Posts by Charlie Clark

Re: Unfair dismissal

He probably will have got something to keep quiet: Apple will want to keep this out of the headlines and, therefore, out of the courts and he could easily launch a discrimination suit.

Re: C and then some

then there aren't really many useful alternatives to C.

Depending on the domain, you may find plenty of Fortran and Lisp fans out there… ;-)

PyPy does a fantastic job of optimising Python byte code and has over time achieved quite astonishing results. Unfortunately it doesn't play well with Cython, which is a great alternative for those occasional hotspots in libraries.

But the general drive to shoe-horning types in Python so that compilers can optimise should be resisted: code becomes bloated and unreadable and thus difficult to maintain. And then it turns out that YAGNI but it ticks a load of boxes, which is great for the project managers.

Where Python does need to improve is on multiple CPUs and, due to the way Python works, this is hard™ but there have been significant improvements and investments, due to the ecosystem built around Pandas and Numpy.

Re: Or could it be

No, they don't care because they've grown up being trained to be "good" customers, ie. ready to buy the next load of crap.

In general, most people seem happy with the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument. But, in particular, they tend to find it creepy. It's easy to demonstrate this by reading their public streams and then asking them about things that they may have thought were only being read by a few people.

Re: Legacy code's legacy

Python has a history of changes, some of which are backwards incompatible: dropping support for backticks, demoting filter and reduce, etc.

While the move to Python 3 was very poorly handled, the ideas behind it were reasonable and generally approved. Code that runs on Python 2.7 will run on Python 3 with a minimum of changes, this was the reason for supporting 2.7 for so long.

But that battle is largely over now and new ones are starting, particuarly the one to force type annotations onto everything.

Re: "For an Android"

This is a major problem for Android and iOS.

IOS, yes, Android less so. A friend of mine with a collection of fruity devices routinely gets annoyed about having to buy newer version of apps to support newer versions of IOS or be forced to get newer versions of IOS or new devices in order to use newer versions of software. Android is, for better or for worse, far more pluralistic so it's only recently that support for Android < 6 has been dropped from apps.

Re: Best UI

In general, yes. But there can always be improvements and I think it's fair to say that UI hasn't always been the focus of Audacity. Sometimes simply updating the toolkit makes a big difference. After that all changes must be argued for.

Re: Many APIs are undesirable

Yes, a lot of the ideas are half-baked. But this is why proper technical discussion with others, such as Apple, would be welcome. It goes two ways with Apple's proprietary web-kit extensions foisted on an unsuspecting world: viewports handled by meta tags, CSS support for notches, etc. This goes back to the day Apple decided it was job done with web-kit, removed developes from it and essentially withdrew from WHAT-WG.

To their credit, Google has consistently fought for the web as a platform. Yes, this is because the web is where they sell ads, but that shouldn't detract from things like webP/webM, WebRTC, etc, which have made the web a more open environment, including for companies like Zoom. Even after they essentially won the browser war they have continued to pour resources into web development. They should be taken to task (or even court) for their privacy and monopolistic practices and criticised for some of their more hare-brained suggestions, but applauded for their continued commitment to development.

Re: "we lowered the commission rate for small developers to 15 per cent"

You left out …in a competitive environment. The app stores show the risks inherent in any vertical integration.

Re: Don't follow the Germans on this…

Thanks for the links and additional information. Good road signs are a great advert for the importance of design. The story of Frutiger and Roissy Airport is also interesting. And Microsoft did learn some lessons from that. Unfortunately, and this happens only too often, it decided that it wouldn't limit the number of tiles. And it added animations.

Limits are important. I remember driving around the Scottish Highlands a few years ago and being not just overwhelmed but downright confused with the signs along Loch Ness: too many places in two languages.

Re: bomi?

Without more details it really is just a number. Being sold to private equity could mean that there's going to be more for investment but it's more likely to be some kind of debt and equity deal: Dell is keen to pay down some of that massive debt it piled on. Boomi will then be stripped prior to being sold to a competitor in a couple of years, if the gearing is right: that will almost certainly be a cash transaction.

It's just more: it's not what you know, but who you know. The polling/electioneering data slant is a great door opener as most politicians would sell their soul (if they still had one) for better polling data.

Now that we have computers powerful enough modelling based on statistical extrapolation has gone from being merely fashionable to seemingly essential and the provisos that should accompany such things ignored. The models are now so detailed that they increase the illusion of control. Even though we know forecasts don't give us control of the weather it's difficult to shake off the feeling they do.

And tell me, the UK has a serious problem with stabbing assaults and deaths,

It may have, yes, but less of a one than the US has.

An armed society is a SAFE society!

