even get a free ad space for your business on it for people's support needs.

Microsoft: What were you thinking when you made up a number for lost money, when you know full well that the disks themselves were free and the license keys were already present meaning that you don't lose money.

Lundgren: If you're selling these at such a low price--essentially giving them away, why did you find it so necessary to have them have the labels on them? The recyclers are going to pay you the same amount, seeing as they're too lazy to burn their own copy. Surely you recognized that that would look sort of sketchy.

Microsoft: Why did you feel that saying the cliche malware line would work? You know full well that they were identical copies. I'd have a lot of sympathy if you found someone faking disks but including a set of preinstalled malware or for that matter any unnoted software of any kind, but that's not what these were. I'd have sympathy if these were windows disks with pirated license keys on them. None of that was the case.

Recyclers: Why did you buy these? Surely you know that they weren't official microsoft ones and also it doesn't cost much to write your own. I can't believe you didn't use the same suggestion I had earlier, to change the label to tell the users what was there and to refer them to you or someone who paid you, for support. Surely you could see that unofficial official install disks would be sort of sketchy?

Microsoft: Given you have announced an interest in getting recycled computers in use and having people on windows 10, don't you think that convincing customs that there wasn't a real case, owing to the basically zero value of the disks, and discussing with the recyclers to help them end their problem (especially if you could get them installing windows 10) could be useful for both of you? Why is the not-going-to-court solution so unpleasing to so many people?

IFixit: Can you see that this issue has nothing to do with the stuff you advocate? Microsoft and dell did not try to prevent people from using the machines, or even reinstalling windows on them. In fact, the data that they provided for free allowed people to erase and cleanly reinstall windows without buying anything or hopefully having to deal with any license management. Therefore, it was incredibly good of the companies given their usually terrible track record with repairs, as I would have expected such disks to be completely unavailable or to be well-hidden by the typical microsoft knowledge base web maze. No law or regulation or corporate policy prevented repairs in this case, and that's what we're going for. Go back to those laws that do exist and help us get rid of them.

Apple and The Notched One: It can't hide the X-sized iPhone let-down

Re: Commoditization is not going to be Apple's friend.

It's worth considering how many iPhones from old generations are still out there being used. The availability of updates results in some people keeping their iPhones longer than they did androids, and I know far more people using iPhones in the 6, 6s, and 7 ranges than I know people using the 8 or x. I can see that being a problem for apple if they keep it up with the expensive high-ends that don't really have a big selling point. Then again, I would expect the same to hold and even stronger with android phones that cost a similarly high amount, because there is now no lock-in reason to keep the people off the $200 phones with similar features. Yet, companies still make them and people must be buying, so what do I know anyway.

Firefox to feature sponsored content as of next week

Re: Kiss FF goodbye.

I'd gladly pay $2.50 a year for this purpose; I pay more for many other projects I use. However, the problems remain, and they are many:

There are those who would rather not identify themselves in order to make the payment at all, and even those who would not dislike this would probably not want to identify themselves to have the browser disable this for them, as they've just replaced one identifier with another. My payment in the year won't remove mozilla's problem, and they will keep going with this, so I have to ask whether they will actually care about my desire for privacy. If they are going to use my donation to create an ad tracking system, there are more deserving projects that respect me as a user, and the money would be better used paying them. Furthermore, there are users that should not be expected to pay for something that is, in fact, open source. I view the fact that firefox and related products can be used in less developed countries for free so that the people can use the internet to improve a situation I don't have to endure as a major advantage, and I would oppose any attempt to restrict that.

In short, I will donate to mozilla if they show they will respect me as a user and all other users by not inserting this advertisement crap, that they respect their open source roots and will keep the product free and open to alterations, and that this will continue and not be based on a short-term financial report. They haven't been doing that.

Let's be Frank: Bloke drags Google to the US Supreme Court over $8.5m privacy payout

Re: Wow

Uh...No.

"Yep, all those lawyers who work for the homeless or for absued children, or who help you make sure your scumbag neighbour isn't tossing dog doo into your garden -- all villains."

That's why we don't say "all". All stereotypes that claim to speak for all people are bad. But that doesn't change the point that it seems a bit bad that a settlement against google for messing up privacy for users results in $0 to users, a lot to lawyers, a lot to law schools that the users have little to do with, and a lot to things google was going to pay anyway. We might reasonably blame the lawyers for this.

"Or are lawyers not unlike 99.99% of IT people who are always skiving and taking bungs? Or so popular belief holds?"

Then popular belief is wrong. You'll see a lot of yelling about IT from everywhere, and a lot of it is true, but usually the administrator earns a lot less than the lawyer and doesn't break things because they hate the users. There are many jobs where things break and IT is blamed, but not all of those are because IT broke it. Also, it has almost nothing to do with the point being made, that one group of lawyers in this situation and perhaps too many lawyers in other positions are not serving the clients they claim to represent in favor of self-serving and adversary-serving decisions.