Posts by Dave 126 10672 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010
> Scratch Earth-killer asteroid off your list of existential threats
An existential threat is a threat to the existence of humanity, not merely a threat to the existence of Dave. I might have another five decades left to me, but hopefully humanity will be around for far longer - so there's plenty of scope for the orbit of a bloody great space rock to become disturbed.
> Sorry, but that's just a racket and should be a criminal offence.
I dunno, my friend knowingly bought a Ninetendo Switch for the sole purpose of playing a handful of 1st party Nintendo games, starting with Zelda and then probably Mario and Mario Kart. He's very happy with his informed choice.
Undermining a console's defences to run emulators and such, well, that's what his his PS2 and and PSP are for.
@Leed D
It is proven, in the same way as a mathematical thereom can be proven. Under its design, a buggy app can't be used to gain further access into the system. Nor are Apple the only customers for SEL4 - DARPA develop with it too:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/formal-verification-creates-hacker-proof-code-20160920/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_verification
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family#High_assurance:_seL4
> Imagine what Steve Jobs would have done to that guy.
The announcement of the first iPhone was said be a scary time for some engineers - it was touch and go that it would make it through the presentation without crashing.
Still, I seem to remember a technical issue during a Jobs keynote that he handled well - I can't imagine him not having practiced such a response.
> An engineer stands almost motionless over a nearby wide-format inkjet
That's a *technician*, not an engineer. If we want more people to use their brains in society, then respecting the rank of engineer is not a bad place to start.
Countries like Germany properly recognise titles such as Engineer or Brewmaster as important - just as we do medical doctors - and not the sort of thing you grasp after a day's training.
Cheers!
With this Moto Mod phone you can snap a battery pack on the back. Not only does this mean you can carry spare batteries, but also your phone's internal battery isn't subject to as many charge / discharge cycles.
People should be aware that being in remote places - skiing, hillwalking - with poor signal will deplete their phone battery very quickly unless they they turn off 3G/4G. This can result in them not having enough juice for an emergency call. Using GPS too is an additional power drain.
> But it seems odd that a phone sold on its unique quality of a resilient screen needs some extra help like this.
Ain't physics a rascal, eh? Generally, things that are tough are not hard, and hard things are not tough. You gotta make a choice, I'm afraid. Motorola's engineers are just working with what the universe has handed them.
I'd recommend looking through forums to see how this phone performs with a toughened glass screen protector - they can sometimes have an adverse effect upon the screen's touch sensitivity. A toughnened glass protector will still likely break at some point if dropped, but cheaper to replace than a scratched phone screen.
Most phones that support wireless charging support use the same flavour of tech these days.
Failing that, USB C offers power plus video out plus USB peripherals.
Not sure why you want to run Windows/Chrome from your phone... maybe you're best off getting a headless fag-packet sized computer, either ARM or Intel ('Compute Stick'). Either way, they cost less than a midrange phone.
Samsung DEX offers a desktop environment with some mouse and keyboard optimised Android apps, including a browser and Office 365. The docking hardware is standard (it works for other USB C devices such as laptops and Nintendo Switch). A review and discussion of the setup is on the Reg. 3rd party docks are £20.
'Orient as a verb means to "find direction" or "give direction." The noun form of this kind of orienting is orientation.
Sometimes people in their speech will form an imagined verb from orientation and say orientate. At best, orientate is a back-formation used humorously to make the speaker sound pompous. The correct word is the verb orient.'
- http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000245.htm
I use a Tate glass screen protector, slightly smaller than the screen as it's designed to work with tight cases like my Spigen. Already the screen protector has cracks radiating from an impact on the edge of the screen.
When I get around to getting another Tate protector, I'll try using some wax to seal the edges of it in the hope of preventing dust ingress.
Hmmm... you have 14 days after the phone arrives to send it back without quibble, yet they're asking you to wait up to 21 days to see if you receive the sweeteners you were expecting.
If there was no smallprint when you placed the order and you don't get the extras, you can return the phone for a full refund, since they've broken their contract. they can't retroactively amend the contract after you made the order.
As tools go, I really don't understand why he considers waterproofing to be a 'crap' feature.
You might go years without using it, granted, but it's good to have the option. Nobody plans to be in flood water, nobody plans to fall in a ditch, nobody plans to get caught in a sudden down pour without suitable clothing.
Give me waterproofing over a slightly louder speaker any day. Nor does waterproofing exclude a swappable battery, as some Galaxy Active and Xperia phones have shown.
The S9, unlike the S8, supports Google's Project Treble. Time will tell if this modularisation of the OS (so nobody's waiting on ODM binary blobs) will result in quicker and easier updates.
All phones sold with Oreo must support Treble, but some phones are sold with Nougat and promise day one updates to Oreo - beware.
If you are a business user, you can't reclaim the 20% VAT because OnePkys refuse to issue VAT receipts - this makes the Galaxy S8 cheaper.
The OnePlus 5T is highly rated, but in a few key points it falls short of the S8; waterproofing and wireless charging (both of these can protect your investment against a unplanned submersion or a broken USB socket), screen resolution and brightness (causing the 5T to not receive HDR certification), and camera quality.
