* Posts by Dave 126

10643 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010

Oh cool, the Bluetooth 5.1 specification is out. Nice. *control-F* master-slave... 2,000 results

Dave 126 Silver badge

Indeed, the last issue I had with audio wasn't Bluetooth's fault. Microsoft's Silverlight, on which a streaming TV service ( Netflix iirc) runs on MacOS, doesn't allow Bluetooth audio streaming due to DRM issues. Wouldn't be so bad, but there no dialogue box telling you this, you're expected to research it yourself. And really, if I wanted to copy the soundtrack of a Netflix series, I wouldn't be using Bluetooth.

Dave 126 Silver badge

> Please don't force me to watch Star Trek Discovery again

It's gone a bit Special Circumstances, with Michelle Yeoh being part of a Star Fleet dirty tricks unit. Cool! This idea of a utopian society using tricks, brutality and terror seems to have upset Trekkies ( who can just watch the Orville) but as an Iain M Banks fan it doesn't bother me, except for: Hey Amazon, what's going on with your Consider Phlebas adaptation?!

Dave 126 Silver badge

I used to find Bluetooth flakey for audio especially on Windows a dozen years back. These days I rarely use Bluetooth on my computer (mouse uses proprietary Logitech dongle) but I'm pleasantly surprised at how reliable it is on my phone, even when paired to cheap headsets. The only issue I've had in recent years was my phone just refusing to pair to a Ford Transit. I can understand though how you might mistrust Bluetooth today if you've had bad experiences in the past ( it took me a while to get over my shyness after being bitten)

For listening to podcasts (where maybe audio quality isn't as crucial when listening to music) whilst doing active work, the freedom from wires is great. I leave my phone charging whilst moving around the room, I can leave the phone in an area of good cellular signal whilst I clean inside a steel tank, and - most wonderfully - I don't catch the cable on anything that results in the ear buds being rudely popped from my ears.

Much as I might want premium earphones for active noise cancellation, I know that I would only lose or break them so cheap, near expendible buds are my most sensible option.

That said, I'm currently using the wired earbuds that came with with Samsung, with a bit of malleable silicone earplug to create a better seal.

You got a smart speaker but you're worried about privacy. First off, why'd you buy one? Secondly, check out Project Alias

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Be curious if it's picked up at the other end ......

Amazon would just assume you're living a 24 hour party and send offers for booze and coffee.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: I'd quite like one for doing cooking related tasks

Just turning the radio in the BBC 6Music and leaving it there usually does the job! But yeah, a multiple timer for the kitchen would be good. Of the discrete timers, the mechanical ones aren't accurate and the digital ones have a fiddly (read: bad) UI. Hmm, Pritotyping a good multi-timer might make a good Raspberry Pi project.

Sony made a range of waterproof Android tablets, suitable for kitchen use. You might find one on eBay. Old battery life and old OS aren't problems if it's plugged in as your kitchen recipe hub.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Local Automation

There are products appearing on the market that allow home automation without sending any data off site, thereby addressing privacy concerns. There's no technical reason for data to leave the home, other than voice trained data sets held by Amazon, Google and Apple - but hey, a system that is trained by, and only responds to, the occupants of the house could be a feature not a limitation.

2018 might prove to be a watershed in the wider public awareness of big companies not respecting data and privacy.

Apple appears to have been too conservative in their HomeKit home automation system. It's considered secure compared to most systems, but it's proprietary which adds cost to the devices as well as delaying their release whilst Apple certify them.

The upcoming Bluetooth spec is due to add triangulation, so that phone will know where, down to a couple of inches, in a room another Bluetooth device is. This would allow an elegant UI: phone controls only the device - lights, for example - it is pointed at, like a magic wand.

Say what?! An AI system can decode brain signals into speech

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Amusingly, you've failed to understand the language in the article.

Understanding natural speech is not their aim. Converting brain signals to speech is.

'Intelligence' merely means problem solving, and therefore AI is the commonly accepted term for problem solving by machines, often using techniques that aren't explicitly coded into them by humans. You're confusing it with the concept of Artificial General Intelligence or artificial consciousness.

