Posts by Dave 126

Apple updates iPad Pro with a trackpad, faster processor. Is it a real computer now?

Re: Still not a real computer.

I remember just how reliable and trouble free my old 486 was /s

Re: "you get 128GB of storage"

The internet is full of short videos, often by folk I've heard referred to as vloggers who earn a crust from it. Its not just attention seekers, either: Other short videos might be workplace instructional videos, or product demonstrations.

I'm capable of assuming that their workflow - and needs - are very different to those of a video editor working on footage from several 8k hdr cameras at the end of a day's shoot, redundantly backed up.

My tractor only runs John Deere software. Does that make it a toy?

There are a lot of devices out there running proprietary firmware, from audio recorders to site surveying equipment. Are they all just toys?

And a PC that is administered by a company so that the user can use it to write reports but can't install a game - toy or tool? Sounds like a tool to me.

Try not to be so narrow minded about what jobs other people do and what tools make those jobs easier.

> Maybe they have a skunkworks project to get their chip to run a full version of macOS,

There's no maybe about it, it's a given. Heck, OSX ( nee NeXtStep) had been run on five different different architectures before it ran on Intel. Even existing 3rd party software should be easy to run flawlessly on ARM Mac OS today if developers have used Apple's tools and guidelines.

Nobody said powerful. They said fast. Which of course is open to interpretation.

Famed Apple analyst chances his Arm-based Macs that Apple kit will land next year

Re: Arm 1987

> It would have helped them in Smart phones (9 years late to market) and the iPod (a few years late to the solid state PMP market).

For sure, but being late to market didn't hurt Apples bottom line - although of course we can't overlook the role of chance when we play alternative histories :) Is it possible that if Apple had maintained the Newton line through to the mid 2000s it would have been harder for Apple to make an iPhone-like device? If we look at Symbian, whose Psion forebears were contemporaries of the Newton, we could say the legacy was a in some ways a disadvantage when the state of hardware (lots more RAM, low power GPUs, capacitive touchscreens etc) changed.

>As it was they had to buy in the GUI and most of the iPhone design!

Some elements of the UI were bought in from Fingerworks, notably the touch gestures. Other elements of the UI, including the GUI, were Apple's - a two man research team at Apple had been playing around with iOS-like concepts for a few years before the OSX iPhone (as opposed to the competing iPod iPhone) was green-lit.

Re: What about AMD instead of Intel?

There's nothing to stop an ARM Mac using an AMD GPU.

Apple's graphics API, Metal, already runs on GPUs by AMD, Intel and Apple. Indeed, you can plug in an AMD GPU via Thunderbolt to a Mac that normally uses an Intel Iris GPU.

Re: Well you don't often see Apple following Microsoft

Well, the iPad came after Windows XP Tablet edition, and both came decades after Steve Jobs in 1984 describing an iPhone / MS Courier device in a keynote address which itself was long preceded by concepts such as the Hitchhiker's Guide and the iBM tablets in Kubrick's 2001.

But to be clear, OSX has always been designed to run on a variety of architectures, and has done so ever since it was NeXtStep. Apple will have had OSX builds running on ARM for years now.

Re: 5nm ? Where did that come from ?

Intel designs and manufactures their own chips. Apple design their own chips, but it is usually manufactured by TSMC - who also manufacture chips designed by Qualcomm, AMD, HiSilicon, MediaTek, Nvidia etc.

Samsung have their own foundries, and have made Silicon for Apple in the past.

Other foundries, such as Global Foundries, are also available.

Re: Arm 1987

> Steve came back, killed the Newton. Worst decision he made.

Can you expand upon that point? Genuinely curious.

I only know that other stylus-driven devices that followed the Newton (Palm, WinCE) remained relatively niche and took a different approach to text input ( having the user learn stylised letters instead of the device transcribing natural handwriting). Even today, stylus driven phones such as the Galaxy Note are rarer than their stickless cousins.

Re: It wouldn't surprise me

Well, a lot of consumers won't try and compare an Intel XYZ9000 to an Apple X123 - they'll look at how fast it can process a load of photos and how long the battery will last doing it.

Larry Tesler cut and pasted from this mortal coil: That thing you just did? He probably invented it

Re: Newton - MessagePad

The Samsung Note is pretty good at transcribing hand written mathematical notation, square roots, powers, matrixes etc for those of us who have learnt to do so with a keyboard.

