* Posts by Charlie Clark

12082 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2007

Modular finds its Mojo, a Python superset with C-level speed

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Static typing in Python

I think this tells more about habits than anything fundamental in a language. Static typing is primarily an aid for the compiler which optimise based around it. While I have had plenty of facepalm moments when passing the values with the wrong types into a function, raising an exception at some point, the return value has never been an issue; this could happen in any runtime and would not necessarily be avoided by static typing. There is something to be said about not being able to explicitly return an error value in Python but other than that it's not something people discuss.

My own experience has been that I much prefer tests, preferably using pytest, to understand how code works over any kind of comment or declaration. This gently encourages code that is easier to read and maintain, which in turn leads to fewer problems.

But I would have no problem with something like a returning keyword for the definition. Anything is better than the type hints noise! I think we may get an idea of what works best in Mojo where the declarations necessary for optimisation are explicitly optional.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Static typing in Python

I think there are whole PhDs written on the subject. PyPy illustrates quite effectively how good JIT compilers can be at inferring types (for optimisation purposes) and there are plenty of examples of static typing being skirted. What should never be in doubt is the need for strong typing.

But I hate type hints and would like a mechanism within Python for declarative types (descriptors look like the best place to start, needs extending for functors and return values) so that the implementation wouldn't look like it was optional when, in fact, it's a clumsy attempt to enforce type declarations through the back door. Did I mention that I hate type hints? Well, I do.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

To a degree, yes. But this is focussed even more on the hardware side, ie. running stuff on GPUs with hardware acceleration. So more like numba than numpy. I'm also quite intrigued by the keywords for the optimised code; I think this could work well. I still haven't forgiven Guido for failing to introduce a new keyword for generators and think the move towards async processing would have been a lot smoother and easier if it had.

Samsung's Galaxy S23 Ultra is a worthy heir to the Note

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Shrug….

Oh, I think there's plenty to like about them. But are they worth the price? The battery on my S10e is showing its age (4 years) and I was thinking of getting a new phone. I don't want another flagship and the A54 looks pretty good, except that it doesn't do wireless charging. So, at the moment it looks like I'll just be getting a new battery for what is still a fantastic phone.

Russia tops national leagues in open source downloads

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Pariah State?

90% of statistics are made up.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: As much as I loathe what Russia is doing

It's a bit of a mixed blessing. While indeed many managers have grown up with open source and have no fear of it being used, there's still the potential maintenance gap. But, perhaps an even bigger threat: SaaS is eating everyones's lunch and it seems that, once companies get on "the cloud" they have fewer options to get off. So, while a few researchers may indeed be running open source stacks, the company is increasingly dependent upon a decreasing number of providers.

Microsoft may charge different prices for Office with or without Teams

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Whilst they're at it

That's because it's SharePoint in a casual Friday look. SharePoint has, apparently, always been a nightmare to administer.

Fed up with Python setup and packaging? Try a shot of Rye

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: No mention of pip and venv?

Ugh deadsnakes! I have Python3.6 to 3.12 and PyPI on my MacBook all installed and managed using MacPorts (I could still have 2.7 if I wanted to). Debian/Ubuntu have probably the worst approach to Python I've come across.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Software Packaging is Hard

Python is not helped by the fact that python gets used in Linux distros / desktops as a system component in a way that exposes that Python environment to users.

This is one of the many sins of the Linux distros. *BSD users understand the difference between system and user software and ports takes away all the pain that comes from conflating the two and lets you have pretty much all the versions of a language that you would like. On my Mac I have Python 3.6 to 3.12 and no conflicts.

CERN celebrates 30 years since releasing the web to the public domain

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: The only reason that WWW ...

The GPL would have been a terrible licence for either Gopher or CERN's stuff: public domain and keep the lawyers out of things.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Mirage of democracy

I've just checked the source of this page, and apart from it being a largely semantic-free soup of divs, the source is definitely more legible than say a year ago and would definitely work without JS though the lack of semantic tags would hamper a good rendering.

CSS has also improved though there were some deliberate decisions that I find make it more confusing that it should be. I didn't mention Javascript, but that too has improved and some people have even got the message that they need less of it than they thought they did. I hate "Single Page Apps" and it seems I'm not the only one as they're less popular than they were say five years ago.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: *EVERY* form of communication

Where there's muck smut there's brass.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Stop

I think you're the only one complaining about the web becoming popular: the web is one of the main things that made the internet popular. Sure, it couldn't have worked without the internet but it was the web that really meant that siloed systems such as Compuserve and Minitel would have to open up.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: The only reason that WWW ...

I liked Gopher and I liked the WWW. For many things, the web did end up reinventing Gopher because Gopher was excellent at revealing structured information like directories. HTML was much more free form, but that's why hypertext was invented, because it's how many people do things naturally.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Mirage of democracy

The genesis was obviously SGML as this was supposed to be a non-visual language with little or no ideas of presentation. We then went through around twenty years of it being abused for presentation. Nowadays most HTML is pretty legible.

Apple pushes first-ever 'rapid' patch – and rapidly screws up

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Customers with more venerable software will have to wait for normal software updates.