You can rail against this reasonable usage all you want, but you're pissing upstream.

Worried about Brexit food shortages? North Korean haute couture has just the thing

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: some stuff is going to become a bit more expensive

The French had a butter shortage last year, due to a refusal of their retailers to sell butter ant a higher price. Source: From Our Own Correspondent, BBC Radio 4. The price had gone up due to greater demand for French dairy from the Chinese, possibly due to an earlier scandel around Chinese produced dairy products, specifically baby formula milk. If you drive through Brittany there's a massive Chinese-built milk processing plant.

Florida man's deadliest catch forces police to evacuate Taco Bell

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Here fishy fishy

Andre Geim won an Ignobel Award for levitating a frog with magnets - no reason it wouldn't work on a fish except it would require removing the fish from water. He would later go on to win a Nobel prize in Physics for faffing around with sellotape and extracting quantities if of graphene suitable for testing.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Candidate failed

Survivors are eligible for a Darwin Award, as long as they render themselves incapable of reproducing.

I guess the logical extension is that anyone who has already procreated is ineligible for an award, unless their stupidity results in an event that also kills their offspring, such as 'repairing' their own gas boiler or fitting new 'brakes' to their family car when they are not competent to do so. See Dunning Kruger for why incompetent people overestimate their own competency, a verified and repeated confirmation of Russell's observation that the 'ignorant are cocksure'

Starship bloopers: In touching tribute to Tesla shares, Musk proto-craft tumbles – as Bezos' Blue Origin rocket lifts off

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: floating back to terra firma using three parachutes

> Pinpoint landings don't matter that much as the support crew is at most minutes away.

Not landing on a boulder, house or tree is desirable. Not having to drive a heavy transport vehicle over fauna and flora is also desirable.

You say that Musk is only interested in image, but his bread and butter comes from commercial launches where he's competing on price.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: floating back to terra firma using three parachutes

The craft can be steered with rockets, parachutes place you at the mercy of the wind. Any mechanism that allows the parachutes to be steered adds complexity.

The parachutes, like the extra fuel required to land a nearly empty launcher, also add weight.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: ...pretend to be astronauts.

The US Astronaut Badge has been awarded to people on sub orbital flights before, be it on an X-15 or Scaled Composites craft.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Astronaut_Badge

But for sure, the difference in energy required to reach orbit and the energy required merely to leave the atmosphere is huge.

UK.gov plans £2,500 fines for kids flying toy drones within 3 MILES of airports

Dave 126 Silver badge

Some people who fly sky lanterns are idiots. They're a fire risk to crops in dry conditions, and the wire frame isnt a pleasant thing to strew around the countryside ( though admittedly the littering impact of sky lanterns is next to naff all compared to everyday litter such as bottles and cans)

Clone your own Prince Phil, says eBay seller hawking debris left over from royal car crash

Dave 126 Silver badge

Yeah, someone I know was recently done for not wearing a seatbelt, I think a hangover from his commercial driving days when delivery vehicle drivers were exempt from having to wear seatbelts. The police caught him using one of their new long range cameras (the news reports suggest it has a range of a mile, and evidently not for catching speeding drivers).

Still, reminds me of Tina Fey in 30Rock asking a topless Florida woman why she has a black stripe tattooted diagonally from shoulder to hip: " It's so when you're driving topless it looks like you're wearing a seatbelt!"

Dave 126 Silver badge

> especially that if your soul e and bowels.

Oops, that should read: spine and bowels. There is probably an argument that sitting down is bad for your soul too, but I'm no theologian. I'm no medical researcher either, but they tend to produce reports with more data and explanation of method in them than the theologians do.

Dave 126 Silver badge

I thought he's in bloody good shape for 98 years of age. His views are more likely a product of his environment than his DNA, so would be cloners shouldn't be put off.