Not if you go on the data from the US it isn't. But other countries have similar rates of gun ownership and seem to get by with fewer mass shootings so I'd say the point is moot. But maybe it isn't about gun ownership than about what kind of guns and who has access to them. For people in countries where gun ownership is restricted, travelling to countries where it isn't certainly doesn't feel safe.

Re: inverse correlation

As far as I am aware the Covid-19 vaccines do not suppress or protect against influenza.

It certainly doesn't. My point was that AFAIK more people opted for the flu vaccine last year than usual. But, more importantly, the flu as another airborne virus was also denied many of its usual means of distribution through reduced mobility of the population. This was observable in the Southern hemisphere earlier in 2020.

Flu vaccines are known to be far less effective than COVID – I wonder whether this may change – not least due to mutability of the virus over the course of time, which is part of its modus operandus. Hence, sometimes we have mild seasons and sometimes (eg. 2017-2018) we have more severe ones, which we just tend to accept. The counter-factual test is difficult to demonstrate, but it could be conjectured that, with an ageing population, mortality might be expected to rise (until this becomes self-limiting). Whatever the reason: the flu season 2020-2021 hasn't really happened yet.

Of course, as you point out, if we don't die of the flu (this year), we will eventually die of something else. However, the main argument for vaccinations is that, like dental hygiene, they're dirt cheap compared with medical care and the potential long term effects. And then there is quality of life of the survivors.

The irony is, again of course, that because they're cheap the phama industry hasn't really been bothered with them: it was the university of Oxford that worked on the Adeno-based vaccine and the work on mRNA was initially done with an eye on developing treatments for conditions like MS.

Permission is required for non-essential cookies. As state cannot be preserved in a browser without cookies, the cookie that needs to be set representing your decision, must be reset every session, hence the banner for you in every session. That's not the issue: the issue is the way websites attempt to gain consent for everything with misleading "accept all" buttons.

Well, yeah, if you're too poor to be able to afford such "magical" and "gamecharging" "optional essentials™" then what do you expect? Stop spending your disability benefit on worthless gimmicks like mobility support and spend it on really transformative toys tech.

Technically those would be creditors of the insolvent company.

Re: The shell cares not if you believe in it..

I think this exploits demonstrates that the workarounds required by these new-fangled protections always contain their own flaws…

Re: Have we even ...

Well, as developments over the last decade have shown: in order to have an industry, you need to be involved in developing the technology. Remember Nortel, Lucent, Motorola? Huawei, ZTE and others have been producing great equipment for years – Huawei particularly should be singled out for developing low power base stations – that we nearly all use.

Re: I am disappoint...

17 years olds drinking with their teachers has much to commend it. Less likely to get bladdered and the kids see that drinking sensibly can be fun.

I certainly remember that growing up in a culture of prohibition inculcalted a desire in my generation to get drunk. Hence, a fondness for cheap and disgusting Thunderbird, White Lightning, etc.

I also remember trying to take my younger brother into a pub with me for a breather during Christmas shopping and be refused entry – he'd have only got and wanted a soft drink. Because I'd already been to the continent a few times where in many countries it's perfectly normal to see whole families in bars, this really jarred and still echoes discrimination againts families, though I think things have improved a bit since then.

That said, I think recent research indicates that young adults are particularly sensitive to alcohol so moderation really should be observed.

Re: How long

From the description it sounds like it took around 30 minutes. Presumably the current limiting factors are energy input and size. Ideally, you'd also want to be able to source locally some kind of reduction agent in the hope of being able to reduce the temperature required. However, seeing as CO₂ to CO is considered an essential part of our own renewables strategies, it's to be hoped that improvements here can be expected .

Re: Define freedom

That's just part of the politics of the GPL: strings are strings and one of the intended side effects of the GPL is to force the licence onto other software if it makes use of GPL code.

I assume you're talking about the web version? I always found that to be a bit of a hog. Until I came across Teams as an Electron app: has the fan whirring with any kind of video feed.

Meet, previously known as Hangouts, has always had excellent networking performance. I've also use the call out function a couple of times: useful when you're away from home and making international calls. While this has been phased out, Google has at least refunded the balance, which can't be said for all such providers.

The new version offers support for up to 250 participants. If that includes video then that means some serious network performance. As I normally disable video I'm not worried about a screen full of faces, but that's a lot of multiplexing! The inclusion of realtime subtitling and international dial in numbers for all calls will also be useful for some.

But even more ARM 64 devices… also known as mobile phones.

It is also intended that ARM will remain an independent business within SoftBank

Which we all knew was horse shit and why no one was surprised when it was sold on. Little point now in bolting the stable door…