These shortcomings could be cheerfully overlooked when the 5T was significantly cheaper than the S8, but now the S8 is heavily discounted it's a no-brainer: go Korean.
And yeah, is also waterproof and has Qi charging (I haven't used the latter, but I like the idea that my phone will remain perfectly usable should its USB C socket break). Listening to podcasts in the shower is nice (speaker is just about loud enough, unlike my Nexus 5.
The S8 is working well for me.
Minor gripes are:
- fingerprint sensor location.
- difficulty in finding a case that really protects the long edges of the display, due to the curved screen.
- No touchscreen sensitivity adjustment. With a tempered glass screen protector, the phone was initially missing taps. However, and for some reason, turning off 'hard press on navigation bar to return to homescreen' makes the whole screen a bit more sensitive.
- Not being able to remap my Bixby button to something useful, like Flashlight. I don't want to use a 3rd party app to do so, and in any case such apps use the Bixby framework as a workaround.
- No Project Treble. This doesn't bother me yet, but the S8 unlike the S9 doesn't support Google's new modular approach to updates, so there's a chance it won't be supported for as long as phones that do.
Of my gripes, only two are fixed in the S9. Is that, plus better photos (S8 camera is good), several hundred quid? There is of course no one answerer to that!
That's about it, really. Because Samsung use onscreen navigation buttons, you can easily swap the Back and App Switcher buttons to Android standard positions instead of Samsung's default. It's a lovely looking phone, but then I never have it out of its chunky case. Battery is okay, much better than my Nexus 5, maybe not quite as good as my Z3 Compact (smaller low Res screen helped the Sony there).
The Samsung Internet app (based on Chrome) has done genuinely useful features. Night mode, and also taking internet video into a pop up window or fullscreen, with download option.
In Vietnam and Cambodia, every toilet has a (manually operated) flexible hose for washing whilst sat in the toilet. It's great. It's maybe due to older houses having sewage systems that don't cope with toilet paper. It maybe that the heat and humidity of that climate makes another way of keeping fresh desirable. Whatever, it's a far better solution than using 'flushable' wet wipes as some folk in the UK do.
And if you have any expectations of getting lucky that day, it's confidence-inspiring to feel clean and fresh below the belt.
The architecture in Japan often leans towards smaller houses and thinner walls. Having a toilet that produces sound effects (birdsong, waterfalls) is a way of maintaining a pretence of privacy.
The first mainstream waterproof smartphones were from Sony. I don't know if this is related at all. I usually start playing a podcast before I do my business, and pick it up again after washing my hands - so the waterproofing is mainly handy for listening to podcasts in the shower. That Sony made a waterproof tablet is useful, given how many people tablets them to display cooking recipes.
Rubbish touch pads on cheap laptops cause all sorts of strife and user confusion. Some parts of the unmarked pad result in scrolling, some selecting. In these cases, it is not the user's fault if they want to throw the machine out of the window.
Thankfully, market demand is finally beginning to result in decent touchpads on laptops. There isn't always a mouse around.
(And indeed I'm reluctant to lend out my carefully chosen mice since someone threw one against a wall - it's handy Forward / Back navigation buttons caused to lose a long rant he was writing on a forum.)
Customer Service at OnePlus isn't great, though they sorted me out eventually. They don't supply VAT invoices, wouldn't cancel an order the day before they shipped it, and gave conflicting advice about refusing the delivery. I cancelled the order because of their weird VAT position, and ordered a Galaxy S8 instead - actually cheaper (because of the impending launch of the S9) than the top tier OnePlus 5T, even before the VAT refund.
The weird VAT situation was not mentioned by any reviewer of the OnePlus 5T.
Blackberry's microkernal OS could run Android apps - something about shimming in API calls as required - and Google have more sway with Android app developers than Blackberry did. Maybe Google will just encourage them to develop their apps with tools that easily allow Fuschia as well as Android (and iOS) apps to be built?
Amazon have tried replacing for Play Services, and Samsung too bundle their own equivilent to the Play Store, email, etc which whilst aren't completely ready once served as a hint to Google that Samsung might focus on them if Google's terms aren't to their liking.
The trouble is many 3rd party apps which use Google Play Services APIs (instead of ASOP), such as those for location.
> Suspended cradle? You mean like the trays/tables etc they've had on small boats for donkey's years?
Exactly that. I'm not one to reinvent the wheel; I'm one to take a traditional bicycle to the pub.
Actually, fuck this project: if Ref staff can't nip down the local boozer at lunchtime, they have no right to call themselves journalists. For shame.
...you can test a mechanical system for not spilling beer. I'm thinking of the beer held in a cradle, suspended from the apex of a pyramid frame. For testing purposes this frame can just be bolted on top of a 18" x 18" wooden board with castors - of the type sold to shift furniture.
It may work. It may not. That's what the testing is for.
Of course, if all beer glasses are of uniform height, one can just use a hinged clamp-down lid to avoid spillage.
I suggest that the cradle or platform be colour-coded or otherwise marked to ensure the empty glass that is sent to the bar returns (full) to the journo who sent it.
