Posts by Dave 126

Re: So how do you heat it?

Indeed, regardless of its heat-activated memory properties, Nickel Titanium can be bent far further than steel and still return to its original shape. Anyone who has played with a pair of titanium spectacle frames knows this.

Re: Yawn - another (boring) new phone story

The article itself was useful enough, but yeah the headline was just odd for a tech blog - for the last thirty years us computer and gadget buyers have known a faster/cheaper/better device will arrive on the market a week after we've bought our new toy.

Embargoed reviews are only issue if you want to buy on launch day, surely? Or am i missing something?

It seems no hardship to wait a week or so for a more in depth review.

Re: fingerprint sensor

You can unlock the 5T whilst it's lying flat on a desk by using facial recognition, if you're willing to take the hit on security (it isn't a depth sensing system like Apple's).

What would be good is if this facial recognition system was only enabled in more trusted places, e.g within range of your office or home WiFi networks.

I agree with Phil though - Bluetooth unlocking doesn't seem a smart idea for the reasons he's outlined.

Re: @Dave 126

@Mr Hartley - thanks for the tip re. micro USB > type C converters, I'll look into it.

@DougS, Cheers!

I've found my the gauge and length of USB cables have a bearing in how quickly my phone charges, and I've heard not all USB C cables are created equal. When I've found some well reviewed / tested ones, buying a good dollop of em would be a good idea.

If I do go the iPhone route, my observations of friends' Lightning cables is such that I'll reinforce the ends with self amalgamating tape or polyurethane mastic before using them.

Yeah, I'm currently wrangling with myself... are features found in pricier rivals worth the extra money? Ah well!

What I do know is this: whatever phone I get this month - Android or Apple - is going to require me buying half a dozen new cables in place of the microUSB cables I already have (upstairs, downstairs, works van, own vehicle, power bank and spare)

Re: Another failure from crApple

Speaking as an Android user: oh do piss off. If you think I'm being harsh, check UT's posting history.

The new OnePlus 5T phone looks good, though. Released this week, for £450 6GB/64GB model, and £500 for the 8GB/128GB variant. Samsung AMOLED screen. It has a fingerprint sensor on the rear, but will face-unlock with a double tap. Whilst the OnePlus face-unlock doesn't work in the dark like Apple's IR system does, it seems a useful way of quickly unlocking the phone if it's sat on a desk or docked without picking it up. If the face unlock can be geo fenced so so fingerprint or code is required outside the home or office, that'd be secure enough.

(Security levels: preventing CIA from reading your phone. Preventing a mugger using your phone. Preventing your colleagues from setting your wallpaper to a picture of Graham Norton for a grin. )

Re: It works..

We don't have magic replicators, but we do have big combine harvesters. We're approaching the point - and have been since the invention of the plough - where it's available land mass that dictate our resources, not human labour.

That's why we have so many jobs - coders, market researchers, interior decorators - that aren't directly tied to feeding us.

> The only fix is a TRUE free market system. As imperfect as it is, free market has the inherent checks and balances to reward hard work and punish laziness

Sorry Bob, but it doesn't just reward hard work. It largely rewards capital. It rewards luck. In addition, some of the rewards it provides are so disproportionate that it results in huge wealth inequality. The only reason that this inequality hasn't resulted in violent uprising in the USA in the 20th century is that technology has resulted in growth - even the lowly workers can afford a car and TV. However, plot the graph: how the hell can growth continue indefinitely when resources (ultimately: land area) are finite?

Re: fast forward.

> Without the replicator technology that would actually eliminate scarcity

It's not replicators that eliminate scarcity, it's having sufficient land mass (read: source of solar radiation made usable to us by plants) per human.

Re: Sopmething pretty for the ladies?

C'mon guys, this fear about form over function is maybe premature? I mean we have on the market faster laptops with better displays, trackpads and I/O than ever before, with useful battery life and a weight that is comfortable to hold in one hand if required. (Or some better compromise twixt the above than ever before). Shit, were even seeing laptops being sold with displays other than 16:9, and some are being sold with Linux and first party support for drivers etc.

Where's the cause for worry? A bit of concern is healthy enough, but *don't panic*

:)

Re: Read my lips

>So if you go slugged in the face so that you lost a tooth and now speak with a lisp, you're basically screwed?

[facepalm] No, you just enter your passcode. Not sure what's so hard to understand.