Still, one assumes that he's had had first class healthcare, medical advice and diet through his adult life (he was born on a kitchen table), so it's not just his genes keeping him well. Also, he hadn't had much of a chance to spend long periods sitting down (what with attending hundreds of official engagements every year)- and sitting down is very bad for your health, especially that if your soul e and bowels.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: The papers said he has a license

Well, it is *her* highway. In any case, my grandmother and other people of her age never took driving tests.

Apple hardware priced so high that no one wants to buy it? It's 1983 all over again

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Expansion slots. Meh.

The lack of expansion slots did limit the Apple's appeal in more niche areas, such as those where an engineer or physicist might want to connect it to some instruments. The lack of expansion was the deciding factor in a friend of mine not getting them for his department. Yeah, it is niche, but then Apple survived the nineties by being in a few niches.

Broadly though I'd agree with you; placing access to a computer's PCIe bus on the outside of the machine (AKA Thunderbolt) makes it very expandable indeed. The downside that some users might notice over an internal PCIe slot is with GPUs due to Thunderbolts reduced bandwidth. Before FireWire (also offering DMA) took care of storage and peripherals on all Macs, rarely seen as standard on PCs

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Buried treasure

A film was made of the efforts to locate the landfill contains unsold E.T Atari games cartridges...

There was a time a few years back when the cost of good was such that it was economically viable to extract it from older computers (newer computers use smaller components and more precise manufacturing methods, so contain less gold). It's possible that the Lisa's have already been unearthed and recycled.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: The last project named after a CEO's kid was the Ford Edsel

The Edsel was eventually killed by Robert S McNamara who, like Jobs on his return to Apple, simplified Ford's product range. McNamara was the first president of Ford who wasn't a Ford family member

The documentary film Fog of War, about McNamara's later life as US secretary of defence. He would later become the president of the World Bank, but the documentary doesn't cover that.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: What about the NeXT?

Esslinger (Frog Design, Wega, Sony) designed the Pixar Image Computer as well as the NeXT Cube, as well of course the Apple IIc.

It took me a while to track down a source to confirm he did the Pixar machine, but Walter Isaacson notes it: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cf_2PBPP-rEC&pg=PT313&lpg=PT313&dq="pixar+image+computer"+esslinger&source=bl&ots=pPKrfJYE4n&sig=ACfU3U0BpSM2nd7nrKrZBP25f6zZtlVQOA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRjZyy-v_fAhXlD2MBHQPhA30Q6AEwC3oECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q="pixar%20image%20computer"%20esslinger&f=false

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Look and Feel

Jobs became a billionaire by pumping money into a special effects industry offshoot that became a medical imaging computer company that became an animation house that was bought by the mouse house. (ILM, Pixar, Disney).

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: What about the NeXT?

And two years before the NeXT Cube was the Pixar Image Computer, a snip at $130,000. It was released only a few months after Steve Jobs bought the company, so obviously it was already mostly developed without his input. And to be fair, it wasn't designed to be overpriced, it was designed by folk at Industrial Light and Magic to do computer visual effects for cinema. It was then marketed to work with the data of multi million dollar medical scanners.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar_Image_Computer

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Limped after Apple II

> NT4 was excellent and 2 years old. Win98 was good for cheaper HW, games & consumer USB. Professional scanners & external HDD etc tended to use SCSI then which unlike USB was supported on NT 4.0

NT 4 was excellent; stable and fast on £1,000 worth of 1998 PC. The same money spent on an iMac would get a machine too fond of displaying a beach ball if you had too many Photoshop layers. The repro graphics department were on Macs though, and they told me only Macs could preserve colour accuracy throughout the work flow. I dunno. However it may have been a moot point in 1998 because by then Macs were being adopted by the digital video crowd - FireWire was fitted as standard. FireWire was created for storage and high resolution scanners, but later was ideal for audio and video. And for, as it happens, a certain pocket sized MP3 player (MK. I)

By the mid 2000s Windows had better control of colour spaces, but it wasn't great at high Res monitors. Then Windows got better at high Res displays but Adobe hadn't updated its UI elements with the result that menus would be too small to read. By the time Adobe had sorted that out, no Windows laptops were available with anything other than 16:9 letterbox displays. Grr.

