Posts by Alex Walsh

Sony won't budge on Microsoft-Activision merger objection

Ironic that Sony, once the hip disrupter in the console market is now digging its heels in and coming across very much as the entrenched old monopolist wary of anyone who might challenge its dominance.

RetroPie 4.6 brings forth an answer to 'What do I do with this Pi 4 I bought last year?'

Re: If you prefer ssh over HDMI

Have a micro SD card with that on, and another with Chromium OS, the open source version of Chrome OS. The pi 4 runs hot with that though!

Cosmo Communicator: Phone-laptop hybrid is neat, if niche, tilt at portable productivity

I picked up a GPD Pocket 2 about 18 months ago, and I've been happy with that. I've got Ubuntu running on it. Since it's a clamshell mini laptop (smaller even than the original Asus EEE), I still need to use my phone as a hotspot but it's pretty snappy all things considered.

OPPO's Reno 2, aka 'Baby Shark', joins the deepening pool of high-spec midranger mobes

Full screen spec is:

Type IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors

Size 5.99 inches, 92.6 cm2 (~81.9% screen-to-body ratio)

Resolution 1080 x 2160 pixels, 18:9 ratio (~403 ppi density)

Protection Corning Gorilla Glass 4

The screen to body ratio is pretty impressive though!

Xiaomi are feature limiting stuff to differentiate phones- the newly announced Mi Note 10 Pro has a super amoled screen but a SD730,their Black Shark 2 has super amoled, inscreen fingerprint reader & a SD855 but no wireless charging or NFC, and so on...

Spent £300 on a Xiaomi Mi Mix 2s this time last year. It has a SD845, wireless charging, fast charge, 6GB RAM, 128GB storage, and is due Android 10 shortly. Half as much again a year on for a phone with a lower spec SoC seems...expensive?

TalkTalk says WalkWalk if you've got a mouldy Tiscali email address, or pay £50 a year to keep it

Outrageous. I still remember when Tiscali slurped Lineone and removed our newsgroup access. Revenge is a dish best served 20+ years cold

Our hero returns home £500 richer thanks to senior dev's appalling security hygiene

Reminds me of Chris, our IT manager 10 or 15 years ago. He spent most of his time in the office playing WoW, and any time someone had the temerity to ask why he wasn't doing IT stuff instead, he waspishly told them that he was managing the systems so well, it didn't need constant firefighting or troubleshooting, freeing him up to play games.

Here's what Lynch, Hussain and HPE are saying about Autonomy pre-buyout due diligence

One of the biggest issues with financial due diligence is that 90+% of the time management are just looking for confirmation of a decision already made. It's very unusual to get as far as DD and not complete the transaction.

Brave claims its mobe browser batt use bests whatever you're using. Why? Hint: It begins with A then D then V...

I've used Brave a fair bit on Android but ended up with Firefox Focus as my go to instead. Brave actually stopped quite a lot of sites working, it was that strict.

Using WhatsApp for your business comms? It's either that or reinstall Lotus Notes

We are family

We have an extended family Slack group, with various sub groups for parents/adults and kids. All school related emails go to a specific email account which distributes them over Slack on a keyword basis and we have a shared Google calendar that pings updates to everyone. It works for us better than bits of paper or conversations that switch between text/twitter dm/Facebook Messenger/Whatsapp depending on who's involved.

Would that we did something similar at work- I even get emailed a spreadsheet of dates my for diary, rather than actual calendar invites.

Xiaomi anarchy in the UK: Chinese tat-flinger wants to slip its cheapo flagships in Brit pockets

I've had a Mi Pad 4 for a few months now. It fills the gap between low res slow cheap Android tablets and the hi res shockingly expensive stuff Samsung make. I like it, even though getting GAPPS on it and making everything update like it should was a bit of a ballache.

Cyber-crooks think small biz is easy prey. Here's a simple checklist to avoid becoming an easy victim

Re: Good recommendations but...