Re: The AI Effect

Well, that was Rogers Penrose's argument, that consciousness may depend upon quantum phenomena.

Back to the question of Artificial Intelligence, I'm with Iain Banks' reasoning of why General AI should be possible: because to accept otherwise means believing either that nothing is intelligent, or that intelligence requires some magic that we humans can never reproduce through technology.

The IoT wars are over, maybe? Amazon, Apple, Google give up on smart-home domination dreams, agree to develop common standards

Re: Will they go far enough?

Fires in Oz. Most sparked by faults in a power grid that needed better maintenance and investment. The tinder created by extreme weather conditions, and yeah Australia is big exporter of coal to countries that make consumer goods.

How to reduce load in power grid: Use more efficient devices. Use appliances that can turn off smartly to reduce spikes in demand. Use more local generation and storage. Note too that solar generation is now so cheap because if mass production in China.

So, reusing instead of recycling is not always the answer.

Can home automation reduce the power consumption of a home? Of course it can, if used wisely.

Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?

Re: Now You've Done It

> You know us geeks won't be satisfied until we can one-up each other to see who can build the house with the highest number of outlets

Just depends upon the surface area of your walls, floors and ceiling... should be a fairly easy Photoshop effort to Mick up the appearance of such a room. Or... Hey, would anyone here like to buy some wallpaper with representations of 13A sockets in a grid array?

Re: Mains gangs or wall sockets

Ah, maybe that's why USB charging cables are slightly too short to allow the use of a phone when the charger close to floor level. Higher up wall sockets would bring the charger closer to the user.

Xiaomi the way to go phone: That would be with a 108MP camera by the looks of things

Re: Real world use

Use cases:

Use individual pixels for a 'zoomed' image of a distant subject in good light. i.e, a landmark during the day.

Use pixel binning for better low light shots of near and medium distance subjects, i.e parties, people and street photography.

We've seen the improvements in image quality that modern phone camera sensors have made over their roughly size-equivilent counterparts from a decade ago. This same improvement applies to SLR sensors over the same time period, more or less.

Of course where improvements are less dramatic is in the lenses, and yeah, an older SLR with an appropriate lens will produce better pictures than a newer SLR with the wrong lens for the job.

It's back: The mercifully normal-looking Moto 360 smartwatch

Re: Benefits?

If you only want to know the time, a smartwatch offers no advantages. If you want very simple notifications and handy features like being able to page your phone if it's fallen between sofa cushions, then there are smart watches from Casio and Citizen that have very good battery lives - months. If you want a watch that is also a GPS tracker, means of payment, runs apps, maps and makes calls - then yeah, the downsides such as bulk and poor battery life may make themselves noticed.

All design and engineering is a process of compromise.

Various web forums suggest that the the energy storage in the very earliest Seiko Kinetic watches eventually failed, but that this issue has long been resolved.

Any finger will do? Samsung Galaxy S10 with a screen protector reportedly easy to fool

Your workplace did give you a 'commercial work phone', as you put it. Likely because it has Samsung Knox on it, allowing them to manage work apps and data without interfering with your personal apps and data, should they choose.

Samsung Knox predates Android Enterprise, which offers some of the same functionality to corporate customers on handsets from many vendors. However, Huawei aren't included in the Google Enterprise program. Funny that.

Don't log into Facebook. Go to Setting, Apps, disable it. All you'll have lost is 100MB of storage space and a minute of your time. I appreciate preloaded apps are offensive on principal, but are insignificant compared to other factors.

Re: Smudges?

Shame that on the S8 the rear fingerprint sensor was right next to the camera. Still, even without finger grease, the camera lens benefits from being wiped clean of dust with my shirt so every often. Camera lens still unscratched, but bizarrely the metal bezel around it is starting to lose its black coating. No complaints in practice.

The side-mounted fingerprint sensor on the S10 E sounds good, but I've not tried it in practice. Sony had fingerprint sends mounted on the power buttons on some models, strangely disabled in some territories due to some patent dispute.

Ultrasound will pass through the screen protector happily. What it won't do is pass through a boundary of materials of radically different properties, such as glass and air. You've got a sporting chance of applying a plastic screen protector without leaving an airgap, but not so a a glass protector unless you apply a resin to the screen first.

S10 E

The lower priced model in the S10 range, the E, always seemed like the one to get. I swear by tempered glass screen protectors on my S8, but they are generally incompatible with an ultrasonic sensor due to the inevitable air gap. The S10 E has a traditional fingerprint sensor mounted on the side of the phone.

