Posts by Dave 126

Re: An M1 Mac Mini isn't going to break the bank

I'm not voting either way - it seems a dig into the agreement between the devs and Apple would be a prerequisite, along with a look at statutory rights in the relevant territories. Sales of Goods wouldn't cover a loaned device, and as I'm not a lawyer I don't know if the 500 dollar fee was for a service (which requires the device kit to actually work) or what.

I would imagine any serious Mac OS dev would want to have an M1 machine for testing, and this testing would be better on an actual Mac and not a dev kit.

I'm not convinced that the universe cares about which labels we stuck on each other.

They say Lemmium can't be killed by.. er, *created by* conventional weapons.

Re: Billionaire rocketman

Iscaacman will be the commander of the vessel, which in this case mostly means he has authority over the other occupants. The craft itself is controlled from the ground or by its computers.

The only real control the commander has is the big red lever which will, in the event of Something Bad happening during the launch, blast the Dragon capsule safely away from the launcher.

Re: There is no choice

And how exactly does Apple monetise this supposed FB-level data slurp of theirs? Remember, they are doing very nicely from selling hardware and services, differentiated from competitors in part by their privacy policies.

Your chief logical fallacy is 'false equivalence', with touches of letting best be the enemy of good.

Re: Shameless

> I'm still on Android, which is a massive info hoover of its own, I hope they will follow Apple's example in this though

Well, Google's business model is built around advertising. Apple's is built around hardware sales and paid-for services. You pays yer money and takes yer choice. You don't pay yer money, and yer choice looks more limited.

(You can of course substitute time and learning for money)

Re: "...a unique per-user ID..."

> Whatever happened with those red phone booths at the corner of the street?

These days they tend to contain either a defibrillator, or else some books.

Re: the benefits of personalized ads

I mean, if I'm reading EastCheamGazette.com then the chances are that I live in or near East Cheam, and therefore the adverts for East Cheam Skip Hire or East Cheam Hairdressers won't be wasted on me.

The wonderful thing is, the East Cheam Gazette doesn't have to know a single thing about me in order to serve 'targetted' advertising. Just as a Guitar Player Weekly doesn't need to know anything about me in order for Fender to buy advertising space from them.

Re: the benefits of personalized ads

Likely the reverse. The likes of Facebook have taken advertising revenue that otherwise would have gone to local newspaper's online editions, but Facebook et al have refused to take on the responsibilities of a news publisher (journalistic standards, right of redress, fact checking etc).

So, if less targeted advertisements on Facebook make Facebook a less attractive place to advertise, one assumes that some advertiser's will spend a bit of their advertising budget elsewhere (including local news outlets).

i.e depriving Facebook of power probably helps more small businesses than it harms, and helps local democracy (you can't make a meaningful choice about councilors if you don't know their policies and local issues) into the bargain.

Very little pro audio software is available for Android - the issue was originally due to the high latency in Android, which was appalling (around 80ms) until Android Marshmallow, and has been merely serviceable since. The first iPhone had a low latency of around 10ms from the get go (as well as wireless MIDI.)

https://superpowered.com/superpowered-android-media-server

Re: It's for

It's for playing Civ VI on the sofa. Nuff said.

Re: Phone for the living room

> Work? Maybe to replace a notepad. Couldn't imagine any other use case.

Can't you imagine use cases where multitouch is the best basis for the UI? Mixing desks, for starters. There's many more, if you stretch your imagination or keep your eyes open.

Re: It's for...

It's better than a laptop if your application is better suited to a touch interface. For example, many bands use the iPad as the control for a mixing desk. Why? Because the sound technician can stand amongst the audience during the gig (all iOS devices have wireless MIDI baked in since the first iPhone). Other musicians use it to display sheet music. Leica site survey gear only works with iOS/iPadOS (indeed, the only time I ever saw a pre-ipad Win XP TE tablet in the wild was in the arm of a surveyor)

Anyone looking for a single 'killer app' is seeking in vain since their premises is faulty. However, there are hundreds of damned useful applications that people use.

Re: Well worth it?

>the difference in price is a few quid a week"

>>If you like being shackled to a contract, maybe..

Eh? The difference in price equates to the same amount per week, regardless of whether you buy it upfront or through finance.

I only used the timescale of a week because it was easier to visualise. Like 'how many times a week does your phone do that annoying thing, and what would pay to make it better?' sort of a question.

Re: Quick charge devices DO charge quickly over USB PD

It's possible that Bernie's misunderstand has been caused by his using poor quality USB C cables (or a dodgy connection, or failing USB port on his phone). Not his fault - the market was awash with poor cables some time back.

Cables do fail. It's very possible for a USB cable to fail in such a way that the lines required for power delivery negotiation are broken, but the power lines are still good. In this circumstance the wall plug will still charge a phone, but only to the maximum of the older USB standard - 2.1A at 5v.

Storing your photos on an SD card only renders them salvageable in the event if your phone breaking - it does nothing to protect them against loss or theft. Are you asking us to believe that you've chosen to ascribe an arbitrary value of importance to your photos? They're either worth backing up properly or not at all, no?

'Ending up gawd knows where' is what can happen if your phone is lost or stolen and your photos are on an unencrypted SD card. Again, it seems arbitrary to care about bad actors getting your sensitive personal data via one vector but not another. In any case, its a moot point - you can wirelessly back up your phone's folders to a server of your choice, including your own.

Whatever. Samsung make a phone with SD card, swappable battery, 3.5mm socket and extra user-mappable hardware button called the XActive Pro, if you like that sort of thing. Still, it wouldn't hurt to re-examine your back-up strategy for holes.