We're used to that. But older versions of MacOS without all the IOS shit tend to be more robust. Toytown is where the problems tend to turn up.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Great idea ...

Looks more like openssl's borked numbering system. A patch is a patch is a patch, so no real need for anything below z in x.y.z.

SAP users not happy about German giant's price rises

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Enterprise accounting systems pretty much defined lock-in. That's why they'll always buy any serious competition, paying for it out of future licence fees.

Microsoft pushes users to the Edge in Outlook, Teams

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: @PeterM42 - Microsoft used to do things people liked......

I really liked MS Word 2.0, especially the learn program that it came with. Someone had put a lot of thought and work into that. But, from the way nearly everyone used it, it's clear that they never put any thought into what they were doing or bothered to try the learn program. The successor, Word 6, was the first down that slippery slope of "No, Dave, I can't allow you to do that…".

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Poor messaging

Teams and data protection in a single sentence. Teams is leaky as hell. You have to hope it's only phoning back to Microsoft. There are many environments when Teams (and it's evil stepfather, Sharepoint) are antithetical to any data protection policy.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: It's how they turn you into the product..

Firefox works fine for me on my phone.

No more feature updates for Windows 10 – current version is final

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Truly, certainly not

I don't think most people would really notice, once they manage to disable the ads and "tips" they get thrown at them. As an OS, Windows 10 is more reliable because it's nearly all managed code – there's a lot more stuff than no longer works – and hooks for administration were improved. But most of the changes were cosmetic and, as usual, not consistent. Then there was the usual removal, hiding or reorganisation of configuration. For example: you used to be able to disable the performance sink that is file indexing in a single option but not any more. It's almost as if they never heard of soft updates or rsync.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Your next OS will be a subscription

NFT

China again signals desire to shape global IPv6 standards

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Dodgy stats

All modern clients support IPv6 and this is what matters.

Rollout of IPv6 here in Germany continues. At some point, IPv4 will essentially be running on local networks only with 6to4 gateways doing the heavy lifting. This will solve many of the problems of IPv4 without th dreaded switch off. It reminds me a bit of the move from http to http2 which was also heavily criticised by has since then been nearly universally replaced because, despite its problems, it was an improvement.

Those countries that don't join in may find themselves in difficulties in ten years or so when they have to replace existing kit. They won't have the skills either to deal with the new kit or make more of the old stuff.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Dodgy stats

Rolling IPv6 back to IPv4 is virtually impossible so the claim that IPv6 rollout is slipping has to be taken with a pinch of salt. It's more likely that China is taking networks off the internet so it's more difficult to gather data about them.

Whatever, China's approach is the correct one: actively promoting uptick puts in them in a better position to shape future developments. A lot in the West, particularly in the US, are happy to bury their heads in the sand saying IPv6 is flawed (it certainly isn't perfect). But it's a lot easier to do this if you still have a huge pool of IPv4 addresses and as such don't have to deal as much with its manifold shortcomings.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Will China-IPv6 interoperate with other versions ?

There's no China IPv6, they're proposing a successor and I suspect lots of governments would be happy with more control over networks. Think of the various bills the UK parliament routinely discusses.

However, there is a fundamental problem with this approach to the internet which was is robust because it is not centralised.

Elizabeth Holmes is not going to prison – for the moment

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Depends on the legal system but normally the sentence starts when incarceration starts. Time in detention before trial is often recognised, which is why many people who've been on remand are released after sentencing because it takes so long to go to trial.

I'm still not convinced that the sentence matches the crime. Yes, it was fraud, but that happens all the time in America and punishments are slight. Look at the case of Marin Shrkeli. His crimes were arguably greater but his sentence shorter (7 years) and we was released after 4. Silicon Valley routinely lure investors into putting their money into questionable business schemes. And yet, despite multiple high profile failures, the system continues essentially unchanged.

US watchdog grounds SpaceX Starship after that explosion

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Good thinking that man

Cannot build one up because the area they can build on at the launch site is tiny and surrounded by nature reserve.

This does suggest that the choice of the launch site might not have been ideal.

How was Google boss's 2022? He got paid $226M as stock awards kicked in

Charlie Clark Silver badge
FAIL

Re: Performance review

I don't know anyone who's bought an I-Phone because of the apps and most of the young people I see don't have I-Phones.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Stop

Seeing as the majority of the compensation comes from stock options and not salary, there's not a lot to be saved from your suggestion. Real estate can be considered an investment and is any case better than holding cash.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Move along, nothing to see

Whatever you think of the payout, it was made for meeting "performance" objectives agree years ago. This is entirely up to the shareholders, who did indeed see fairly spectacular returns during that period. The shift to the kind of system was spurred partly by favourable tax treatment, but mainly as improvement over higher fixed compensation where Pichai might have routinely trousered $ 50 million a year whether the company was doing well or not.

