* Posts by Charlie Clark

12082 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2007

Today's old folks set to smash through longevity records

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: "life expectancy in [the USA]"

The lifestyle-induced diabetes and obesity epidemics are just getting under way. And, with the prospect of an effective diet pill, have just lost an incentive to change.

Gun deaths are unfortunate, but like RTAs (another astonishingly high number in the US in comparison with other OECD countries), they're fairly constant. And, if the majority are related to suicide, then removing the guns won't change that much. Gun deaths are a tragedy but I think that, at best, some kind of restriction on the kind of weapons available over the counter and possibly whom they're sold to, is the best you can hope for.

Pro-Russia cyber gang Winter Vivern puts US, Euro lawmakers in line of fire

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Thank fuck they're not going after Exchange!

Given the fairly well publicised problems with MS Exchange over the last couple of years, I'd be more worried about that. Zimbra is fairly easy to patch and update, and if you're not doing that, you can assume the 3LAs are already in there. Exchange, on the other hand, can be a real bugger. It takes more time, may well involve an expensive upgrade both of the sofware and the server OS, as the cluesless user's will still click on the phishing URLs.

We're doomed, I tell you, doomed!

So you want to integrate OpenAI's bot. Here's how that worked for software security scanner Socket

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Thumb Up

Spot on: the incentives are definitely aligned with the miscreants. Very few open source projects can or will pay for this kind of service, malware authors on the other hand… We could soon have (yet) another principal-agent problem.

Microsoft wants to stick adverts in Bing chat responses

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Return of pay to play

That is what this amounts to: pay enough and the "AI" will make sure your products and services are served up in the answers.

As for the numbers: if I were Microsoft, I'd wonder about the sudden spike and how much of it is driven by bots and competitors finding out how not to do it.

Scientists speak their brains: Please don’t call us boffins

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Pint

Re: Those who obsess over "gender" get themselves into a pickle

I'm trying to think as to whether English really does have "deep Latinate" roots. We certainly have a lot of Latin words but very little truly Latinate grammar. What we have is a Germanic language (Anglo-Saxon with some lovely Scandinavian simplifications) with many similar constructs, but huge differences in the detail.

As for French, it's another bastard language, being the language of the Francs, a Germanic group, with even more Latinate influence than English. You see this particularly in comparison with the significantly more Latinate, but also newer, Italian and Spanish. Both English and French contain lots of archaic terms and constructs due their long histories as official written languages of nation states, with Henry V of England (because there was also, of course, a French one) the first English king to swear his oath of allegiance in English, Honi soit qui mal y pense, indeed.

The good old Académie Française does indeed get to ponder over gendering, though some of the changes made do at least have theoretical underpinnings from French feminism, Cixous, et al. Somewhat typically French, it's important that the problem is discovered, analysed and resolved in theory. The real world can wait!

German is also getting a bashing from the time wasters with discussions as to whether students should be der Student / die Studentin or (double gerund) die Studierende and whether the previously theoretically masculine-only plural should replace by the "gender star" (you can't make this shit up) so that die Studenten gets to become die Student*innen, and whether this monster should be aspirated or not. If it's not, it's the same as the feminine-only plural. This is considered somehow more inclusive for the generic plural than the masculine-only one!

Anyway, genders in language only loosely align with animal sexes, which only adds to the confusion and misapplcation. But also, no doubt, provides plenty of reasons for yet more "research projects".

My head hurts, where's the Aspirin™ icon? I'll have a pint instead, here's yours.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Mushroom

Specious arguments are great for wasting time

And what a waste of time this suggestion is! Changing terms, pronouns, etc. are easy to suggst but they don't change anything.

If there is a problem with getting your girls in science then look at the society they grow up in, and work on providing role models or changing their perceptions of role models. Make boffin acceptable by making it accessible and even desirable, in the aspirational sense. There are now plenty of excellent female scientists in different fields who probably be happy if you call them boffins. But most importantly, it's obvious that they are successful scientists without sacrificing any of their feminity; a culturally specific minefield all of its own.

