Posts by Quando

It's National Cream Tea Day and this time we end the age-old debate once and for all: How do you eat yours?

Re: Too much arguing = not enough eating

Try Chucklehead. Dry of course.

One year ago, Apple promised breakthrough features to help iPhone, iPad, Mac owners with disabilities. It failed them

The Apple voice over controls for blind/partially sighted people work excellently when the app developer implements them.

Watching a blind person navigate through the system and apps with the voice speed cranked up is something to behold.

But it is a chunk of work to implement to best quality in an app, and most devs/product owners don’t care/have the time/budget to do it.

Working from home on Virgin Media's broadband? Too bad. Outage hits English capital

Got an EE 80/20 as my backup. First I knew about the Virgin part of my setup being down was the email from UptimeRobot about it.

The EE has been reliable, but Virgin is very fast (when it works).

We spent billions building atom smashers – and now boffins think nature's doing the same thing for free?

Re: whether it might even be possible

Cherenkov Radiation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation - is what you get when a particle ends up travelling faster than the local speed of light in material that is making that lower than c. Used in neutrino detectors.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

Re: "The probe flew past Venus thanks to its 340kg square-shaped light sail"

IKAROS != Light Sail

Fancy some post-weekend reading? How's this for a potboiler: The source code for UK, Australia's coronavirus contact-tracing apps

>> Its a phone app! Of course its meant to be badly written and low quality.

As opposed to all those perfect websites, OS’s, embedded hardware platforms etc.?

Elevating cost-cutting to a whole new level with million-dollar bar bills

Re: Never saw a car crash into a computer

European or African?

Apple bans COVID-19 games and restricts virus-related apps to authoritative souces

Standard developer account (to publish apps (free or paid) on the App Store) is $99, the $299 is for an Enterprise account to be able to publish privately to employees without going through the review process.

European electric vehicle sales surged in Q4 2019 but only accounted for wafer-thin slice of total car purchases

Re: Range & Time for a FULL charge

Your 440V @ 20amps giving a charge rate of 8800 W is not going to cut it. You get 7KW from a home charger.

Roadside rapid or superchargers are 50KW up to 150KW these days, with 350KW coming soon. So at 440V that is 795amps - a chunky heavy cable.

The Tesla 150KW chargers use 480V DC, the higher power ones will be moving to 800V.

UK's Virgin Media celebrates the end of 2019 with a good, old fashioned TITSUP*

Re: don't go with just one supplier

As a home based worker most of the time I got an Openreach based ISP connection as a backup to my Virgin media (consumer) connection. Put them through a dual WAN LinkSys router and I have a load balanced and fail resistant network. Some websites get funny as my IP address changes during the session, but surprisingly few.

Connections are 350/35 on Virgin and 78/19 on the FTTC one, overall cost much less than a business line from one - which wouldn’t help with outages anyway, just might mean more info and compensation.

Only one Huawei? We pitted the P30 Pro against Samsung and Apple's best – and this is what we found

About 2

Are you sure your disc drive has stopped rotating, or are you just ignoring the messages?

Re: I can believe it!

Evolution worked out that they couldn’t be relied on to remember to breathe and came up with the autonomic nervous system.

Bitbucket wobbles but it won't fall. Oh, snap...

Re: "and are seriously considering other options"

Ha ha ha ha.

Azure Dev Ops as they are calling it this week is the only thing that has made me pine for JIRA/Confluence. The git part of it might be ok but the rest is super shite.

Wiki that won’t export pages.

Can’t get a notification when a wiki page changes.

Task item editing that needs a save button (hello floppy disk icon...) to keep changes.

Pipeline pages that have changed format about three times in the 5 months I’ve been forced to use this shite.

And they are promising/threatening another big UI change any time now.

Avoid at all costs (and it isn’t even cheap....)

Creased Lightning: Profits wobble at Virgin Media while fibre project stays sluggish

Re: Vermin media

Everytime I’ve go to the end of contract period and called to get the new customer price and speed it’s never been a problem. Not had to threaten to leave. Only get broadband with them, so not sure if it is easier to get a price match on single service.

Virgin Media admits it 'fell short' in broadband speeds ahead of lashing from BBC's Watchdog

Virgin are so variable. I've been with them a few years now, and I get more of the up to speed than I did with ADSL - but don't normally test it in the evening (but never noticed serious streaming problems).

I did have a long period where it would drop out a few times each week - often mid morning: noticeable when I was working at home. It got so bad (and customer support were the usual chocolate teapot of usefulness) that I got a VDSL line from someone else and a failover/sharing router - Linksys LRT224. That has worked nicely to smooth out any problems - and as far as I can tell the VDSL has been stable (and quick ~75/19).

More recently (last six months) Virgin finally rolled out the 200Mb service in my area (after years of missed promises) and some initial problem I've checked and I've had one outage of 9 minutes since the end of March on the Virgin line, which I'm not going to complain about for consumer grade product. Don't check the other one but the router says connected for 9 days - so something happened.

