* Posts by I ain't Spartacus

10122 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009

Google's Project Zero reveals Apple jailbreak exploit

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Re: This is bang out of order!

Personally, I'd prefer to work at a company that is prepared to take an active role in security.

That's the problem right there! Google stick their noses into / take an active role in, other companies' security.

But when it comes to fixing bugs in Android, suddenly it's somebody else's problem.

Oh Boo Hoo it's the vendors' fault. We can't do anything about it. Oh poor us!

No! You designed the fucking software! You make it work! I can accept that they bought in the design, and hadn't predicted the problem in advance. But they've had a decade to get cracking on sorting this out now. And they've done pretty close to bugger all!

The manufacturers don't want to spend any money on updating their software. But I'll tell you what they want to do even less, and that's write their own phone OS themselves! And seeing as they can't, and even MS couldn't overcome the lack of app support in what was a pretty decent OS - Google have the power to solve this problem relatively easily. Either by fixing the Android update model - or by forcing manufacturers to choose between Google Play Services or not offering updates.

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Megaphone

Re: This is bang out of order!

Who was it who did the research to find the bug again?

Perhaps if Google spent a bit less time finding bugs in other peoples' software and gloating about it, and more time finding bugs in their own, and then fucking fixing them for the actual users - then people might be a bit less cynical about them.

US authorities issue strongly worded warnings about crypto-investments

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Re: Partial solution

The Lightning system seems to just deffer some transactions until they can be lumped into one, and save some processing fees or time on the crypto side

Then what problem is Bitcoin solving?

I thought the point was simultaneous transactions to allow for trust over online payments.

With Lightning you're forced to trust one side of the transaction again - or whatever intermediary to hold the money in Escrow. I would point out that Bitcoin has a distressing history of intermediaries, like the exchanges, either stealing or losing the coins entrusted to them.

At this point, you may as well just use the banks, who have secure and cheap international transaction systems already in place. £20 is a massive transaction fee, and as almost nobody gets paid in Bitcoin, that doesn't even account for the fee you have to pay an exchange to get hold of Bitcoins in the first place.

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Re: Bitcoin fees

They're infinitely divisible, so you just keep adding more decimal places as the economy expands. The effect is pretty much the same as inflation for normal currencies.

Naselus,

This is the wrong way round.

Say I hold 1 BTC and in order to have enough units of currency we're adding a decimal place, so 0.1BTC becomes the same value as 1 BTC. Extreme example. That means you've given me the equivalent of 9 BTC for free. This is money becoming more valuable over time. That's deflation.

Inflation is where money reduces in value over time. The Bank of England increase the money supply over the year by 4% to account for the growth in the economy + inflation, so every pound in my pocket or bank account is now worth 4% less than last year. Most of this is not done by printing notes and coins, so actually the BofE are targetting an average money supply growth over time - monetary theory and practise is really complicated and weird... So anyway that's inflation. The money in my pocket is worth less.

Inflation means I have an incentive to spend my money now, or invest it to protect its value. It also means if I take out debt, that the nominal value of that debt stays the same, while the real value falls over time, thus making it less onerous over time. Interest must then be charged to cover this loss of value, plus some profit for the lender.

Deflation means that I have an incentive to save my money now, as it will buy me more goods in future. The value of the money itself is rising - or the price of goods is falling - as both have the same effect.

This gives less incentive to invest, as my money is already increasing in value. So why take the risk? Without investment economic growth collapses. Debt becomes hideously awful. Because the nominal debt level stays the same, but now the real value of that debt is increasing. Thus if you can't pay it off, you're getting poorer every day. This also shrinks the economy.

The combination of debt overhang crippling people and companies, the incentive not to spend throttling growth and the lack of investment (borrowing to invest being suicidal) causes depressions that can last for decades - without massive government intervention. Japan was in depression from the mid 90s to last year - the 30s depression was ended by World War II (that's excessive government intervention...), the 1870s depression lasted until the 1890s. Greece, bequeathed inflation by incompetence and stopped from solving it by the Eurozone is predicted by the IMF to get unemployment down from its current 23% to 12% by 2040!!!!!

