I don't think that's "microscopic" but it's hard to nail down stats for the US on its own.
That's literally hundreds of millions of devices, though, so I don't think we're talking about something that can just disappear overnight without anyone noticing.
You mean like the Pi-Top? Inspired by OLPC if you look at it, it costs a LOT more than $100, even today with all the production in full swing and the costs greatly subsidised by having sold millions of units.
The hand-cranked power supply is literally a bolt-on item with a Trevor Bayliss (RIP) clockwork mechanism, basically, but at further cost.
Honestly, you can't get a Pi, working, with a stable power supply, storage, a screen (generally the most expensive bit) and something to contain it for under $100. Certainly not that would be safe and reliable and durable enough and available in such countries.
Sorry but mentioning a price was ALWAYS a mistake. There wasn't a country on earth willing to pay what was actually necessary to get what was actually promised, but you could have made a hand/solar/dropping-weight powered laptop that operated in some fashion for that price easily. Just not what they promised. Or you could have made a laptop as promised and try to get people to subsidise it.
The problem, as ever, was that there was no actual need for it. Places where OLPC could succeed could have done a lot more for that money - like just hiring a teacher for a lot less, which would give the teacher a job, and the kids their own "computer" in the classroom to teach them.
It was always a half-hearted pipe-dream, and it never gained traction at any point. The RPi come out and nobody even connected the two in their head because OLPC was already dead by then.
And how do you expect to have a useful network if the IoT device can't talk out to the Internet (the only reason to have it connected), it can't be connected to the other tanks, it can't be managed by the central app, etc.
Because it's all very well saying wire it separately but in the first instance it's WIRED FOR A REASON. It's needs to be networked. And connected to other devices. The second you do that, there's some router, Internet connection or local switch involved, even it's to only one other device.
And nobody in their right mind is going to buy one set of switches, routers, cables, Internet connections etc. for each individual device/set of devices wired through the site, including all the feeding back to a point (which might be the other end of the building) in order to be actually physically separated compared to: Join it to the Ethernet wiring. Manage your switches properly (which are already perfectly well isolating finance servers from digital signage, back-office from the gambling machines, the hotel guest wifi from the management network etc.).
It has to be said... of all the things to moan about, this is the most minor.
Buy sturdy bags. Don't have a problem. Or do what I did for most of my childhood, and which I've seen practised all over the world, most recently in rural Italian stores... which is grab the big cardboard boxes from the back of the store (they used to just have a big area laid out that they put empty packaging into), use those to pack your shopping into for the brief periods of a) putting into your car, b) taking out of your car at home.
Pretty much the plastic bag thing had gotten silly and we were using crappy plastic where a single cardboard box could do ten journeys, better, more manageably, more easily. Then by the time you come to re-use the crappy plastic bags, they were disintegrated, UV-destroyed or just plain torn to pieces and fragile.
To be honest, I still haven't worked out why I'm not just given a box / set of boxes that perfectly fits the trolley/cart when I walk in, then I fill it/them with my goods, and then put them straight in the back of the car. All this packing-and-unpacking nonsense at the checkout/car/home is a total waste of time.
I say this as someone who ALWAYS forgets to take bags, and hence ends up paying for lots of "life" bags (more sturdy, more expensive ones) when I really don't need to. But I guarantee that I've used less plastic in all that time even so, and I have a huge box full of really sturdy re-useable bags to boot... I used them when I moved house months ago.
But everything from small stores in Italy, large supermarkets in London many years ago, to strange oddments stores have had just a huge selection of their empty cardboard boxes by the tills ready for anyone to use in preference to a bag. Why it's not present in the larger stores, or indeed every store, I can't imagine. I can only think that the empty cardboard boxes are worth MORE to the store than giving them away - whether by people paying for bags unnecessarily, or just some recycling subsidy from the producers.
It would be really daft to make a ship's hull out of PET - but "sailcloth is typically made from PET fibers also known as polyester or under the brand name Dacron"... be interesting when you have to buy a new sail just the old one was eaten.
But, yes, that is a concern, especially seeing as this enzyme was borrowed from a bacterium that evolved it naturally. It won't be long before another does the same, or this one gets into the wild.
Are you suggesting that you'd have to compromise the switch? How would that work any differently with physical separation?
You can request a VLAN, from a list of allowed VLANs, on any decent managed switch. But you can also be FORCED onto a VLAN with no way to override that by such switches too.
And if Cable 1 is on VLAN 1 and Cable 2 is on VLAN 2, you can't do anything without total compromise of the switch itself (which renders the problem moot anyway). And which is incredibly unlikely to happen, especially if you have any kind of traffic monitoring (e.g. literally blocking the protocols that a device can communicate over), port-authentication (RADIUS etc.), etc.
Sorry, but VLANs are as-good-as, if not better than, physical cable isolation.
If you can design a compiler and have any clue whatsoever about how to do so effectively, you can sure as hell break out another compiler and code it up.
Then, once it's self-hosting, you can concentrate on the compiler itself.