Why are the manufacturers being blamed here when the choice to use easy/insecure or fiddly/more secure is left to the owner of the phone?

It seems that some manufacturers have done their part by making it bloody hard to get data off a locked phone.

Re: It's all about Purpose

Apple give users the choice of using biometrics or passcode for an easy unlock, but other operations on the phone still require a passcode. Apple also communicate to their users that Touch and Face ID can both be temporarily disabled by five quick taps of the home button (or power button on the X) should they be coming up to a border checkpoint, so I'm not sure that the charge of 'deliberately confusing and misleading' sticks.

Re: You may be right

> Although it is not clear if the FBI can simply hold the phone to the face willing or no.

Touch and Face ID can both be temporarily disable by five quick taps of the home button (or power button on the X). Whether the user does this depends upon what is pointed at them when 'Freeze! Put your hands in the air!' is shouted at them.

For the FBI to copy files from the phone to a computer they still need the passcode, even if they lay hands on an unlocked phone.

Re: I don't even wear a dumb watch

If you ever get to escape your desk and car (hill walking, perhaps)and decide that a watch would would be useful, then Milanese steel mesh straps are very comfortable and not sweaty. Traditionally associated with Omega, theses days Skagen pair such straps with low profile watches at a sensible price.

From everything I've read in The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams would have an Apple Watch and iPhone if he wasn't in heaven* now.

Yes, DNA was was a humanist, I was referring to an address by Kurt Vonnegut to the American Humanist Association following the death of their previous president Isaac Asimov. "Isaac's in Heaven now" he said, and had the attendees rolling in the aisles.

Re: This morning...

I think you'll find that that the distortion is in the reporting, hence no mention of all the circumstances that cause the phone to demand a passcode, and that this potential attack method is more effort and less reliable than spoofing a fingerprint. Both Touch ID and Face ID unlocking are optional.

Still, if you want to laugh and do your heart some good, more power to you.

The mask is unique to the target's phone, which is why there is a mask. Otherwise the attacker would just stick photos of the target's eyes and mouth on his own face.

Re: Told you so

Have you seen the mask? (You might not if you're on m.theregister) It wouldn't fool a human retailer!

Right o, dunno what to watch tonight... Mission Impossible 3 or 4, or Darkman with Liam Neeson. Or maybe Total Recall, that's got a good fake head in it. Or possibly A Scanner Darkly - no fake faces, but the the characters have tech that constantly changes and obscures their heads in order to defeat ubiquitous tracking via facial recognition!

The passcode is still required before the phone will connect by cable to an computer, if the aim is to dump all the data off it.

For more casual perusal of the phone by law enforcement officers, the mask will have to be created before such time passes that the phone requests the passcode. The mask has to work within a few attempts, too.

And all of this is assuming the users hasn't had time to tap the power button five times to disable Face ID.

So yeah, Face ID is a potential security hole, but one that takes some planning and luck to exploit.

Re: Why oh why

The fingerprint scanners can be spoofed too - which is why there are lots of circumstances in which iPhones will fall back to requesting a passcode or phrase.

It's a between security and convenience. It's after considering this balance in real life that I didn't fit ten locks to the front door of my house.

Re: Nothing to worry about

If you wish to deny the coppers or border agents, you tap the power button five times in two seconds (or home button on other iPhones) to have the phone require the passcode.

. This The passcode is also required if the phone has not been unlocked for a period of time, it is required after a few unsuccessful attempts to login with Face ID, it is required after a power reset, and it is required to connect the phone to a computer even if unlocked at the time - to prevent forensic cloning of the phone.

Re: When will they learn (@ AC)

@bombastic Bob

My understanding is that Face ID adapts to gradual changes in a users face, so growing a beard wouldn't confuse it but shaving off an established beard would cause it to request the passcode.

The passcode is also required if the phone has not been unlocked for a period of time, it is required after a few unsuccessful attempts to login with Face ID, it is required after a power reset, it is required to connect the phone to a computer even if unlocked at the time, it is required if the user hits the power button five times in two seconds.

Re: Pointless

Commerce. Selling people clothes online - this is a huge area. With a body scan of the buyer, more if the guess work is taken out of online clothes retail. It's actually common for people to buy three sizes of a garment and then return the two that don't fit. Seeing how a new sofa will fit into your lounge. Virtually repainting your walls before picking up a brush.

