Posts by neilfs

Microsoft confirms Russian spies stole source code, accessed internal systems

Zero trust?

I see zero trust is going well at Microsoft, they can't even seem to make it work for pen pushing executives who have a basic grasp of Word and use Excel as a desktop publishing package.

Twilio reminds users that Authy Desktop apps die in March – not in August

This is a reminder that cloud versus on-prem remove some of the management burden but cloud providers can all pull these stunts and you just need to follow along. Real shame as the desktop client was ideal for systems that were shared amongst many users, such as in retail and hospitality.

Arm wrestles assembly language guru's domains away citing trademark issues

Re: "given my previous relationship with Arm"

Very true. But that’s what comes of a company run by accountants. The environment which created ARM, that has had a positive impact on so much technology was very much built upon and because of those relationships with the people.

Such a shame, and ARM should be ashamed of itself. They could have easily reached out and put in place a formal agreement to protect its trademark whilst encouraging the ecosystem surrounding it which helps to create future generations of developers proficient in developing products based on ARM.

FCC questions ISPs' selective memory about data caps

Data has a cost

Data has a cost.

What we pay for is burst speeds. That moment we want to download a large game without needing to wait. Or have a film quickly fill the buffer so it starts playing immediately.

We want low latency.

So most people use reasonably small amounts of data. The problem comes with you have a user who consumes vast amounts, maybe switches between two 500GB games, unable to store them on the device so deletes and downloads time and time again.

That user on an unlimited connection can do that. But they’re consuming a disproportionate amount of network resources. They could be making others experiences worse and increasing the provider’s infrastructure costs causing everyone’s bills to increase.

So caps are a safety net also. A way to manage a shared network so everyone gets a reliable and predictable service. Predictable is what business users need.

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

Re: Largely a waste of time

Do feel as if we are jumping from having China being in a powerful position to America.

Writing from the perspective of the UK, much of this to me starts to give me a sense this isn’t just about security but retaining wealth and limiting other countries from growing financially to become a greater super power.

And yes agreed, they’re forgetting about production of sub-assemblies and final assembly which China are still masters of.

Europe's USB-C deadline: Lightning must be struck from iPhone by December, 2024

The key thing for me is 100 watt supply won’t be that small. So when you want something small and light to carry to charge a laptop which only needs say 65 watts or 45 watts you are now forced to carry a physically larger and heavier PSU. I guess PSU designers will optimise their designs.

Wonder how this will tie in with workstation laptops which sometimes demand 230 watt power supplies. Really need to discover what USB-C’s maximum wattage is.

Internet backbone Cogent cuts Russia connectivity

The Internet isn’t what it used to be!

So the Internet, a network of networks, self healing, redundant, robust, neutral. Tens if not hundreds of inter-connected networks.

Now we have one corporate organisation who can break that! Somehow we have lost the original ideals of the Internet and should be concerned by that.

If we can throw the switch on one country, it could be thrown on any country.

Is too much hardwired? Surely if things were still working by old ideals Cogent cutting their network peering should cause the data to route by other networks, automatically. Russia at worst would notice less bandwidth, slower transfers and other peers would seen a sudden spike in data and may themselves have to rate limit that.

Government-favoured child safety app warned it could violate the UK's Investigatory Powers Act with message-scanning tech

Re: Here we go again "were doing it to safeguard children"

Until said child faces the following issues:

Peer pressure

Isolation

Bullying

Even placing screen time limits on a child’s device makes then different to their peers and can lead to the above. You then see unhappy, depressed children.

The tail wags the dog here. The only want to prevent that so if all parents did the same. Therefore removing the difference.

Then younger children with older siblings. They’ll push the boundaries at a far earlier stage after seeing what their oldest sibling is doing - is who could be ten years older.

The ideal nice thought is to remove and restrict. The practicalities and social stigmas that can create cannot be ignored either.

Unexpected risks of using Apple ID: 'Sign in with Apple' will be blocked for Epic Games

What would you call it?

It may not match the exact measure of what you define genuine single sign-on to be (what measure does it fall short on?), but for most users they have a single identity which allows them to sign-on to many different services, for those this is a single sign-on solution.

Google, Amazon pass on UK Digital Services Tax by hiking ad prices, fees at same rate the government takes

So to compound their tax going to another country they're claiming back R&D tax here against what little tax they do pay here. Smart people, dumb regulators for creating such a weak rule set.

UK mobile network Vodafone channels its inner stroppy teen, begs government to cancel upcoming 5G auction

Re: Virtualisation.

It is simply a money grab. I’ve always felt there must be a far better return on investment if the money gained from such an auction was reinvested in infrastructure that benefits the economy.

So not only is available cash flow for infrastructure inefficient so is the use of the spectrum.

In deepest darkest Surrey, an on-prem SAP system running 17-year-old software is about to die....

Re: Civil servants never learns..

I’ve just been ousted by one. Back to step 1. You see them get appointed and you can predict everything for the next 18 months. The non-technical seems to worship their every last word. Anyway onto a new challenge, that’s the fun part.

UK taxman updates its employment-checking calculator for IR35: Still crap, say contractors

Being a self employed person, I find this entire practice has had an impact on people running real companies with more than one client.

If you are going to work for a single client on any length of contract, get employed by them, enjoy the perks of employment, holiday, sick pay and so on. If you're going to be self employed enjoy the perks, ie a very slight tax advantage but also enjoy the negatives, no holiday, no sick pay and if you don't find yourself work, no money at all.

Worse still running a company, taking the risk of not finding enough work to pay the bills used to have a small advantage that dividends were slightly more tax efficient, now even that has been eroded because of this modern practice. Equally someone running a real company goes on to employ people as they expand.

These sole director, single client companies just take and give very little and now they're all crying over IR35 tests as well as employers looking for a no strings attached skilled person.

When the IT department speaks, users listen. Or face the consequences

Re: Beautiful

Sh1trix also translates to me that it was installed by and managed by someone who did their one day training course and has little skill beyond that. When installed correctly by someone experienced it is faster at login, cleaner, fewer issues and far cheaper. But sadly I see too many poor examples of it in the wild and those who installed it appear to have charged a lot for their incomplete install.

OneDrive is broken: Microsoft's cloudy storage drops from the sky for EU users

Until your power supply pops, then you can buy a complete new box. Great product but hardware support in my experience hasn't kept pace with the software side.

UK gov grilled over massive exposure to struggling outsourcer Capita

Re: Core competence: getting contracts

Whilst said specialist companies make a choice:

1) make do with small scraps of work, unable to compete for complete contracts.

2) become subcontractors for the likes of Crapita, told what to do, how to do it and for almost below cost. Specialism is completely thrown out of the window.

Tendering was great, it served a purpose to ensure best value was gained in a transparent and corrupt free way until frameworks and unrealistic financial requirements put many and then almost all contracts outside of their reach. Frameworks have made the system corrupt by design, only a select few ever win the contracts, like actually having a real money tree.

What amazes me is how can they be struggling financially?

Elon Musk's latest Tesla Model 3 delivery promise: 6,000... a week

The shape of the car won't be the latest fashion, the seats will be flat and lost their padding and the paint will look dull. This is why I and most other people replace cars long before the vehicle is unusable.

All cars are scrapped long before their usable value has been completely spent because their market value has depleted to less than the desired value. If we removed the desired value, replacing worn and failed components would allow cars including battery-powered cars to realise the full life potential of the batteries and the bulk of the components, vehicle refurbishing would take place.

I suspect very few cars make it beyond 100k miles in the UK.