Like every "project" I ever got involved with or people asked me to join since I was a kid - it's the person with "all the ideas" who has no clue how to actually make the thing work, or what's even feasible. While the people who "can do" have a thousand such ideas throughout their life and can implement the ones that actually work and are feasible.
Trust me, I've sat there for years thinking about ideal programming languages and game concepts and operating system design and all kinds of things. It's when you sit down and actually code stuff that you realise why it doesn't work, why it can't work well, why it's not so easy, and why the existing things were designed as they are.
The "wow" moments come from someone MAKING IT HAPPEN and seeing that the lightbulb-moment can be real, never from just the moment or idea itself.
If you're giving large companies that use your service a discount on your service that means you can't profit from them... YOU'RE the idiot. Not them. Raise the prices.
Fact is, though, that it's just not true. At best, they can't compete with others offering the same service for a lower price. Again - YOU'RE the idiot, if you're unable to compete, USPS.
If the only alternative is layoffs (which is bollocks, but let's roll with it)? Guess what... you're already on the knife-edge. If the alternative is no USPS because it turns down custom or a USPS that's losing some money because it's too stupid to just set a price at which it at least breaks even, which is the best political option there?
Fact is, it's nothing to do with layoffs, though. Those will inevitably follow whether they have no money coming in or they're making a loss. That's just a difference in timing, not outcome.
Price your services to break even at minimum. If your competitors can then do the same job for less? There's probably a reason you're not going to be in business for long.
"The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation."
And Tesla is a company. That sells cars. Which have crashed.
One of those is qualified, able, permitted, the people who helped form the legislation, and trusted to give out limited early information that won't be contradicted by later findings and has no political, financial or other interest in anything other than the truth of how the accidents occur.
The other isn't. It's a company selling cars.
STFU and keep your head down, Tesla, or it might hurt badly when it's discovered that it WAS the fault of the car, and that you've just been trying to cover it up.
Be open but be co-operative. "We believe..." not "well, obviously, it can't have been us" before anyone's even had a chance to look.
Because if there's one organisation that can take every vehicle you make off the road, and thus bankrupt you overnight for failing to comply with its own regulations, it's the NTSB.
It's like Boeing being belligerent to the FAA etc. and interfering with a plane crash investigation.
And if no alternative exists, and you can't get the developers to continue to develop it, NOBODY can do anything to help you. If it's not 64-bit, it'll be permissions, or a central library upgrade, or unavailability of the drivers (or hardware!), or incompatibility with new interfaces, or whatever. Something's going to die at some point and blaming the "first" thing to kill it is really disingenuous.
If you are dependent on software which has no alternative, and for which you can't negotiate with the original supplier, and which you can't cope without - your entire purpose/business is on a knife-edge anyway.
There are vanishingly few industries where you literally cannot get software to do X any more. There may be a price tag attached, but if someone sat to make the software in the first place, likely there are a dozen replacements available. The only exception is if it was bespoke. In which case, guess what kind of software you have to replace it with - yep, bespoke.
The fact is that if it's not important enough to contract the company to update, or hire a developer to replace, then it's not that important. Sure, maybe that important to YOU but nobody else on the planet, certainly not Apple etc. If it is important enough, you might have been stung and it might cost you but you have the way out.
And if you have half a brain and have such bespoke software, you would get them to make the software and give you the code such that things like this would be, say, a month of developer's wages to recompile it and fix any issues to make a 64-bit version. Every 5-10 years.
To be honest, basing ANYTHING on Apple supporting your business like this is a real stupid path to even begin down. People moved from apps running on general purpose PC's to back their businesses years ago. Back in the IE/ActiveX era. That's why ActiveX was so popular. Put all the gumph on some central system that can run on anything you like, but access it from Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10.
If you are seriously reliant on an Apple app that only works on Apple hardware with a certain version of Apple iOS, and you get to the stage where you have to update the iOS version for any other reason (security, other apps, etc.) then you can never, ever win. Live in perpetually-outdated systems, or have to change the software. Learn the lesson this time round (like people learned it for everything from DOS CNC milling machine apps to ActiveX controls, etc.).
Reduce that reliance. Solve the problem. Plan for it next time so you know when and where the cost will hit you again.
Yeah, but that's what was said about everything from DOS apps, 16-bit apps, apps built against WinG, apps which expected full permissions, etc. etc. etc.
Either you're actively developing something, or you're not. If you are, it should just be a case of "recompile" - you don't even need to provide support of bugfixes if you don't want to, just recompile the old app.
But if you're not... then it's just a timebomb anyway, and if it's at all critical you probably want active development for security etc. issues anyway. Otherwise the app will be compromised and/or get switched off by someone anyway.
The decision about what the end-user does hasn't changed. You are either a) getting a new version of the app or already have it, nothing to worry about, b) using an app that's not being developed and hence may stop working / never work on any other system again at any point. If that doesn't prompt at least a warning and review of the situation in your head, then you're not doing anything important enough to care about. If it does, and you make the conscious decision to continuing using it, then you have accepted the risk of things like this.
