Posts by Dinanziame

Amazon blasts past estimates, triples profits to $6.2bn but says COVID will cost it $4bn over the next quarter

Re: Comparison

You always grow fast when you start from zero :)

Alphabet thanks ads and AI for its $124m-a-day quarterly profit, and comes out swinging against antitrust action

Re: Because it's convenient?

You get one (good) set of results if Google knows it's you but you get another (garbage) set of results if you try to use it anonymously.

Sounds like letting them gorge on your data does make the results better... Which, as it happens, they claim to be the reason they're doing it!

Oh come on, don't say it's creepy! Remember, the computer is your friend!

Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?

Socket switches seem like a weird idea. I can understand if the socket is controlled from the room entrance, so you can put a lamp there that you can switch on when you come in, but what's the point to put it on the socket? If the appliance itself doesn't have a switch, just unplug it...

Brit accused of spying on 772 people via webcam CCTV software tells court he'd end his life if extradited to US

Re: Team America: World Police

Indeed, I have no idea why he shouldn't be tried and jailed in the UK.

Honey, I shrunk the battery: Something's gotta give as iPhone 12's logic board swells to accommodate 5G chippery

Re: The Iphone 13 will come quicker than the 5G

I'm suddenly wondering if they'll do a sidestep to avoid version 13, like Microsoft skipped Windows 9...

Hackers rummaged about in Finnish psychotherapy clinic – now patients extorted with public data dump threats

Charming

The best part about paying for blackmail is that you are signalling your willingness to pay in order to remain hidden. That's a great opportunity for repeat business from the blackmailer's point of view.

RIAA DMCAs GitHub into nuking popular YouTube video download tool, says it's used to slurp music

You mean YouTube premium? It allows you to download songs and videos on your phone, but you cannot (directly) access the file. And there is no download option available on your desktop.

Iran sent threatening pro-Trump emails to American Democrats, Russia close behind, says US intelligence

So this is a campaign telling people to vote for Trump... But the suspected goal is that they actually want to defame Trump, to make people vote for Biden... Except that now it's public, people will vote for Trump... Which is what the campaign was telling them to do...?

Google screwed rivals to protect monopoly, says Uncle Sam in antitrust lawsuit: We go inside the Sherman parked on a Silicon Valley lawn

Re: FFS ..... Goose meets Gander and Both go on a Mindbender

Sometimes AMFM accidentally makes sense.

Re: On the other hand

I wonder what Alphabet's yearly net income is, divided by the number of their users? A quick DDG tells me $34B

Note that net income is what they make after paying for salaries, electricity, data centres, tax, etc. Their total revenue (what they make for selling ads and a bit of cloud computing, before paying for all the stuff above) is $160B, and that's what you would need to replace with a yearly payment.

That said, no matter how much Google uses their power to keep users in, they can only be successful if they have a good product (and they had plenty of failed products like Google+, no matter how hard they tried to push it). It's much better to keep that incentive to keep the product good.

Stickiness of search engines

According to StatCounter, Bing has only 1% market share in the US on phones. But on desktops, Bing has 12% market share. And on tablets, Bing apparently has an astonishing 18% market share. So yeah, that's probably people who receive a Windows device and never bother to change the default search engine. No wonder that Google is paying Apple billions for being the default on iOS. On the other, there's far more than 12% of desktops that are on Windows, so a majority of people do change search engines, and that mostly means Google.

Breaking up might be good for Google

At the moment, they are bloated and know so little what to do that they keep rushing out products, most of which disappear within a few years.

Kick Google all you like, Mozilla tells US government, so long as we keep getting our Google-bucks

Note that Mozilla switched the default to Yahoo in 2014. Then they switched back to Google in 2017, amid lawsuits between Mozilla and Yahoo reported on this excellent website. One particular detail is interesting:

Also of interest is a section explaining that when Mozilla went to market for a search partner in 2014, it considered Yahoo! a very risky proposition and sought special protections in its contract.

This seems to imply that Mozilla does not only use Google because it's paying well, but also because they consider it more reliable.

China passes Tik for Tok export ban law

Why do they even need a new law?

It's not like Wikipedia, Google and Facebook are currently allowed in China...

When you tell Chrome to wipe private data about you, it spares two websites from the purge: Google.com, YouTube

What's "site data"?

I never heard that there was anything kept in the browser except cookies and cache. What's even the point of having data that is not stored as a cookie? Isn't it functionally the same? Is information that you are logged in to a website part of "site data", or is it a cookie (which is what I assumed)?

