Posts by Dave 126

Mi 8 Pro: Xiaomi early buyers wait for modern firmware

The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 had design input from Phillipe Starck. His other IT related commissions include a mouse for Microsoft and bits of a yacht interior for sone bloke called Steve Jobs.

Japanese cyber security minister 'doesn't know what a USB stick is'

I've tried putting a speech on a USB stick. The trick is to use a very fine nibbed permanent marker, and to note down only the key points.

Some exploration of the cultural differences? I've heard that the fax machine was popularised over email in the eighties by Japan, because of the difficulties of creating a Japanese keyboard. I've also heard of the Japanese learning English in order to use a computer. There are also stories of large companies being dependant on one experienced secretary for filing, because files couldn't be ordered alphabetically.

How much of this is myth?

iPhone XS: Just another £300 for a better cam- Wait, come back!

Re: 2018 is the year of stupidly sized phones

@Voyna i Mor

Thank you for correcting me. Oops, I meant the XZ2 *Compact* only had a Snapdragon 650. Some previous Compact phones had the same SoCs as their bigger brothers, but not the XZ2 Compact.

Re: the improved camera is one of the best in class

Vlad at the Verge was actually a bit more nuanced in his comparison, but fair play to you for providing a link.

At the moment Vlad is busy gushing - with some justification - over Google's new 'Night Sight' algorithms for the Pixel 3. Good folks over at XDA Forums are currently porting and testing Night Sight on some non-Pixel phones. It's worth keeping an eye on if you own a recent Android flagship.

Re: Not me

Put your phone in a case and apply a toughened glass screen protector. Sure, it'll add some bulk, but physics dictates that protection requires bulk, regards of whether it's built into the phone or added after purchase in the form of a case. It's works on well on my all-glass Samsung.

Wireless charging (which adds to the potential lifespan of your phone since damage to your sole port no longer renders the phone useless) rules out a metal back. The back must be stiff to protect internal components. Glass back plus case is a reasonable solution.

Re: 2018 is the year of stupidly sized phones

> , whereas nothing fits in women's pockets so that's not an issue.

Female police officers in the USA choose wear the male versions of the uniforms. Why? The female versions of the uniforms have the same small, unfit-for-purpose pockets that is the norm for women's trousers.

Re: 2018 is the year of stupidly sized phones

It's weird, the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact was not an uncommon phone - in my local pub I had one, and so did a large builder bloke and a petite young woman. However, Sony aren't making an XZ3 Compact, and the XZ2 only had a Snapdragon 650 (though there might be a sound reason for that, such as not needing to push as many pixels, or doubling down on a Compact's already excellent battery life).

Power efficiency difference

Anandtech reported that the XS's OLED display is less power efficient than Apple's LCDs even when displaying mostly black images (contrary to expectation). They put this down to the 10 bit colour display silicon that Apple use on the XS consuming power. Other phones that use Samsung's OLED panels (ie, Galaxy, Note) use a more frugal display controller than can only output 8bit colour.

Another 3D printer? Oh, stop it, you're killing us. Perhaps literally: Fears over ultrafine dust

Re: no mention of the different types of filaments that can be used

PLA allows greater detail than ABS. ABS objects can be used at slightly higher temperatures, won't biodegrade if left outside, and are easier to finish.

In fact you can bring an ABS object to a mirror smooth finish if you expose it to acetone vapour - which is just as hazardous a process as it sounds.

Still, in a conventional workshop there are plenty of other nasty things around, such as MDF dust.

Open the pod bay doors: Voice of HAL 9000 Douglas Rain dies at 90

Re: Fun IT facts about HAL's song

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/pasp/Singing_Kelly_Lochbaum_Vocal_Tract.html

More on Daisy Daisy on an IBM in 1961. If there's any Wikipedia editors here, it could be added to the history of Speech Synthesis

Re: One of the iconic voices...

With Star Wars ADR by James Earl Jones (who worked for Kubrick on Dr Strangelove) cinema lost the prospect of a badass space bastard with a Bristolian accent, though this was eventually put right by Luc Besson's casting of Tricky in the Fifth Element.

Re: The reveal

Yeah, it's a weird one... co-creator Arthur C Clarke had HAL's behaviour as that of a machine just acting on conflicting orders ( clarified in '2010'), but HAL was recognised by the Monolith as a sentient entity by the Monoliths - or at least as a useful personality for face Bowman to relate to (2031). It's possible the Monolith was deliberately broad in its definition of sentience, though I like the idea of one machine have professional courtesy towards another!

Huawei Mate 20 Pro: If you can stomach the nagware and price, it may be Droid of the Year

Re: Can anyone tell me the advantage of face/print unlock?

Passcode can mean a string of characters, surely? I didn't say Pass number or PIN.