I'm not an update-immediately guy. I think that's stupid, brash and unthinking to do so without in-house testing. But when I start to realise that I'm using an app that isn't being updated, I do start to research alternatives or worry what I'm going to do when it stops. Even if that's "Oh, it's fine, it'll run in a VM", I still have to think about it and test it.
The words "nothing of import was lost" should apply. If you care about it that much, contact the developers and pay them to continue. Suddenly not that important now that money is involved? Well, there's your answer. Can't get hold of them, can't do that, they refuse to do so? Well, there's your answer too.
I agree they should just have a backwards compatibility layer, at least for a few versions. This is something that Microsoft get right, with WOW64, etc. even if it's not ideal. At least you CAN continue to run old apps seamlessly. The trick is to obsolete them only as fast as they obsolete themselves in other ways. So it's not just "Apple have turned off 32-bit and broken my app" as "apps that were developed for an OS that's 10-year-old won't work any more for a variety of reasons of which 32-bit support is only one of them" by the time anyone notices/cares.
Aren't almost all Linux distributions 64-bit now? Aren't all the server editions of Windows 64-bit only? Did you notice? Did you care? No, because of compatibility layers and the fact that by the time they switched, all the software you wanted has been moved to 64-bit development anyway.
But hinging this on "what the user is still using" is stupid. That's their fault. You can't run modern Samba on ancient kernels or libc, for instance. It just wouldn't work. The fact is that you never noticed because it was never an issue, and anyone trying to do that would be laughed at.
Watch the money pour in (if it's anywhere near half-decent).
That they haven't already done this means they have no clue. I love Steam, I think they're great. But they missed the boat by just letting people make Steam Boxes that have... no unique selling point whatsoever. It's just an expensive PC operating as a console using software you can install on your existing PC for free.
Or you could have had the first PROPER set of VR-designed consoles by getting into bed with HTC or someone, and done the same.
They'll still rake in millions, from silly loot boxes and shite, but it bugs me that they aren't in the game-development industry any more. Steam was just a distribution method for HL2. They forced you onto it if you wanted to play HL2 or CS (after shutting down WON).
Now... there's nothing of incentive to move platform.
"It looks to me, as a Tesla owner myself, that autopilot did, indeed, drive him into the barrier and that we have a reminder that every time a driver looks away when on autopilot, they gamble with their life."
Who cares about their life? What about that of their passengers and other road users?
Best thing to happen here? Only the idiot who made the decisions to a) use this model of car, b) enable said features, c) place their life on them is the one who died.
Hopefully, things like that will adjust other people's driving so that they don't kill people.
You want to take risks? Kill yourself. Nobody else.
I worry about any driver that voluntarily drives a car which they have seen experience undesirable behaviour with regards steering, disabling functions without cause and/or unnecessary warnings.
Sorry, no I don't. Please drive off the road and hit a wall. But please do make sure that you take no-one else with you, because those are the people I actually *worry* about.
As far as I'm concerned, Tesla drivers are as much to blame for using, encouraging, excusing and ignoring these features as the cars are for having them.
Read any EU Data Protection Act or GDPR legislation. It literally doesn't matter.
Storing and processing of data. They can't say what, where, how, provide it on request, tell me what jurisdiction it's under or allow me to correct it if it's incorrect. ANY ONE of those is a violation of being a data processor in the EU. And that definition extends to ANYONE in the EU who processes data generated within the EU, on any individual of the EU.
They could be printing it out and using it for hamster bedding. It literally makes no difference to their non-compliance with the law.
For a start, they shouldn't be opening packets and inspecting protocols, so they can't "fix" this for you in any way, shape or form, if they're doing their job.
This is the browser talking to an outside STUN server deliberately saying "My internal IP is X.X.X.X". The VPN shouldn't be interfering with that. No VPN (hardware or software) should be combatting that.
If you're worried about it, don't use browsers that do that.
VPNs are NOT there to provide protection from data-escape. They are there to provide a secure unmonitorable connection to a device that may then connect to the Internet. EVERYTHING on the other end is monitorable anyway. And if you're literally sending your IP address via STUN, or in an email, or by telling people it on the web, a VPN is not even supposed to know, let alone try to stop you (which it can't).
This is a case of people culminating "VPN" and "web proxy", and then using a piece of software that talks entirely different protocols out anyway, and does so at your request, and expecting the VPN provider to "just take care of my own stupidity".
I mean, I'm quite glad. Stupid criminals are the ones most easily caught, so they will just think they are safe because they bought some $5/month VPN and they can't possibly be found when planning their acts of terrorism, illegal acts, software piracy, whatever it may be. But if you're using a VPN like this to just bypass a content restriction, or to enable you to browse without people casually snooping on you, and not for 100% anonymity, then you're pretty much unaffected.
However, if I demanded secure anonymous access to a resource, a commercial web browser of any kind probably wouldn't figure very highly at all. There's just too much junk in there from javascript and cookies to WebRTC (a lovely useful technology), extensions, automatic-updates, history recording, etc. etc. etc.