Can't quite remember the name of the song stuck in your head? Hum it and our AI will take a guess, says Google

Re: Hum it and our AI will take a guess, says Google

I think the most obvious purpose is to attract people to the Google assistant: "Watch this! Alexa and Siri can't do this!", yadda yadda. The big companies are trying super hard to put every feature from the useful to the ridiculous in their assistants, because they're becoming a major entry point for user queries, and if people use theirs rather than another one, it means they can charge more for ads. It's like the whole Android thing, which technically is not making Google any money — it's free. It's only useful to bring more people to Google services.

Apart from that, I don't think humming recognition serves any useful purpose to Google. The commercially-important part was recognizing copyrighted performances, and that was done long ago.

Mandatory Axis of Awesome 4 chords song link

Re: Hum it and our AI will take a guess, says Google

Google is not known for doing things without a reason

Huh? You mean the Google that did an 8-bit version of Google Maps? Or the Google that has ten different messaging apps? Or the Google that bought Boston Dynamics, never did anything with it and sold it a few years later? Or the Google that named its paying YouTube service YouTube Red?

Recognizing original soundtracks is easy and apps are everywhere; I think my phone does it unprompted on the lock screen. Recognizing humming, now that's a lot harder.

Gamers are replacing Bing Maps objects in Microsoft Flight Simulator with rips from Google Earth

Re: Why?

Quoth the article: “In regard to photogrammetry, we often talked about number of cities or places that have it on Bing vs. Google. However, when I was examining the same area on both platforms, to my surprise (or not), the quality of photogrammetry on Bing is a lot worse, both in texture quality and polygon counts.”

Where does Bing Maps have 3D buildings? Google Maps has it for some cities, but it's very inconsistent.

Has Apple abandoned CUPS, the Linux's world's widely used open-source printing system? Seems so

The curse of an uncool technology

Printing is on the way down, so nobody wants to be the one maintaining the required systems. I was delighted when I realized I could print directly from my phone out of the box thanks to Google cloud print. Alas, I've heard it is going away, because Google can't even bother to just... maintain... it.

We bought a knockoff Lego launchpad kit from China for our Saturn V rocket so you don't have to

Re: Glue? No thanks...

Same. I remember getting goosebumps when I realised what the kragle was.

UK, French, Belgian blanket spying systems ruled illegal by Europe’s top court

Re: Not for much longer

To be honest, if you're working in IT, I don't know why you'd insist on staying in UK. The pay and the work conditions are terrible compared to other countries.

Re: Nothing rhymed

This is not the US common law, where unconstitutional laws can be on the books for many years until a court decides that they should be ignored. In civil law systems, courts only rules facts, not interpretations.

Apple seeks damages from recycling firm that didn't damage its devices: 100,000 iThings 'resold' rather than broken up as expected

Compare Burberry burning thousands of unsold items rather than letting anybody buy them at a reduced price...

And you thought Fuzzilli was a pasta... Google offers up $50k in cloud credits to fuzz the hell out of JavaScript engines

Maybe I'm too old, but I'd have thought finding security vulnerabilities in anything Javascript-related would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Apparently, not so.

Google adopts ‘value-neutral’ language to make selfies less about ‘beauty’

Re: Wait what?

We used to wonder how powerful empires can fall into decadence. Now we know.

The perils of building a career on YouTube: Guitar teacher's channel nearly deleted after music publisher complains

Re: Google Support

They make £2 billion a month in profit. Individually, your business really ain't worth jack-shit to them.

With H-1B workers not exactly rushing to America this year, Uncle Sam plans to spend millions home-growing IT staff

The US government giving money to colleges so that they teach people?

Seems suspiciously communist.

Paying the private sector to teach people

I'm sure this will be a resounding success: Everybody going through the system will receive a paper. Accredited, no less! If I remember correctly, the current president used to run a university, so he'll know all about how that works.

Looking for a new tech job? Just browsing? This week's list includes roles for devs, engineers, and Perl maestros

So El Reg is hiring?

Don't tell me anybody else is still using Perl

Braking point: Tesla has had quite enough of Trump's 'unlawful' tariffs on Chinese-made parts, sues Uncle Sam

And Tesla claims not to pay for advertising

See title

Microsoft leaks 6.5TB in Bing search data via unsecured Elastic server. *Insert 'Wow... that much?' joke here*

Re: Must be all of Bing data?

If you only count desktop searches in the US, the market share for Bing is around 13%. If you only count mobile searches, it is just above 1%... There's your answer. A lot of people just use the default search engine without changing it; and on Desktop, which more often than not means Windows, that default is Bing.

There's a reason Google is paying billions to Apple to be the default search engine on iPhones.

Tesla to build cars made of batteries and hit $25k price tag about three years down the road

Re: Paris Driving

You won't be able to drive in Paris soon.

That's good news!

