Ironic that Sony, once the hip disrupter in the console market is now digging its heels in and coming across very much as the entrenched old monopolist wary of anyone who might challenge its dominance.
Posts by Alex Walsh
530 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Oct 2007
Sony won't budge on Microsoft-Activision merger objection
RetroPie 4.6 brings forth an answer to 'What do I do with this Pi 4 I bought last year?'
Cosmo Communicator: Phone-laptop hybrid is neat, if niche, tilt at portable productivity
OPPO's Reno 2, aka 'Baby Shark', joins the deepening pool of high-spec midranger mobes
Full screen spec is:
Type IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size 5.99 inches, 92.6 cm2 (~81.9% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution 1080 x 2160 pixels, 18:9 ratio (~403 ppi density)
Protection Corning Gorilla Glass 4
The screen to body ratio is pretty impressive though!
Xiaomi are feature limiting stuff to differentiate phones- the newly announced Mi Note 10 Pro has a super amoled screen but a SD730,their Black Shark 2 has super amoled, inscreen fingerprint reader & a SD855 but no wireless charging or NFC, and so on...
TalkTalk says WalkWalk if you've got a mouldy Tiscali email address, or pay £50 a year to keep it
Our hero returns home £500 richer thanks to senior dev's appalling security hygiene
Reminds me of Chris, our IT manager 10 or 15 years ago. He spent most of his time in the office playing WoW, and any time someone had the temerity to ask why he wasn't doing IT stuff instead, he waspishly told them that he was managing the systems so well, it didn't need constant firefighting or troubleshooting, freeing him up to play games.
Here's what Lynch, Hussain and HPE are saying about Autonomy pre-buyout due diligence
Brave claims its mobe browser batt use bests whatever you're using. Why? Hint: It begins with A then D then V...
Using WhatsApp for your business comms? It's either that or reinstall Lotus Notes
We are family
We have an extended family Slack group, with various sub groups for parents/adults and kids. All school related emails go to a specific email account which distributes them over Slack on a keyword basis and we have a shared Google calendar that pings updates to everyone. It works for us better than bits of paper or conversations that switch between text/twitter dm/Facebook Messenger/Whatsapp depending on who's involved.
Would that we did something similar at work- I even get emailed a spreadsheet of dates my for diary, rather than actual calendar invites.
Xiaomi anarchy in the UK: Chinese tat-flinger wants to slip its cheapo flagships in Brit pockets
Cyber-crooks think small biz is easy prey. Here's a simple checklist to avoid becoming an easy victim
Virgin Media? More like Virgin Meltdown: Brit broadband ISP falls over amid power drama
Fermi famously asked: 'Where is everybody?' Probably dead, says renewed Drake equation
Nokia 8: As pure as the driven Android - it's a classy return
Dear rioters: Hiding your face with scarves, hats can't fool this AI system
Huawei Honor 8 Pro: Makes iPhone 7 Plus look a bit crap
Who's behind the Kodi TV streaming stick crackdown?
Always reminds me of this excellent Oatmeal strip on piracy. I saw plenty of chatter last week on Twitter from disgruntled Expanse fans when they found out the Netflix broadcast wasn't happening until the series had aired. Lots of people even tweeted Netflix to say they were going to pirate it.
I've got Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions and pick up a Now TV pass when something I want to see is specifically on but they don't make it easy do they? It's as bad as the three different car park payment apps I have on my phone- so fragmented and poorly thought out.
Programmer finds way to liberate ransomware'd Google Smart TVs
There's a similar issue with Amazon Kindles and WiFi. Some Kindles just lose the ability to connect to WiFi for no discernible reason but a factory reset sorts them out. So far, so good. However there is another Kindle issue that sees factory reset fail to work, leaving you with a Kindle that you can't reset or connect to WiFi. There's a hidden routine that lets you reset a Kindle via a password but Amazon Customer Support don't ever give this out.
Whoosh! China shows off J-20 'stealth' fighters and jet drones
Seagate has a flash early Xmas present for Xbox gamers
Spinal Tap’s bass player sues former French sewer
Lester Haines: RIP
Ding-dong, reality calling: iPhone slump is not Apple's doom
Remember Netbooks? Windows 10 makes them good again!
Re: Closest thing to a netbook...
My boss bought one (on my recommendation). Been a few firmware issues with battery drain from what he's said but it is exactly the form factor I miss and he's pretty pleased with it. (eee 701, 9001, 1001HA saw me nicely for years).
Ironically, his main use for it is Sky Go as none of his Android tablets are supported by it...
Drug-smuggling granny's vagina holds Kinder surprise
Twitter reduces BBC hacks to tears with redundancy notice
Neat but narky at times: Pebble Time colour e-paper watch
Had an original Pebble since Christmas and still love it. All I use it for is notifications (email, twitter and FB) but it saves getting my phone out of my pocket every time I get a ping. Still get 5+ days from the battery. Only issue is it's not as pretty as the Steel but since it cost a fraction of the price, I shouldn't complain.
