* Posts by jason 7

3181 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

iFixit slams Samsung's phone 'upcycling' scheme for falling short of what was promised

jason 7

Another nope...

I buy a phone.

I run it for three years or so then I get a new one.

The old one? Well cos I look after my batteries (current 3 year old Mate 10 Pro still at 93% battery life) I hand it down to my Dad who uses it for another 3 years.

A Nexus 4 was pushed to 7 years use. An LG G4 is now in its 6th year I think.

Openreach out and hike prices on legacy fixed-line products: Broadband plumber pulls trigger after Ofcom gives the nod

jason 7

Re: it's not private infrastructure

Yeah it adds noise and still remains hooked up in many many telephone master sockets.

I have done the removal for people and seen a decent boost from it. Those stuck out in the sticks going from 2Mbps to a more stable 3Mbps is nothing to sniff at for free. The alternative is fix a ADSL/VDSL faceplate but this takes all of 5 minutes.

jason 7

Re: it's not private infrastructure

Well I'd take going from 1Mbps to maybe 1.5Mbps for 5 minutes of effort if that's all you can do...

jason 7

Re: it's not private infrastructure

Have you pulled your bellwire out yet? Worth a look.

jason 7

I really do wish...

...I could get paid tens of millions over and over again for doing a half-arsed job over and over again.

Fabulous business model.

Google, Facebook, Amazon et al look on nervously as Biden bumps anti-Big Tech warriors into key posts

jason 7

Re: To break 'em up, or not?

The USA isn't heading towards Socialism, it's heading towards Serfdom.

jason 7

Re: Make them Pai!

Yeah...but I'm still right though. It's Obama 2.0. Got all branches but still can't/won't pass anything substantial. Most of that $1.9 trillion will just waft upwards.

It's cheaper to just bomb Syria than issue out those promised $2000 cheques 'immediately'.

Plus all the other stuff... Now is 'not the time' etc. etc. Platitudes...

Dems will lose both houses in 2022. Worth £50 on.

Plus...where is Joe these days?

jason 7

Re: Make them Pai!

About three months ago I predicted that Biden would deliver next to none of his campaign promises and got severely moaned at.

Well looks like I was 98% right in my prediction. The Dems are going to get obliterated in 2022.

If you can't deliver anything promised, substantial or popular with control of all three branches of Govt. then you deserve to lose. The Progressives/Squad have proven to be mostly useless and all Twitter talk. Bernie always folds at the last moment.

By the way I'm a Brit and no fan of either side in US politics. They all just work for the same elites.

Remember that day in 2020 when you were asked to get the business working from home – by tomorrow?

jason 7

I was telling customers....

....to buy up all of Amazon's refurbed Lenovo T430's at £300 a go like no tomorrow.

That worked a treat. Been fairly quiet since.

Spotify to introduce lossless audio streaming: Better sound or inefficient gimmick?

jason 7

Re: "it reduces the quality for discerning listeners"

I abandoned it as soon as I felt CD players reached a decent level of maturity and never looked back.

Whether its a Tandy or a fully setup Thorens, all I hear by the end of track two is massive distortion. I just cannot unhear it with vinyl. Like nails down a blackboard for me.

jason 7

Re: can't tell the difference between speaker cable at 100 GBP per metre or 5 GBP per metre

The only thing that really affects speaker cable is the basic physics of 'shorter and thicker' IMO. That covers 99% of any real changes.

I've often said that that £100 a meter cable was probablty originally specced to be used in aircraft or a CAT scanner and cost 0.05p a meter. The Hi-Fi companies do not have their own undustrial smelting works to make cable. It's massive industrial scale work that only is viable in runs of many kilometers a go. That £1000 a meter cable Russ wants to sell you, did NOT cost 99% of that to make. They just buy in a huge consignment from China or Eastern Europe where they still make the stuff and relabel it. The Mk2 version is just the old stuff running out and having to order in something else.

People still want to believe Hi-Fi companies have Cable factories and in-house metallurgists...

Just get some VanDamme or similar for £3-£4 a meter and be done with it.

jason 7

Re: I think this is more important

The 'Loudness War' was mostly the reason why I stopped buying CDs soon after the turn of the century. I kept locked into releases recorded or issued on CD before 2000.

I also blame the easy availability of PC based audio recording for the drop in all round quality of pop & rock. Before, you had to go into a studio and hire a producer/engineer and that presented a fabulous barrier to entry/filter to those with more ambition than talent.

Australia facepalms as Facebook blocks bookstores, sport, health services instead of just news

jason 7

Facebook's future...

