Posts by FXi

Hands up who ISN'T piling in to help Epic Games appeal Apple App Store ruling

Apple is getting shafted by very guilty parties

First, Apple does have a house, and yes a house to protect as well as to profit from. Could they spread that profit around a bit? Yes but they did build this house a brick at a time and now they reap a decade of very solid marketing and engineering. Do they have others to thank for that success? Absolutely. But so does MS Office, Amazon AWS and thousands of other companies who have a huge product built partially on the efforts of others and housing it in a marketable machine. Just look at Amazon. And try not to think of what became of all the Malls across the country, or the many bookstores that used to exist that are long gone.

Let's consider the accusers, corporate wise. Microsoft the near "king" of product protection? Windows, Office, countless "business" products who just purchased Blizzard for 70 billion to promote their gaming hegemony. So they have a problem with the Apple store? Right. They just hope your lawyers spend more time on Apple than them and this surely helps that goal.

Then we have Epic, the very founding "poor puppy". Epic hasn't operated a profitable enterprise in its entire history of existence! It is giving software away for FREE, and then complaining that Apple holding back profits from them? For God's sake what soul believes they have "the user" in mind? They are pulling a strategy straight out of the Internet Explorer days. If you can't sell a product profitably you give it away hoping that if you can do that long enough you drive the other guy out of business. Bye bye Netscape. See you Malls - next to that "free shipping with Amazon prime" (another venture that never made the company money but surely did put a lot of other companies out of business).

Attorney Generals? Do they think that free is the way this should all be? I mean the Linux endeavor has surely made few hundred billionaires right? Oh wait, maybe not. Hmm. So do you think Tesla should start giving away cars for the $10K worth of batteries and electric motors in them? And why doesn't Epic take on Steam which seems to keep right on chugging in profit and has done so without worrying about the Apple problem, or the Play store or the Microsoft shop.

To me, Epic is pulling the IE vs Netscape plan and is happily enjoining a lot of people with Robin Hood syndrome whereby they don't actually have to make money until their lawyers have done enough damage to their enemies that they can no longer offer an effective product. Spotify is doing the same thing to everyone except Apple in the music streaming business and also does so without yet making a profit.

The is competition by litigation and while Apple isn't a saint, they are being slammed by parties who don't want you to notice what they are doing. And if you give in to that hype, if you help Epic prevail then you'll be doing the gaming world a huge disservice. Let Epic make and sell a profitable business, prove they are operating on a fair basis with ALL their competitors and then, let them come back and make claims. Right now they are hoping the world believes their lawyers more than their marketing team.

Microsoft warns against SMS, voice calls for multi-factor authentication: Try something that can't be SIM swapped

Not a good solution either

Apps fail and get compromised too. And they have privacy issues where SMS does not carry that burden "yet". Worse, now you want me to have yet another "app" stuck on my device to help with someone else's security. And it won't be long until every single party has their "own" app such that we have 20 different varieties of the same thing. All that to fix the fundamental issue that we simply don't have good security on our phones or on SMS. Gee we need a rocket scientist to understand that.

Meanwhile, SIMPLY adding 2FA via SMS stops 95% of most attacks. That's not 100% and yes sim swapping (mostly involving an "insider" which is the Achilles heel of almost every security methodology on the planet) still exists as a weakness. How about addressing that as the problem?

More Apps is a path that has a plague of issues, compatibility, age of the device, operating system version and weaknesses if not up to date, that just don't make that a so much "better" choice. And we aren't even counting the fly by night security apps that will pop up all over the place and bring the next wave of who do you trust with you data. The goal MS highlights, that existing methods need improvement is valid. The route to answers just brings more problems.

Microsoft tells staff work-from-home is now ‘standard’ – with caveats galore

Commuting

Some people choose a longer commute (particularly in expensive regions) in order to save some coin and deal with added annoyance. I'm in the camp of not wanting to be at home for more than 50% as there is a lot of things missing from the office experience, the knowing of what's going on from the activity around you, the hallway conversations, sometimes simply the "haven't heard anything about that" tells something. Some time at home is nice because it's that chance to close the office door and actually concentrate on a major task. But sadly at work they'd know to leave you be but remote you inevitably get the *ping* "hey I've got a question".

Anyway the long commute often gave you a slightly more affordable rent, perhaps even at all affordable as some major cities can attest to. Now they have the opportunity to lower (remember it always is a downward "adjustment") your salary because of that choice? So we're going to enhance gentrification of regions because anyone who wants a good salary will have to make incredibly sure they live in the most expensive parts of the region they are in to assure the best salary offers. This is not a good long term thing, even if it has been going on in the form of salary premiums for certain geographic regions. But they did mention "may" adjust. Spreading wealth out geographically is good for the country as a whole. It gets economic spending dispersed without communities having to resort to only tourism economies. While I don't expect that to matter to companies, it sure would be nice if they gave those choices some thought.

You'd think 1.8bn users a day would be enough for Zuck. But no. Oculus fans must sign up for Facebook

Well never going to buy one now

Just like Sonos shot themselves in the foot by stopping to support products only a few years old, this is another move that will relegate the product to an even smaller audience. Last I checked these headsets weren't suffering from supply problems created by excessive sales. But apparently they really want to sell less of the devices as we see here. Corporate darwin award.