Microsoft nopes out after Twitter starts charging $$$ for API access

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Business hari kari

Sure, any platform would be within its rights to refuse anything other than a court order. The risks of self-censorship are well-known, but that's another matter.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Business hari kari

There wasn't any censorship, Twitter was acting within its rights as owner of the platform to choose whether something should be published on it or not. Musk has continued to do the same.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Business hari kari

Bankruptcy is likely to be more tax effective than a sale.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

The model that decides whether the sentences are okay is based on precisely such data. This is how some of the training data has been exposed.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: In the good old US of A

I guess you haven't done business with Oracle have you? Oracle (and SAP) have in the passed managed just this feat from customers trying to leave the nest.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

No, he has people who lent him the money to do the deal. Running the business into the ground to be able to seek bankruptcy protection, seize whatever IP the business has and then going bust is a well-established practice in Silicon Valley. And, for all his tantrums, Musk is a money man so he does have a plan for something.

Musicians threaten to make Oasis 'Live Forever' with AI

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Musicians we'd like to continue hearing after their death?

Don't forget the Marks: Hollis, E. Smith and, sadly last week, Stewart.

SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Starship hasn't had the most successful history?

Yes, but only to a degree. SpaceX finances this through government contracts and is, thus, somewhat insulated from the commercial risks. I think some of the other newer companies have even better records, because they don't have such deep-pocketed sponsors.

Even with its recent failures on Vega and Ariane 6, ESA has an enviable record on launches and some of the very hard science and engineering associated.

Europe wants more cities to use datacenter waste heating. How's that going?

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: When the Arctic ice cap is sufficiently melted

Should that happen, then there won't be sufficient power to waste running data centres!

Charlie Clark Silver badge

I've never come across that argument so I'd be tempted to call it specious. Germany has always been prepared to extend "Ostpolitik" to Russia in the forlorn hope that trade would somehow lessen Russia's expansion tendencies. Actually, listening to politicians across the spectrum talk about Russia is a good way to induce nausea: from "ostalgia" to the thought of a resumption of the 18th and 19th century "special relationship", all top quality bullshit.

One of the reasons Russia is involved in the Sahel is access to the Uranium there.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

The majority of the population was against nuclear for decades. For over fifty years, Germany had also failed to deal with the issue of where to put the waste, something that all densely populated countries have to deal with. Also, considering that the reactor rods come Russia, sticking with it wouldn't really solve the problem of being dependent upon Russia.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Truth be told, the reason why Germany has been doing very well economically for decades has been a well below market price source of cheap energy.

That's reductivist and not entirely accurate. Lots of countries have cheaper energy than Germany and yet it still managed to compete with them. The deals with Gazprom did, however, provide long term price security and that's often worth more than the actual price itself. Yes, it was recklessly naive but it's what the majority of the politicians and industrialists wanted.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

The article you point to is only partially right. Yes, Garzweiler is still being mined but will be shut earlier than originally agreed. In total less coal will be mined and burned than originally planned.

I agree that German energy policy has been an inconsistent mess over the last twenty years, but the last year has forced some very difficult decisions that had been continually put off and has provided long-needed clarity. But more controversy is to come, so watch this space.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Another way to think of the heat is too much electricity consumed. Regulating this via the price of electricity or emissions trading is the easiest way to deal with it.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Bit of a non-starter

Existing constraints (power price, emissions trading) should already drive data centres into minimising their excess heat. In addition supply and demand are inversely correlated: data centres produce excess heat when demand for it is lower. Solarthermic adsorption for cooling in the summer could be an option but the low fungibility remains a problem.

Many existing industrial plants (steel, etc.) have long been part of district heating systems but these have declined as they've been closed down or relocated away from residential areas.

Synthetic fuels remain an option for anything operating at scale.

Metal-rich stars inhibit chances of life on their planets

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: However...

More than an interesting thought experiment. Life of earth started in conditions that are antithetical to most of life on earth now: no oxygen, no photosynthesis, not much of an atmosphere.

I can understand the research in the context of whittling down the number of stars with potential earth-like planets, but, given what we've learned and then had to unlearn about exo-planets in the last twenty years alone, I wouldn't give it much shelf-life! But same goes for most of this stuff. And, until we can develop faster spaceships and means of communication over the distances, it's all a bit academic®. But, I guess that's the point!

Meta virtual reality interrupted by financial reality as thousands lose their jobs

Charlie Clark Silver badge

The next Compaq/DEC?

Things really are starting to turn to shit at Zuck towers. I bet Carly Fiorina is constantly checking her phone for when she gets the chance to finish what Zuck started.

Musk tells Twitter advertisers: You're welcome back, but don't make demands

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Cart, meet horse

I think he's still pushing for some kind of bankruptcy. Twitter's value proposition was questionable at the best of times, but like many sinking boats, it was lifted by the pandemic online spend. Since then, partly due to Musk's epic fucking around and partly due to being "last year's platform", the value proposition has declined. People are moving to other platforms and the money will follow them.

If I could be bothered I'd do a comparative search for "said on Twitter/instagramTelegram/TikTok/Discord…" to see at least how journalists, the biggest Twitter whores of them all, have started to react to the changes.

European datacenters worried they can't get cheap, reliable juice

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Coat

Re: No Way!!!

I believe this is yours. Close the door on your way out.