Posts by big_D 6775 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Nov 2009
Obviously not, considering Shrems I and Shrems II both got the data protection treaties with the US annulled, because the US demonstrably didn't take it seriously, which is why it is very hard to balance moving to the cloud, if you are using AWS, Azure, M365, Google WS etc. because they have been declared non-GDPR compliant in many countries.
Yes, but that requires more doctors, not just AI. The AI can't really do much about hurrying appointments, if there are no doctors available to see patients.
My mum needed a new hip, she spent 2 years on the doctor's "not a waiting list", before she landed on his waiting list for 18 months, before she could see a specialist... Because the doctor wasn't allowed to have people on the waiting list for more than 2 years.
It isn't necessarily about lower bids, it is about guaranteeing the data stays within the German or at worst, EU borders and that the provider can guarantee that they will not hand over the data in response to the CLOUD Act, the Patriot Act, NSLs etc.
That is something Microsoft, as a company with office in the USA, cannot guarantee.
They are going for an own cloud and web browser based virtual desktop experience.
They want to use Cloud-Office, Collabora and OpenXchange, for example.
The big point being that the school districts can't use M365 and Teams, because it is not GDPR compliant, especially when it comes to handling the data of minors, according to German Data Protection Registrars.
This is part of a general federal move away from proprietary software, especially software that is outside their control - E.g. US big tech.
Given the US's repeated failures to take data protection and the corresponding EU treaties (Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield) seriously, so that they got shot down in EU court, along with the US attitude to placing sanctions on the EU partner countries, as well as general sanctions against tech sourced out of China, looking for a home-grown infrastructure that you have control over is becoming a critical theme in many governments.
As far as I could ascertain from the story last week in c't, they want to create dPhoenixSuite as a virtual, browser based, environment, using home grown cloud providers. If it is a success, they want to provide other states in Germany with the software stack and know-how to implement their own installations - either on-site or locally hosted.
It seems to be building on Dataport's existing Phoenix open source offering.
Many other states are positive about the project or are already in plans to implement it. Sachsen and Berlin are still in discussions - the new coalition senates in the states need to sort themselves out first. It looks like only Bavaria is not looking into trialling the project at the moment.
I always turn of the voice on my satnav. It display the turnings coming up in the middle of the dashboard anyway, so I don't need it to interrupt my audio book or podcast every 10 seconds.
That said, I rarely use the satnav in my car anyway. I think I probably use it about twice a year on average. I usually know where I am going and I know where the shortcuts are and, if there is a detour, I can read the road signs to know roughly where I am heading, so I won't get lost.
I believe it is the market deregulation post Brexit that is the root cause. Visa is no longer bound by the limits set by the EU and is flexing their muscle to up their merchant rates.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59306200
According to Sky, the interchange fees have had a 500% increase since Brexit.
https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-to-reject-customer-payments-using-uk-issued-visa-credit-cards-12470641
We ripped out the cameras from our conference rooms and gave them to users who had to go into home office - in the first wave, laptops and cameras were not widely available or expensive (we were quoted 800€ for an 80€ camera at one point!), the users took their desktops and the cameras home with them.
After the initial lockdown, we moved to a hybrid environment and, to space people out, we started putting people from multi-occupancy offices into the conference rooms, so there was 1 to 2 people per office (depending on size) with others then occupying the conference rooms or working in a rota in home office.
I will point out that Apple have gone "all-in" on ARM.
Microsoft has "added" ARM as an afterthought, or as a kick in the pants to Intel to get its arse back in gear. Google is also going 2-pronged about it with their Chromebooks working on Intel and ARM.
The problem being, to make a laptop, let alone a desktop, chipset involves a lot of work and a huge investment in R&D. And the current mobile SoCs don't provide near-laptop performance and the units that the chip manufacturers can hope to sell in the current climate are miniscule. The investment needed to make the performance acceptable would take billions over a few years. That would make the price per unit unacceptably high, so just minor tweaks are being made, which leaves the performance wanting, but good battery life.