...essentially weaken and wipe out most other mainstream and independent news media so Zuckerberg has majority control when he finally decides to run for President.

Worth $20 on.

Watch this space: Apple offers free repairs for the self-bricking Apple Watch SE and Series 5 wearables

jason 7

Been watching YouTube videos...

...of some young lady that goes diving in popular swimming spots with a metal detector. Nearly every video...Apple Watch, sometimes two.

Seems like Apple still haven't cracked the watch strap as yet.

That's it. It's over. It's really over. From today, Adobe Flash Player no longer works. We're free. We can just leave

jason 7

Re: Internet Archive

Doesnt have Beer Goggles! sigh.

This product is terrible. Can you deliver it in 20 years’ time when it becomes popular?

jason 7

I thought...

...this would be a article on how crap DAB radio is.

Dutch officials say Donald Trump really did protect his Twitter account with MAGA2020! password

jason 7

Re: Not just Trump out

Well just you wont get much of the later part of your post. Especially education.

You wont get much of anything. Minimum wage is still MINIMUM wage. It's not a living wage, folks will still be working three jobs and 18 hours a day to get by...if they can.

Pelosi is still not on board with helping folks during the pandemic, yet gladly signed off trillions for the corporations.

Green new deal...that will get watered down and down as the lobby cheques from the fossil fuel industry come wafting across Biden's desk.

Nothing is going to change. The average American is still going to get screwed while still having to pay for it all.

I don't even live in the US but can see it. But then all I have to do is sit back, watch it all come to pass and say "told you so!"

jason 7

Re: Not just Trump out

Yeah looks sound for Wall St and the likes of Amazon, Lockheed and Raytheon but the average American...nope.

jason 7

Re: less than a month before no one has to care what appears on Trump’s Twitter feed ever again

Yep it's a great grift.

I saw all this coming back in 2015 when Newt Gingrich was challenged on some false crime BS he was spewing. He just smiled and said -

"It's not what's true that is important! It's what I believe is true that is!"

I knew we were all f*cked when I heard that.

jason 7

Re: less than a month before no one has to care what appears on Trump’s Twitter feed ever again

Ahhh so even after seeing Biden's corporate lobbyist status quo cabinet picks, some Dem folks are still in denial that they will get nothing over over the next 4 years.

Just look at AOC's current back peddling and gas lighting on why she won't support a vote on M4A as a taste of things to come.

Yeah asking for healthcare during a pandemic is 'not the right time'. Jeez.

They all get bought.

jason 7

Re: no one has to care what appears on Trump’s Twitter feed ever again

The news agencies and MSM will go into decline most likely. Trump has been news gold for them.

As one American comedian said "Trump is like a scared horse loose in a children's hospital!"

Ratings and advertising revenue is going to plummet. Lot of people going to lose jobs and the talent have to make do with lower contracts.

It's their own fault really. It's a lot of people's fault.

jason 7

Re: less than a month before no one has to care what appears on Trump’s Twitter feed ever again

Yeah can you imagine Trump's mental and physical health at nearly 80 after 4 years of brooding and comfort eating?

It won't be good. He'll most likely have another stroke well before then.

In the meantime my post from a couple of months ago saying that Biden etc. will do f*ck all for the average American will have also come true.

Jimmy Dore for Pushing AOC for a vote on M4A!!!!! Go Jimmy!!!

Delay upgrading the UK's legacy border systems has added £336m to taxpayers' bill

jason 7

It doesn't matter to them.

My other half worked for the Govt for a month. Her job was to monitor projects and their progress. She would visit the managers of said projects and they would be sat at their desk doing sudoku or reading the golfing times whatever.

They were genuinely surprised to see her asking about the projects. Over and over she was told "look it's a govt project, no one cares, we will just file a report right at the end, nothing will happen...and after all, it's only taxpayers money!"

That's why she quit after a month. It wasn't going to get any better. That and her boss was a creep who was up on three HR disputes with other female staff.

End-to-end encryption? In Android's default messaging app? Don't worry, nobody else noticed either

jason 7

...who knows...just wasn't a 'instant' experience.

jason 7

Ahhh glad I'm not the only one.

jason 7

This was both Android and Apple. I even checked all the usual suspects like battery/sleep but nope. Just really bad performance. Sometimes it was instant, the next message a few seconds later would vanish for several minutes or hours. Not just my phone but also on the Apple ones too. Just not what you want from a instant message app. Other apps we tried...worked fine.

This was 18 months ago over a few months.

jason 7

I and a few friends that tried it never got on with Signal. Messages would arrive hours or even days late for some reason. Did all the usual attempts to fix it to no avail. Just really unreliable. Carrier pigeon would have been more effective.