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Re: Bitcoin fees

What the hell is the point of having this magic cryptographically signed and un-alterable distributed ledger, if you then have to move all the transactions off it - in order for it to work?

Bitcoin had some clever ideas, but basically because the designer didn't understand the theory of money, it's too flawed to ever be a useful currency.

Plus mining is stupidly wastefully energy intensive - and how are the miners going to be paid when there are no more coins to mine. Plus how would Bitcoin then cope with the vicious spike of deflation that would cause. In general you want your money supply to expand at the same speed as your economy - so there's enough money to go round, but without causing inflation.

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Re: Investment you say?

Real fiat money isn't an investment. It's a relatively predictable store of value - but inflation still gives a penalty in holding it. Which is why you balance liquidity needs against cost of holding cash - and try to protect assets from inflation by investing the rest. Generally sacrificing liquidity for better returns.

The problem for Bitcoin appears to be that the "investors" are causing it to be less useful as a currency, for example by bidding transaction costs up to £20 a time - and if it once loses its value for use as a means of exchange then the value for the investors will soon disappear after that.

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But some bubbles can outlive us all. Most obvoiusly, gold, whose financial value has far exceeded any intrinsic value for millennia.

Gold clearly isn't a bubble. There's something inate about us humans that we like the shiny and it has fulfilled a role as currency/store of value for thousands of years. Sure its price may fluctuate and sometimes go into bubble territory (as a few years ago), but if you average those fluctuations out it's actually maintained a relatively steady value over millenia.

The thing about Bitcoin is that the investment madness is now starting to kill off its use as a currency. Some people argue about how fiat currency smells just as bad a Bitcoin, so whatabout that. But the point is, Steam just dropped it as a payment method, because transaction costs had gone up to £20.

So because the Bitcoin processing system doesn't appear to scale well the worst outcome for it is if this bubble continues for another year or two - the "investors" might drive away the users. Leaving only investors left and not the underlying economy. If that happens, the collapse might be total. Whereas if the bubble pops now, it could go back to business as usual, like a few years ago when the price crashed from $1,000 in December to $50 by January.

Netflix silent about ridicule as it discusses punters' viewing habits

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Re: I'm confused

Well it highlights questions of exactly what data they keep on individuals - which were already obvious. But most ordinary people don't think about it, or even realise just how much data they give to companies like Facebook and Google all the time.

But also it raises the question of how much access ordinary Netflix employees have to that data. Google always like to talk about the algorithms, as if these are neutral, computer-generated processes that have no interaction with humans. And of course these companies' datasets are so vast, that no human can read individual info from them. But what if Netflix employees can just casually dial up a username/email and ogle their personal video history? What controls do they have in place.

I think the PR own-goal is more about the mean-spiritied nature of the post. Make the joke about Netflix themselves, or if about the users, make it general and non-specific. This crossed a line in taste - but possibly more importantly highlighted the dangerous power that many of these tech companies have to ordinary users,who don't normally think about it.

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Re: Wow on a tech site people seem surprised.

You can even target a specific Facebook advert at a person whose email address you know. Dave Gorman used it for a prank on his wife in one of his recent shows - but we were discussing it a few years ago when we briefly had a company social media experiment. Decided it wasn't for us, but you can do some pretty creepy stuff.

Blighty flogs Qatar a bunch of missiles and Typhoon fighter jets

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Re: The Typhoon was never designed as a carrier-based aircraft.

The air frame also needs to be suitable for being catapulting off a deck and suitable for landing on a moving deck.

Apparently BAe's argument is that they don't need to be catapulted. They can operate off a ski-jump with full ordnance load. They have actually done some flight-testing on their thrust vector system, and also on the changes to the wing-roots that allow lower stall speed for carrier ops, as well as better dogfighting performance.

So it may not be total fantasy. However they'd also need to re-design the airframe to be able to take arrested landings - and they'd have to re-do chunks of the avionics bays for all that lovely salt water - and it would be a major re-design. Which wouldn't be cheap. And who'd possibly want it? The MoD might want 100 max, and more likely 70-odd. The Indian navy maybe, but that's it. France won't be buying it, and nobody else in NATO has or wants that kind of carrier.