Microsoft also don't seem to be in a hurry to make their software ARM compatible, after 2 generations of Qualcomm SoCs in Surface devices, great swathes of their product pallet were still Intel only.
Apple, on the other hand have made that investment in tuning ARM for laptops and says it is doing the same for desktops going forward. It announced the move, once it had the first SoCs available for production and announced at the same time, that Intel was dead, going forward, when it comes to Apple products. And the first products they showed off were much faster than the Intel parts they were replacing, whereas the Qualcomm parts are much slower than Intel parts under Windows.
It does mean the usual no-prisoners attitude from Apple. If you have old legacy hardware and software that won't run with/on ARM based kit, tough, buy some new kit/software or you are stuck with the old Macs until they goes out of support.
Again, that is something Microsoft just can't do. Most corporate customers will be unwilling to spend millions upgrading lab equipment or production lines, just because their old control software won't run on ARM and the manufacturer only supplies new software with new lab equipment or production lines. You just aren't going to pay out several million on a new production line, because a 400€ PC needs new software.
(I currently use a Ryzen 1700 PC and have no M1 based kit, so I am not speaking as an Apple user.)
The biggest problem I found with InTune on Android was, after enrolling my phone, the first thing I attempted was to deinstall the InTune app. Nothing stopped me and, suddenly, the phone was no longer under InTune's control...
That seems to be a bit of an oversight, if a disgruntled employee or a thief can simply deinstall InTune and do what they want with the device.
We are lucky, my employer says, unless we are on call (2 people on the team in rota), you should turn off your company phone when you leave the office.
I have mine set to switch to do not disturb mode at 16:30 and goes back to normal at 08:00 the next day.
#!$%#&!
It is this sort of thing that really gets on my goat. Let's not try and integrate existing controls that are optimally written to be efficient on the native platform, it is time to re-invent the wheel, but we will coat it in tar instead of grease, so that it clogs up the works!
With power prices currently going through the roof, it will become more and more important that applications are well written and economical with their processing load.
Electricity prices have skyrocketed, in the last 3 - 4 months they have increased over 30% and are now in 36-38c/kWh.
By all means, write an object-wrapper around the native textbox, to use the example in the article. But completely re-writing a near zero-impact object in a way that just burns through the processor and memory? You've got to be kidding, right? Right?
And I thought Electron should be burnt in the pits of Hell...
I use VSCode at work a lot, although it is very bloated for what it is, being an Electron application - this is not a criticism of VSCode itself, but the platform on which it was developed. It takes up huge chunks of memory that aren't needed.
I have the same file open in Notepad++ (1.5MB) and VSCode (150MB) - actually a lot slimmer than I remember it from a year ago, but still a huge footprint for what it is.
vi is the Marmite of the computing world.
I've worked at places where the devs are in vi(m) all day long. It was their editor of choice for C/C++ development and editing scripts...
I never really got on with it, but knowing how to use it is critical, when you have to re-configure some random Linux box that does have your favourite tools installed.
I'm glad that we have independent repairers around here. The nearest Apple Store is an 8 hour round-trip away. If I need to get the screen replaced, it is pack it up and send it to an authorised repair centre and wait 2 weeks for it to be fixed and shipped back.
Alternatively, a colleague runs a repair shop in his spare time and will replace a smartphone screen overnight.
Lock up shady repairers who buy stolen parts and the thieves that steal the phones in the first place? Yes.
Ban independent repair shops that use authorised new parts or high quality 3rd party components? No, no way.
I guess you've not looked at the FairPhone then?
It is small move in the right direction for one of the big players. But it is still baby-steps.
EU law requiring that manufacturers provide replacement parts to third party repairers has absolutely nothing to do this, oh, no, Apple are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
Longer product lives and the availability of spare parts to non-authorised repair shops is a nice move by the EU. I wonder how the US will respond? So far, they have tried to play the security card, but if other countries are pushing for sustainability and repairability, it will be hard to continue to push for non-repairable (or non-self-repairable) products protected by law...