Honestly, if you're doing something critical for which you don't want to ever be identified, then... this is not the answer. It's not even close to the answer. For a start, paying a VPN provider is a really dumb idea, even if you do it with Bitcoin. Let alone "hoping" that they aren't secretly complying with FBI etc. orders to open their logs etc. (I'm sure if I was an intelligence agency, I'd find a way to own at least one major VPN provider claiming to provide anonymity myself, even if it meant setting it up from scratch and operating it like any other business without any formal contact).
If you want to be "private", then asking a bunch of computers along the way, all belonging to different people, corporations and nations, to keep your secret is really stupid.
"The morale, I suppose, is that if you want to encourage good employee work/life balance, you should implement more security policies. Or not, I guess, depending on your corporate goals."
If you want to encourage employee work/life balance, then do so. It's really easy. Say "Hey, John, it's 6pm, you should be at home enjoying your family. It's not an emergency, we'll sort it out tomorrow. Have a good one."
Yes, the answer is "fuck you, we won't even bother to tell you we're not compliant at all".
Unlike EVERY OTHER CLOUD VENDOR. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. ALL have EU-compatible data-protection guarantees and all have venue-choice and GUARANTEES that your data will only be held in that venue.
Because anything else is basically illegal for the whole of the EU business world to use for anybody's data.
I'm puking over a "fuck you, law" from a major company with a legal base in Ireland, which is subject to EU law but conveniently ignores that it's not compliant.
I don't see how I am seeking to weaken a data protection position which is basically non-existent, when in fact I'm demanding they COMPLY WITH EXISTING DATA PROTECTION LAWS as a bare minimum, which they currently don't.
In recent compliance audits for GDPR regulations in the EU, we've been unable to get any kind of statement out of Apple about where they store iCloud and other data, and whether it's held compliant to either the GDPR or Data Protection Act.
Their policy flat-out contains a line that is illegal under EU data protection rules and prevents almost any company that processes any kind of personal data (even "this is your name and email for your iTunes account) from using them::
"All the information you provide may be transferred or accessed by entities around the world as described in this Privacy Policy."
Which is the same "no answer" answer I've had out of them when I've asked over the last ten years. They pay lip-service, but I ain't going to court to explain why my user's EU-protected ended up in Outer Mongolia.
The reason, of course, is obvious. iCloud is actually just Amazon, Microsoft and Google storage depending on whatever they bought this month:
Maybe they give a shit in the US, but in the EU they have absolutely no interest and, hence, lose a lot of custom. Ironically, they claim to have focus "on education" now with new educational-models of iPad. Hilarious seeing as we can't legally store children's data on them.
Yep, if your child's school is using iCloud or even iTunes in any fashion, ask to see the data protection guarantee.
Do yourself a favour if you work in IT in the UK/EU and are checking for GDPR compliance - take all your Apple gear and bin it now.
Sorry, but in this day and age why are we still running a base OS of any description?
Why are things not supplied with a hypervisor and then people just choose what they want on first boot, even choosing "all" if they want both OS.
Running a general purpose OS on top of a general purpose OS is just a waste. Virtualise, and make the hypervisor be the "OS", the only thing that actually needs to integrate with the hardware whatsoever.
They will either a) sort out the problem really quickly, or b) allow you to get a better phone system and more operators.
It's really not fucking rocket science. They are nuisance calls caused by badly-configured software on the devices that THEY MAKE. If they are emergency dialling just by being on a stack of iPhones under repair, then let them fix it.
In any sensible country, repeated false-dialling of the emergency numbers results in a fine or prosecution. And it's not like you don't know where it's coming from.
It's no longer a race. It's a bore-fest. All the cars are so heavily regulated, there's nothing to differentiate them. All the timings are so tiny that there's no fun... winning by one-thousandth of a second is boring, lads, unless quite literally it was a head-to-head photo-finish with no other competitors near, and a rare exception.
"Rules on overtaking".. in a race? Beyond "don't kill people", what's the point of that?
Then all that safety-lap nonsense. Just stop the race, or don't. Either way, make sure it starts back how it was before you stopped it. When a computer-controlled timing box inside the car tells you what speed to go, and allows mistakes like this, it's not a race any more.
I think I'd honestly rather watch 100 separate drivers all attempt the same circuit, on the track, on their own, and then superimpose their times (e.g. rally, etc.), or cars doing one-hundredth the speed, but proper overtaking, etc.
Honestly, a go-cart race, or a drag race is infinitely more interesting, and the latter would bore me to tears after the first few runs.
Slashdot Mirror
10% worldwide:
https://www.statista.com/stati...
I don't think that's "microscopic" but it's hard to nail down stats for the US on its own.
That's literally hundreds of millions of devices, though, so I don't think we're talking about something that can just disappear overnight without anyone noticing.
Yep. It was so good that nobody even copied it for e-readers, even from the transition to B&W e-ink screens to colour LCDs.