There is a company that fits tempered glass screen protectors to S9 / S10 phones with ultrasonic fingerprint sensors, but they charge a lot of money for it. Their trick is to use a resin to ensure there is no air gap twixt screen and protector, just as medics use a gel between an ultrasound sensor and a baby bump. It may be that someone has posted instructions online to do this in a DIY fashion, but I haven't yet found any.

Conspiracy loons claim victory in Brighton and Hove as council rejects plans to build 5G masts

Re: Neoliberalism SUCKS

The precautionary principle also applies to polluting the public discourse with pseudoscience, especially at a time when our civilisation desperately needs to pay more attention to real science in areas such as climate change.

Pillock.

LED streetlights are typically whiter than the yellowish Sodium streetlights. Stargazers and naturalists don't like LED streetlights, whilst on the other hand it has been claimed women find it easier to identify attackers under whiter light.

The body of evidence about the effect of light frequency upon our circadian rhythms and health is diverse and strong.

Stalker attacks Japanese pop singer – after tracking her down using reflection in her eyes

Re: Gap in the app (market) ?

My thoughts too. Here's the website of a kind soul who has created some HIgh Dynamic Range environment maps and is offering to everybody under the CCO licence:

https://hdrihaven.com/hdris/category/?c=all

There's some GNU software available to convert lat long images to a circular format - though I've forgotten its name - and Blender or a Blender rendering plugin will likely do the trick. GIMP couldn't do it a few years back, don't know if this transform have been added since then.

New Instagram filter opportunity

Eye tracking in camera app, that places stylised Manga eyes over the eyes of the subject.

Still, it's 2019 and Japan still has flesh and blood pop idols? I'd have assumed they'd all be virtual idorus by now!

Excited about dual-screen laptops? Make your own with duct tape and the ThinkVision M14

>The lack of a battery in the stand seems an odd omission

Get a USB C power bank... and some duct tape. Bonus is that battery remains available for other devices, and can be swapped out at will. Actually, self adhesive velcro would be better than duct tape.

The OS is 'no longer' important to Microsoft, and yet new Surface kit has 3 Windows flavours

Re: Microsoft. + Android

Search for 'Microsoft Launcher Android' and scan through the reviews. None of the nearly 1 million ratings are mine, but the score of 4.5 / 5 suggests it isn't a disaster.

Again, this is not my view, I'm just drawing attention to other people people's views. There's no need to just imagine if there's a chance to examine.

BBC said it'll pull radio streams from TuneIn to slurp more of your data but nobody noticed till Amazon put its foot in it

Re: It will be their podcasts next...

And they turned off the iPlayer Radio app a few days ago, forcing people to use the BBC Sounds app instead. The reviews for the Sounds app in the Google Play store are overwhelmingly negative.

The iPlayer Radio app had a dark theme, the Sounds app is eyeball-burning bright. It auto-plays random shit.

This won't end well. Microsoft's AI boffins unleash a bot that can generate fake comments for news articles

Re: No thanks, we've already got one...

Bug powder dust and mugwump jism. Aman is inspired by William Burroughs through a Gibsonian 'invisible literature' filter. Class 1 Laser Product.

In contrast, Shadow Systems often makes reasoned comment on the accessibility of systems and services by those visual impairment, as well as on many other topics.

My cousin makes $50,000 a week working from home. You can too!

So we're going back to the Moon: NASA triggers countdown by firing up spacecraft production

Re: Party-Pooper

Sooner or later, next Wednesday or in a few thousand years time, there's a good chance of a sodding big space rock hitting the Earth.

Whilst we haven't yet worked out how to deflect such a rock, it will definitely depend upon our ability to get hardware into orbit.

Every dog has its day – and this one belongs to Boston Dynamic's four-legged good boy Spot

What, no Ray Bradbury reference yet from you lot? For shame...

I don't know. Immediate guess would be legal concerns - it's quite hard to hurt someone at 3 mph.

For that matter, it's less likely to damage itself at 3 mph. Who here, after buying one, would trust their engineers not to 'test' its sprinting and somersaulting abilities to the limit?

Not everything needs inspecting daily. Indeed, the things that need continuous monitoring will have fixed cameras pointed at them, or redundant sensors.