I guess the UK will have to look at what the continent is doing as well, now. Although, as we saw with the sewage fiasco last week, this might be one of the reasons for Brexit... Right to repair? That is so European, there is no way we will implement that!
The adverts should simply target the page that you are viewing. The adverts will probably be more relevant than the "targeted" advertising we currently get.
At the moment, YouTube doesn't seem to know what to advertise to me, on the one hand, it is telling me to get my baby vaccinated (normal baby vaccinations), but also that due to getting old, I should watch out for shingles and get my vaccinated, and also I should look at pain medication for rheumatism...
The thing is, I am not a retired person who has just had a baby...
Yep. I dropped Windows 10 this year, after dithering for a couple of years. With Windows 11 not being compatible with my Ryzen 1700 (8 cores, 32GB RAM, 3 SSDs). Even though it is much more capable than my work laptop (4 cores, 8GB RAM, 1SSD), it is insufficient for Windows 11, so I chucked Windows in the proverbial bin and stuck Linux on it.
It runs really nicely, it takes about 8 seconds to boot and another 3 to load the desktop after I have entered my password. Much better than Windows managed on the same hardware.
The only reason I am currently thinking about a new PC are the spiralling electricity prices - they have shot up from ~24c/kWh to over 34c/kWh since July. A more economical PC would be very welcome, but in performance terms, what I have is more than good enough for the next several years.
I still have the same laptop that I was given when I started with the company in 2018, a Lenovo ThinkPad T480.
I have to regularly set up new laptops for other employees and, to be honest, my T480 doesn't feel any better or worse than the new ones I install (mainly Dell Latitudes these days). The new ones have better styling, but from a functional point of view, I don't feel I need to change.
The same at home, I have a Ryzen 1700 from 2017 and it is just fine, more than fast enough for what I need - I bought it to teach myself Hyper-V, but I just do the odd bit of photo editing and it is now overkill.
The only reason I am thinking of replacing it is because of the sharp increase of electricity (over 30% in recent months) and something like an M1 Mac or a mobile based mini PC would be much more economical going forward.
but they did apparently buy time for Bill Gates to come up with a vaccine that simultaneously stopped a killer virus and persuaded us to upgrade to Windows 11,
I want a refund, my vaccine is defective, since I was vaccinated, I've bought an iPad and installed Linux on my Windows 10 PC...
But if you have a 6 or 7, it is a big upgrade and those phones are slowly reaching end-of-life.
I always find it funny that reviewers say there is little difference between last year's and this year's devices. But most people are not even on a 2 year upgrade cycle any more, they are often on a 4 or more year update cycle. For those people, the 10% better than last year is a huge difference to 4 or 6 years ago.
"We had a record quarter!"
"Yeah, but not as good as we said you would do, so we'll take your stock down a peg or two as punishment!"
No, this isn't in defence of Apple, this is just about the stupidity of the markets. A company forecasts turnover and profit, and exceeds what they forecast, but an analyst says they should have made even more is correct? No wonder there is no sustainability built into modern business.
It is like an American gas guzzler at the beginning of the 70s, released just in time for the fuel crisis.
Electricity prices have gone up over 30% here in recent months. I think prices jumped from ~24-28c/kWh to 34-36c/kWh. I'm seriously looking at replacing my Ryzen 1700 desktop with a new Mac mini as I really don't need the full power of the Ryzen desktop any more (I bought it to teach myself Hyper-V) and the Mac mini would be fine for my general use and some photo editing - under load, it will user over 100W less (ignoring the graphics card's draw!).
The problem is, there is new software, but it is linked to new hardware. "An upgrade for a Win 10 compatible version of our CNC machines? Sure, we can do that, you just need to buy a new CNC machine!"