Because... and this is critical... it was shit and cost too much.
You mean like the Pi-Top? Inspired by OLPC if you look at it, it costs a LOT more than $100, even today with all the production in full swing and the costs greatly subsidised by having sold millions of units.
The hand-cranked power supply is literally a bolt-on item with a Trevor Bayliss (RIP) clockwork mechanism, basically, but at further cost.
Honestly, you can't get a Pi, working, with a stable power supply, storage, a screen (generally the most expensive bit) and something to contain it for under $100. Certainly not that would be safe and reliable and durable enough and available in such countries.
Sorry but mentioning a price was ALWAYS a mistake. There wasn't a country on earth willing to pay what was actually necessary to get what was actually promised, but you could have made a hand/solar/dropping-weight powered laptop that operated in some fashion for that price easily. Just not what they promised. Or you could have made a laptop as promised and try to get people to subsidise it.
The problem, as ever, was that there was no actual need for it. Places where OLPC could succeed could have done a lot more for that money - like just hiring a teacher for a lot less, which would give the teacher a job, and the kids their own "computer" in the classroom to teach them.
It was always a half-hearted pipe-dream, and it never gained traction at any point. The RPi come out and nobody even connected the two in their head because OLPC was already dead by then.
And how do you expect to have a useful network if the IoT device can't talk out to the Internet (the only reason to have it connected), it can't be connected to the other tanks, it can't be managed by the central app, etc.
Because it's all very well saying wire it separately but in the first instance it's WIRED FOR A REASON. It's needs to be networked. And connected to other devices. The second you do that, there's some router, Internet connection or local switch involved, even it's to only one other device.
And nobody in their right mind is going to buy one set of switches, routers, cables, Internet connections etc. for each individual device/set of devices wired through the site, including all the feeding back to a point (which might be the other end of the building) in order to be actually physically separated compared to: Join it to the Ethernet wiring. Manage your switches properly (which are already perfectly well isolating finance servers from digital signage, back-office from the gambling machines, the hotel guest wifi from the management network etc.).
It has to be said... of all the things to moan about, this is the most minor.
Buy sturdy bags. Don't have a problem. Or do what I did for most of my childhood, and which I've seen practised all over the world, most recently in rural Italian stores... which is grab the big cardboard boxes from the back of the store (they used to just have a big area laid out that they put empty packaging into), use those to pack your shopping into for the brief periods of a) putting into your car, b) taking out of your car at home.
Pretty much the plastic bag thing had gotten silly and we were using crappy plastic where a single cardboard box could do ten journeys, better, more manageably, more easily. Then by the time you come to re-use the crappy plastic bags, they were disintegrated, UV-destroyed or just plain torn to pieces and fragile.
To be honest, I still haven't worked out why I'm not just given a box / set of boxes that perfectly fits the trolley/cart when I walk in, then I fill it/them with my goods, and then put them straight in the back of the car. All this packing-and-unpacking nonsense at the checkout/car/home is a total waste of time.
I say this as someone who ALWAYS forgets to take bags, and hence ends up paying for lots of "life" bags (more sturdy, more expensive ones) when I really don't need to. But I guarantee that I've used less plastic in all that time even so, and I have a huge box full of really sturdy re-useable bags to boot... I used them when I moved house months ago.
But everything from small stores in Italy, large supermarkets in London many years ago, to strange oddments stores have had just a huge selection of their empty cardboard boxes by the tills ready for anyone to use in preference to a bag. Why it's not present in the larger stores, or indeed every store, I can't imagine. I can only think that the empty cardboard boxes are worth MORE to the store than giving them away - whether by people paying for bags unnecessarily, or just some recycling subsidy from the producers.
It would be really daft to make a ship's hull out of PET - but "sailcloth is typically made from PET fibers also known as polyester or under the brand name Dacron"... be interesting when you have to buy a new sail just the old one was eaten.
But, yes, that is a concern, especially seeing as this enzyme was borrowed from a bacterium that evolved it naturally. It won't be long before another does the same, or this one gets into the wild.
What?
Are you suggesting that you'd have to compromise the switch? How would that work any differently with physical separation?
You can request a VLAN, from a list of allowed VLANs, on any decent managed switch. But you can also be FORCED onto a VLAN with no way to override that by such switches too.
And if Cable 1 is on VLAN 1 and Cable 2 is on VLAN 2, you can't do anything without total compromise of the switch itself (which renders the problem moot anyway). And which is incredibly unlikely to happen, especially if you have any kind of traffic monitoring (e.g. literally blocking the protocols that a device can communicate over), port-authentication (RADIUS etc.), etc.
Sorry, but VLANs are as-good-as, if not better than, physical cable isolation.
Well VLANned, guys.
I mean, seriously. What are you playing at?
If you can design a compiler and have any clue whatsoever about how to do so effectively, you can sure as hell break out another compiler and code it up.
Then, once it's self-hosting, you can concentrate on the compiler itself.