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Re: Good answers

DrD'eath,

Interesting. I didn't know the Typhoons were designed for thrust vectoring - and a quick look at Wiki suggests that it's a possibility for tranche 3 that hasn't yet been implemented. They've also done the work on some of the low speed aerodynamics - but not yet implemented it. Same for the conformal fuel cells mentioned.

So what I'd say from the date of that article is that BAe were attempting to persuade the MoD to look at the Eurofighter, becuase the coalition had decided to look again at catapults, before realising that they weren't going to be possible to retrofit to the carriers.

There's no way the Indian navy were going to pick an untested design from a foreign company, over off-the-shelf hardware - so I guess they were dangling the idea to the MoD that they could solve some of their Typhoon cost problems by getting more orders for carrier ones (with somewhat fantasy design), have more UK jobs, and even the possibilty of export orders to India. Though why India would buy an untested new plane, when they could have Rafales or MiGs (that are already operating) is anyone's guess.

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The Typhoon is too fat and heavy to land on an aircraft carrier. It was designed as a Cold War air superiority fighter - that just happened to miss the Cold War by a decade and a bit. But that's advanced defence procurement for you - the project studies were begun in the 70s, the design work in the 80s and it then takes years/decades to get off the ground.

BAe are a partner in the F35 program - so we have some fingers in that pie. But since it was decided not to go for a catapult carrier, the F35 was the only game in town. Harrier being rather long in the tooth by this point. And also, very short range.

Catapult carriers are incredibly hard on the airframes (which last many years less) - as well as being much harder on the pilots, so that we wouldn't be able to have a joint RAF / Navy force of planes - that can be assigned either to the carriers or to other duties.

So this would almost certainly mean buying more planes in totaly - though obviously we could buy cheaper ones. French (spit!) Rafales or F18 Super Hornets for the carrier and something else for the RAF (perhaps the cheaper F35A). So there would be much less flexibility. If a crisis coincides with both QE and PoW not being in major refit - then we'd be able to briefly deploy both at once with full air groups of 48 F35s. That's a Falklands War type situation, that looks incredibly unlikely - so that option may be totally irrelevant anyway. But say wouldn't be available if we'd gone cats'n'traps and ordered one and a half full air-groups - so we could only ever sortie one carrier at a time.

I'm not sure any of these are the choices I'd have made - but despite lots of column-inches to that effect, they're also not totally irrational.

SpaceX to try reusing both rocket and spacecraft for historic ISS mission

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Happy

Re: Excuses

unless you're Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Who'd have guessed that all that laudnum would affect his spelling...

Tired of despairing of Trump and Brexit? Why not despair about YouTube stars instead?

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Re: So?

Clarkson punched Piers Morgan. He can't be all bad...

Rogue PIs found guilty of illegally snagging personal financial info

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Re: How times have changed.

I doubt anything's changed. It's still legal to go through rubbish I think. So that wouldn't be unlawfully obtaining data - though of course the charges of unlawfully passing on private data could still stand, for giving it to other people.

However what certain private investigators got good at, is blagging. There were some that various newspapers used, and a big stink coming out of the ICOs operation motorman in 2003. I think some of those people were also involved in the phone hacking thing. Oddly it was the Daily Mail that was found to have used PIs more than any other paper, but they managed to stay out of the phone hacking scandal.

Of course the Mirror did lots of phone hacking, but got away with a lot less flack than the Murdoch press.

Anyway some people are just good at blagging. I've done it a few times when dealing with family stuff (mostly for Mum and Dad), and just talked my way past security on things like insurance and utilities. Even banking once for Dad. I've had good reasons, and managed to persuade the call centre person to stretch what they're allowed to do in order to help me solve a genuine problem.

So all you have to do is lie convincingly, and as long as you're not asking them to transfer £1,000 to an unknown account - I'm sure you can find a plausible reason to get them to send a bank statement to "check a problem transaction" or deal with a legal dispute "because Dad's on a business trip for the next 2 weeks and we need to avoid going to court by tomorrow."