I've read plenty of stories about USB sticks/SD cards being "lost" in car parks or by offices purely on the off chance that someone will be curious and pick it up and plug it in to their office computer. Scary.

Virgin Media? More like Virgin Meltdown: Brit broadband ISP falls over amid power drama

Some of the tweets show disgruntled business owners claiming they've lost clients - any business should have a 4G mobile WiFi hotspot as an emergency back up. Won't anybody think of the children?!

Fermi famously asked: 'Where is everybody?' Probably dead, says renewed Drake equation

Re: Not useful

If space is infinite, and as a population on a planet we're finite, we can all quote Douglas Adams on where that leaves us statistically.

Nokia 8: As pure as the driven Android - it's a classy return

My network agnostic Nokia 8 doesn't believe you on the Android 8 update, it's still telling me it's up to date on 7.1.1

Dear rioters: Hiding your face with scarves, hats can't fool this AI system

Self contradicts itself in the first line

Dear rioters: Hiding your face with scarves, hats CAN'T fool this AI system

ACCURACY IS NOT GREAT – but it's a start for computer-aided crackdowns by cops

Sounds like it can comfortably fool this AI system to me.

Huawei Honor 8 Pro: Makes iPhone 7 Plus look a bit crap

Not convinced about Huawei/Honor updates. I'm still waiting for the Nougat update for my P9. Bearing in mind I got it at the press launch, which was in advance of availability at retail, I'm not very impressed with it.

Who's behind the Kodi TV streaming stick crackdown?

Always reminds me of this excellent Oatmeal strip on piracy. I saw plenty of chatter last week on Twitter from disgruntled Expanse fans when they found out the Netflix broadcast wasn't happening until the series had aired. Lots of people even tweeted Netflix to say they were going to pirate it.

I've got Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions and pick up a Now TV pass when something I want to see is specifically on but they don't make it easy do they? It's as bad as the three different car park payment apps I have on my phone- so fragmented and poorly thought out.

Programmer finds way to liberate ransomware'd Google Smart TVs

There's a similar issue with Amazon Kindles and WiFi. Some Kindles just lose the ability to connect to WiFi for no discernible reason but a factory reset sorts them out. So far, so good. However there is another Kindle issue that sees factory reset fail to work, leaving you with a Kindle that you can't reset or connect to WiFi. There's a hidden routine that lets you reset a Kindle via a password but Amazon Customer Support don't ever give this out.

Whoosh! China shows off J-20 'stealth' fighters and jet drones

Re: Human waves

The Aliens exhausted the supply of ammunition in the Sentry guns, so perhaps James Cameron was on to something.

Seagate has a flash early Xmas present for Xbox gamers

Re: Can you not...

You can do that with your PS4, and I shoved a 2TB HDD inside mine before I booted it for the first time (not an SSD mind you) but the Xbox One is different, and, no, you can't change the internal drive.

Spinal Tap’s bass player sues former French sewer

I love movie accounting. If no film ever made any money, nobody would ever make a movie.

Lester Haines: RIP

RIP Lester. Can't compute the news :(

Ding-dong, reality calling: iPhone slump is not Apple's doom

Bonkers market expectations

Properly don't understand how the market can expect continual everlasting growth out of any business.

Remember Netbooks? Windows 10 makes them good again!

Re: Closest thing to a netbook...

My boss bought one (on my recommendation). Been a few firmware issues with battery drain from what he's said but it is exactly the form factor I miss and he's pretty pleased with it. (eee 701, 9001, 1001HA saw me nicely for years).

Ironically, his main use for it is Sky Go as none of his Android tablets are supported by it...

Closest thing to a netbook...

Is probably something like the Toshiba Satellite Click Mini- 8.9 inch Windows tablet with a detachable keyboard and a battery in both bits. Bitterly regret not getting one when Amazon were flogging them for £149 at one point last year.

Drug-smuggling granny's vagina holds Kinder surprise

Something smells fishy

I wonder why she 'fessed up with the stash so well hidden...