Shame cos otherwise is was a cool app but instant messaging it was not. Moved over to Whatsapp and that just works. I also use RCS/SMS for customers and just direct messages.

The Nord N10 is OnePlus's cheapest 5G handset and, boy, does it show

jason 7

Re: Are 4GB...

I think for some reason reviewers feel that all phones are also supposed to be games consoles and therefore review them solely from that angle. Due to them also getting all the new phones to review their perception is skewed as they are then trying to make out the version from 6 months previously is seriously obsolete.

For those of us that never game (or even watch movies) on their phones this seems most odd.

You know...a phone is well...kinda a phone.

Snap-crappy: 183 Brit local authorities operate 80,000 CCTV cams between them, says surveillance watchdog

jason 7

Next to useless it appears.

I live just off of one of the most 'notorious' streets in the UK (thankfully Covid is killing off the Nightclubs and cheap bars too so that's one upside) and it's covered in CCTV cameras from every angle.

However, assaults still happen (I have told them drunks don't think about CCTV) and when they do the Police come knocking on our doors asking us if we have any CCTV in our block that might help them. I reply "No! However, haven't you enough cameras out there as it is?" The copper then looks crestfallen and walks off.

When you tell Chrome to wipe private data about you, it spares two websites from the purge: Google.com, YouTube

jason 7

They don't delete anything.

Really they don't.

LibreOffice rains on OpenOffice's 20th anniversary parade, tells rival project to 'do the right thing' and die

jason 7

Re: Why I use OO

Ahhh Apple user...so you are still using a 2GB IDE HDD from 1997 then? That extra 300MB or so would be an issue.

jason 7

Re: But Office365 is free!

Yeah essentially you get the usual Word/Excel/Outlook to use on 5 machines with 5 different email accounts whatever, but the cloud stuff (Onedrive/teams) is just the one user account.

I had 2 or 3 years ago, a small business that wanted to just buy two subscriptions and share that between 10 users as they really just wanted the Word/Excel/Outlook but somehow I convinced them to get ten subscriptions (no kick back for me) which paid off big time when it came to March as they all had access to the cloud/collaborative stuff on an individual level. There was a bit of push back at the time but as I said "If you cant afford £1200 a year for the software that essentially your £X million turnover business runs off...."

Former antivirus baron John McAfee collared, faces extradition to America on tax evasion, securities allegations

jason 7

Re: $750

I see a few Dems in denial there. You need to stop that.

But just remember my words as Biden (then Harris in two years after she takes over) and the senior Dems -

Won't increase the minimum wage to a living wage.

Wont increase taxes for the 1% and Corporations, just you.

Won't improve college tuition fees.

Won't get behind Medicare for All.

Keep lessening Wall St regulations.

Keep increasing the military budget.

Keep taking big pharma and fossil fuel lobby money.

Keep on fracking.

Start a couple more illegal wars and up a few existing ones.

Etc. Etc.

You'll maybe think..."Hmmm what's the difference here? Who are these people trying to appeal to?"

jason 7

Re: John McAfee

Yeah I think he sits firmly in that "I'm the centre of my own personal universe' type group.

jason 7

Re: $750

Give it another 12 years and most likely the Dems will be as fascistic as the GOP is now.

They always feel they have to appeal to 'wavering' Republican voters with Republican policies rather than give their own party voters anything at all but platitudes. That means they will continue to move to the right.

Just want to point out I'm from the UK and can plainly see this so...

Who cares what Apple's about to announce? It owes us a macOS x86 virtual appliance for non-Mac computers

jason 7

Re: Hackintosh

"Also Apple doesn’t charge for its os."

Oh it does in most cases through folks paying £2000 for £500 worth of laptop.

The odd bod doing a Hackintosh with a old copy of Snow Leopard doesn't make a dent

jason 7

The Sisters are the most overrated live band ever. Saw them in 2006 and walked out halfway in disgust. Three fog machines at 110% and some disco traffic lights do not make a great live event.

No new album since 1990...lazy!

Microsoft to charge $200 for 32 GPU cores, sliver of CPU clockspeed, 6GB RAM, 512GB SSD... and a Blu-Ray player

jason 7

So does one wait...

10 months for the 'improved' 15% faster XBox X-treme?

TalkTalk, Three, and Virgin Media, come on down! You've all won a prize for... not being that great at something!

jason 7

As I have said before...

...if I visit a new customer and they say "Oh I have crappy internet!" I always ask if it's TalkTalk. Lo and behold 9 times out of 10 it is.