OK Google: A stranger with stash of pirated films is spamming my Google Team Drive

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Re: Google Drive Help Forum "top contributor"

Nick Ryan,

Oh Noes!!!!! Disaster! I stand (well sit actually) corrected.

I've obviously been saved by my love of special offers. Must have not had McVities since, apart from the tubes of 15, or the Christmas meter long boxes. Sainsbury's have had the 3 packs on special quite a bit, and the M&S near me often do deals on theirs too.

Still, it disturbs me that I've clearly not been eating enough Jaffa Cakes. It might be my current thing for choccy covered gingers - or my Christmastime lebkuchen addiction.

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Happy

Re: Google Drive Help Forum "top contributor"

Nick Ryan,

Very good. But... I can't let you get away with that calumny upon the good name of McVities. Jaffa cakes come in 2 sizes of container, so far as I know. The boxed 12 pack (sometimes in multi-packs too) - or the platicised (Pringles type) tube with 15.

Only Marks & Spencers are so evil as to only sell theirs in tens. Though they are incredibly nice, so I suppose I'll let them off. But only buy when they're 2 for the price of 1. The other supermarket ones I've tried also came in 12s.

I have done extensive research into this vital topic...

[I could use the pedant icon, but actually a Mr Greedy one would be more appropriate.]

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Re: Google Drive Help Forum "top contributor"

Any advice on how to avoid the subsequent memory blackout after which you often find you've scoffed the entire packet short of one (sometimes two)

Teiwaz,

There's an argument to say that this isn't a bug but a feature.

But I suggest two solutions. Option 1 is to mark out cake number 6. That is the all important member of the packet. 12 is the perfect number, as if you eat 2 (minimum dose) you're fine. 3 is also neat, as there are three more lots of 3 to go - and eating 4 leave 2 more lots the same. All very neat. Once you eat cake number 7 though, all neatness is gone, and you're forced to finish the packet.

Option 2: Go to Iceland (shop not country). Invest £4 - get big box of 100 Jaffa Cakes. Eat until gone.

As for Weight Watchers, a friend of mine who successfully lost a lot with them told me that he moved from biscuits to Jaffa Cakes on their advice. The Jaffa Cake is quite low calorie, compared to other teat accompaniment snack options. Although I believe there recommendation was one or two.

I didn't realise it was even possible to only eat one Jaffa Cake...

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Re: Google Drive Help Forum "top contributor"

If he held an EL Reg Gold Badge I might listen to him

Got one. My advice is to have a cup of tea and a Jaffa Cake.

After that, I might choose to mutter something rude about Google.

Do their products ever come out of Beta?

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Bexit? I didn't know Belgium were leaving the EU...

That'll really annoy the Commission...

Bitcoin price soars amid technical troubles for exchanges

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Re: New concept for subscription services...

Ken Moorhouse,

Good ideal. But Douglas Adams beat you to it...

All you have to do is deposit one penny in a savings account in your own era, and when you arrive at the End of Time the operation of compund interest means that the fabulous cost of your meal has been paid for.

This, many claim, is not merely impossible but clearly insane, which is why the advertising executives of the star system of Bastablon came up with this slogan: "If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?"

Behold, ye unworthy, the brave new NB-IoT logo

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Re: I kinda hate to say this, but…

Shouldn't a radioactive green football be FIFA's logo?

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FAIL

What fresh hell is this?

I wasn't even aware this technology existed before now. So I guess the logo has done its job. Well except for the fact that I regard it not so much as marketing, but more as a warning.

I have a pretty low opinion of IoT. Particularly of its many vendors' pisspoor attitude to security - and even more shoddy attitude to ongoing support - and simply remotely disabling hardware they've sold in the past. I've noted Google shitting on their customers, because apparently they're too cheap to keep a couple of servers going to support a few 18-month old devices.

But no. There's always a way to make things worse! It's all on spectrum licenced to them, so the mobile phone companies will have to approve all the kit as well. And they're famous for their customer service, software competence and ability to make the right consumer technology choices. Oh yes!

