Posts by Scunner

Re: As a Non Legal Opinion

Unless there's any real evidence beyond claims of "they were all in on it", it's probably reasonable to suspect that the lawyers didn't actually know there was a problem with these cases.

Re: History repeating itself.

The top end discrete GPUs are basically the equivalent of hypercars in their market - very shiny shiny so everyone can daydream about how nice it would be to have one, but they're not exactly designed with operating budgets as a deciding factor. A high end card like a 4080 (in ti or any other flavour) is now constrained only by the upper limits of what a PC's power supply can output, and to hell with the power bill.

Console GPUs are where the manufacturers get really serious about power constraints, though that's historically been more about thermal management than the electricity cost. Portable platforms like the switch and the steam deck are even more constrained as they have battery life to factor in as well. Laptop CPU/GPU hardware is designed for the same factors, at least if you discount "PrO gAm3r" laptops which end up basically wedded to a power outlet. In these product categories the GPU makers (well, actually just AMD for the gaming devices, and mostly intel in the laptops) have been delivering everything you've asked for, just for it not being on the halo products that gather all the publicity.

Re: Called it a 4070... I may have been wrong

You make some good points. From what I'm reading, when you take into account the relative core count vs. the flagship and compare with what was released last gen, the 12GB 4080 was really more akin to what a 4060TI should have been. What might be even more awkward for nvidia is the same type of analysis suggests the 4080 16GB is rather gimped compared to the 4090, and on relative performance terms that card should probably have marketed as the 4070. Right now its left them imposing a massive price hike for the 4th gen xx80 for a card that performs relatively worse vs. it's xx90 - it's really not a good look.

Intel has priced their flagship ARC card very low compared to it's capabilities, and it's truly an impressive debut for a company that's effectively new to dedicated GPUs. The decision to use emulation for older DX titles does kneecap the card a lot, but it would be good for the market if ARC succeeds. My worry is without a crypto boom jacking up prices Intel may lose interest in developing the line any further.

AMD is definitely the one to watch, but at this point I'm kind of expecting to be disappointed. They've been winning in the price/performance stakes for years, and what nvidia have pulled this time around just gives them more breathing space to stay in that zone. I'd love to see them come in like a wrecking ball with their next gen prices but I just don't see it happening.

Comparing GPUs with the price of a steam deck or any of the current gen consoles makes it clear that the crypto boom has caused a complete failure in the GPU market, and prices are going to have to fall a long way before high-end gaming on the pc will get anywhere near mainstream again.

I suspect that falling PC sales have little or nothing to do with what's going on in the gamer market, and the corporate market is still what defines overall PC sales trends. My bet would be that a lot of firms bit the bullet on hardware rollouts and upgrades for remote-working staff during the Covid lockdowns, and those assets aren't ready to be refreshed yet; the relatively poor numbers this year represent this distortion of the refresh cycle rather than a real downturn.

Re: SMETS2?

Power surge pricing?

Re: Other side of the insurance thing..

A 1986 vintage microwave oven? Do birds spontanously drop out of the sky into your garden every time you reheat a cuppa?

Re: Mines different...

"Hey sis... have you been messing with the ROM on my phone again?"

Re: Add this to the list?

Agreed, the cavendish is awful. I've not had a Gros Michel myself, but I can recommend the variety they grow on Tenerife - smallish fruits but very sweet and excellent flavour.

Why would the streaming services have to shut down? All they need to do is respond to GDPR information requests properly.

Re: New name needed

I think that "No-As-Big-As-Medium-Jock-But-Bigger-Than-Wee-Jock-Jock" is the gonnagle you're thinking of...

https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/No-As-Big-As-Medium-Jock-But-Bigger-Than-Wee-Jock-Jock

Oddly enough I was thinking exactly the same thing!

Re: Droning

If they do get caught I doubt it'll be just a summons, as anti-terrorism legislation would probably be deemed to be relevant to what they've done. You can't cause the closure of a major airport and just expect a smack on the wrist as the only outcome.

Re: Cheaper hardware ?

Based on the way subsidisation on phone handsets and contracts works (or at least used to), you might find that you only get the subsidy if you sign up to a minimum contract term on the subscription that more than wipes out the cost advantage.

Re: If all you ever do is run Chrome...

Agreed. This chip looks like it might do very well in the underlying guts of said chromebook though.

Re: Alternative business model please

FishnetFlix?