Like every "project" I ever got involved with or people asked me to join since I was a kid - it's the person with "all the ideas" who has no clue how to actually make the thing work, or what's even feasible. While the people who "can do" have a thousand such ideas throughout their life and can implement the ones that actually work and are feasible.
Trust me, I've sat there for years thinking about ideal programming languages and game concepts and operating system design and all kinds of things. It's when you sit down and actually code stuff that you realise why it doesn't work, why it can't work well, why it's not so easy, and why the existing things were designed as they are.
The "wow" moments come from someone MAKING IT HAPPEN and seeing that the lightbulb-moment can be real, never from just the moment or idea itself.
Erm...
If you're giving large companies that use your service a discount on your service that means you can't profit from them... YOU'RE the idiot. Not them. Raise the prices.
Fact is, though, that it's just not true. At best, they can't compete with others offering the same service for a lower price. Again - YOU'RE the idiot, if you're unable to compete, USPS.
If the only alternative is layoffs (which is bollocks, but let's roll with it)? Guess what... you're already on the knife-edge. If the alternative is no USPS because it turns down custom or a USPS that's losing some money because it's too stupid to just set a price at which it at least breaks even, which is the best political option there?
Fact is, it's nothing to do with layoffs, though. Those will inevitably follow whether they have no money coming in or they're making a loss. That's just a difference in timing, not outcome.
Price your services to break even at minimum. If your competitors can then do the same job for less? There's probably a reason you're not going to be in business for long.
"The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation."
And Tesla is a company. That sells cars. Which have crashed.
One of those is qualified, able, permitted, the people who helped form the legislation, and trusted to give out limited early information that won't be contradicted by later findings and has no political, financial or other interest in anything other than the truth of how the accidents occur.
The other isn't. It's a company selling cars.
STFU and keep your head down, Tesla, or it might hurt badly when it's discovered that it WAS the fault of the car, and that you've just been trying to cover it up.
Be open but be co-operative. "We believe..." not "well, obviously, it can't have been us" before anyone's even had a chance to look.
Because if there's one organisation that can take every vehicle you make off the road, and thus bankrupt you overnight for failing to comply with its own regulations, it's the NTSB.
It's like Boeing being belligerent to the FAA etc. and interfering with a plane crash investigation.
And if no alternative exists, and you can't get the developers to continue to develop it, NOBODY can do anything to help you. If it's not 64-bit, it'll be permissions, or a central library upgrade, or unavailability of the drivers (or hardware!), or incompatibility with new interfaces, or whatever. Something's going to die at some point and blaming the "first" thing to kill it is really disingenuous.
If you are dependent on software which has no alternative, and for which you can't negotiate with the original supplier, and which you can't cope without - your entire purpose/business is on a knife-edge anyway.
There are vanishingly few industries where you literally cannot get software to do X any more. There may be a price tag attached, but if someone sat to make the software in the first place, likely there are a dozen replacements available. The only exception is if it was bespoke. In which case, guess what kind of software you have to replace it with - yep, bespoke.
The fact is that if it's not important enough to contract the company to update, or hire a developer to replace, then it's not that important. Sure, maybe that important to YOU but nobody else on the planet, certainly not Apple etc. If it is important enough, you might have been stung and it might cost you but you have the way out.
And if you have half a brain and have such bespoke software, you would get them to make the software and give you the code such that things like this would be, say, a month of developer's wages to recompile it and fix any issues to make a 64-bit version. Every 5-10 years.
To be honest, basing ANYTHING on Apple supporting your business like this is a real stupid path to even begin down. People moved from apps running on general purpose PC's to back their businesses years ago. Back in the IE/ActiveX era. That's why ActiveX was so popular. Put all the gumph on some central system that can run on anything you like, but access it from Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10.
If you are seriously reliant on an Apple app that only works on Apple hardware with a certain version of Apple iOS, and you get to the stage where you have to update the iOS version for any other reason (security, other apps, etc.) then you can never, ever win. Live in perpetually-outdated systems, or have to change the software. Learn the lesson this time round (like people learned it for everything from DOS CNC milling machine apps to ActiveX controls, etc.).
Reduce that reliance. Solve the problem. Plan for it next time so you know when and where the cost will hit you again.
Yeah, but that's what was said about everything from DOS apps, 16-bit apps, apps built against WinG, apps which expected full permissions, etc. etc. etc.
Either you're actively developing something, or you're not. If you are, it should just be a case of "recompile" - you don't even need to provide support of bugfixes if you don't want to, just recompile the old app.
But if you're not... then it's just a timebomb anyway, and if it's at all critical you probably want active development for security etc. issues anyway. Otherwise the app will be compromised and/or get switched off by someone anyway.
The decision about what the end-user does hasn't changed. You are either a) getting a new version of the app or already have it, nothing to worry about, b) using an app that's not being developed and hence may stop working / never work on any other system again at any point. If that doesn't prompt at least a warning and review of the situation in your head, then you're not doing anything important enough to care about. If it does, and you make the conscious decision to continuing using it, then you have accepted the risk of things like this.