What joy!

A new front door lock made by the lowest bidder in China, "supported" by Google and with technology and UI crafted by Vodafone.

Sign me up! I'll take 12!

The logo should be a man, running away as fast as his little legs will carry him...

Nokia 8: As pure as the driven Android - it's a classy return

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Are you suggesting they should change their name to say, "Phone Shop"?

After all, they've not warehouses either.

Or maybe they're actually ahead of the game. Now that many cars come with slots for your SIM card, they could be the warehouse that sells you cars, which also happen to be phones.

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Re: It's fantastic to see such a great start

It's not Nokia. Even says so in the article.

Nokia are just leasing them the brand name for a bit.

The ultimate vendor lock-in: High school opens on Oracle campus

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Devil

As I understand Oracle contracts - you are required to mortgage your soul and hand over your firstborn child in order to be allowed to use their glorious products.

So all this seems to be is a receptacle for those firstborn children to be kept in.

So it sounds less like a school and more like a hostage situation.

Or am I being unfair to Oracle...

No, BMW, petrol-engined cars don't 'give back to the environment'

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Flame

Don't BMW make up for the lack of energy required for their indicators by having the brightest headlights in the world...

Google prepares 47 Android bug fixes, ten of them rated Critical

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Re: Peasants..

blondie101,

It was only last month that there were a million downloads from Google's official Play store of a fake Whatsapp app - which had only been up for a short while. This slipped through automated checking in a way that it would probably have never got through ten seconds of human scrutiny from Apple's appstore.

But Google are obsessed with automation - if not also being greedy.

There's obviously a much bigger problem with the unofficial app stores, which I think mostly affects Chinese users. You could argue that isn't Google's fault, though the shit app permissions model that they created, most definitely is.

Shoving more and more functionality into their own Play Services (which they can update) is one way of fixing some of these problems. Though it's also a way of allowing them to claim Android is Open Source, but it not actually really being so - because you need Google's Play Services for the full experience. So that looks as much like a response to people like Amazon forking Android than it does a way of solving the vendors breaking the update model.

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Re: Peasants..

tony 72,

I completely agree with you that a lot of users actively don't want UI changes - which only confuse them, after they've got used to how a device works. The surprise from friends I've told to reboot phones before I'll fix them leads me to suspect that most people don't think of them as having software at all - but as a hardware device that happens to allow them to install apps.

I'm sure if you sat them down and made them think about it, they've happily recognise that there's an OS on there, as well as apps - and that it's basically a mini PC. At which point they might vaguely consider wanting security updates.

But until a massive Android outbreak makes global news, like "I love you", "melissa" etc., I doubt they're going to think much more about it.

Maybe that'll never happen? Or perhaps Google's seeming lack of care over the marketplace will be the thing, where they do all their checking by automatic processes and hoping for the best?

So it would be nice for users to think about this. But seeing as they're not going to, and the manufacturers are shit at software, and it's Google's reputation on the line, I'd hope for them to do better by the customers. And I judge them harshly because they not only don't, but don't even make the effort to,when it would cost them very little at this point.

Also, what about customers who don't have £500 to blow on a handset? They can't go either Pixel or iPhone? Previously they had Windows Phone, which had worse apps, but better updates. Now they have no good choices.

Maybe whatever company it is that's hired Nokia's brand name for this month will prove reliable and deserve to prosper?

I will play my part by not funding the Android brands that take the piss so blatantly. But I'll also fulfill that role by calling out Google for being greedy, short-sighted (unusual for them), arrogant (business as usual) and lazy - in the hopes that this will also help.

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Re: Peasants..

Richard 22,

I fully understand the model. And I agree with you, that it's the vendors to blame for being shit and not even providing security updates and bug fixes. And sometimes it's because they've encumbered their kit (or the networks have) with additional software that they're unable/unwilling to support and test with patches. Obviously this is to their advantage financially, as they want people buying new handsets to get new features.

However Google have known this problem for many years now. And at some point, there could well be some horrible security incident. Remember how few people had experience viruses before the "I Love You" email thing, or whichever one was first to hit it big around 2000.