I guess because the Virgin network is put together from varying quality bits and pieces they bought from others they are going to vary around the country. [Not apologising for them - they are scum on pricing for existing customers, not rolling out new tech until a competitor gets close, (lack of) customer service, marketing spam etc. etc. - but they are generally predictable scum working with shit infrastructure that customers wont pay to have improved.]

Is Apple's software getting worse or what?

Re: On the flip side..

Settings -> Phone -> Show My Caller ID, but obviously not easy to turn on/off per call. Doesn't dialling 140 or 141 before the number stop it in the U.K.?

Matt LeBlanc handed £1.5m to front next two series of Top Gear

Re: Still Undecided

@I like heckling : C4 is publicly owned, but self funds from advertising and other activities. Hasn't had any government money in a long time.

$329 for a MacBook? Well, really a 'HacBook' built on an old HP

Re: EBay

@jzl: Forward delete is fn + backspace

Sealed with an XSS: Popular vulnerabilities probed

Do they mention anything about getting people to login via https rather than http?

Who wants a quad-core 4.2GHz, 64GB, 5TB SSD RAID 10 … laptop?

But but but...can it run Crysis?

Comcast 'rolls out' 'world's first' DOCSIS 3.1 modem, pumping 1Gbps over existing cable

So guesses for when Virgin Media start offering this? 202X?

EE is UK's biggest loser on customer broadband gripes – AGAIN

Re: @ AndrueC

You can get Virgin Broadband without a phone line - probably have to try *very* hard on their website to avoid a bundle deal, but it is doable, but not sure how much it will save you. I pay £38.75/mth for 152/12 broadband and nothing else from them.

MoJ admits to splashing out on 2.3 MILLION Oracle licences

Precisely - government departments should have to publish details of every deal they do so we know who is getting backhanders from who. If the vendor doesn't like their prices being published then so be it - find someone who is not too embarrassed to share their price in public. It's *OUR* money they are spending, and we (should) have a right to see where it is going.

Apple cleans up iOS App Store after first big malware attack

No source code is submitted - just the binary package of app + resources, and a symbol/map file. All the system frameworks are called dynamically so they can scan the app to see what it calls to, and the biggest problem is false-positives if you use a method name in your own code that matches a private API: it flags you up.

But beyond an automated scan they don't do much - certainly not launch it on each device it is supposed to run on as there have been enough apps released that crash immediately on certain device types due to a lack of testing.

Re: Clearly competitors are behind this criminal act

There's no auth key needed to install XCode. Developers would have used legit publishing keys *inside their project file* that they got from Apple as normal. It is just the size of the XCode download at over 4GB that was causing the developers to look for alternative sources.

As long as the malware didn't use any private API calls it would get past App Store review - and accessing the clipboard, throwing alerts etc is all OK.

'To read this page, please turn off your ad blocker...'

Re: Humax PVRs (Youview flavour)

Not true for home recorded content. They have a great +1 minute button on the remote, so the standard 3 or 4 minute break can be jumped in seconds once you get used to it. -15 second button too for when they are 3.5 minute breaks. Also has the standard x2/x6/x12/x30 ffwd button too.

On demand players for the commercial channels do restrict it - but that is the develover of the demand player not Humax limiting it.

How to catch a fraudster – using 'top cop' Benford and the power of maths

Re: Dear Prof.

Because the total number of disturbances in the river that extend its length will depend on the 'original' length that the river covered.

Amazon, Hollywood, Samsung: PLEASE get excited about 4K telly

Re: How about a better frame rate?

BBC white paper - http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/publications/whitepaper209 - agrees with you. Would love to have seen these tests, but while marketing rules then resolution increases are easier to sell...

They don't recognise us as HUMAN: Disability groups want CAPTCHAs killed

Re: @BongoJoe

They kept is so quiet el Reg did an article on it:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/04/google_recaptcha_street_view/

Why do Smart TV UIs suck?

The article is spot on.

Had the horror of a Samsung 'smart' TV and apps - thought it couldn't get worse until I got a View21 HD Recorder - interface on that is so *very* slow, full of bugs and silliness that anyone with a clue would have spotted before release. Already had to do a factory reset and wipe the hard drive of recordings after about 3 weeks of use when it hard crashed.

Only TV recorder I've used that was any good was PlayTV on the PS3 - and that is just SD and single channel recording, but the interface was built by game developers and is slick - rapid response, no crap just does what it should. Paired with a blue tooth remote it's great. [Why are TVs still using IR remotes? They suck compared to bluetooth and the batteries in the PS3 one last for ever with tons of use] iPlayer on PS3 is a mess though - have to get the trad controller out for some operations.

Apple squeaks over revenue estimates, misses earnings target

Re: Number of shares

One is revenue, the other is profit. So looks like their margin might have dropped a % or 2 this quarter.

Übertroll firm bags DRM patent for 3D printing

3D printing should lead to less people fixing things - the cost of replacing an item will tend towards the price of raw feedstock and a bit of energy. Will eventually always be cheaper to print a new one than fix the old one.