So, if we can accept there exist things that require inspecting at intervals of between a week and a year...

Re: Useful?

IP*8 is waterproof, IP*2 means it is safe to use in rain falling at no more than 15 degree angle. Seems fit for purpose to me, since one wouldn't normally carry out scheduled inspections when it's pissing down in a howling gale.

The first digit, in the case the 5 in IP52, refers to object / dust ingress. 5 means that whilst dust might enter it, the dust won't bugger it up.

Still, it seems to be largely a development platform at this stage; organisations might buy a couple of this gen to play with and code for.

That time Windows got blindsided by a ball of plasma, 150 million kilometres away

Re: Sometimes I miss...

Back in the nineties a PC magazine included a mouse cleaner as a freebie. It was effectivity a textured mouse ball-sized ball attached to a hex rod for attaching to a power drill.

Re: Sometimes I miss...

Try the MX mice from Logitech - they use some cunning, if expensive, darkfield laser system that even works on glass (which feels lovely and smooth). There's a big version and a travel version. The MK III has recently been introduced so it's possible there are currently discounts on the MK II. The only downside is that the rechargable AA battery only lasts weeks instead of months, but they include a USB charging cable.

I can't think of a computer peripheral, the MK I big version, that has made my life easier. Even still, its RRP of £90 was too much for me so I had to wait a couple for years to find it in sale for £45.

Fairphone 3 stripped to the modular essentials: Glue? What glue?

Re: At the risk of making myself unpopular

Like any continuous industrial process.

Re: At the risk of making myself unpopular

> Allegedly - I've never seen the process actually at work.

Argument from ignorance, upvoted here.

Remember, this is the Fairphone - paying people low wages to dismantle stuff isn't what they should be about.

Re: Not waterproof.

Fully waterproofed is no mark up at all if it saves you the price of several non waterproof phones.

As I originally hinted, a hill walker is never planning to slip and fall in a stream.

People who care about the environment are often the same as those who are *in* the environment. And here, that includes rain, puddles and streams.

Re: Not waterproof.

Fingerprint sensor doesn't work with wet fingers anyway.

Re: USB ports ?

Sony have had external charging pins on their phones in the past. The plug-in USB C magnetic couplings look like a good idea, especially if your phone isn't waterproof (they would reduce areas of ingress) and doesn't have wireless charging ( which provides redundancy for the charging docket, and be be used to minimise the mechanical wear on the socket in the first place.

Not waterproof.

Given the overlap between eco conscious folk and people who love being in the great outdoors on bikes, boats and on ropes, the lack of waterproofing is disappointing.

My phone has taken a few dunkings in the last couple of years, so it could be calculated to have used fewer resources than the sum of several replacement Fairphones. Whilst there is a sporting that a Fairphone might have made a recovery (as many phones not advertised as waterproof do, if the owner is lucky), my experience would suggest that outdoors enthusiasts (or even just people living in areas at risk of flooding or hurricanes, sadly a growing number of people it seems) might be better looking elsewhere.

Sony and Samsung have both shown that waterproof phones with swappable batteries are possible.

Re: At the risk of making myself unpopular

Glued phones are also easier to dismantle for recycling - devices are placed on a conveyor belt running through an oven. This is far less less labour intensive than unscrewing dozens of little screws.

Lights, camera, camera, camera, action: iPhone, iPad, Watch, chip biz in new iPhone, iPad, Watch, chip shocker

Re: Boring

You need faster silicon if you have multiple higher resolution, higher frame rate cameras and you're performing post processing trickery upon the captured data.

Re: Subscription services

All the streaming services play nice with the inexpensive Google Chromecast dongle ( regardless of whether the user is holding an Apple or Android device), with the exception of Amazon. Grrr.

Re: So what?

Er, lower power consumption equates to longer battery life. I think everyone can find that useful.

I don't know if Apple have redesigned the controller for the OLED screens - Anandtech reported that their first gen OLED controllers were inefficient (in a bid to claim higher colour accuracy than Samsung phones) negating the inherent power efficiency of the OLED panel itself when displaying dark content.

Re: Peak tech

No, but if you add this year's incremental advance to last year's incremental advance... then after a few years the difference will be significant.

I have no reason to upgrade my 2017 Galaxy today, but the groundwork is being slowly laid (by the likes of Apple, Sony Sensors, Google, Qualcomm et al) for features I would find genuinely useful - such as 3D scanning, for example.