Now it's much of a muchness between a Mac and Windows PC for graphic work, unless the individual designer (who perhaps grew up using Wacom) has incorporated an iPad Pro into their workflow. Product designers are still likely to use Windows because not all common parametric CAD software is available on MacOS.

Most munificent Apple killed itself with kindness. Oh. Really?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: My "new" Apple batttery needed replacing

At least you have the option of using the Apple centre. I'm planning on having Samsung replace my phone's screen due to some minor OLED burn-in. It'll take a couple of hours at a Samsung service centre, the one in the city closest to me is near some good pubs. I don't know what steps someone with a OnePlus would have to take to have the same issue fixed.

In the city I'm thinking of, the Apple store is also near some good pubs, once you've escaped that God forsaken pedestrianised plaza.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Resale value and durable?

> Durable? Why the huge number of shops in the city selling Apple bumpers & covers and offering screen repairs?

Because there are more units of any one iPhone model sold than there are units of any one Android handset. Highstreet shops usually just stock cases for iPhones and the more common (usually Samsung) Android phones. Another factor is that some Android brands are only available to buy online, so people who have bought a OnePlus phone most likely bought a OnePlus case at the same time from the OnePlus website.

In any case, Apple screens are no tougher or weaker than those of any other phone using the same version of Gorilla Glass.

Back in the days of iPhones having 3.5mm ports, the majority of Sennheiser headsets sold on the highstreet were for iOS (Android vendors treated the call control button differently between vendors, even between handset generations within a single vendor). This fact meant nothing about their durability.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Rock and a hard place

> Under that dullard Cook, Apple seem unable to innovate their way out of this bind,

Ledswinger, I can only look at that in the context of nobody else doing anything massively innovative with phones at the moment. So, here's five *possible*, not mutually exclusive, conclusions: 1, Cook is a dullard as you say, 2, all the low hanging fruit of innovation has been taken, 3, what we thought was innovative at the time was merely inevitable, 4, Apple have some innovations in the pipeline but won't announce or release them til the tech is ready, 5, Apple's rivals have upped their product design game and so the bar of what seems innovative has been raised.

I don't know. I do feel a tension between what Apple are capable of doing with their control of software, OS, silicon and hardware, and what they choose to do (or more often *not* do) for commercial reasons. As an example, Apple could have made the iPad a wired second screen and input device for Macs, or they could make an iWatch Lite with fewer features but great battery life.

Dave 126 Silver badge

I don't know how big your wife's hands are, but my S8 in a Spigen Tough Armour case is at the limits of weight and width that I'd care to hold in my medium-large size man hands. When I take the phone out I'm amazed by how svelte it is! A glass screen protector, on the other hand, adds next to nothing to the phones bulk.

Tip: if her S8's screen is less sensitive after fitting a glass screen protector, try Settings > Display > Navigation Bar and disable Unlock With Home Button. It's either that or disabling Hard Press Home Button that helped me. It might be Samsung fixed it in a software update though, because there's options to adjust Hard Press pressure that can't remember seeing before.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Re-lightening plug.

You're better off using isopropyl alcohol (IPA) to sterilise your handset, rather than Dettol. Methylated spirits are fine too, but it smells. Don't use acetone.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Battery

In the field? A battery will start showing signs of diminished capacity weeks or months before it is useless, so there's every chance to replace the battery at a workbench. If you're not near a desk for months then you shouldn't be using consumer kit, or be dependant on a single device.

Having field swappable batteries is fine, but it inherently adds a lot of bulk - the spare battery needs a rigid, puncture proof casing when not in use, because, as even a novice observer of human nature can note, some idiot will inevitably leave it in a kit bag with screw drivers or on the dashboard of a hot car.

The best solution is the Moto Mod one - extra battery capacity can be snapped on, reducing charge cycles on the built in battery. As a bonus, the bolt on batteries can be swapped without power-cycling the phone.