For a while 3D printers will help those who fix things by printing out a new spare part for the larger item, but before long they'll be able to just print a whole large item. Fun times ahead.

Symantec source code leak becomes torrent

Re: Comparison

Nice numbers but the norton (cr)app will have graphic assets in it, as they never could bear to use the OS defaults, so 80-90% of that size will be that. Or a mass of signatures baked into the code? Either way: data not code. Kernels are pure.

Carbon fiber MacBooks to appear soon?

Skippy: the evidence often indicates that they do form it.

Hobbyist star-gazer cops amazing eyeful of Jupiter's space ball

That prices is lower than keen amateur photographers will spend on a DSLR + lens. The priceless part is the clear sky in Greece - no hope here in south London. And patience. Lots of patience.

Eugene Kaspersky frustrated by Apple’s iOS AV ban

He can just publish it...

If the platform needs it then he can use the same vectors as a virus would use to infect the platform to publish+run an anti-virus scanner/cleaner.

On a more sensible note: an AV scanner basically needs to be integrated at the OS level on a platform where all apps are sandboxed, so he'd need Apple support to develop and release it, and who is to say that an internal team at Apple, or one of Kaspersky's, don't already have AV software running in the OS on all devices?

How politicians could end droughts forever But they don't want to

Re: Wind

Your day night difference is out by 1000 - the difference is about 13-25 GW not TW.

But your 0.3% calculation is correct.

http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Data/Realtime/Demand/Demand8.htm

Paper pictures failed hostage rescue with Call of Duty shot

You can improve the graphics more with the beer addon.

Shoppers love fondling iPads to fill out sex health survey

Easy - get a £59/annum developer licence to cover the whole organisation building the software. Build code using the free tools provided, test, run on up to 100 devices.

Amazon revamps E Ink Kindle line

UK price

£89 for the new smaller Kindle - www.amazon.co.uk for a pre-order. That's for a wifi only version (doesn't appear to be a 3G one).

Sneaky tracking code (finally) purged from Microsoft sites

Probably just cut+paste sample code

The iPhone one is probably just everyone using the same sample code (http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#samplecode/Reachability/Introduction/Intro.html) for their 'is the internet' reachable tests - the sample uses www.apple.com as the target URL to test for WAN access . I know I've just cut+pasted that into apps where I needed to know network status, and I suspect it would trigger a hotel wifi re-direct page when it runs.

Spotify's music manager makeover - does it work?

On bundle pricing

A flat rate volume pricing model works for me - if I decide I'm going to make Spotify my primary music player/library/purchase place then paying them £50 to get 50p/track works - given the time taken to hunt around all the other stores trying to find a 'bargain' price on something I think I'll take the slightly higher (but probably average out to 0 difference over the long term) price per track and simplicity.

I get so fed up with myself for spending minutes/hours trying to save a few £ on something when I should know my time is my most valuable thing - I'll never get more of that. My target rate of time spent hunting to reduce the price on something I'm going to buy vs the money saved is 5-10 times my effective hourly salary depending on my mood - problem is I tend to forget that until I'm far too far into saving £5 on a £100 item....

Google Docs

Is this a title?

Why do you need cursor keys with a touch screen? If you have a physical keyboard then sure, but with an onscreen keyboard?

I'm not an Android user but GoodReader on iOS devices has full read access to the google docs so there is obviously some API for getting to them - maybe writing isn't exposed yet though.

Editing a spreadsheet google doc on iOS using the Google app/web browser was a painful experience and from the screenshot in this article it looks to be the same on Android - things can only get better yeah?

Casio goes superfast with compact megazoom

hi-res sensor

Hi-res enables shooting wide and cropping down later and still being able to get solid A4 size prints.

As long as the sensor is up to handling the resolution without going too noisy.

Trouser-bomb clown attacks - how much should we laugh?

#include <requiredtitle>

"inspired by the medieval equivalent of a 419 scam"

Phrase of the year so far.

Sony punts pair of trendoid cameras

Sensor on the nano not worth taking stills with

I suspect the sensor on the nano is a video optimised chip - probably doesn't have much (if any) resolution beyond 640x480 and the Apple marketing people are not going to try and sell anyone a 0.3MP still image are they?

Samsung e-book reader range doubles in a day

So that's why they have audio output....

"The readers will have a text-to-speech facility too." - it finally makes sense to me now why these e-book readers have audio output. And I guess once you have text-to-speech an MP3 player is a small extra software module.

RSA crypto defiled again, with factoring of 768-bit keys

So how long to factor it using a botnet?

If "Using a single-core 2.2GHz AMD Opteron with 2GB RAM, sieving would have taken about 1,500 years" then a 10,000 machine botnet takes 54 days or so. So a 70,000 machine network is a week, assuming they are all just single core and are running 24x7 [big assumption I know - I'd expect faster machines on average, but not running 24/7].

Alternatively how much would it cost to rent that much CPU time on Amazon's cloud?