Re: Meat?

When, not where. He was commenting from 1973.

Re: I've seen a definite uptick in these

"IBM. You would think that they might have got some idea about how the email system works."

You've clearly never used lotus notes then... <shudder>

Re: Snap.

And for good reason. Randomly deleting your files must be number 1 on the list of things that an OS shouldn't do.

Re: So he DOES respect the law!

By default UK courts expect witnesses to give evidence in person, and only offer the use of video links under extreme circumstances - e.g. witness identity needs to be protected, or where a witness is considered too vulnerable and/or traumatised to give evidence in front of an open court. In this case the reason for wanting a video link would be that the witness is on the run from UK authorities for bail jumping, and wants to give video evidence so they can avoid risk of capture. I don't think any judge is going to grant permission for that, so this legal action will likely fizzle out fairly quickly.

Re: Unbundling the app store would have been the right solution

It's an interesting point though. If this EU competition action does go through, and device do end up being shipped in the EU without google play etc. installed, but with the option of paying the google license fee to add the functionality post purchase, what would happen?

A lot of people would probably just silently curse Samsung, Google and the EU and pay the extra money with gritted teeth. But there would be some who wouldn't want to, and by default they'd now be getting a non-googly experience. That's a market opportunity, but would developers react to it by getting their apps into the other app stores or not?

Amazon are quite happy to allow their app store to be installed on AOSP-based phones. Samsung may have next to no app store presence at the moment, but they do have the largest handset presence in Android, so having their store installed by default would give them a big leg up. If anyone stood any chance of gaining from this, it would be those two.

Re: He's probably rolling in his grave

Indigestion? You're drinking it wrong...

Re: Has GDPR given the ICO balls or just a quick power trip

20 million could go a long way towards fixing that if they're allowed to keep any of the fines collected for their own use. Assuming AIQ don't just immediately claim insolvency and fold if found guilty, of course.

Re: Who's opinion would you trust most out of this lot?

@werdsmith

Sadly I can only offer you one upvote, rather than the six that comment deserved.

Re: Belfast Rocks

Whaddaya mean, *future* government? The future is now...

So... what method did you use to get the infection onto his PC? </BOFH>

Re: Just say No to Amazon

"there is nothing in UK or EU law that requires a company to maximise its profits."

Of course not, there doesn't need to be. Shareholders like profits and the dividends that come with them - and they're the ones calling the shots (albeit through their appointed board).

Re: No need to hack anything?

Ooh, I'll play. How about breathable air?

Re: @Ashley_Pomeroy: Orient is racist - WTF?

As far as I'm aware, "the orient" is just another way of saying "the far east" (unless you're talking about the football team of the same name). It's therefore about the compass direction or the territory that exists in that direction, and has nothing to do with the people there - it isn't a racist term. The Orient Express was/is a fast train which travels in that general direction, so it's just a descriptive term explaining what the train does.

"Oriental", on the other hand, does refer to people from the orient, so perhaps could be construed as racist. However, I don't recall ever hearing it used as a pejorative term in itself, and personally consider it to be a pretty much neutral descriptor for people originating from SE asia (c.f. Caucasian, African, Asian). N.B. To a Brit, Asian means somone from the indian subcontinent, and oriental or SE Asian means someone from China and it's environs. I guess you could argue the case that indulging in such categorisation is wrong, but I'm not seeing racism here either, really.

I will agree that racist terms for people from the far east do exist, but I'll refrain from using any here because that kind of language has no place in a civilised forum. I seem to remember the former presenters of Top Gear being quite well versed on the subject, which is one of many reasons why I don't have any time for them.

Marketing

The term "full fibre" seems to be taking off as a synonym for FTTP.

Maybe the term "fake fibre" should start being used as shorthand for FTTC.

Re: CMA

"It's an offence if you do naughty things to a computer outside the UK from inside the UK. It's an offence if you do naughty things to a computer inside the UK from outside the UK."

First part of that means that he could (and should) be tried in this country. If the US authorities are refusing to assist the UK Police and CPS with their investigations they should be told to bugger off with their extradition request - why should assistance between law enforcement agencies be one way only?

Lack of sufficient evidence to support a case proceeding to prosecution should be an absoute bar to extradition being granted. If the UK were trying to extradite a US citizen (or practically any other nation's citizen) I am sure it would be.

Re: Surface problems are two-fold

I wouldn't rely on that. Hardware and software are different divisions. Left hand, meet right hand.