I'm not an update-immediately guy. I think that's stupid, brash and unthinking to do so without in-house testing. But when I start to realise that I'm using an app that isn't being updated, I do start to research alternatives or worry what I'm going to do when it stops. Even if that's "Oh, it's fine, it'll run in a VM", I still have to think about it and test it.
The words "nothing of import was lost" should apply. If you care about it that much, contact the developers and pay them to continue. Suddenly not that important now that money is involved? Well, there's your answer. Can't get hold of them, can't do that, they refuse to do so? Well, there's your answer too.
I agree they should just have a backwards compatibility layer, at least for a few versions. This is something that Microsoft get right, with WOW64, etc. even if it's not ideal. At least you CAN continue to run old apps seamlessly. The trick is to obsolete them only as fast as they obsolete themselves in other ways. So it's not just "Apple have turned off 32-bit and broken my app" as "apps that were developed for an OS that's 10-year-old won't work any more for a variety of reasons of which 32-bit support is only one of them" by the time anyone notices/cares.
Aren't almost all Linux distributions 64-bit now? Aren't all the server editions of Windows 64-bit only? Did you notice? Did you care? No, because of compatibility layers and the fact that by the time they switched, all the software you wanted has been moved to 64-bit development anyway.
But hinging this on "what the user is still using" is stupid. That's their fault. You can't run modern Samba on ancient kernels or libc, for instance. It just wouldn't work. The fact is that you never noticed because it was never an issue, and anyone trying to do that would be laughed at.
You've never owned a Kindle or anything else with an e-ink screen?
Release Half Life 3.
Make it SteamOS exclusive for 6 months.
Watch the money pour in (if it's anywhere near half-decent).
That they haven't already done this means they have no clue. I love Steam, I think they're great. But they missed the boat by just letting people make Steam Boxes that have... no unique selling point whatsoever. It's just an expensive PC operating as a console using software you can install on your existing PC for free.
Or you could have had the first PROPER set of VR-designed consoles by getting into bed with HTC or someone, and done the same.
They'll still rake in millions, from silly loot boxes and shite, but it bugs me that they aren't in the game-development industry any more. Steam was just a distribution method for HL2. They forced you onto it if you wanted to play HL2 or CS (after shutting down WON).
Now... there's nothing of incentive to move platform.
"It looks to me, as a Tesla owner myself, that autopilot did, indeed, drive him into the barrier and that we have a reminder that every time a driver looks away when on autopilot, they gamble with their life."
Who cares about their life? What about that of their passengers and other road users?
Best thing to happen here? Only the idiot who made the decisions to a) use this model of car, b) enable said features, c) place their life on them is the one who died.
Hopefully, things like that will adjust other people's driving so that they don't kill people.
You want to take risks? Kill yourself. Nobody else.
I worry about any driver that voluntarily drives a car which they have seen experience undesirable behaviour with regards steering, disabling functions without cause and/or unnecessary warnings.
Sorry, no I don't. Please drive off the road and hit a wall. But please do make sure that you take no-one else with you, because those are the people I actually *worry* about.
As far as I'm concerned, Tesla drivers are as much to blame for using, encouraging, excusing and ignoring these features as the cars are for having them.
Read any EU Data Protection Act or GDPR legislation. It literally doesn't matter.
Storing and processing of data. They can't say what, where, how, provide it on request, tell me what jurisdiction it's under or allow me to correct it if it's incorrect. ANY ONE of those is a violation of being a data processor in the EU. And that definition extends to ANYONE in the EU who processes data generated within the EU, on any individual of the EU.
They could be printing it out and using it for hamster bedding. It literally makes no difference to their non-compliance with the law.
Nothing to do with the VPN.
For a start, they shouldn't be opening packets and inspecting protocols, so they can't "fix" this for you in any way, shape or form, if they're doing their job.
This is the browser talking to an outside STUN server deliberately saying "My internal IP is X.X.X.X". The VPN shouldn't be interfering with that. No VPN (hardware or software) should be combatting that.
If you're worried about it, don't use browsers that do that.
VPNs are NOT there to provide protection from data-escape. They are there to provide a secure unmonitorable connection to a device that may then connect to the Internet. EVERYTHING on the other end is monitorable anyway. And if you're literally sending your IP address via STUN, or in an email, or by telling people it on the web, a VPN is not even supposed to know, let alone try to stop you (which it can't).
This is a case of people culminating "VPN" and "web proxy", and then using a piece of software that talks entirely different protocols out anyway, and does so at your request, and expecting the VPN provider to "just take care of my own stupidity".
I mean, I'm quite glad. Stupid criminals are the ones most easily caught, so they will just think they are safe because they bought some $5/month VPN and they can't possibly be found when planning their acts of terrorism, illegal acts, software piracy, whatever it may be. But if you're using a VPN like this to just bypass a content restriction, or to enable you to browse without people casually snooping on you, and not for 100% anonymity, then you're pretty much unaffected.
