Posts by fattybacon 85 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2009
Speaking of Pixels... Google have been giving very generous trade-in values during launches of new devices in recent years. They gave me £345 for my old Pixel 7 for the £499 Pixel 9a. The trade-ins for the full fat Pixel 9 and 9 Pros were even more generous. After the honeymoon period the trade-ins go back down to risible, be warned.
I've had a few Pis in the past (and if you ever saw me, a few pies too). Infact, I found the original Pi last night.
However, every project has been abandoned due to the damn SD cards corrupting after 'surprise' power loss, so the final release of the official M.2 addon means I might get back into the Pi game.
I'm surprised so much of the comments here are about physical cards. Surely that ship has sailed? If you are happy with NFC payments then your phone is holding all your cards already? I've long stopped taking out my wallet. I have a default card for bonking, and I can choose any of the others at POS.
It's like Google Stadia. It's a staggering achievement, you are playing top end video games without any lag, without a console, using any old controller and browser screen (laptop, tablet, phone, fridge, microwave, pc) but people just shrug their shoulders and say it won't work. It does work. It's incredible.
And this is why I have a Stadia... the patching is done and I can play on any device I own (TV, Chromebook, laptop, pixel phones)...
Everytime I turn my PS4Pro on there is some 40Gb patch for something waiting to happen. I know you can have the updates on PS4 to be done in standby but when I was gifted RDR2 by a friend, the patching process robbed me of my precious intended gaming session.
Yarp. I enabled 4G Data Roaming on my son's phone when he went to Spain. One video call, all allowance used up for the week. The app that used to have nice controls which you could limit bandwidth manually were removed for 'improved user experience', so when offered a juicy 4g data resource it usedto the max.
Looked very good, mind.
The thing is, this was for early adopters, don't do a stupid stunt like this while you are trying to get established in a new market. I'm sure lots of people who like good quality, cheap phones have been put off with the brand for a good long while. They should have just stuck with the £20 off a £99+ spend dealio they had at the same time.
It's a shame a lot of regular sites view any email address containing the '+' as invalid. Despite it being whatever RFC for the last 400 years. Trying to get my free BT Sport was a joy, they accepted it but the BTID system didn't, so I was registered with one arm of the behemoth but unable to verify my id so couldn't ever use it.
> I have just 6 Internet Things: a router, 2 phones and 3 laptops
> And those alone cause enough problems.
Only 6? You don't have a smart TV, a PVR, a Set top box, a games console or two?
> The idea that a vital, fundamental home device such as a lock
> requires a live connection back to the
> manufacturer just to work, is insane.
Yeah.... I think it hit home to me when all those pets died... (The Petnet SmartFeeder which had a 3rd party server go down rending the feeder useless.)
Where did anyone mention them breaking down? Have you ever been in a local council library? They used to have lots of books, often in multiple copies and in multiple locations, and they also had lots of members who could also go to any location and loan one. That's what Google have done. Lots of sites with the potential for an unknown number of staff visiting. You don't want to run out, the hardware is cheap, so you stock lots of them.
In my University, we have secure laptop loan dispenser cabinets at multiple sites, students and staff bonk their cards and get a laptop. Sadly, they are all Toshiba PoSs, and by the time your Windows roaming profile has loaded you'd wish you' hadn't bothered. It's a shame we are moving from the G-Suite because Chromebooks would have been so much better.
It needs something to be more attractive. At the moment it looks like Bella Emberg hit with a frying pan. My PC is in a constant tussle to trying to kill the Windows 10-built-in OneDrive to allow the company's One Drive for Business also overcome the different One Drive that comes with Office 2016. Good times.
RFID shielding wallets, give me a break.
Thanks John. Why did it take so long for someone to post something sensible, rather than the swivel-eyed rantings of the foil-hatted loons?
I'd say Android Pay is more secure than your bank's contactless card as they generate you a fake card, tied to your bank account, so your real card details aren't part of the transaction. So, you could hobble the contactless part of your participating bank's card, and still be part of the contactless love.
I live in the ruddy sticks (A seaside town they forgot to bomb) where we do have a) 4G mobile b) shops that accept contactless, and I use it all the time with just MY PHONE. I'm so confident I even leave my wallet and jacket in the boot of my car, I'M A TOTAL REBEL.