Wi-Fi 6 isn't signed off yet, but boffins are already teasing us with specs for venerable wireless tech's next gen

Intel Shenanigans

So with the Wifi standard being upended every 2-3 years, why would Intel (who recently purchased the Killer lineup and makes the #1 preferred wifi client cards) be so gung ho about soldering wifi chips in mobile devices? Planned decrepitude anyone?

Pentagon's $10bn JEDI decision 'risky for the country and democracy,' says AWS CEO Jassy

Security is an afterthought at AWS

With the sizable number of servers found "wide open" with confidential information on them I have zero trust in AWS on something as sensitive as our national security. It can be argued that these server setups are the responsibility of their owners but given that AWS takes absolutely zero responsibility for guiding those customers and "securing by default" leaves me with stunned every time we read about another server found wide open. AWS is classic Amazon really. They will do all they can to sell you a product. But taking responsibility for the quality of that product is only done when you force them to do so. They will never, and I think this is literally "corporate culture" take an active role to prevent faulty products. And frankly, with a contract that has this much importance, the track record at AWS over security problems tells me exactly why they should never be given a Pentagon contract.

US border cops confirm: Maker of America's license-plate, driver recognition tech hacked, camera images swiped

Biometrics images hacked...

Leaves you real confident in the safety of biometric information used in airports now doesn't it?

Two weeks after Microsoft warned of Windows RDP worms, a million internet-facing boxes still vulnerable

unless you are using Sophos

If you are using Sophos they recommend you don't patch. Of course, instead you should get someone other than Sophos and then get back to patching.

That's a hell of Huawei to run a business, Chinese giant scolds FedEx after internal files routed via America

Funny after they claim they are "no danger to internet routing security"

I find it quite ironic after they have claimed that their internet equipment would pose no security risk that they are so heavily concerned with where their documents get routed. And given their heavy history in industrial espionage (numerous cases settled out of court), perhaps they are so sensitive because they know full well how easily they could fall victim to the very tactics they have used on others?

Go, go, Gadgets Boy! 'Influencer' testing 5G for Vodafone finds it to be slower than 4G

5G is just an excuse to have to build out more infrastructure

Bonded LTE could have been done from the same towers and only require building out the interconnects with more bandwidth. That bandwidth still isn't complete to rural areas, and instead of finishing that process, we now want to build out all new cells (in 10x the quantity), new cell locations (towers/mounts/whatnot), rebuild practically the entire thing with tons more connection points, all the interconnects that go with that, the airwave noise and conflicts (remember there is plenty of background RF going on in the world, smaller range means a higher impact from this noise), and once again have a reason on the financials to again be building and again charging more money for all that building.

This whole process feels inherently like something that is being done to hide the concept that like electricity, cellular access is becoming utility, not growth, and that terrifies the giants of the industry. All this rebuilding, however, is an excellent excuse for local towns to build and own their own micro cell network and get infrastructure where they want it, and just charge the big telco's for access.

Secret mic in Nest gear wasn't supposed to be a secret, says Google, we just forgot to tell anyone

Re: i believe it was a mistake..

So Google, is there anything else in your product list you forgot to tell us about?

"I'm sorry sir but we're going to exercise our right not to incriminate ourselves"

Start trek, the next generation: PCie 4 flash controller demo flaunts speedy peripheral vision

Pretty dramatic impact to notebooks

This will have a nice improvement for servers, but also a nice boost to notebooks using the Thunderbolt connector. One more doubling of TB bandwidth would make the difference between using an external GPU box and an internal card nonexistent. External drive arrays for the video editing audience will also notice a nice boost connected to mobile workstations. And of course docking stations overall can become more elaborate with a single power and data interface that drives whole office setups too. In the desktop arena you might well see a number of cards that needed x4 connectors in the past, able to deal with just and x1 connector under 4.0. That may well help SFF systems to become more capable too.

Googlers to flood social media with tales of harassment in bid to end forced arbitration

...a wretched hive of scum and villainy

You wait for one IT giant to show up with its sales figures, then two come at once: Red Hat, Oracle

Double lock in is not winning IT folks over

You go Oracle Cloud you are both locked in to HW and SW. A lot of very sensible folks are pretty thoughtful about that combination. The SW lockin has always been a challenge to budgets. AWS and Azure just do Cloud better, modular, standardized and easy to understand. But this drive to make it all or nothing (for Oracle) is driving many long customers of Oracle SW platforms consider changing or doing away with Oracle products. It'd be one thing if the Oracle HW Cloud platform was simply a competitive offering, an "option" but that's not how it's being done. And that, in essence, is why the market is going so cold on the whole Oracle Cloud. Oracle's hanging on hoping to force customers to it's platform. I don't think they realize they may well become the next Lotus in doing that.

Comparison sites cry foul over Google Shopping service

Fines aren't enough to deter the bad behavior

The EU should immediately double the fines they have levied for bad behavior. Apparently the previous fines were not enough to deter future acts. And apparently Alphabet just hasn't gotten the message.