For those of us who don't go for retail therapy in the same way, there's DIY and hobbyist applications. Wave your phone around a room and extract the data for a cutting list in CAD - a lot of local timber yards have a CNC router these days.

The sheer amount of real estate taken up by B&Q and IKEA should give you a clue that there's money in these sectors.

And this is even before we account for the next Pokémon Go-style craze. Or some social media silliness. In the entertainment sector, social board gaming is still a thing... it's easy to imagine a hybrid Games Workshop set up with AR assisting in the rules and game play.

Well, you take your guess and I'll take mine. I might suggest that the answer doesn't lie in a single 'killer application' (eg buy a PC for a spreadsheet) but in dozens of handy applications (buy an ARM tablet to watch TV, read recipes, comics and sheet music, to control audio workstations etc etc). )

Regards

Re: Did I read the article too fast?

From what I can make out from the link you posted, that HP-owned company merely made software that responded to a QR code on a print advert and then displayed a video within the 2D border of the advert.

Scanning a QR code and then detecting the edges of a 2D rectangle is technically very easy. It's a different ball game to real time mapping of a 3D environment.

Re: Whatever ....

I still can't follow Stardust's logic here. He goes on a stag do. His friends' phones run out of battery before his bigger phone with a bigger battery does (shocking). He attributes this to an AR co-processor that his friends' phones likely don't have (only the iPhone 8 and X do). He decries new features, but has a premium phone from Samsung who are notorious for throwing in every feature bar the kitchen just for the hell of it.

Confused.

Re: Magic Leap ?

There's a huge difference between doing something and doing it well in a small lightweight package with good battery life.

It's not always the core concept that holds things back, but rather advances in silicon process size and manufacturing tolerances etc.

Re: Don't say

Define innovation. Is it creating good quality raw ingredients, or is it cooking them together into something people will pay to eat? The reality is more nuanced - it's working with the suppliers of the raw ingredients - or buying them. . As noted above, Apple haven't been alone in developing silicon for AR applications. The difference is, iPhone users will inevitably end up with a phone that contains it even if they don't know what it is at the time - and then app developer might create some that works on millions of handsets. In the diverse world Android, not all handsets will feature AR features. (I'm an Android user with a 3D printer gathering dust... A 3D scanning phone appeals to me, but I'm a niche case. The mainstream SLAM use cases are likely to revolve around commerce and shopping as well as games)

Re: Magic Leap ?

I wouldn't invest in them, but it's hard to call either way. To be generous for a moment, they do seem to have a good idea of what they are trying to achieve, with research into to optics, silicon and 3D rendering, plus partnerships with authors and 3D studios. As such they appear to focused on a Gee Whizz entertainment experience, rather than industrial (MS) or shopping and social media applications (FB, Apple).

I'm not expert enough to judge on how important their patent portfolio is - i.e whether they can be defended or not easily worked around.

Tim Cook says that the technology for good AR glasses doesn't exist yet. Obviously that's just his view or a bluff, but Magic Leap are reportedly struggling to bring the size and weight of their glasses down (remember, we're being generous for the sake of argument here).

Silicon and 3D frameworks are something Magic Leap are working on, but these are areas Apple have shown themselves to be good at in recent years.

https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/254243-qualcomm-develops-active-depth-sensing-camera-android-phones

Re: Whatever ....

> All this AR crap will just eat more battery whilst providing nothing for the average phone user.

No new hardware feature adds anything for the average phone user *until* devs write software for it. No Devs can or will write software for it until the hardware is there.

If you don't use any AR feature, I'm not sure why you think the mere presence of some dedicated AR silicon will eat up your battery life.

Re: "Sintered gears have been in mass production for decades. "

The freedom you have in geometry can save you mass for the same structural performance, so if material tests told you that your printed part was only 98% as strong as a machined part of same geometry, you can redesign your printed part and likely still be ahead in terms of strength/weight ratio.

Any critical part - be it printed, cast, sintered or machined - will be tested before deployment anyway. And modern CAD systems allow the results of such physical testing to be stored for reference in the design of future parts.

Re: Just a thought here...@defiler

Take a weighing balance. At equal distances from the fulcrum place an inflated balloon on one side, on the other place two uninflated balloons. If the inflated balloon is heavier than the two uninflated balloons you might just be in with a chance. (Issues: the air inside the inflated balloon will be slightly denser than atmosphere because of the elasticity of the balloon material. )