Posts by Charlie Clark 12180 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2007
It was probably chosen for two reasons: tax and regulation. Wirecard AG didn't fall under the remit of the BaFin (FCA) but under the government of the very parochial local government of Upper Bavaria. Mind you, it does look like BaFin did also fuck up but it has a history of this on big money projects. German savers seem to be magically drawn to "too good to be true schemes" in other countries.
Yes, I've seen that behaviour in some companies as well. It used to be the argument against open source, until it turned out that commercial software was just as shit but you wouldn't have a chance of finding out until it was exploited.
Personally, I don't agree with either the current practice (all problems can be solved by an update) or the disclaimers in many licences. But the point is that I can't think of any court cases. Unlike, say, those that have upheld the GPL. No doubt there will be some case at some point but IIRC in the US there are some wide-ranging excemptions. Otherwise Microsoft would probably have been bankrupted multiple times in class action suits over Active X, which wasn't just an oversight but a design goal waiting to be exploited.
I don't think the law is on your side. Currently, software developers are not subject to strict liability, which is why we live in a world of updates. Then there are the licences: most open source licences explicitly exclude liability and I've not seen the clauses invalidated by any court yet. It's not as if commercial software is immune to such stuff either: both the flaws in own code but also in liberal use of open source libraries.
While it is possible to check for known vulnerabilities in libraries, there's basically no way around extensive pen testing for modern web-based applications. But getting customers to pay for these is another matter. As is paying for updates of the software stack as new vulns get discovered.
For next few years there will be x86 Macs sold, including new Intel Macs that haven't been announced yet.
Apple said they expect the transition to take about 2 years, ie. 2 years from now they will not be selling x86 machines. x86 will continue to be supported by the OS for "years" (my guess would be 5-6 in line with current practice of deprecating hardware chez Apple) but it may soon become "maintenance" mode if they can sell enough of the new ones.
We won't really know until the new devices appear towards the end of the year and we can see whether Apple silicon does have better TDP and memory performance than x86. For example, same battery life / performance as now but in machines < 1 kg. That would be serious bragging rights. But let's see what they come up with.
I've been running Windows in VMs on MacOS for over 10 years and never found it to be slow. As long as the VMs can use the hardware hypervisor there's no reason why it should be.
There will be a hit for Windows 10 x86 on MacOS ARM because of the emulation. Apple is clearly saying to Parallels and VMWare: if you want performance it's up to you to do it but, again, the hypervisor might help here for CPU stuff. Bigger problems will be with anything wanting to use x86 hardware acceleration: MMX, etc. because Apple might not make any optimisations it's done for this available to other software, as is already the case on MacOS for codecs. But it also had a vested interest in Windows on MacOS not being completely unviable. Guess we'll soon see reports from people running QEMU on the new developer boxes.
Germany took a huge bath when it last subsidised chip factories: the factories were closed before the tax credits ran out. Though, the pressure to repeat this when the coalfields in eastern Germany close will probably mount.
Chip manufacturing is very complicated and not all value is created in the fabs, which is one of the reasons why these are moving to lower (though not low) wage economies. There's still plenty of money to be made in chip design and in the machines that actually make the chips. IIRC the world-leader on chip lithography is a Dutch company. Countries are focussing on keeping those companies in European hands, because once that IP walks, we really will struggle.
You can report IP addresses to ISPs but nothing ever happens.
Such ip addresses are regularly blacklisted by other ISPs. It's just not effective because the addresses can be recycled fairly quickly so that you get assigned one after it has become blacklisted.
More important is setting up honeypots long enough for law enforcement bodies to gather data, not only about infected machines, but more importantly about the networks controlling them.
In general I agree but the boot sound on a Mac is useful if you're trying to get into recovery or single user mode: it tells you when you can let go of the keys.
Likewise, some animations can reinforce the UX by extending the metaphor: think of button presses, slides in and out, etc.
But, I've never understood the fashion for transparent elements in the UI which only seems to distract.
I've used Skype for projects where screensharing is important and it's been pretty good on the whole. Occasionally there are problems getting audio to work properly, so a restart of the call is necessary, but at the moment, as a multi-platform desktop conference app, I'd reckon it's the best: the Electron-based stuff just chews CPU cycles.
Probably, for the two who do it. It was fashionable when the Intel Macs came out for people who wanted the status of Apple hardware to run their Windows apps but virtualisation was generally good enough for most things - I was certainly using Windows XP on Parallels to remote control InDesign in 2008 without many problems.
Rosetta is something that the user will not even notice.
Bollocks. The approach will be very similar to that done on Android after every update which tries as much as possible to apps through a JIT to get native code. Intel was able to make use of this for a lot of stuff of Android for Intel. Except, it didn't work for everything and for some stuff it definitely was noticeable.
Most stuff using Apple's APIs should transpile pretty well but there will always be exceptions and anything making heavy use of x86 specific optimisations could be noticeably slower.
There's no reason to suggest that Apple's engineers will make chips that are any more "secure" (for users) than Intel's.
ARM designs are inherently more customisable, which means Apple can put more stuff in silicon that it wants whether it's video codecs, encryption algorithms or machine learning. This, in turn, should lead to less demands on the CPU which should be good for battery life and heat generation. Custom hardware also makes software even more Apple specific, ie. increasing lock-in for users.
That said, I'm looking forward to the first devices to see how they stack up.
It wouldn't need for much for them to be able to cream off the higher end Windows users. Currently, similarly specc'd Intel notebooks are similarly priced whether they're from Apple, Dell, Lenovo or HP. Microsoft has a far higher investment in the x86 software stack than Apple. But let's wait and see what is actually announced.