That did terrible damage to Microsoft's reputation, which they still haven't recovered from. Even though they've made serious (if imperfect) and expensive efforts to beef up security in the years since.

I'd argue this is a risk to Google's reputation, although it's harder for this stuff to spread on phones, obviously. But it might happen on a huge scale. And if it does, what will Google do then?

But anyway, even Samsung gave up on Tizen as a viable Android alternative. Windows Phone and Blackberry have fallen by the wayside, and we're just left with Apple or Android. So Google have the power to kick the crap out of the vendors, if they choose to. The fact that they don't choose to, and have made pretty minimal efforts to sort this problem out, tells you they don't care. Not that I wish a mass virus outbreak on the innocent users, but it would be nice to see life bite Google on the arse for their arrogance, greed and incompetence.

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Re: Peasants..

To our anonymous friend,

You'll probably have more than 14 downvotes when a few more people have read your rather childish posts.

Windows PCs get updates, however cheap and shit your vendor is.

The reason Android doesn't have a good upgrade model is because Google allowed it to be the case. And more importantly because Google have continued to allow it to be the case, given they've had all the power in that relationship for at least 4 years now.

It's because Google give barely a shit about their customers, just so long as they can mine their data.

Obviously it's a shame that non-techy customers don't care about updates.

But it is important to remember that Google used to make it relatively hard to get hold of their relatively cheap Nexus devices - again in order to appease their vendors and help make Android a monopoly that they could abuse. And now their Pixel devices are over-priced - so if you buy those you're just getting ripped-off in a different way. And even at their Apple prices, they only give you 18 months - 2 years of software support. And by the looks of it, bugger-all customer service.

My current phone is a Windows Phone. If I replace with a droid, it will be a relatively cheap and disposable one, like it is. I paid £130 for it, 3 years ago - and it's been perfectly adequate. If I'm forced to spend serious money, the only conclusion I can draw is that it has to be with Apple, if I want reasonably acceptable service.

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Re: Peasants..

So when I looked at that brand new Lenovo tablet, costing £450 last week, still on Android 6 (i.e. 2 versions out of date), did that make me a cheapsake pleb?

I didn't buy it, because I'm not a moron, as well as a cheapskate pleb, but hey. The really cheapskate pleb £120 Lenovo tablet was still on 5, if memory serves.

The Samsung tablets I looked at didn't seem to fare any better, so I guess I'm forced to get an iPad. As with a phone, I'm not giving a vendor north of £400 in order to get abandoned almost immediately. I can live without feature updates, but I demand bug fixes and security updates. With a phone I want 3 years of life, a tablet at least 4.

♫ Storage falling, all around me... Snowflake, Komprise... Paragon ♬

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Thumb Up

Re: So many puns,

I am uninterested in storage, and unqualified to comment on it.

I only came here to say thumbs up to the subbies for "love NAND understanding".

Merry Christmas! Everyone!

French activists storm Paris Apple Store over EU tax dispute

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Re: It's a tradition...

Lars,

I don't think there's anything unusual about various British people making comments on how Britain compares to other countries. And this being the internet, many of those will be innaccurate.

If you'd read my post, you'd have noticed that I gave my sources, which were the IMF, World Bank and UN. I was lazy and just picked the Wikipedia link at the top of Google - though I'd already seen the figures at some point and so knew they were broadly correct.

However I did just pick straight 2016 GDP in dollars. Which figures you use, depends on what you want to compare - or what political point you want to make.

So you picked PPP, which showed that France hadn't surpassed the UK - but then said it was expected to. Still not backing up your claim though, which was that it had already happened.

So I've done a better search and can give you a World Bank linky.

My original comment was only to correct an error, probably because it's become a Brexit talking point to claim that this cause the UK economy to instantly become smaller than France's - due to exchange rate fluctuations. Which isn't actually true.

India will be passing both the UK and France soon enough hopefully, given the size of their population. Although obviously China and India are way up the table on size of population, but a long way from catching up on GDP per capita.

