Posts by David Roberts

Eventually we will reach peak phone

PCs are replaced less often these days because, IMHO, there are few really major improvements in performance these days.

10 year old PCs can still handle an average user's workload.

Phones are still seeing leaps and bounds in performance, although not as startling as in the past, so the reason to update a phone is still there eventually.

In my limited experience one of the biggest issues with older phones is lack of memory. While daily or weekly updates of the software seem to leave the old updates lying around you are going to run out of space eventually. One of the many nice things we could have would be new releases of Apps which include all the old patches which could then be deleted.

[Thinks - if you are prepared to risk losing all your data could you just uninstall and reinstall all your Apps from time to time, or with locked down ones disable them and revert to factory then enable again to get a later version? Or would you just get all the updates in one go?]

Cut them some

Slack, guys.

Mental health issue?

According to the article he kept trying, was identified, was told to knock it off and still kept trying.

Almost as if he wanted to be caught.

BLE?

Isn't this what will be used in the soon to be released Track and Trace App?

Thunderbird only?

I have diverse systems with diverse clients and diverse email addresses.

I use Thunderbird on PCs because it is good for looking in SPAM folders for emails the few remaining POP3 clients aren't seeing.

I have some legacy Windows Live Mail clients because they organise multiple email accounts in a much more friendly way than Tbird.

I use K9mail on my phone and tablets.

I want all devices to be able to access all email accounts, not have to go to a specific device.

When something goes bad in email the standard way to resolve it is to go to the provider's webmail to confirm via another route what is actually on the server.

So any encryption strategy has to work with the above clients, plus Outlook (Hotmail), Gmail, Virgin (NTL) and BT web interfaces.

Possibly one reason that email signing and encryption never really took off, despite being more or less standard product since the '90s.

Oh, and being into PKI I once bought a certificate to enable secure identification with HMRC. Didn't renew it because it cost money and the non-PKI method worked and still does. Whatever happened to the personal certificate?

Pancreas?

Nobody so far has mentioned the work towards creating an artificial pancreas.

So far, insulin pumps linked to blood glucose monitors with some open source software to do the clever bits.

Each generation should be smaller, cheaper, smarter.

Permanent implant to cure T1 diabetes would be a major step forward.

Windows model?

No new features because it would break backwards compatibility?

Wonder where the coders work.......?

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Not really fair on the coders because they are stuck with the coding strategy. Still, interesting coincidence.

BT or EE?

Does anyone else remember when there were BT shops on the high street with a range of branded products and services?

Not sure if this is the future aim, or if the purchase of EE has given them all the high street presence that they need.

Anton Pillar (sp?) order?

How is this different in a data age from issuing a court order for Pandora to recapture all the contents of the open box?

Disrupting a public meeting?

Potentially a very broad brush to prevent or punish legitimate protest.

Track and trace?

Noting that Apple and Google have released a new feature to allow BT to run in the background as a notification service to other handsets (if I understand this correctly) is this in any way tied to the version of the BT stack?

Asking for a paranoid friend.

Dominic Cummings should read this

If the alleged plans to use Government subsidies to build a trillion dollar UK tech company are true.

Scepticism that a company with over a billion potential home customers under an authoritarian regime can build a new tech infrastructure suggest that a nation with around 60 million home customers may well struggle.

Ethernet now obsolete?

No mention of it.

I assume these days you buy a USB C dongle if you need it.

As an aside I have a Dell XPS 15 (10+ years old and still going strong) and it didn't cost anywhere near £1700 new. Brand inflation?

I keep asking

Has Zoom fixed their privacy issues yet?

You know, the ones everyone said meant you shouldn't use Zoom until they are fixed?

Like slurping unrelated information from your PC?

Zoom

Have they fixed their security issues yet?

What Linux add ons can you install?

Might give this a try.

Fighting W10 to get a USB GPS to work with web pages.

Linux might be a workable alternative (or possibly not).

Virgin cable good

If you are in a cabled area VM outperforms ADSL and FTTC mainly because of the final few yards of crappy copper.

I'm waiting for FTTP to be available to see who offers best bang per buck.

However i know two areas (hundreds of miles apart) which have clusters of fibre terminations on top of the local poles but with no sign of an FTTP offering.

So I am stuck with VM for the moment. Who to be fair do give a good service.

Nice to have?

I use a Garmin Edge Explore as a speedometer which records the details of a ride, and it is nice to be able to upload the details and view them on a web site. However this is nice but not essential.

I also use it as a satellite navigation tool.

Fortunately I can plan routes using other software, then load the routes directly onto the Edge Explore without needing any Garmin services.

Sympathy for those who are reliant on the servers for day to day use (such as pilots) but not being able to update Strava instantly doesn't seem to be that major a problem. However I don't use Strava!

Wonder

How much of the total payout went to the lawyers?

I wonder if this is why

Air NZ have ceased flying from the UK via the USA?

Possibly people would prefer not to fly through the USA, not because they have anything to hide but because the last thing you want on a massively long haul flight is to worry about your phone, tablet, laptop being siezed and your journey being interrupted for arbitrary reasons.

Asian routes seem far more civilised at the moment.