Look at societies which value science, such as the fomer Soviet Union, India and elsewhere in Asia and learn from how they approach the subject.

Apple patches all the iThings, including iOS 15 hole under attack right now

Charlie Clark Silver badge
FAIL

Re: Catalina users have been abandoned it seems

Actually, I don't have a car. But your comparison is nevertheless dreadful: if there is a problem with a car then the manufacturer is obliged to fix it: hence, the many recalls of various manufacturers over the years.

That I'm not running the latest version of Apple's OS is for a reason: I can't remember the last major release that didn't take at least three point releases to be stable. Add to this the significant changes due to ARM and the integration of IOS code, and the motto "never fix a running system" springs to mind. More importantly, my backup machine (MBP 2016) is no longer supported by Apple so I need to keep both machines on the same version in case one goes down. And, much as I like Apple's hardware, I've had hardware issues with all the previous three models: batteries, USB daughterboards, fans, etc.

I'm going to look at getting Open Core onto my backup machine.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Catalina users have been abandoned it seems

Will we forever have to suffer with the random bug shit? Currently suffering from a bug that seems to be related to Safari's plugin mechanism. The system quickly becomes completely unusable and a hard restart is normally required. And yet you ask why I don't update to even more dumbed down (and therefore vulnerable) versions?

For whom the bell polls: Twitter voting is for Blue users only now

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: How long . . .

As soon as it makes sense to the accountants…

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: what a twat

Twitter polls never gauge public opinion just the already selective group sentiment. Making it pay to play could actually make such polls more representative (of the self-selecting groups).

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: what a twat

That's Libertarianism for you…

Microsoft promises it's made Teams less confusing and resource hungry

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Teams will be less like WhatsApp, more like Facebook

Probably because, every time you see this Turducken software, you wince?

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Gimp

Re: Teams will be less like WhatsApp, more like Facebook

I see Threading and think, oh they've finally gone multithreaded with their shit. Then I realise it's a post from a fanboi… Good luck, gimp!

Watch for schema design in graph database rollout, business user warns

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Old solution

Yep, especially for stuff that isn't changing all the time (which this stuff isn't), focus on getting the indices right and make sure you have enough memory for it.

BOFH: The Board members are looking very ill these days

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Happy

Re: Openings in forestry

If you're going to use quicklime you don't want things like carpets than leave traces. Better a nice sapling from a fast growing tree. Or so I've heard.

Nice to hear that the PFY's car has had an upgrade and is now even more suitable for transporting organic waste!

Winnie the Pooh slasher flick mysteriously cancelled in Hong Kong

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Wierd

You obviously haven't ventured into the realms of alternative horror films: no subject is taboo, no treatement too shoddy. And, most importantly, you're not supposed to be able to tell if it's a joke. Sharknado, Tremors,…

Free-Teams-gate: Docker apologizes for shooting itself in the foot

Charlie Clark Silver badge

On my machine Docker necessarily runs in a VM, so that's 5 layers. But you're also ignoring how hardware hypervisors reduce both abstraction and isolation. Containers are really all about deployment in data centres. On single machines, I/O quickly becomes the limiting factor.

Google: Turn off Wi-Fi calling, VoLTE to protect your Android from Samsung hijack bugs

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Apple

I know Apple has security issues, but they patch things rapidly.

While Apple might have fewer security issues than Android, they're patching speed is really poor. They just sit on the reports until after releasing the update. Where they do excel is getting people to install the latest versions, even if this means buying new versions of their apps.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Shitesung

I had a device with a Mediatek in it: never got any OS updates. Mediatek is known for poor drivers and OS support.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Stop

Re: Good luck with that

Depends what your priorities are. Packet based stuff allows more efficient use of spectrum than connection-based stuff and data outstripped voice on mobile networks over a decade ago.

Also, this doesn't mean that other methods couldn't be, or haven't already been, hacked.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Stop

Re: Wifi calling on? Really?

Or in an office with good windows which will have enough metal in them to make a reasonable Faraday cage.