Also, was funny the other day seeing four newly arrived American student girls in a bar all trying to pay for their individual diet 'sodas' with cards without the powah of contactless or chip'n'pin. The hipster bar dude hadn't a clue how to process them. He would have been better off just giving them on the house.
I've read all the posts so far.. lots of criticism of the minister and the Whitehall wonks and their agendas. No mention of the piss-poor journalism at play. The obvious question even if you could make you a backdoor and give Western governments the key then do you give all governments the key also?
And considering how often ours lose data then what hope? Additionally, all our IT systems are run by Capita et al. Do they have keys too?
For years the mobile contracts would only advertise the number of call minutes and texts you got, you could barely find the amount of data you got, if any, and certainly not quality/speed (GPRS, EDGE etc.). When they did cotton on the still would never give you a decent amount of data without a ridiculous amount of call minutes and texts. I just wanted the data... but of course data was expensive and broke their money cow of SMS, up to 10p for 160 characters of text, per text!
The article was interesting but it forgot the absurdity of Apple's nano-SIM... phones got bigger, SIMs got smaller, everyone standardised on the micro-SIM.. except Apple. No good reason.
I ain't got no FM radio in my house, other than the receiver in my phone (LG G4), so it's always great to attempt to listen to the local radio footie commentary at home.
PC web browser... yes, for the pre-/post-match gibbon-chat, nope for the game, this program isn't licensed on this platform.
Squeezebox/Logitech server to numerous Squeeze clients dotted around the house... as above.
Chromecast TV and Chromecast Audio using TuneIn app on phone (nope). As above.
Chromecast TV and Chromecast Audio using BBC iPlayer Radio on phone (nope, no channel).
Freesat telly - nope, not re-broadcast there, not Lardaarn enough.
Freeview... just checked, maybe! Hope at last!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/news/item104
Balance phone precariously on top of a 2m tall cabinet, connected to amp using headphone jack... and phone's built-in FM app and yes, finally. I can listen to some very crackly FM.
Or sit outside in the street listening to the car's FM.
However... when it comes to test match special, the reverse applies to all of the above (car only has FM and MW).
Saw this on their forums
"Please send us a private message to the CET user account with your name, DOB, postcode and contact number. When you send the details, please leave extra spaces between DOB, postcode and phone number, like 0 8 1 1 2 0 1 6."
https://yourcommunity.tescobank.com/t5/News/Message-for-Current-Account-customers/m-p/6770/highlight/true#M370
What sold me on the LG G4 I bought last year was that ticks all my boxes, SD card, removable battery and LTE-Advance (y'know the double speed EE sells), barring waterproof-ness. AND it was 2/3rds the price of the similar but worse-specced Nexus 5X.
Nice to see the crazy LG G5 carrying on the tradition of replaceable batteries and sd-cards, and lifeproof make a proper waterproof case. https://www.lifeproof.com/en-us/lg-g5/fre-for-lg-g5/lpfr-lg-g5.html
Google have seen chumps buying iPhones and thought premium price land here we come.. but they haven't got a Google shop in every premium shopping centre, staffed by people insane enough to patiently listen and help chumps who can't configure their home WiFi and send them away to be fixed when they breakdown. That's what people are paying the i-premium for and that's fair enough, I can see the appeal... but Google has none of this infrastructure and never will.
Android users want premium phones at half the price, and companies like Xiaomi and OnePlus produce phones. The Pixel specs, despite what the author thinks, are pretty mid-range, and indeed the materials, you get premium metal cases for a lot lot less.
Why suffer the trials and tribulations of varying Bluetooth versions and protocol extensions that your devices might or might not support? Get a Chromecast Audio, switch HD on, and hook up to some nice amp/speakers or 'active' speakers, with lovely optical cable. (Remember that you can upload 40,000 of your own tracks to GMusic.)
I'm going to sound stupid (as well as looking stupid).. but.. so the micro-USB cable is providing powah and ethernets to the Chromecast? So, even the first Chromecasts had this ability built in? Why isn't every usb device offering this? A usb hub with a single ethernet port acting as a router to a raft of RaspberyPis etc.
Paris? Well, she's had some non-standard plugs put in her various ports.
