Posts by Charlie Clark

Re: Only took Apple 2 years...

£419 for a 64GB model is decent.

Not sure if the rest of the market will see the price and think it's good value. The phone probably appeal to existing I-Phone owners who for various (money, form factor, etc.) reasons haven't already splashed out a grand or so on new I-Phone. But Xiaomi et al. offer a whole lot more for quite a lot less so I think this might go the way of the coloured I-Phones — anyone remember those?

Re: Beware of big investors crying crocodile tears....

You mean people like Bill Ackman who have a vested interest in seeing prices fall (because they have options) and go and national television prophesying the end of the world? Yes, these people are so hard done by.

As for Softbank: Son isn't going to be personally affected, just the CEO of and some investors in WeWork who've just lost an exit strategy. But the biggest losers will be the employees…

Re: False positives could be off the scale.

Or standing close to someone in a park versus in an air-conditioned room.

Re: First, understand the problem you're trying to solve...

The question is who does this actually help?

The nail hit on head. Firmly.

We didn't get from a pandemic (tragic but also not infrequent) to a crisis of this proportions without some help from the fear industry. One result is massive fiscal expansion, something which the financial markets have been calling for for a while now.

My proposal to help everyone is a new insurance policy from MM Enterprises: a personal supply of PPE for the next pandemic for the small monthly premium of $ 50…

Re: Good for data-less phone plans

In EU countries even the €0-2 per month tariffs have a Gig of 4G data included these days.

I think that's a little optimistic.

Re: Bluetooth vulnerabilities

I keep my Bluetooth turned off because it is still very battery-draining

Not if it's not doing anything, it isn't.

Re: Proximity

The research from Singapore, which was one of the first to adopt such a system, says they were tripped up by the extremely variable power outputs of Bluetooth devices so that signal strength alone isn't sufficient, which is why you need something passive like the RFC protocol.

Worth noting, in passing, that the tracking in Singapore doesn't seem to have helped that much. But that's what you'd expect with a highly infectious epidemic that's had time to spread.

Re: Use of proximity-tracking for criminal cases

That would be based on the network cell data, which is "good enough" for that kind of task and can be enforced by court order but uselss for the kind of "ant tracking" that eveyone is somehow will solve the problem. It won't, of course, but there is research funding going and PR to be had.

Re: Proximity

Valid point, but Bluetooth has - as I understand it - a method of determining roughly how far away a device is.

Only in combinatin with NFC.

But basically, as covid-19 is essentially endemic in much of the world, this is tilting at windmills.

The US is pretty good at enforcing its laws in other jurisdictions using things like the Magnitsky Act, or declaring any particular group or country as "terrorist". But the problem they face with Signal is that the code and research (the peer reviewing and theoretical validation is perhaps as important here) is already public so it would likely become a whack-a-mole and some countries might have problem complying with US demands and their own laws, relying on lax enforcement, or using that US stalwart the anonymous shell company or trust to obscure everything.

But when has that every stopped them? Hard to think of anything more sinister and pointless than the Committee for Unamerican activities but I'm sure history is replete with them. :-/

Re: If you follow the money

And WhatsApp switched to using the Signal protocol for encryption a few years ago, not least because this would leave it less open to lawsuits when its own shitty protocol was compromised. Not sure how it handles groups, not least because I don't use WhatsApp, but it seems more than happy to scrape (and leak – in a group everyone's telephone number is visible to everyone else) metadata, but zero-knowledge encryption for groups is difficult as recent reports from Signal show. I guess the NSA wants to hold the tide back before the proposed zero knowledge group code becomes generally available.

Re: If you wish to let people move freely across borders, you need a single app too

Yes, Kieren doesn't understand the principles of the single market:

But no, this is the EU and everything must be done through centrally.

No, but one of the available will be chosen as the "winner". The French will probably still do their own.

The current pandemic is a goldmine for all kinds of research projects that, if you squint hard enough, look vaguely associated with epidmiology. Rather than writing articles like this Kieren should be getting his grant application in. Especially now that president Trump has removed oversight from the money tap.

Re: LineageOS

LineageOS is not rooted by default. And, if you need root, you can use Magisk for enabling it on an app-by-app basis. Worked great on my S5.

Re: I'd love to see a law...

You can still use banking apps on LineageOS, which is not rooted by default, and even root the phone if you install Magisk. I did this with my S5.

Re: I'd love to see a law...

Can't see 5 years ever being the case for such extensive support and I'm not sure it would be practicable The 2-year warranty in the EU is already pretty unusual, but I suspect the real improvements would be made by enshrining a right to repair and beefing up the liability relating to security updates, which is currently almost non-existent. And, to be fair, the industry has improved in this respect. Samsung used to have support for about 18 months for all devices and Google's Project Treble means that devices like the S8 can get security updates via the Play Store. But there is definitey a long way to go!

Re: Am I a bad person

How do you know what's standards-compliant when there is only one renderer left?

Re: Why do so many businesses seem to need video?

I think this is why boffins keep tweaking the algorithms so make the eyes look as if they're looking at the camera. But, if you must do video, the best experience is with a camera as sufficient distance that optical distortion is limited.

Re: 90 Days?

Not when they realise how much it will cost to bring home offices up to the safety standards demanded of normal offices.

Re: To be honest you can't blame people for going to Zoom

Why did you need 5 simultaneous video streams? I try and hide these whenever I'm on calls where people have the camera running. It would be nice if you could easily switch off incoming video feeds.

Used Skype a lot recently and quality has generally been okay but I think a lot will depend on the network traffic on whichever server is doing the mixing of feed.

Re: Have you checked 14 boxes under system preferences...

Will probably be facing that problem soon: current MBP has severely swollen glands (batteries) that will need replacing fairly soon and I will need a backup machine. I think you can downgrade the OS when installing from backup but I guess I'm going to find out when computer says "No!"

Re: Have you checked 14 boxes under system preferences...

Can't really remember any of the recent releases that didn't come with a heap of problems but Mojave is just begging to be skipped because it takes away so much and brings so little to anyone who isn't obsessed with I-Toys.

Re: think out of the box?

Except work might run out before you do…

Re: CEO Dr Janko Mrsic-Flogel

The Gemini also got an update in December but since then nada. Planet is presumably largely dependent upon Mediatek providing the updates for the SoCs. They've wasted their own resources on things like a crap version of K9 and a database that no one needs-

Not sure why you quote the money raised, but if you know anything about the device business you'll realise this kind of turnover is not sufficient for a hardware company.