Ellison's healthcare obsession carries risks for Oracle

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Cerner will lose them business

Yes, but there also conflicts of interest. You might, for example, be hosting your SAP infrastructure on Cerner. You might then, again for example, find support for this somehow getting worse…

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: FUBB

Who does yachts any more? Islands is where it's at, man!

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Cerner will lose them business

Spoken with a few people who are very keen to move off Cerner since Oracle bought it.

Long term, commoditisation of some of these markets is going to happen and that will affect margins in a bad way. Regulation might also, at some point, wake up the hidden cost of Hotel California clouds and make getting your data back easier and cheaper.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: FUBB

Under one of the palm trees.

Watch Reg vultures wrap their heads around Silicon Valley Bank collapse

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Shock horror: asset and liabilities mismatch can lead to funding problems

Thanks for the correction!

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Stop

There are two problems with your assumption: firstly, does the government have the resources to do the work required to turn a profit? I reckon not. The sale transfers assets but also any liabilities. Yes, money can be made on the dea – look at the sharks circling a possible auction of the parent company – but it's by no means guaranteed.

Secondly, the legislation invoked effectively seized the asset of a foreign company, in this case the US FDIC, and not that different to some of the seizures of Russian assets. But definitely not a good idea to play fast and loose with something that belongs to the US. The seizure and subsequent sale was justified as the best way to protect customers from a bank that otherwise would have to cease operations while everything gets sorted out.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Facepalm

Shock horror: asset and liabilities mismatch can lead to funding problems

I always get this the wrong way round but the basic problem was long term assets (loans to customers) financed by short term debt (bonds as security). Banks do this to try and make money on the carry trade but problems started as the market value of the bonds fells they held as interest rates rose. This should really only be an accounting problem because the bonds will be paid at face value when they mature, but only if the bank isn't overleveraged. But it was, because everybody expected the era of cheap money to last forever and therefore valuations (the banks assets) wouldn't change much.

The solution, or so the bankers tell us, is to stop raising interest rates…

FTX inner circle helped itself to $3.2B, liquidators say

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: How did they think

In America the point is not that the fraud will get noticed, but how much you can make before it is and how much a deal costs so that it doesn't go to court, because very few do.

ReMarkable emits Type Folio keyboard cover for e-paper tablet

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Good reasons, or just reasons

All I can say is: lucky you. I had to rely on Planet for support and it was a fucking nightmare. Familiar enough to anyone who's worked for such cashflow-based businesses.

If Andrew Orlowski had not interceded, I would probably have never got the German keyset I needed.

It's a pity because the device had so much potential.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Good reasons, or just reasons

Apart from software issues, the Gemini also had major hardware issues. I had to take it apart quite often and inevitably the display cables suffered, the display became unusable and the thing died. Software problems had turned it from a promising device into a brick. Planet is an example par excellence of an underfunded company.

Google taps Fastly to make cookie-free adtech FLEDGE fly

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Let's create the "I'm not interested in ads and don't want to be tracked" interest group.

Advertising took over newspapers and broadcasting decades ago.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Am I reading this right?

Not just that, the browser stores the data. As this is all a cookie does, it's still a cookie and will be slapped down by the courts.

I think it's a sideshow and that advertisers switched to using finger printing a while back: no cookies required, no personally identifiable data stored, good enough…

Microsoft: Patch this severe Outlook bug that Russian miscreants exploited

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Mushroom

Solution often as bad as the problem

At least, judging by the problems our sys admins are having with SCEP (certificate management) since problems last year. We've had access completely bricked at least once and certificate deployment broken (used via MMD to provide secure access to mobile devices) more than once. Not only is this inconvenient, it's bloody expensive to track down and fix.

Ordinarily, this would lead to at least the threat of legal action. But this is software and Microsoft only has to promise to fix things in future updates. And, remember, recent changes in their support policy means they won't answer questions if you're not running the most recent version of the product, even if your version is still officially "supported".

