Posts by Waseem Alkurdi

Re: Who Wants It In The First Place?

I'm a Muslim (Kurdish, as obvious from my surname), and I totally agree w/ the idea of your post. It's not only phones, it's their whole lifestyle of excess induglence in ill-gotten $$$$$$$$.

This money could be better spent on people who need that (see Abdulrahman Al-Sumait, MD for instance).

Re: Not quite relevant, but might share anyhow

@404

Dongles? I abhor these. And tablet/phone processors ... no sir, my tablet/laptop (HP EliteBook Revolve 810) has a proper Haswell Core i5, 2x USB 3.(something), DisplayPort, Kensington lock (if that counts), barrel charger, dock connector, and most importantly, headphone jack.

And of course, Linux + Windows + Hackintosh + Android-x86 + (whatever legacy x86 or x86_64 I ever wish) ... impossible to do on a run-of-the-mill ARM device, yet important if one is doing serious stuff on them (I run hobby VMs under QEMU/KVM and the like).

The only terrible part is the battery ... wish it lasts longer. It gives ~ 3 hours without Wi-Fi and maybe ~2 with it, although it's a Li-ion. It's definitely not enough when your whole Internet life is on that thing ...

I Googled the weight of the CF-C2 (as it's a touchscreen convertible, the particular form factor I need) 3.7 lbs (1.6 kg). Actually, that's impressive, seeing that my current laptop is 1.3 kg, a 300g won't break my arms!

It's a great weapon, but border cops won't like the sight of it if traveling par avion ... especially if one gives it a startup chime that sounds like a buzzer!

Re: Not quite relevant, but might share anyhow

I do something similar ... I'd show them my own laptop (2014) vs. theirs (brand-spanking-hard-disk-new), or failing that, Windows booting from my phone via USB 3.(whatever it's called today) ... some cave in, some don't give a hoot*.

You use a Toughbook? I was thinking of buying a CF-C2 myself ... but I stepped back when I read that they weighed a ton (I use my laptop like how other people use their phones, can't stand tiny screens, so my laptop is a convertible 2-in-1 with a central rotating hinge, and is always, always on me).

However, I'm still fascinated by these, the mere thought that, as somebody once put it, you can slap-bang it on a table, with people scurrying to protect their fickle phones and Ultrabooks, is simply awesome!

How's yours? Heavy? Light? Can you compare its weight to some real-world object?

________

* nor do I give a hoot about them in this case.

P.S. Yay! I've got a silver badge now ... feeling proud!

I'll leave this here: https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html.

Re: file system access

@doublelayer

*Using the shell on an android device: Not using a sort of Linux VM, nor a remote shell with the android device being a terminal, but the system shell to which we all have access. Does anyone use that? That's why we wouldn't use one on the iPad either. It'd be a pain. All it would do is let us write a few scripts that give us more control, then stay away from it for the future.

Hell, of course you could use a proper Linux shell on an Android device?

Forget about the Android shell (this isn't a proper GNU userland, but rather BusyBox over Bionic C instead) ... you can build a chroot jail with your favorite distro!

You can use an app like Linux Deploy (root) or UserLand (no root) to build the chroot jail for you, or you could manually build it using a static build of Debian's cdebootstrap (for Debian-based distros).

Or just download and install Termux, which gives you an almost proper Linux shell with virtually no setup needed (but there are tradeoffs because this isn't a 100% pure GNU userland either)

Sorry for the long post!

<pedantry>

They already have (Windows on aarch64 aka ARM64) ... the issue is getting it to boot from iBoot instead of a standard UEFI implementation, and possibly deal with Apple's non-standard changes to aarch64 (should they exist)

</pedantry>

You can always jailbreak ... there is a tweak that brings the iPad Pro's split-screen and dock to iPhones and non-Pro iPads running iOS 11 and above.

I tried it on a 7 Plus ... the phone had no problems doing it, but a split 5.5" would become essentially a chocolate bar per app ... allowing you to do nothing on either of the two.

Re: Hardware requirements

You probably mean OBD-II (the automotive diagnostic port), not ODBC (the Microsoft database thingy).

You can, but I'd recommend a USB one instead (one point of failure instead of two). Read up on the types (especially ELM327 clones that you'd probably be seeing a lot).

As for the codecs, doesn't Ubuntu + nonfree codecs package work? My laptop works fine, even on YouTube, not sure whether I have the nonfree codecs package, but it works.

Re: Hardware requirements

The SSD would explain the ThinkPad tablet (I know a university lecturer who has one, and it runs Windows 10 just fine) ... yet the 15-year-old Sony is intriguing ... that's a laptop from 2003! Are you sure it doesn't have an SSD, or at least a 7200 RPM rust drive?

Re: Hardware requirements

Good choice ... Lubuntu runs well because it's properly designed with a suitable set of lightweight packages, unlike Windows.

You didn't mention the specs of the machine concerned ... it seems to be an Acer Aspire One 735 with an AMD C-60 CPU and 4 GB of RAM. The RAM is adequate (mine is 4 GB as well, yet runs both W8 and W10 well when I want them) ... it's the CPU (this line compares to an Intel Atom) and the HDD (a friggin' 5400 RPM unit as reviewed!) which killed it. The other laptop in question, however, has a high-performance HQ spec Core i7, 6 GB, and a (IIRC) 7200 RPM rust spinner. Your laptop would probably choke with Windows 10 ... the other laptop barely runs it without lag.

My advice? Get an SSD! ^_^

The difference is night and day, and with the laptop's good size and (probably) good battery life, you need that.

Re: Hardware requirements

I don't do Windows on my personal laptop (Linux + SSD), but how about others?