Twitter reduces BBC hacks to tears with redundancy notice

Not so much now

Used to be that twitter was even referred to as a micro blogging platform. Nowadays its much more of a messengering client, public and private IMHO.

Neat but narky at times: Pebble Time colour e-paper watch

Had an original Pebble since Christmas and still love it. All I use it for is notifications (email, twitter and FB) but it saves getting my phone out of my pocket every time I get a ping. Still get 5+ days from the battery. Only issue is it's not as pretty as the Steel but since it cost a fraction of the price, I shouldn't complain.

Ant-Man: Big ideas, small payoff

OTOH

Loved it. Best Marvel film in years; it's a heist movie with a superhero flavouring. The script is often laugh out loud funny, the two Michael Pena "tip" scenes are comedy gold, and the action is very well handled. The movies pacing is also good, there is plenty going on and since it's not wall to wall action, there is texture to it all, rather than an Age of Ultron style endless action sequence. Yes, it's not Citizen Cane but then it is a summer blockbuster, and one that will probably not be topped this summer either.

Shadow of the Beast: Amiga classic returns from the darkness

Re: Ooops, pet peeve triggered

Surely a result of limited storage media/memory? In the tape days, games were short but bloody hard because you couldn't get much into 16/48/64k of RAM and lets face it, there were too many multi-load games that you'd load the next bit with one life, die immediately and then have to rewind the tape and reload the level you'd just finished. Used to get fed up with disk swapping on the 16bit home computers too :/

Today games are long, not necessarily hard.

Chinese takeaway, hold the Google: Xiaomi Mi4 LTE Android

That looks expensive for a Chinese phone. Constantly see bargain websites full of stuff like this:

Elephone P8000- 3GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 64 bit Octa-core CPU, 4150mAh, fingerprint scanner, Slot for 128GB expandable memory, 2G+3G+4G, 5.5" FHD, Lollipop OS- £110 (with code).

God knows the quality or the (non existent) after sales support though.

What an eyeful: Apple's cut price 27in iMac with Retina Display

Re: Good idea

Our first Bosch washing machine cost us around £400 and lasted ten years (the last 3 with two small kids). Had to replace the brushes in the motor at one point but that was very painless to do thanks to an instructional video on YouTube.

Microsoft's Surface 3 is sweet – but I wouldn't tickle my nads with it

I ended up getting one of these (John Lewis price-matched the Currys deal, so I got the higher end machine with the keyboard cover for £525) because everything I was reading about the Surface Pro 4 made it look like it was heading towards a Intel M processor, which for my use wasn't enough of an improvement over the Cherrytrail to warrant the price difference. Looking at a lot of benchmarks, the S3 isn't much outperformed by the i3 variant of the S3Pro, mostly due to thermal throttling constraints, and performance wise I've no complaints so far.

I needed a new machine as my ASUS S2000, had died. The ASUS UX305 was top of my hit list but I'd read there were a lot of issues with the intel video driver that hadn't been resolved, so it put me off. In the end, after looking at various other bits of kit (Toshiba Click Mini, Transformer Chi, Dell Chrombooks), I opted for the S3 and have to say I'm pleased with it.

It's not cheap but it's not Apple expensive either. it's surprisingly difficult to get a high res screen on anything this small, which is also a limiting factor. Far too many of the smaller screened devices feature x768 as part of the res, which in this day and age is naughty.

Drone penetrates Virgin's shapely space arse

Hope that's a poor thought our press mock up picture (the one with the dotted lines) as I'd like my GoPro in some sort of protective housing...

Ex-cop: Holborn fireball comms outage cover for £200m bling heist gang

I'm guessing he's former Flying Squad because the Flying Squad doesn't exist any more?

Steely wonder? It's blind to 4G and needs armour: Samsung Galaxy S6

Competition

Can't imagine spending £600 on a phone. I thought what I spent on the Nexus 5 was a large price increase over the Nexus 4. When I see people at work spending £40-£50 a month on a 24 month contract just to have an iPhone 6, it always strikes me as a bit mad. I'd rather spend up to £300 on a phone off contract and £15 a month on a SIM only deal myself- just makes more sense to me. Over a similar 2 year period the monthly cost would still top out at well under £30, and lets face it phones are getting cheaper with better features away from the flagship end of the market.