Enter Tinker: Asus pulls out RISC-V board it hopes trumps Raspberry PI

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Wrong

Probably true, who's going to pay for you to continue designing chips if your secret sauce isn't secret? It's not the greatest business model. I suppose some fabs with their own design labs could afford to do this. But it's difficult to see why they would want the overhead and what the benefit for them would be.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Wrong

Due to, some might say massively flawed pandemic policies, supply chains are buggered. For chips this means that low volume, low margin chips like the Broadcoms used in the RPis that supply is severely constrained, especially if you are intending to sell at a fixed price, while car and consumer electronic manufacturers refill their inventories. Supplies are improving across the board but it probably won't be until the end of the year before things get more or less back to normal.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Yikes.

Yes, well, blame the article for the misleading comparison. Difficult to beat the R Pi for general tinkering devices. But for prototyping specific domains things might be different.

Most people won't care about the architecture, as long as it's well supported, and it won't affect the end price, either. ASUS has possibly switched archs purely because that's what is available at the moment in what is still a highly constrained market for low-end silicon.

Requiem for Google Reader, dead for a decade but not forgotten

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: RSS

I have "Want my RSS" to expose the feeds and use Vienna to read them. StackOverflow allows you to subscribe to particular topcis like this.

RSS is limited, too limited to be useful for press releases, but it is piss easy to parse. Except for the inevitable extensions for longer articles which generally include images, multiple headings, etc.

Meta chops another 10,000 employees, closes 5,000 vacancies

Charlie Clark Silver badge

It was very fashionable at the time because the investors who were buying weren't planning to hold. Also applies, IIRC, for Uber, Snap, etc.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Like so many public companies, shareholders couldn't really give a fuck which is why investors were hapy to give him special shares which guarantee him a controlling interest in the company. All this is just about meeting targets for more tax efficient stock options for the board.

One third wiped off value of GitLab shares, Wall Street didn't like weaker outlook

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: The fundamental problem with being publically traded

Publicly traded companies must at least abide by the, admittedly few, rules of the stock exchange. These include announcements which may effect the share price, which is why Musk was censured by the SEC. He knows the rules and it's more than a little disingenuous to try and defend him.

Nowadays, there is very little difference between public and private companies, with many flipping between the two purely for accounting reasons: go private to load up on debt (and make dodgy acquisitions like SolarWorld), go public to get more money from the retail suckers.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Numbers

So we can assume investors are disappointed that losses aren't yet a multiple of turnover like a proper unicorn? I think GitLab has probably got a chance in the niche, non-cloud market. Especially, since Atlassian fluffed things so magnificently. The main product benefits from clear focus and a decided lack of feature creep.

The UK's bad encryption law can't withstand global contempt

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: I'm more than happy for my encryption to rendered useless...

Where's Bunny, Lebowski?

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: I'm more than happy for my encryption to rendered useless...

Oh my Johnson!

Charlie Clark Silver badge

For the politicians it's the gift that keeps on giving. It will probably never make it to the statute books. Which just means they can try again next year.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: making it a crime to use strong encryption

It's one of the reasons why Korea and Japan required Internet Explorer for internet banking because ActiveX was allowed to do 128-bit encryption.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: I'm more than happy for my encryption to rendered useless...

We''re going to need a new dictionary to keep up: to Truss, to Hancock, to Raab (make a lot of noise but not really do anything)…

Silicon Valley Bank's UK arm bought by HSBC for 1 British pound in rescue deal

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: An apocalypse averted.

Some investors and shareholders will take a haircut. Which they can they offset against their tax liabilities. Unless they're too poor to able to do that. Their own fault for being poor!

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corp

It used to be held in trust (for the savers and debtors) by the government. The government decided it could sell the bank and keep the money. Technically a breach of the trust and illegal, as the Scottish courts determined. But that's okay, because at the time the government could get the House of Lords could overrule any court decision it didn't like. They haven't been able to do that since the Supreme Court was introduced, but the current lot much prefers the law of "do what I say not why I do" and is looking at ways of removing the supremacy of the Supreme Court. And all in the name of democracy, which has come to mean anything we like and nothing you do.

Yes, Samsung 'fakes' its smartphone Moon photos – who cares?

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Coat

Re: Family Snaps

Are you Basil Fawlty? Or Uncle Mort?