It would seem that Gemini would do well to promote a companion device. This can be done in a few ways. For starters, even those who want/need a Gemini may not want to carry it all the time - so they will still have a conventional smartphone that is more convenient for phone calls and for taking pictures.
The other way round is to have a device that displays caller ID... smart watches aren't the only option here. Sony make a small device that has a display and call and media controls buttons that operates as a standalone Bluetooth earpiece or, since it has a 3.5mm socket, clips to your shirt and uses a standard wired headset.
If we abandon the Gemini and thoughts of full mobile Linux, another option would be the snap-on Qwerty keyboard for Motorola Moto Mod phones, but no full reviews of it are available yet. Early hands-on reviews suggest that it is not without flaws - but then said reviewers didn't have time to get used to it as the Reg's reviewer of the Gemini. This type of approach has the benefit of allowing the keyboard and phone to be upgraded / swapped out independently of each other.
If I were designing a mobile typing experience, I would have a standalone keyboard that works with any phone, and I would use the weight and bulk of a li-ion power bank behind the phone to keep it stable. A bit bulky, sure, but no bulkier than additional batteries are anyway. It would also divorce the screens longest dimension from constraining the length of the keyboard.
The whole issue of running full Linux on a mobile one is not really technical, but rather getting drivers not blobs out of ODMs.
"The wars of the future will be fought IN SPAACE... or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you graduate today, you duty is clear: to build and maintain those robots"
- The Simpsons, head of a military academy.
This wasn't even the Simpsons reference I was looking for. I was seeking the brief scene (at the end of a Treehouse of Horror) set in the future where two armies of robots obliterate each other. It's only a few seconds long, but the escalation of destruction is sublime.
Business class seats that recline back into a bed are very comfy, and I'm 6'2".
I have no idea why I was upgraded from from economy on a part of my return leg, other than one hop on my outgoing trip was delayed. I was left wanting to only ever travel by business class again, even if it meant robbing a bank.
And irritatingly, it's nigh on impossible to find a case that protects the full length of a Galaxy S8/9's curved screen. The case I've got protects the rear of the phone with about 3mm of rubber and polycarbonate (so I must be careful to only drop the phone in its back!) but leaves the edges of the screen exposed. Luckily, I've got some good glue so I'll add some plastic strips.
The curved screen doesn't do much for me - it makes the phone look lovely when it's not in its case, but it's never not in its case. Fortunately, the glass screen protector has stayed in place so far, and has already earnt its keep.
I use the dot in my Gmail address. Say I'm signing up to a website, I might use j.oebloggs@gmail instead of joebloggs. If that website passes on my address and results in spoof mail, I can more easily block it. It's handy because not everyone site accepts a plus sign in the email field so I can't always use joebloggs+netflicks@gmail.com
I believe the original rules didn't allow you to use a man as a wife, but hey, it's the 21st century.
Where I haven't seen women competing is in the sport of Ferret Down Trousers, in which women would have an unfair advantage. And, most likely, no desire to compete.
Competitors wear white trousers with ferret inside, sealed at waist and ankles. No underpants allowed. No drink or drugs for either human or ferret allowed. Winner is last man wearing trousers.
Bizzarely enough, Shambala (without the H) is a music festival in the UK where mobile phones see little use. Partly it's that the organisers don't bother sticking in Pico-cells (so that a 2G SMS might take up to 5 minutes to send, given there's an extra 15,000 handsets in what is normally an unpopulated field), partly it's because the general culture there is about getting dressed up and being lovely to everyone. People there just don't bother taking photos on their phones.
The scale of the festival is such that if you wander around for an hour or two - or just sit outside the pub tent - you'll find your friends without needing a phone to arrange a rendezvous.
A month back I was on a bus in S E Asia... It seems Facetime or similar is the default way people talk on their phones there. They've all talk looking at their phone which they hold 10" from their face.
That's just an observation, and I offer no possible explanation other than another observation: it's bloody noisy there, from horns on mopeds to music being blasted out of cafes.
Oddball was, if not technical ("I just ride them man, I don't know what makes them tick"), at least fairly pragmatic in his application of technology ("we've modified then to go backwards as quickly as they go forward.. we like to think we cannot if trouble as quickly as we get into it")
Some wireless mice are fairly lightweight. My preference is for a wireless mouse because even gentle drag from the cord is distracting, and also the best tracking mice ( Logitech Darkfield ) are only available as wireless. These things work flawlessly on glass, which makes for a lovely low friction surface.
For carpel tunnel complaints, they say the best thing is to vary your input periodically, so running a mouse as well as a graphics tablet or trackpoint might help. I know one person who trained themselves to use a mouse with their left hand (it took them a week, they tell me) so they could swap every hour.
Back in school days, a more minor prank was to daisy chain a few keyboards (these were Mac LCiii's, so each keyboard had an ADB socket intended for the mouse) so that a few of us could type characters on the end computer being used by the keeno (slang noun: fellow pupil letting down the values we held dear by exhibiting keenness and diligence to their school work).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