I was just totting up my Amazon buying experiences (UK, US, CA, FR, DE & JP) so far, the other day and marvelling at how easy it was, my browser translates every page pretty well, and they keep a consistent experience so even without auto-translation I've managed a successful purchase.
The problem is not usually Amazon, it's the suppliers who geo-restrict things, and often Amazon say this item can be shipped to you, you can even filter on ship internationally, but when you finally get your basket to the check you will be stopped.
I just bought a handheld games console from France, arrived in 4 working days, was £30 cheaper than amazon uk including delivery.
I'm amazed at how little of the 3 pages of discussion has been about the needs of the 'customer'. It's all been about bashing Macs, replacing every OS with Linux and perceived quality of bits of technology. Typical El Reg stuff.
The thing is the Chromebook does the job for most people but most of all, it's easy to support for us the nominated techies. When anything goes wrong you can wipe and restore it in minutes, returning all the data, shortcuts, bookmarks, extensions, passwords everything. Yes, you are giving Google a gift but at least we don't have to be involved.
I'd also question the need for Word and iTunes in the OP article. Really? Still got an iPod have they? All the people I know with iPhones have never synced their device with iTunes and in fact, didn't realise you could or why you'd want to. As for Word, Chromebook handles Word docs seamlessly for viewing, and Google Docs edits and saves them.
My first Amazon Fire TV went crazy bonkers, wrestling to handshake with my telly to find a happy resolution and refresh rate. I had to send it back.
Amazon sent me a new one that was better but it still falls off the wagon sometimes. Out of the box it's 1080p/60Hz and my TV sometimes is happy to play ball, sometimes it's not.
In the settings you can choose all combinations of resolution and frame rate. Can't understand why the Chromecast won't. Since I bought a AFTV the Chromecast hasn't had a look in, in our house. Simple reason - remote control.
In 1985 every student on the HND Information Systems at Teesside Poly were loaned a QL and matching 14" crt monitor for the two year course. I still have the welts on my hands from carrying them the to the train station.
Assignments were to be brought in on the damn microdrive tapes. If I'd have been a bit more savvy I would have realised that I didn't have to do the assignments, just blame the tapes. I ended up doing the assignments and invariably losing them.
Our machine code lecturer was a big cheese in the 68008 world, he worked part time for Motorola (more likely a research contract). Seems odd to have someone genuinely good at such a 'ahem' 2nd tier 'university'. Maybe he was a degenerate.
I managed to pick one up for £195 in the Comet firesale. Really nice performer, HD and SD picture quality is excellent in my opinion. The unit itself is pretty light and plasticy, and a fingerprint/dust magnet, a real disappointment to be honest.
A few niggles, though I might be misremembering as I've loaned it to my dad to give him a taste of the future. When you Search it only displays things in the future from the seven day EPG, it would be nice if it searched the available On Demand content from the past too. (Does it even search through your own recordings?
The other big one is the remote, common with other Humax boxes it doesn't support HDMI-CEC so you can't control the volume of your TV, switch sources etc. In other Humax boxes they've made the remotes universal, and can programme in your TVs codes for power and volume etc. Not this one :( though an old Foxsat HDR remote is a good alternative.
It really is cack isn't it? Often on even my brand spanking new Panasonic telly the red button takes a while to appear, and sometimes doesn't appear at all (BBC HD)
My dad and my in-laws were big consumers of Teletext as they have no interest at waiting for a pc to boot and pay poundzz for the internets. They are constantly frustrated by the red button services, half of the pages are missing for a start. The only benefit is they kept the page numbers.
Having the entry level set so high now, it makes the iPad Mini a shoo in for £299 or £349, nestling between the iPad and the Touch (rename it iPad Nano?). Shame, the Touch was as they say in the Hudsucker Proxy "You know, for kids."
It's got even more funnees, bottles of water and bottles of coke, to go with the spuds. The truly gullible could get a full meal going on.
http://www.gmp.police.uk/mainsite/pages/04a6eb4b452f506480257a00004aefaa.htm
All the talk of bank accounts not giving out much at ATMs are forgetting that the there is a vast underclass that deal solely with cash because they don't trust banks (wise) or the banks won't touch them. Hence the popularity of the payday loans and real loan sharks.
When I pop into Argos in my northern seaside town (that they forgot to bomb), I'm usally the only one using the yellow card pay kiosks, everyone else queues with their bundles of cash.
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