I tell the customer that their connection should give more than 1.5Mbps. "Oh but TalkTalk say that's as good as it gets!"

I convince them to move to ANY other ISP in the country and that 1.5Mbps connection jumps straight to at least 10Mbps+. Not great but...

Norfolk's second-greatest cultural export set for return with 3-metre monument in honour of the Turkey Twizzler

jason 7

Well they were not really his restaurants. A chain paid him a lot of money to put his name on them and turn up to mug to camera when one opened. That was about it.

Oliver himself only had one or two restaurants he owned.

jason 7

Re: I'll probably get roasted for this but...

No, Oliver is a huge prick of the highest order.

It's been five years since Windows 10 hit: So... how's that working out for you all?

jason 7

As an IT support guy...

doing small business and domestic, Windows 10 is a lot better than all before it.

Before hand if I had to rebuild a machine I had to use specific makers versions of windows to get it to match up with the worn out licence key on the back.

I don't have to go hunting for a dozen drivers any more.

It installs super fast. I tried using a Windows 7 DVD a few weeks ago...waste of life.

I don't have to wait for 348 updates to download and install like I did with a new Windows 7 install.

USB sticks and devices just connect and work within a couple of seconds.

Connecting to wi-fi networks is much faster.

The big updates are getting much faster and with a NVMe drive take just a few minutes.

Pre Windows 10 I was getting 2-3 machines in a week for virus clean ups. Now I get maybe 1 every couple of months and they are mainly scammers with Teamviewer but you have to check just in case.

If I get a machine in that just doesn't want to work in most cases it's the old HDD failing, not the OS. Thanks to Windows 10 that's an easy rebuild to a SSD.

So for me its 90% improvement. The only real issues I have are the annoying setup routine when building a Home version (just f*ck off). And not being able to just press F8 whatever to get into safe mode. Most of the fail-safe/recovery/repair features in 10 just don't work. It's quicker to just copy off the data and rebuild it.

I'm happy overall and the customers are too.

We're suing Google for harvesting our personal info even though we opted out of Chrome sync – netizens

jason 7

Google records everything and deletes nothing.

Google says - "Delete or recover deleted Gmail messages. When you delete a message, it stays in your Trash for 30 days. After that time, it will be permanently deleted from your account and can't be recovered."

As I mentioned before, my other half had deleted masses of gmails over years and years. Yes properly deleted from the bin etc. The best you can do.

A couple of years back, woke up one morning to find all those emails back in her Inbox. About 6+ years worth.

Not a happy bunny.

From 'Queen of the Skies' to Queen of the Scrapheap: British Airways chops 747 fleet as folk stay at home

jason 7

Re: Concorde

The other main factor that finished it was many of their regular route passengers died in 9/11.

After that a lot of video conferencing kit was bought and Concorde cannot beat a digital video stream.

jason 7

Re: Second Life?

I think there are so many sitting around they can't give them away.

jason 7

Re: Once...

Yes back in 1993 on the way back from San Francisco the BA check in lady asked my brother, Dad and I if we had ever sat upstairs on a 747? Nope!

So we got put upstairs. Nothing fancy but it was cool to be able to watch the pilots if you leaned into the aisle. Also as it was only 30 or so people it was a bit more relaxed and you got a toilet just for upstairs.

Was something to remember. The in flight film was King Ralph, not so memorable.

I also remember on the flight over I walked up to the front of the 747 (club class I guess, it was empty) so I could stand for a few seconds right behind the nose cone right at the front of the plane. I got out before anyone saw me. Though back then people were a bit more relaxed about stuff.

Hot, synchronous DRAM: Next-gen memory tech spec DDR5 lands

jason 7

Re: When will Apple

You mean the 'iMac Pad Pro' surely?

Report: CIA runs secret cyberwar with little oversight after Trump gave the OK, say US government officials

jason 7

In that case America lost a couple of years ago and still hasn't noticed.

Imagine that, America taken down by just money, patience and the internet. Who needs to spend $700 billion a year on defence? Not a bullet was fired.

Pandemic proves just the tonic for PC sales as shipments shoot upwards

jason 7

Re: I have to say...

Those were the days! I had a 6 disk Sony...Minidisc changer in my Puma's glovebox.

Man I loved Mini-Disc.

jason 7

Re: I have to say...

Yes optical media is a nightmare! Has anyone used it recently? I ended up having to rebuild a PC using the Windows DVD a few weeks ago. It took forever. So used to plugging a USB3 stick into a SSD equipped laptop and having it all down in 5 mins or so.

Optical is a waste of time in most cases. Hello to the 21st Century.