However, if I demanded secure anonymous access to a resource, a commercial web browser of any kind probably wouldn't figure very highly at all. There's just too much junk in there from javascript and cookies to WebRTC (a lovely useful technology), extensions, automatic-updates, history recording, etc. etc. etc.
Honestly, if you're doing something critical for which you don't want to ever be identified, then... this is not the answer. It's not even close to the answer. For a start, paying a VPN provider is a really dumb idea, even if you do it with Bitcoin. Let alone "hoping" that they aren't secretly complying with FBI etc. orders to open their logs etc. (I'm sure if I was an intelligence agency, I'd find a way to own at least one major VPN provider claiming to provide anonymity myself, even if it meant setting it up from scratch and operating it like any other business without any formal contact).
If you want to be "private", then asking a bunch of computers along the way, all belonging to different people, corporations and nations, to keep your secret is really stupid.
"The morale, I suppose, is that if you want to encourage good employee work/life balance, you should implement more security policies. Or not, I guess, depending on your corporate goals."
If you want to encourage employee work/life balance, then do so. It's really easy. Say "Hey, John, it's 6pm, you should be at home enjoying your family. It's not an emergency, we'll sort it out tomorrow. Have a good one."
I have had several bosses that do exactly that.
Yes, the answer is "fuck you, we won't even bother to tell you we're not compliant at all".
Unlike EVERY OTHER CLOUD VENDOR. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. ALL have EU-compatible data-protection guarantees and all have venue-choice and GUARANTEES that your data will only be held in that venue.
Because anything else is basically illegal for the whole of the EU business world to use for anybody's data.
I'm puking over a "fuck you, law" from a major company with a legal base in Ireland, which is subject to EU law but conveniently ignores that it's not compliant.
I don't see how I am seeking to weaken a data protection position which is basically non-existent, when in fact I'm demanding they COMPLY WITH EXISTING DATA PROTECTION LAWS as a bare minimum, which they currently don't.
Strange.
In recent compliance audits for GDPR regulations in the EU, we've been unable to get any kind of statement out of Apple about where they store iCloud and other data, and whether it's held compliant to either the GDPR or Data Protection Act.
http://www.applegazette.com/ic...
Their policy flat-out contains a line that is illegal under EU data protection rules and prevents almost any company that processes any kind of personal data (even "this is your name and email for your iTunes account) from using them::
https://www.apple.com/uk/legal...
"All the information you provide may be transferred or accessed by entities around the world as described in this Privacy Policy."
Which is the same "no answer" answer I've had out of them when I've asked over the last ten years. They pay lip-service, but I ain't going to court to explain why my user's EU-protected ended up in Outer Mongolia.
The reason, of course, is obvious. iCloud is actually just Amazon, Microsoft and Google storage depending on whatever they bought this month:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/...
Maybe they give a shit in the US, but in the EU they have absolutely no interest and, hence, lose a lot of custom. Ironically, they claim to have focus "on education" now with new educational-models of iPad. Hilarious seeing as we can't legally store children's data on them.
Yep, if your child's school is using iCloud or even iTunes in any fashion, ask to see the data protection guarantee.
Do yourself a favour if you work in IT in the UK/EU and are checking for GDPR compliance - take all your Apple gear and bin it now.
Sorry, but in this day and age why are we still running a base OS of any description?
Why are things not supplied with a hypervisor and then people just choose what they want on first boot, even choosing "all" if they want both OS.
Running a general purpose OS on top of a general purpose OS is just a waste. Virtualise, and make the hypervisor be the "OS", the only thing that actually needs to integrate with the hardware whatsoever.
Fine them $1000 every time it happens.
They will either a) sort out the problem really quickly, or b) allow you to get a better phone system and more operators.
It's really not fucking rocket science. They are nuisance calls caused by badly-configured software on the devices that THEY MAKE. If they are emergency dialling just by being on a stack of iPhones under repair, then let them fix it.
In any sensible country, repeated false-dialling of the emergency numbers results in a fine or prosecution. And it's not like you don't know where it's coming from.
God, I hate modern Formula One.
It's no longer a race. It's a bore-fest. All the cars are so heavily regulated, there's nothing to differentiate them. All the timings are so tiny that there's no fun... winning by one-thousandth of a second is boring, lads, unless quite literally it was a head-to-head photo-finish with no other competitors near, and a rare exception.
"Rules on overtaking".. in a race? Beyond "don't kill people", what's the point of that?
Then all that safety-lap nonsense. Just stop the race, or don't. Either way, make sure it starts back how it was before you stopped it. When a computer-controlled timing box inside the car tells you what speed to go, and allows mistakes like this, it's not a race any more.
I think I'd honestly rather watch 100 separate drivers all attempt the same circuit, on the track, on their own, and then superimpose their times (e.g. rally, etc.), or cars doing one-hundredth the speed, but proper overtaking, etc.
Honestly, a go-cart race, or a drag race is infinitely more interesting, and the latter would bore me to tears after the first few runs.