BBC: SOD the scientific consensus! Look OUT! MEGA TSUNAMI is coming

If you watch live TV over iplayer or on a website, you still need a license though. I'd imagine if you have a TV with a tuner in it capable of picking up telly signals the effort in convincing the TV licensing bods you don't watch any live TV is probably more effort than the £145 saving. Pointing out you don't watch live telly to the bailiffs or the chaps in the court when the summons arrives is probably a lot of aggro too?

Remember the good old days when science programmes weren't full of gratuitous SFX and structured like a whodunnit?

$10,000 Ethernet cable promises BONKERS MP3 audio experience

Wonder what the What HiFi review will be like

Based on the stuff quoted in Wat Hifi http://wathifi.tumblr.com/ I bet they'd love it!

Free Windows 10 could mean the END for Microsoft and the PC biz

Don't blame MS for the lack of innovation in the hardware market since W7 was released. My i7 3770 is heading towards 3 years old yet is still more than enough for anything I do on the desktop and I have no compelling reason to upgrade the system as a whole in the near future either.

Want a cheap Office-er-riffic tablet? Microsoft Windows takes on Android

I've used a Windows tablet (a Lenovo Miix 2) for a few months now and I think it's almost the opposite of an android tablet. With Android you get a pretty decent tablet experience and can do some traditional computing stuff but it doesn't work brilliantly at it because it's not really what it's designed for (I'm thinking of my experiences with my TransformerPad here). With a Windows 8.1 tablet you get a computer that sort of does the tablet experience well enough to get by with. There are silly things missing, like no live tile for toggling BT on/off and far too few apps or programmes properly designed for touch operation.

Acer Chromebook 13: The best Googletop on the market?

I'm more interested in the Toshiba Click Mini- 8.9 inch Windows tablet, with a keyboard dock (with built in battery). Combined battery life of 16 hours, out 1st quarter for £250. Hoping it looks as tasty as it has in the CES hands on in real life...

Tesla S P85+: Smiling all the way to the next charging point

Re: If only..

I remember the head of future tech at a large energy company once telling me that Dairy Milk has a higher energy density than any battery technology either available or predicted to come to market.

It's now the biggest thing holding back tech developments IMHO :/

Is living with Dolby Atmos worth the faff?

Re: Well it's not just the hassle and faff is it?

Found myself looking at virtual 5.1/7.1 headphones recently for a very similar reason. Any time I turn the surround sound up to a level that it actually works well, one of the kids comes downstairs and tells me to turn it down :/

Re: Pure H2O versus Flavoured drinks

I can still smell the bacon cooking when I listen to Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast :)

Virgin Media DOUBLE-PUNCHED by BSkyB AND BT over ad fibs

Cable speed is good

Recently got my free upgrade from 120Mbps to 150Mbps from Virgin Media. Click along to speedtest.net last night (9pm, so peak usage time) and it benched at 149.93Mbps. Must say I can't grumble on that aspect of the service. Since I don't watch movies or paid sports channels, they do what I want them to very well :)

US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson: US is losing science race

I've often wondered who this bloke is. I see quite a lot of photos of him looked excited at a lectern with some quote next to him. Is he a sort of mobile version of Stephen Hawking?

Yahoo!... Our Alibaba stake's worth BILLIONS. Oh – our shares are in the toilet

Any one else remember when M&S was had a market value well below the book value of it's property portfolio? Sometimes the market does my nut.

In a spin: Samsung accuses LG exec of washing machine SABOTAGE

When the locking mechanism broke on our Bosch it was a faff to replace it but the hinge itself was solid as anything. Our previous Bosch has issues with the brushes, which I was quite proud I replaced myself, but a month or so later the logic board went so we ended up replacing it.