The UK and France will compared to nauseating extent over the next few years, being similar sized, neighbouring economies, with similar populations who are about to take an interestingly diverging path due to Brexit.

France has suffered comparitively to the UK in the last 15-20 years - much of which I suspect is down to having joined the Euro. Though both countries have their own specific economic and social problems.

For example France has much better productivity than the UK, but at the same time has had and seems willing to tolerate much higher levels of unemployment - which are interlinked. Which all makes grist for the mill of economic comparisons. And people do rather pick their stats to support their pre-existing opinions.

One thing I can agree with you on is that there is a tradition in the UK of speaking rubbish about France. Being rude about the french is an ancient custom, which we seem unlikely to be changing in the next few years...

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Re: It's a tradition...

Lars,

When did French GDP pass British?

According to the last figures from the World Bank, UN and IMF the UK is 5th, and France 6th - and nothing has changed in several years.

Although I believe the IMF predicts India will surpass France this year - to take 6th place from them.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro: The unfashionable estate car wants to go to town

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Re: 18:9 displays are 10 a penny these days...

Yeah. But this one... Goes up to eleven...

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Re: I wish the writer had dug into this just a little more..

I believe the long-term review of the Honor came out yesterday, from the same author.

Escrow you, Apple! Ireland expects Cupertino to cough up to €13bn

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Re: What ?!?

Apple don't get fined millions, they get shut down in Ireland, or their Irish management put in prison for fraud if they don't pay their taxes.

The people getting threatened with fines are the Irish government. They're in dispute with the European Commission competition commissioner over their tax law, and have been ruled against. So this escrow deal is to put the money into safekeeping until the appeal to the European Court of Justice goes through. They're unwillingly being forced to change their tax laws on grounds that they break EU competition law - hence the dispute and appeal.

I presume the Irish government are trying to find the least painful way to make Apple pay up, while they appeal - given it's an important part of their economy to attract European HQs their and they see this ruling (or claim to anyway) as an indirect attack on them by the French and German governments, who've been trying to get them to put their corporation tax rate up for years.

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I don't see how it can go to international arbitration. I'm not even sure Apple have standing to appeal themselves, given that the Commission ruling was against Ireland's government, and not Apple. So Apple and ROI seem to have got together to appeal to the ECJ (European Court of Justice) more-or-less together, but this is basically the Irish government fighting the Commission.

Once that's happened, Apple may then be able to sue the Irish government in their courts, and may then be able to appeal that up to the ECJ themselves, for the way the Irish have interpreted their own tax laws and applied them to Apple, but the current appeal is the Irish government fighting the EU on whether Irish tax law complied with European competition law.

Apple are allowed to offset any corporation tax they pay on overseas earnings against US corporation tax due on them, if and when they finally re-patriate that money to pay tax on it. Something they haven't done in more than a decade, instead choosing to borrow money in order to pay dividends on foreign profits, so as to avoid paying US corp tax.

Assuming Trump and Congress agree to a change in US corporation tax, that may happen relatively soon. So the US will lose out. But 12.5% on EU earnings isn't an unreasonable charge, and the US agreed to those mutual tax agreements - so it's a bit bloody late to complain now. Even though Trump has. He could threaten to ditch the tax agreements of course, but that doesn't change the past.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the failest mobe of all?

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Devil

Re: Apps not platform

If you TouchWiz, wash your hands afterwards...

Foil snack food bags make a decent Faraday cage, judge finds

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Happy

Re: "They're a lot like Cheetohs. Only better."

Sure, kneel before the Wotsits. But only in order to pray for thanksgiving that better snack foods are available - that don't turn your hands, mouth and insides radioactive yellow.

Surely the Quaver is the better choice of crap "cheesy" crispy thing here? Although I think I'd prefer a pickled onion Monster Munch right now.

So many yummy crisps, so little time.

Russia threatens to set up its 'own internet' with China, India and pals – let's take a closer look

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Re: not gonna happen

Copied root servers won't save them if they're physically cut off from the internet. That would require all the countries around them to physically interrupt the cable and satellite connections from Russia. Which isn't going to happen because they're next to relatively friendly countries who wouldn't do it. And why would you want to stop the Russian people from accessing outside information - given that cutting Russia physically off the internet still wouldn't stop GRU and FSB people from accessing it via outside connections to spread disinformation.