Ant-Man: Big ideas, small payoff
OTOH
Loved it. Best Marvel film in years; it's a heist movie with a superhero flavouring. The script is often laugh out loud funny, the two Michael Pena "tip" scenes are comedy gold, and the action is very well handled. The movies pacing is also good, there is plenty going on and since it's not wall to wall action, there is texture to it all, rather than an Age of Ultron style endless action sequence. Yes, it's not Citizen Cane but then it is a summer blockbuster, and one that will probably not be topped this summer either.
Shadow of the Beast: Amiga classic returns from the darkness
Re: Ooops, pet peeve triggered
Surely a result of limited storage media/memory? In the tape days, games were short but bloody hard because you couldn't get much into 16/48/64k of RAM and lets face it, there were too many multi-load games that you'd load the next bit with one life, die immediately and then have to rewind the tape and reload the level you'd just finished. Used to get fed up with disk swapping on the 16bit home computers too :/
Today games are long, not necessarily hard.
Chinese takeaway, hold the Google: Xiaomi Mi4 LTE Android
That looks expensive for a Chinese phone. Constantly see bargain websites full of stuff like this:
Elephone P8000- 3GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 64 bit Octa-core CPU, 4150mAh, fingerprint scanner, Slot for 128GB expandable memory, 2G+3G+4G, 5.5" FHD, Lollipop OS- £110 (with code).
God knows the quality or the (non existent) after sales support though.
What an eyeful: Apple's cut price 27in iMac with Retina Display
Microsoft's Surface 3 is sweet – but I wouldn't tickle my nads with it
I ended up getting one of these (John Lewis price-matched the Currys deal, so I got the higher end machine with the keyboard cover for £525) because everything I was reading about the Surface Pro 4 made it look like it was heading towards a Intel M processor, which for my use wasn't enough of an improvement over the Cherrytrail to warrant the price difference. Looking at a lot of benchmarks, the S3 isn't much outperformed by the i3 variant of the S3Pro, mostly due to thermal throttling constraints, and performance wise I've no complaints so far.
I needed a new machine as my ASUS S2000, had died. The ASUS UX305 was top of my hit list but I'd read there were a lot of issues with the intel video driver that hadn't been resolved, so it put me off. In the end, after looking at various other bits of kit (Toshiba Click Mini, Transformer Chi, Dell Chrombooks), I opted for the S3 and have to say I'm pleased with it.
It's not cheap but it's not Apple expensive either. it's surprisingly difficult to get a high res screen on anything this small, which is also a limiting factor. Far too many of the smaller screened devices feature x768 as part of the res, which in this day and age is naughty.
Drone penetrates Virgin's shapely space arse
Ex-cop: Holborn fireball comms outage cover for £200m bling heist gang
Steely wonder? It's blind to 4G and needs armour: Samsung Galaxy S6
Competition
Can't imagine spending £600 on a phone. I thought what I spent on the Nexus 5 was a large price increase over the Nexus 4. When I see people at work spending £40-£50 a month on a 24 month contract just to have an iPhone 6, it always strikes me as a bit mad. I'd rather spend up to £300 on a phone off contract and £15 a month on a SIM only deal myself- just makes more sense to me. Over a similar 2 year period the monthly cost would still top out at well under £30, and lets face it phones are getting cheaper with better features away from the flagship end of the market.
BBC: SOD the scientific consensus! Look OUT! MEGA TSUNAMI is coming
If you watch live TV over iplayer or on a website, you still need a license though. I'd imagine if you have a TV with a tuner in it capable of picking up telly signals the effort in convincing the TV licensing bods you don't watch any live TV is probably more effort than the £145 saving. Pointing out you don't watch live telly to the bailiffs or the chaps in the court when the summons arrives is probably a lot of aggro too?
$10,000 Ethernet cable promises BONKERS MP3 audio experience
Free Windows 10 could mean the END for Microsoft and the PC biz
Want a cheap Office-er-riffic tablet? Microsoft Windows takes on Android
I've used a Windows tablet (a Lenovo Miix 2) for a few months now and I think it's almost the opposite of an android tablet. With Android you get a pretty decent tablet experience and can do some traditional computing stuff but it doesn't work brilliantly at it because it's not really what it's designed for (I'm thinking of my experiences with my TransformerPad here). With a Windows 8.1 tablet you get a computer that sort of does the tablet experience well enough to get by with. There are silly things missing, like no live tile for toggling BT on/off and far too few apps or programmes properly designed for touch operation.
Acer Chromebook 13: The best Googletop on the market?
Tesla S P85+: Smiling all the way to the next charging point
Is living with Dolby Atmos worth the faff?
Virgin Media DOUBLE-PUNCHED by BSkyB AND BT over ad fibs
Cable speed is good
Recently got my free upgrade from 120Mbps to 150Mbps from Virgin Media. Click along to speedtest.net last night (9pm, so peak usage time) and it benched at 149.93Mbps. Must say I can't grumble on that aspect of the service. Since I don't watch movies or paid sports channels, they do what I want them to very well :)