Re: Applefying the car

My understanding is that Tesla makes nice cars and the controls are very cool, but they don't have the same experience as BMW to make an interior really well done. Customers who are used to buy cars around $80'000 expect polished design and high comfort, and they feel Teslas are cheaply made in comparison. High-end Teslas are priced like luxury cars, but they are not luxury cars.

Another body for the Google graveyard: Chrome Web Store payments. Bad news if you wanted to bank some income from these apps

Re: No wonder Apple is killing it

I think you have it backwards; Google is killing a lot of stuff because nobody's using them. It's the first I even heard that there was a payment API for the Chrome web store...

She was praised by the CEO and promoted. After her brother and mom died, she returned from compassionate leave. IBM laid her off

Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM

They invented the sentence, way before Microsoft existed. Now...

Tesla wins defamation counterclaim against Gigafactory whistleblower

Apparently, somebody called the police claiming that the leaker was planning a mass shooting at the Tesla factory. Charming methods.

That said, I'm surprised that Tesla cannot simply sue this guy for breach of confidentiality, which I'm sure is part of their contracts...

Oracle hosting TikTok US data. '25,000' moderators hired. Code reviews. Trump getting his cut... It's the season finale

Re: Trumps cut

Then audit him over the number of cores of his license.

Nvidia says regulators will be 'very supportive' of $40bn Arm buy despite concerns about chip designer's independence

I hope regulators kill this

Nvidia already has a lot of power, and they haven't been shy about using that power. There's not a lot of players in this business, and I see nothing good with concentrating the power in even less hands.

Wow, you guys have so much in common: Oracle hotly tipped to power TikTok’s operations as Microsoft deal rejected

I can only assume that TikTok hopes that Oracle being completely absent from the social media sector, it will give them a free rein to keep doing whatever it is that they want to do. Oracle, on the other side, I have no idea why they would want that; but I'm pretty sure TikTok won't like it when they know.

Oracle customers clamor for its hardware. Yup, hardware. It can't build Exadata fast enough

Lambs to the slaughter comes to mind

Shaking my head

I won't be ignored: Google to banish caller roulette with Verified Calls

Re: "if a user sees the business's name then they are more likely to actually take the call"

You order a pizza, and the pizza delivery guy is downstairs trying to get through the door?

Re: "if a user sees the business's name then they are more likely to actually take the call"

As things are now, you might be blocking calls from business that do have a good reason to call you, but you just don't know their number.

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

Re: Am I missing something?

Never reuse your passwords: Because if you use a password to log in at shitty-security.com and they get hacked, or dodgy-site.com and they sell it, or even att.com and they tell it to whoever on the phone claims to be you, then people can use your password to log into your bank account. When you reuse passwords, all your accounts are only as secure as the least secure of them all.

If you use an identity provider, then any website you use that is hacked, dodgy or incompetent can at most reveal: "This guy's email address is [e-mail]", and that doesn't let anybody log into your bank account. This of course assumes that the identity provider itself, whether facebook, apple or google, in not hacked, dodgy or incompetent.

No, Kubernetes doesn’t make applications portable, say analysts. Good luck avoiding lock-in, too

Sounds logical to me

The trade-off is that either you choose vendor-specific solutions with additional features which lock you in with that vendor, or you choose vendor-agnostic solutions which lock you out from vendor-specific features. Vendor-agnostic solutions may gain additional features, but more slowly because most vendors need to implement them.

I think the main question is, how sure are you what you want? If you are very sure, and you have the expertise, go for the exact solution you want. If you don't, go for vendor-agnostic. Wait until you understand the trade-offs before committing to a vendor, because going in is much easier than going out.

And no matter what you do, don't choose Oracle.

Apple to Epic: Sue me? No, sue you, pal!

With lawsuits like with war, it's quite possible both sides will lose...

Makes sense from Apple

They get a second lawsuit, which augments their chances to have a legal decision in their favour — if there are two opposite rulings, chances are that nothing will change. And they get to implicitly threaten any other developer thinking of doing the same: If you try your luck, we'll sue you.

That said, I hope very much EPIC stick to their guns, don't come back on the App Store, and only use third-party app stores for Android. If they can make it work, other successful developers might join them, and Apple seeing the App store depleted of the most successful apps may eventually change their policies, to avoid users switching to Android.

Apparently, people who already have Fortnite on their iPhone can keep using it to play, so EPIC isn't even losing a lot of users yet.

Hey, want to make a few bucks? Let Google sell your store's Wi-Fi network capacity

Re: Sounds familiar

I think the French operator free.fr has a similar deal; their routers are hotspots for all their users.

Though a big difference is that this gives an incentive to stores to have a "free" WiFi whose cost can be partly offloaded to phone operators.