I don't mind the downvote, but I should point out that it really doesn't count as a 'reasoned argument' in favour of SD card slots - it doesn't help express your thinking.

Re: Well worth it?

If we're talking about phones that people will keep for 3 years, then the difference in price is a few quid a week... ...so, the case for the pricier phone depends upon how much the user is doing the above tasks, and how much smoother the pricier phone is at doing them. It also depends the users time and money, and if the user has to sacrifice something else in order to afford it.

Many people won't have to sacrifice anything to afford a pricier phone.

When phones shipped with 8 or 16 GB, one could see the use for a microSD card slot. However, now phones have 128 or 256 GB of very fast and encrypted storage, the need is less obvious.

The clamouring for SD card slots in phones is beginning to look like mere dogma. I may be wrong, and if so I'd like to hear a reasoned argument in favour of them.

(The only vaguely sensible use case is for for prerecorded media (I wouldn't trust an SD card to maintain write data rates for all video types) but how many movies do you want to take to the Gobi desert - or anywhere else with no data wireless data access? SD cards *can* be encrypted, but then you can't swap it into a camera or music player. Personal and professional documents on an unencrypted card are a no no. )

Re: Already switched away....

Well there's a reason that people don't use 'digital zoom' often - one gets the same results afterwards by cropping.

Re: Continuous improvement

To clarify, the S range has started to become diverse, with the plain Sx and then the Sx Ultra, with the latter having the bleeding edge features.

Quick charge devices DO charge quickly over USB PD

Sorry mate, you've got your (charging) wires crossed here:

I have a Galaxy S8 (with Quick Charge). I was at a friend's once and used the Apple USB C power brick that was supplied with their MacBook (not the Air, not the Pro) and my phone charged quickly whilst displaying 'Fast Charging' on the lock screen.

Re: So what's going to follow?

It's the sort of people who intend to look after one phone for several years that Apple is targeting with the 12 - they went some way to talk about the new Gorilla Glass on the new model.

Re: The inevitable result

You make it a new form of typo squatting.

The Redditors are talking Blackberry and Nokia as their next potential projects... Are there any companies with similar stock market codes? Eg BBRL not BBRI?

Re: The biter bit

> They are skimming loadsamoney from the economic activity of people who make or do something that's wanted or needed.

The metaphor in my head is of all human productive effort as a big machine that gets people what they want (food, shelter, medical care, fork handles, potatoes) and financial systems as being part of the machine's (distributed) control system. Clearly a control system of some sort is needed - otherwise how to get enough people to plant potatoes months in advance of people wanting potatoes?

However - does this control system need to consume the fraction of the machine's power consumption as it does? Does the control mechanism makes things more efficient? Is the control system flexible enough?

Re: Would you pay $100 to screw a hedge fund?

> It's far from ideal, but if the regulators are incapable of doing, or not permitted to do, their jobs, or there is continued fraud...

The excellent 'Against The Rules with Micheal Lewis' podcast series is all about the different ways that regulators and referees can become undermined, toothless, under-resouced or captured.

As an EV? Well you could retrofit an ion drive, but you'd need a helluva long course in order to accelerate to 800mph at such low thrust. (Joking aside, the air resistance would quickly outweigh the ion drive's thrust. Do the rules state that the land speed record must be held on Earth? The thinner atmosphere of Mars might give you an edge)

Re: Perhaps Elon Musk...

I get a bit of that sort if feeling... There's a whiff of engineering to meet arbitrary criteria (as opposed to engineering for the sake of reaching orbit or rapid reuse, or cost savings etc)... the sheer speed is the easy bit (any number of fighter jets can do it), the hard bit is doing so in a vehicle that has to be touching the ground. Touching the ground (in which case could a jet fighter lower a wheeled cart onto the ground for a mile?) or do the rules explicitly state the vehicle must start on the ground?

In the past, one land speed record was denied because the vehicle only had three wheels, making it a motorcycle in the eyes of one Motorsport organisation. Yeah, arbitrary.

That said, were Elon Musk to buy it it'd be a way of making an entrance to the Burning Man festival, which he is known to attend (as least the terrain is vaguely suitable, unlike say Glastonbury... Might need to fit tractor tyres... Not for grip but to give it greater clearance). And he did buy the submarine Lotus Esprit from that James Bond movie (though he hasn't yet converted it to work as the movie depicted it, which he said he was considering)

Re: They all look the same these days....

Form follows function, so yeah, these things that people use for viewing text and video do all look like screens.

Re: New Features

Google's Pixel magic algorithms originally came from efforts to coax usable images out of the camera on the Google Glass (a camera module which was even smaller than the sensors used on phones at the time or today). And yeah, Google, like Apple and later Qualcomm et al developed hardware accellerators to be baked into their SoCs for this sort of computation.

I wouldn't let yourself be confused by the mere accident of history that led to us referring to our pocket internet terminals / connected PDAs as 'phones', though. The 'core function(s)' of the general purpose device depends upon the individual user.

Re: Foot pedal

Touche! I was no more aware of dictaphone foot pedals than the customer was of of mouses!

Well,a vague bell has rung in my head now you've brought it to my attention, but even before doing so I was thinking of sewing machines, pianos, organs, guitars, electric keyboards with sustain pedals...

Re: Smart heating system?

A good number of people, as they are driving to the airport for a family holiday, are haunted by thoughts of 'Did I leave the gas / iron / heating on?'

The ability to check and remotely turn off such things would bring peace of mind to many individuals.

Of course many people are friends with their neighbours and leave them a key. Others folk though, perhaps new to to an area, or too busy, haven't built that level of trust.