If the last 20 years have told us anything, they've told us that Intel is the only company that manages CPU desing and manufacturing effectively and even then it's become increasingly difficult. This is why contract manufacturing from TSMC, Samsung, etc. where the enormous capital can be spread out making CPUs, GPUs, memory for phones, routers, PCs, TVs.
OSX is much, much faster than Windows for some workloads.
I doubt that. If the application code is well written then it should be running as fast as possible on the same CPUs. There are always edge-cases relating to I/O speed, networking, etc. but in most cases the OS no longer makes much difference and, indeed for things like video-encoding, Windows is easier to get hardware acceleration working.
Where MacOS generally shines is the integration of tools for certain workflows. For me, as a developer, I find the posix side of MacOS just so much more convenient, not least because of the path names.
If telegram is truly a secure E2E platform
It isn't and shouldn't be considered as such, unless you setup a "secret chat", though even then it's only published details of the cryptograpic protocols used but no code. Otherwise Telegram stores details on its servers, which is one of the reasons why it's so good for multiple devices.
Telegram has drawn Putin's ire because it has repeatedly refused to provide the details for specific users. And it has sucessfully found workarounds round most government attempts to block it, which is why it remains popular in Russia.
Not necessarily, no, though if you want secure messaging I'm not sure if Telegram is the way to go anway because, in contrast to say Signal, it stores account data on its servers.
Telegram remains popular in Russia, even with Russian politicians, so this is probably some kind of compromise that allows both sides to get on. Spam, presumably including hate stuff, is not unknown in Telegram groups.
The fit may depend a lot on the shape of your ear: I have relatviely small channels so generally struggle with in-ear solutions. Out cycling they generally work loose after an hour so. But then, as someone who wears glasses, find anything that is secured over the ear uncomfortable. :-/
My Jabra Sport did sterling service for several years, though I tended to ride with one ear free so that I could hear my surroundings. Switched to Sony's sport model with an external driver this year which don't exclude the surroundings as much but the cable is a bit short and floppy which means it catches quite easily and can start pulling at the bugs, but I reckon I might be abe to solve this with a small length of tubing.
Exceptions prove the rule.
Remote working some of the time is fine for some stuff, especially when a team already works well together. But it is far from suitable for everything. I'm freelance and generally work from home but, on big projects, I realise the importance of being with the team as much as possible and I think the researchs tends to back this up.
The whole point is that they make life easier / the process quicker once you have been tested positive.
It has no effect for anyone tested positive. What it might do is help track the spread in other people with anyone who may have been in contact. That's the theory, we'll find out over the next few months as to whether this is much more useful than the existing approaches, which after a poor start, have proved very effective in Germany.
Personally, I'm more inclined to believe that the registration of people in restaurants, et al. may prove more effective because it provides the locus. But nothing has been done to digitise this. But time will tell.
Sweden has the most data on this and it does indeed seem that closing schools had little effect on the spread. Not that they don't carry the virus, but they're not the biggest risk. Which is why neighbouring countries quickly reopened schools once their peaks had passed. We're now also seeing data on how keeping kids out of school has affected their learning and it's not good.
Doesn't stop the usual kneejerk reactions though: schools and nurseries have been closed in Gütersloh in Germany due to infections in a local meat processing plant, where the majority of the workers are from south east Europe and who live without families in what are basically barrracks.
Science, we've heard of it.
Yes, it is available as open source and, because it uses the Google/Apple API compatible in theory at least with similar apps in other country, though apparently no one has actually done any work on interoperability.
Anyway, now that it's finally available the news has stopped reporting on it as much. Which is good. In a couple of months we'll know more about its effectiveness. More important was the decision that anyone who wants a test can have one and the health insurance will always pay for it.
The general news is not a good source because it focuses mainly on the numbers and then the "human interest". There's so much other stuff going on, but this is how the news cycle works and fatigue is normal.
For example, German news yesterday decided to report that Sweden now has > 5000 deaths and a mortality rate five times that of Germany's. It didn't mention that reported cases have increased recently as Sweden is now testing more. Nor that admittances to ICU wards and fatalities continue on a downwards trend. It also claimed that Sweden's approach is controversial but failed to mention that the main party of government continues to rise in the polls. All policies are detabable but FWIW in Sweden the main difference has been not closing schools and nurseries or restaurants. But people have still been asked not to travel even in Sweden and hospitals and care homes have strict hygiene regimes.
The focus on numbers keeps people scared, makes whipping boys easy to find but doesn't explain much. It also doesn't really prepare us for a possible spike in the autumn: we're not going to eradicate infections before then and we still don't really know what the best protective measures are. Oh, and along wih age, socioeconomic status is the biggest determinant for morbidity and mortality. But let's not talk about that because poverty implies class and discussions about prevent the middle-class from feeling self-righteous.
Try and listen to a general science report if you can as this should contain less repetition and more information. With so many resources being poured into research there is some very interesting stuff coming out and cooperation worldwide is impressive. But there is also an awful lot of duplicated research based on undersized studies, which means opportunities lost.
I'm generally a big fan of the news but this focus on quantitative reporting and the "won't someone think of the children" outrage as justification for removing people's freedom has made me increasingly sceptical: I know what the news will be before it's broadcast.
The German one cost a mere € 20 million. Mind you, it was developed by T-Systems and SAP so what do you expect. As to whether it works: only time will really tell. They might help a bit.
But these apps can never replace testing. The faster you can test people, the less contact-tracing you have to do. But testing is more expensive…
Question your assumptions and define your terms. Tiny changes in a planet's geology and chemistry would have profound implications of the development of life and thus ideas like sentience. Even taking the temporal dimension into account, our solar system is relatively young, this does not imply that things could have started elsewhere much earlier while taking a similar enough path, especially if some of the universal constants turn out to be slightly less than constant in spacetime.
That said, I'm sure the universe will continue to surprise us.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