Don't tell me to:

- Get them onto SSDs (some really can't be bothered -or- they'd think you're too incompetent to do w/o the extra spending and don't want to listen to mumbo-jumbo justifications, even when dumbed-down)

- Get them onto Linux (you haven't seen the folk I deal with)

- Get them onto 10 + HDD (told you why)

Any other solution in your opinion? 8.1 is actually still supported w/ updates until 2023, so it is secure.

Re: Hardware requirements

Tried installing Windows 10 on your average run-of-the-mill laptop with HDD?

Believe me, 10 is a f***ing resource hog.

It's just yesterday that I installed Windows 10 for someone on a laptop with a i7-3xxxQM, 6 GB of RAM, and a rust spinner.

Windows 8, which it shipped with, ran a kazillion times faster than that piece of shit called 10. That selfsame laptop is to return for a reinstall of 8.1 a few days later.

Anecdotal, but in my case, it's fact. I'm sticking with 8.1 + Classic Shell for Windows installs until 2023.

TL;DR: Some modern laptops won't run 10 ... How would an aging POS terminal with a standard-back-then 160 GB 5400 RPM rust spinner run it?

And perform like dogshit, possibly giving AMD and/or ARM64 machines the edge?

Or possibly the owner of an iPad 1 (the original iPad), for which iOS 6 was the last release.

But seriously though, an iPad Air 2 is, what, $200 on eBay? Could've picked one used ... there's no $$$ excuse, seeing that he's a journo.

Re: Now if we had software liability

It does have a limit indeed ... it's explained in a post near the top. It locks out on the 6th attempt and asks to "Connect to iTunes".

Re: Weird how people missed it

There are two types of this:

- Pirated game installation (before enterprise/developer certificates became a thing) ... people used to use expired certificates, then roll back the clock for the certificate to become valid. (Largely redundant with stolen enterprise certificates nowadays)

- (What I was referring to) The games don't really need it per se, but would do something like:

You're out of Special Super Duper Points! To play, you need to wait for X hours, watch videos for enough points to let you play for a couple minutes, or just buy some!

A kid who doesn't have data/can't be bothered watching lots of videos for points that are not enough, plus having no money to spend on in-app purchases would simply wind the clock ahead, grab the points, then wind it back so "the Internet" don't break (due to expired SSL certificates).

Nope, I've jailbroken iPads for ages now ... jailbreaking itself doesn't do that.

It has to be a tweak that alters either system time or the lockscreen (AndroidLock XT?)

I'd doubt that the three-year-old knows what tweaks are though.

Re: Weird how people missed it

Unfortunately true, at least on iOS 6 - 9 (on an iPad, and the last iOS version I tried this on).

Humans err. Lots of hacks are indeed simple flukes. It's nothing serious though, as enough tries would lock the iDevice with "Connect to iTunes" instead of a timer.

Re: Weird

It's not fake ... it's simply not repeated attempts as how the father presumed it was, but a fluke with the system time (I've seen it firsthand).

Re: Can someone explain how this worked?

Well, how else would the time "jump" ahead? It's definitely not repeated attempts at the passcode (as it would lock with "Connect to iTunes").

Perhaps there are multiple children in the family? I really can't think of anything else apart from that, and I witnessed the clock issue with the lockscreen firsthand (which is why I described the exact scenario above).

Re: How many times?

It's running iOS 6 or lower, so it's quite possible.

However though, a simpler explanation is a wound-ahead clock (for cheating on games) that got auto-corrected when the iPad connected to Wi-Fi while locked.

If you're into jailbreaking

There's a tweak that changes the passcode every minute to the time on the clock ... for example, a time of 9:00 AM would become 0900.

Re: A new metric for phone reviews needed maybe?

Manufacturers have a vested interest in giving as a little support period as they can possibly get away with. After all, they're the one profiting from "Hey, your phone is too old, get a new one to be safe from dem evil h4korZ", aren't they?

the S8 has problems with a bootloader

What problems? Are you referring to the Exynos vs. Snapdragon variants? The latter have always had locked bootloaders (because they are the US versions), while the former don't.

But whether it's a second-hand S9

I'd recommend this because it shipped w/ Android 9 Pie, which means that it has obligatory Treble support. Really recommended to have that, because it means that you'd flash Generic System Images (GSIs) with no device-specific modifications. (Beats waiting for ROM developers to port the latest and greatest .. you just flash the latest GSI version, no extra work needed)

LineageOS compatible

Don't really count on that being provided .. you could be the dev to provide LineageOS support yourself!

It's not that hard to get started with Android ROM building ... and to practice, try building LineageOS from source for your S5 yourself.

Re: shame

Start reading and then remember its made in a land where the population are herded like cattle.

Basic capitalism for you. Some people have to suffer through a lot to efficiently run a factory that manufactures consumer crap destined to our population. Who cares if money is talking? Let them suffer, so we could enjoy cheap stuff.

Laws? The "free bits of the world" would object because $$$.

I've never figured out what the hate is with EMUI.

I'd answer that. Take your IT Guy hat off and wear your "admirer of aesthetics" one for a moment.

Huawei's EMUI has animations that feel janky and unnatural. The whole UI isn't at all fluid. Lots of trashy apps that follow no particular design language (Is it a clone of Apple? Material Design? Samsung?)

(Not that Samsung, Oppo, or Xiaomi are any better)

Now compare that mess of a UI to a phone running an AOSP ROM, say, a Google, OnePlus, or Nokia phone.

The difference is, simply put, night and day.

Huawei simply lacks any originality.

(The hardware line is another story though ... The designs are good, overall, but the build quality leaves much to be desired).