Cutting Russia off from SWIFT is much easier, and reqires fewer countries to agree. But was still considered a step too far.

Anyway the US and the UK control such a large percentage of the global financial markets between them, that they don't need international agreement to flex those muscles. You can simply make a bank choose between the relatively small profits from dealing with Russia or being alllowed to operate in New York and/or London. The year after sanctions were introduced over the invasion of Ukraine / annexation of Crimea, not a single Russian company was able to roll over their international debts in foreign markets. This meant they had to borrow hard currency from the Russian Central Bank reserves. I think it cost them about $150 billion in a year, failing to prop up the currency and rescuing their large companies.

So far the UK government doesn't seem to have tried this kind of thing independently of the US and EU, so we don't know how effective it could be (presumably less than the US but still somewhat). The US Treasury Department seems to have started looking into targetted financial sanctions about 15 years ago - maybe after the failure to maintain sanctions on Iraq via the UN? Worked reasonably well with Iran and has at least inconvenienced Putin over Ukraine, if it's had no other effects.

Want a new HDMI cable? No? Bad luck. You'll need one for HDMI 2.1

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Happy

I'll have you know that bathing in champagne isn't extravagant at all! You've got your savings in bubble bath, the lovely glow it brings to your skin (admittedly this is from smugness rather than particular cleanliness), it's anti-bacterial, it helps keep the drains clear - and best of all, is the lovely repeated popping sounds as one's butler fills the tub...

Only the mega-rich can afford to bathe in printer ink though.

We go live to the Uber-Waymo court battle... You are not going to believe this. The judge certainly doesn't

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And if there's a stupidly huge judgement against them, then they'll probably get it down on appeal, after five year. But in the meantime it really puts the mockers on the IPO that the investors need to get their money back.

Unless Uber manages to ever make a profit... Tee hee. Only joking.

Lock them up and throw away the (don)key

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Re: Did they serve their time

"Good morning, my name is Eyore. I'm calling from Microsoft to say that we have detected that you have a virus on your computer."

Watchkeeper drones cost taxpayers £1bn

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Happy

Re: Application

Well I don't know about that. If you're stuck in traffic on the M1, at least you'll have a nice balloon to cheer you up.

Russian rocket snafu may have just violently dismantled 19 satellites

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Re: It's not looking good for Soyuz and the Freigat US in particular.

Ouch! Ariane have got a long record of mostly not going bang, but SpaceX only have a short record of similar - and the bangs have been more recent. So I'm surprised they're also massively cheaper than Soyuz - which must sting a little. Although I've read the phrase "problems with the Freigat upper stage" an awful lot in the last few years.

This is peak AI: Bot to guest edit Radio 4's Today programme

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Devil

Have you never heard of the Grope-Bot 1000?

Silicon Valley's answer to the problem of having to sack execs caught sexually assaulting their staff. With fewer execs available, it's either reduce female staffing levels, or automate...

I'm still not sure if this is a sign that my humour and cynical heart are becoming ever blacker with age - or just that my opinion of much of the technology giant's attitude to the people around them is lowering every time I read El Reg...

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Happy

Re: The marvellous late Humphrey Lyttekton...

If I recall the joke correctly, Humph described Today as, "30 minutes of news and comment packed into an exciting 3 hours of trailers and time-checks." Or something like that.

With the time now coming up to 8:32 and 23 seconds, it's time for Thought for the Day. With the Rabbi Lionel Blue 2.0.

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Happy

Re: Tokenism as normal

Was listening to several professors of dinosaurology on Radio 4 the other day.

One of them was lead researcher on a paper on some of the interesting fossils being found in China. And he was able to study their skin, and "proto-feathers" - including the shape, and therefore colour) of their skin pigment.

Turns out that not only did lots of dinosaurs have feathers, but also lots of them were gingers!

It's no wonder they couldn't cope with all that bright light when the asteroid hit...