Dave 126 Silver badge

> Repair, re-use,recycle...with 'repair' being the preferred course of action

And I'd argue that 'prevent' [damage] is even more preferable :)

Dave 126 Silver badge

> I'll only replace it if I drop it in the loo

You can buy a pseudo-Magsafe plug for your Lightning socket. This would close a major point of water ingress into your phone, increasing its chance of surviving an unscheduled dunking. As a bonus it would reduce mechanical wear on your phone's sole means of charging.

As regards this article, I bought my current phone with the intention of not replacing it for a few years. So I bought an over-specc'ed model that is waterproof (Galaxy S8) and I keep it in a strong case with a glass screen protector. Even if its charging port fails I can fall back on wireless charging. The broad implications of older models still being for for purpose apply to Samsung et al as much as it does to Apple.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Look it's really quite simple.

The things we use PCs for evolve, but not in a linear fashion. Two decades ago my PC was fit for for purpose, Doom, Office and light Photoshop. Then the promise of more advanced 3D games and tasks like video editing would spur a desire for upgrades. I currently have no urgent need to upgrade my Core 2 Duo laptop, nor my Galaxy S8. Tasks will evolve though.

In a couple of years time my phone will be able to accurately 3D scan rooms and objects ( laser based time of flight sensors), and I'll likely want more more RAM and cores in my laptop to work with the data. That's just me though. What tasks will drive the next mainstream adoption of new technology? I don't know. If I did I would be chasing funding with an NDA : )

GPS used to be military, then was used in rescue, agriculture and logistics by professionals. Then it became the backbone of cobsumer services such as Uber and fitness apps.

Peak Apple: This time it's SERIOUS, Tim

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Too late

> I told him that I wanted to be able to see and restrict what apps were able to send to God knows where.

Look at Blackberry's suite for iOS, it might do what you want.

Before dipping a toe in the new ThinkPad high-end, make sure your desk is compatible

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: I enjoy computing again

> Are there insufficient pointing options -- given touch-screen, Lenovo button in the middle of the keyboard, and a marvelously-capable touch-pad?

Well, there was that W series ThinkPad that also featured a built in Wacom digitiser (and a second pull-out screen)! : D

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Bah

Shh JDX, dont remind them Linus Torvalds uses thin and light (and quiet) laptops. I'll upset them. Oh sod it, do remind them. They might learn eventually, even if they try hard not to!

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Bah

> for real people, doing real work

That comment again. Curious that their idea of machines that fit the bill of 'real work' is Goldilocks, sitting as it does between the thin and light, and the workstation-class P range (successor to the W range) Lenovo laptops.

Real work predates the IT admin by millennia. A farmer using a thin n light to monitor his herds, or a mechanical engineer using a mobile workstation to build a bridge have perhaps stronger claims to be doing 'real work'.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Bah

The mobile workstation P series are updated later in the year, as noted.

Sorry, Samsung. Seems nobody is immune to peak smartphone

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Same trap as Apple

I haven't felt the need the root my Samsung, though occasionally I find out that some small function I would like to have (eg, stop charging automatically when the battery gets to 90%, an option Sony phones had) requires rooting. Now I want to make a warranty claim (OLED screen burn due to a particular app) I'm glad I've not rooted it. The burn in artifacts are only noticeable against bright areas of screen, but hey, it was a pricey phone and so it should be spot on. And I won't be using that app in bright sunlight for extended periods again to prevent a recurrence. I'm sold on OLED and I won't go back to screens that can't display properly black blacks.

Samsung's service under warranty procedure sounds fairly painless - I merely contact a nearby Samsung service centre in advance so that they have the parts, and then it'll be done in a few hours when I call in. There are some good pubs nearby. *If* it works out like that, it's definitely a plus point for Samsung over a Chinese competitor without the service network.