That is the problem. We just isolate the hardware from the network and carry on. You can work around things like that.
But what is important is that the operating system keeps getting security updates, whether that is on a $20 IoT device, a $200 smartphone, a $2,000 PC or a $20,000 server etc.
People often use technology for a long time. My brother-in-law replaced his Samsung Galaxy S3 Lite and his wife's S4 Lite last year... Those were a good 7 years old and were only replaced because WhatsApp stopped working on them! But those things hadn't had security updates since 2014/2015!
The problem is, nobody is willing to pay for support on those old devices, to get newer software or security updates, "we" have been conditioned to want the latest greatest new hardware, because that is the only way the companies know to make more money. Customer loyalty and satisfaction be damned! That leaves those that don't fall for the buying cycle, or how can't afford to replace devices on a regular basis are being put in "danger".
Society and companies need to change, to make things last longer and keep those devices supported.
That also means that we have to learn the value of that support and pay for it. The cost of the device usually has 2 years worth of updates calculated into it, then the user is expected to pay again for a new device. This needs to change, either the support for longer periods needs to be calculated into the price of the device (some high end devices already have this, to a certain extent, look at Apple's iPhone support lifecyles, for instance, or Microsoft's for PC, up until Windows 11, compared to Android generally being out of support after 2 - 3 years; it is slowly changing, 4-5 years is becoming more common, at least on high-end devices).
Maybe it means we have to take out extended support contracts on our devices to keep them going. Or actually thinking about what you are buying and whether it actually needs to be smart...
Our SmartTV is no longer connected to the network (and complains regularly about that fact), because it hasn't received security updates for 3 years now! No way I'll spend extra to buy a "smart" appliance again. I want to keep the appliance and the smarts separate to minimize untimely waste, by having to throw away a perfectly functioning device, just because it is too (cyber) dangerous to use.
Does a dishwasher really need to tell you it needs more salt or cleaner? Do you really need to start it when you aren't at home? We bought a good quality non smart version. The same for the washing machine, it has a timer, that is good enough for us, we don't need to see how far through the cycle it is, when we are at work.
Volvo had a fleet of Volvo 240s converted to automated driving in the 70s, likewise Mercedes and Volkswagen had converted existing cars for automated driving in the 70s and 80s. These rolling testbeds were used to refine the self driving or column driving (Mercedes, ISTR - all cars in a queue on the motorway slave off of the car in front).
These are not production cars, but specially adapted testbeds (based on real cars), used to test and refine hardware and software. Alphabet's Waymo (formerly Google) also does the same. What they don't do is let beta software loose on non-professional drivers to test on public roads!
You put it in a rolling testbed and test it thoroughly under real conditions, using professional drivers to override the system when it goes wrong.
You don't just plonk beta software on the general public, especially when the software is controlling a potentially lethal weapon.
I built a legacy free PC in 2003 with XP.
It had no floppy drive, SATA drives (2x 150GB drives in ICYdock trays for quick insertion and removal, so I was dual booting Linux and Windows, each on their own drive), DVD.
Linux installed like a dream. I then tried to install XP and it refused to believe there were any hard drives attached to the PC.
I borrowed a USB floppy drive, so that I could point Windows at the SATA drivers... It found them, then promptly reset the USB bus before it loaded them and couldn't find the drivers.
In the end, I went back to the shop where I bought the parts and borrowed an internal floppy drive, just to get Windows XP to install!
That is the big difference between the UK and Germany. In Germany, you cannot film/photograph people in public without their permission, if they are recognisable or the main subject of a photograph. The same goes for car registration plates - which is why most dashcam footage from Germany has either the bottom half of the image blurred or the plates individually blurred.
If you photograph a fountain, for example, and people are wandering past in the background, that is allowed. If they are in the foreground, you need their permission to use the photo or to publish it online. The same is true for film, if you don't get a waiver, you cannot upload the film to the Internet without making the persons in the shot unrecognisable.
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