Re: Long overdue

"Then how do you explain the IP Act and its predecessors such as DRIPA?"

Easy - the average voting punter doesn't pay any attention to stuff like this, so they can get away with living the draconian dream. The government needs to be careful about taxation and immigration issues, but otherwise they can get away with pretty much anything they like.

It's a bleak view of the situation, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

Re: Astrophysicists think

<snip>...about 0.7c ...To decelerate the ship is aimed directly at the star in the destination system...<snip>

So if your sail has a malfunction you're going to hit the star at 0.7c? Well, if you've gotta go, you might as well do it in style...

Re: "The internal combustion engine" [...] is designed to use fossil fuels

"I take your point but I would offer that these engines really are designed specifically to burn fossil fuels. "

Yes, modern internal combustion engines are tuned to burn specific fuels. This is a good thing, as building a general purpose "can burn anything" engine would be likely to involve making compromises which would lower efficiency - you noted this yourself in your point about engines using different blends. But this really is besides the point. Modern engines are only designed for fossil fuels because this is what's available today in bulk quantities, relatively low cost, and with a widely established supply chain to enable you to get more of them wherever you are.

If someone came up with a scalable way of making a cheaper hydrocarbon fuel from renewable sources we'd all be using that instead in very short order - existing vehicles would be retired or adapted to the new fuel type as need be. Biofuels haven't managed that so far, and have also suffered from the political implications of edible crops for bioethanol in countries where there are people who don't have enough to eat. There are people looking into using the sea to produce a biomass source (algae) as the raw material for biofuel, to avoid this competition for arable land. As far as I know it's still early days yet, but it would be foolish to write it this off just because the fuels we use in our vehicles at the moment have fossil origins.

Re: Built in Taiwan

Styled by the Germans

Built by the Italians

Privacy standards by the Americans

That fits with the sentiment of the original...

Re: According to the science:

The way I heard it was this; Tea was originally drunk without milk - if you've got really good tea it's still the "best" way to drink it (personal preference aside - it is the best way to be able to really taste the quality of the tea). The fashion for tea drinking brought with it a fashion for using very delicate porcelain cups to drink it from (fine china - named as such as that's where both tea and cups came from). These had an unfortunate tendency to crack when very hot tea was poured into them. Someone came up with the bright idea of putting milk in the bottom of the cup, which behaved as a heat sink for the hot tea, and reduced cracking in the very expensive cups. It also changed the flavour of the tea, which many preferred - and hence the British custom of milky tea was born.

In a historical sense Orwell was wrong on this one. In practical terms I'm with you both though - modern ceramics are cheap and robust, so thermal damage isn't a problem any more.

In my experience black tea brews better with freshly boiled (not reboiled) water that's still bubbling, and milk should only be added after the teabag or infuser has been removed. Adding the milk when the bag is in situ brings out all sorts of awful flavours, probably due to the milk interacting with the tannins in the leaves. I'll make an exception to this rule for masala chai though.

Re: Certificate Authority buys enterprise grade SSL decryption biz? What could go wrong?

You have a point. That said, if Symantec do this it will be noticed, and very quickly browsers will no longer trust any certificates which have been issued by their certificate authority. So all they'd be doing is flushing their CA business down the toilet. Browser makers won't do it until abuse has happened though.

MITM technology in proxies is just an enabling technology - it's not really good or evil in itself. In the workplace it's a way of protecting your business against malware in HTTPS. This is good in that it protects businesses from threats, but also bad in that it potentially impinges on the privacy of the company's employees. You try to mitigate that by telling employees that use is monitored. Doing MITM on generic internet HTTPS traffic for sig int purposes (GCHQ, NSA etc.) is bad because of the 1984 overtones, but also good in that the primary purpose of such activity (primary *stated* purpose, at least) is to gather intelligence on terrorist threats - and stopping terrorist plots from coming to fruition is a good thing. The spy agencies don't seem to be interested in mitigating the problematic aspects of this activity though, which does suggest they're not being entirely up front about what it's really all for.

You can argue the toss about whether a particular usage of the technology is justified or not, but it's a bit pointless trying to claim the whole idea is evil and should be banned, or criticising the companies who make the products. You don't attack car companies because their products are used as getaway vehicles in bank robberies. You go after the bank robbers. Save your ire for the spooks who abuse the technology, not the technology companies themselves.