As regards this article, I bought an S8 ten months after its release from (not just fulfilled by) Amazon.co.uk for a few hundred quid less that it was priced at launch (making it much the same price as an inferior OnePlus 6T). It was still a lot of money, but my rationale was to take good care of it (buy waterproof phone, get good case, glass screen protector, don't let it get too hot, be respectful of the battery by at least trying to keep it between 40% and 90%) because I'm intending to keep it for a few years. Samsung may well get my money again, but it'll be in a few years time.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: You reap what you sow

Any reason you go for phones on contract? Credit is available from companies other than network operators. With a SIM-Only rolling monthly contract you're not tied to the network operator beyond a month and can easily negotiate a better deal for data and calls. Buying the phone ourltrifht means you're protected by the Sales of Goods Act, so a handset suffering from poor workmanship or materials can be immediately exchanged for what you paid for it - no waiting a fortnight for it to be repaired on the behalf of the network operator.

I bought a Galaxy S8 outright when the S9 had been announced, saving about £350 from its original price.

Chinese rover pootles about... on the far side of the friggin' MOON

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Beam me up Scotty!

He's likely referring to the shutdown of various US government departments, some of which are required for permissions etc.

Full frontal vulnerability: Photos can still trick, unlock Android mobes via facial recognition

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Sigh

Researchers have enjoyed a high success rate of determining phone passcodes by examining video footage of the legitimate user entering said code. The footage was taken from across a room with the phone screen hidden from the camera.

So, as you say, consider using biometrics in addition to a passcode. Also, consider ways of moving your fingers when entering a passphrase in such a way as to make it harder for attackers to extrapolate your phrase from your finger movement.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Stupid idea in the US

Which is why tapping the power button of an iPhone five times causes the device to demand a passcode to unlock instead of a face or fingerprint. The same applies if the device has been turned off, restarted, too many incorrect biometric attempts have been made or if a period of time has elapsed since the phone was last unlocked.

I haven't looked into the equivilent system on my Samsung, other than to note that it requires a passcode instead of a finger print t or or iris scan after it has been restarted.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Sony soon to release TOF sensors

Sony are reportedly close to offering laser Time-Of-Flight sensors to Apple and Android OEMs. These sensors allow a phone to build up a three dimensional map of a face or environment. The current iPhone system is also three dimensional, but uses distortions in a projected infrared grid instead of measuring distances directly.

My interest in a TOF sensor isn't security based; I'd like a handheld 3D scanner for use in the workshop.

Apple blew my mind – literally, says woman: MagSafe plug sparked face-torching blaze, lawsuit claims

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: MagSafe vs Friction

To achieve the level of friction required for a secure connection, barrel type connectors are recessed - therefore any spark would be further away from any inflammable vapour.

Like others, I'm not knocking Apple here - a pure oxygen environment is not a normal operating environment. For similar reasons, I wouldn't plug in any laptop if I'd just spilt petrol on myself.

I've never had any reason to use an oxygen mask, but presumably they come with warnings such as 'Do not use near naked flames or other sources of ignition'?

The Palm Palm: The Derringer of smartphones

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Sorry, but no

Some people do need Android (as opposed to a feature phone OS) in order to use WhatsApp, Spotify or Uber.

Cambridge Analytica's administrators misled judge, High Court told

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Er, what?

Yep, it's one of a few Reg articles that read as if the author doesn't know what is going on. There's no shame in that - but it's helpful to the readership if it's admitted to.

OM5G... Qualcomm teases next Snapdragon chip for phones: The 855 with a fingerprint Sonic Screwdriver, er, Sensor

Dave 126 Silver badge

I remember when 3G was rolled out and networks were trying to work out how to get a return on it. Charging for clips of football highlights was mooted, but it didn't work out - there just wasn't that much that a typical consumer would want to do on a 1.5" screen that required lots of data.

What changed was the arrival and mass adoption of full screen smartphones and the services that ran on them.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Ability to read wet fingerprints would be a nice feature to have ( part of my job involves cleaning things, so my hands are often wet and confuse my fingerprint scanner) but no cause for a new phone.

What would tempt me is if Google update ARCore to take advantage of multiple cameras / ir grid projectors ( a la Project Tango) to generate accurate point clouds ( 3D scans) of rooms and objects.