Re: £899 - Ouch

> The OEMs are still not forced to release updates

No, but it makes it much easier for them to roll out updates, and and removes their dependency on chipset vendors releasing binary blobs.

In short, vendor's past performance in this area is no guide to their future performance. (And even before Treble, we've seen some vendors go from poor to good in this regard)

Re: £899 - Ouch

> Hopefully this slowing in phone sales / upgrades recently is the tip of the iceberg and people will wake up to the fact that they are being fleeced.

There are lots of competent phones available for far less, so who is being forced to buy the pricier handsets?

Given no vendor is wildly undercutting the others, when comparing oranges with oranges, it's hard to make the argument that they're overpriced.

The relationship between people's upgrade cycles and the price of a new phone isn't one way. For example, someone might deliberately choose a pricier phone with the intention of using it for three years, instead of a slightly cheaper / mildly compromised phone for two years.

People also expect their phones to do more. Easy example is that many people haven't bought a discrete digital camera for a few years, so there's a £100 - £200 saving right there.

Re: Can anyone tell me the advantage of face/print unlock?

> Nobody has yet managed to pluck a thought from someone's head (though Derren Brown can show you quite a few tricks), so that's the ONLY way to be secure at the moment.

Actually Lee, researchers have had success with determining someone's unlock code from videoing their hand movements from across a room. Passcodes don't only live in people's heads, at some point they have to enter them into their phone.

Now, where passcode are more secure is in their legal status. Passcode don't have to be surrendered in many jurisdictions , jurisdictions where a cop is allowed to hold your phone against your finger.

For this reason, tapping the power button of an iPhone five times disables biometric entry and enforces a passcode. A passcode is also required if the phone has not been unlocked for a few hours.

Re: Simplification

Project Treble is the main difference between the Galaxy and Note 8s and the version 9s, other than price. But yeah, it seems to be only Samsung who tick all the boxes these days, SD card, headphone socket, wireless charging, waterproofing, HDR certification, AR Core support, no notch, etc

Sorry to hear your Galaxy 8 is misbehaving, mine (Exonys version) has been solid. Maybe you have an intermittent hardware fault, or some app is upsetting it?

Re: The notch

Crazy thing is, if you put a tempered glass screen protector on a notch-less Samsung phone it makes it look notched. The screen protector has a notch cut out for the Samsung's earpiece and camera.

Re: Cost of Face ID sensors

The iPhone XS panel is made by Samsung to Apple's spec, driven by a driver of Apple's own design. DisplayMate rate it a smidge higher than Samsung's panels on its own Note 9, but they're all in the 'so close to perfect colour accuracy you can't tell the difference' territory.

Samsung's TouchWiz isn't bad as it used to be, and the launcher can be changed if you must. It's hard to get another launcher to stick to Huawei phones.

Additionally, Samsung flagships are well supported by the modding crowd.

Re: £899 - Ouch

> And for a phone that'll only receive updates for a couple of years too

They all have Android 9, so they all have Project Treble.

Brit boffins build 'quantum compass'... say goodbye to those old GPS gizmos, possibly

Re: GPS accuracy

BAE also have systems to compile maps in real-time of stationary FM transmitters and other sources of RF, so a drone can tell if the GPS signals are being spoofed.

There was a Reg article about it.

Re: It's not a compass.

The concept (and practice) is called Dead Reckoning and is used on submarines. However there is no way to avoid Cumulative Errors which limit its accuracy over time. A submarine is moving relatively smoothly compared to a phone in someone's pocket, which is why dead reckoning can't practically be used to augment a phone's GPS (for navigating with a building, for example)

One UI to end gropes: Samsung facelift crowns your thumb the king

Re: How about we acknowledge that big phones aren't as usable

I could reach about 85% of the screen of my Xperia Z3 Compact phone with my thumb without adjusting my grip... That's reduced to about 65% on my Galaxy S8, and to 50% with its case on.

TouchWiz isn't what it used to be. I was wary of Samsung but my S8's version of Android is good, and I say that coming from Sony phones (close to stock) and Nexus (stock).

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

Re: So....?

If data privacy is your chief concern, maybe don't look at Android at all?

Why the mattress hang up?

I've seen foam mattresses for sale in the UK that state that they need to be aired for a few days after unpacking. It doesn't seem that odd for Xiaomi to advertise that their mattresses doesn't vent nasty gasses, especially if some of their competitors do.

Premiere Pro bug ate my videos! Bloke sues Adobe after greedy 'clean cache' wipes files

Re: "An external drive [...] with the bottleneck that brings."

>Using Thunderbolt, eSATA or USB 3.x is not really a bottleneck - especially when you maybe work on a stylish PC which can't really be expanded despite its price...

Exactly, the entire rationale of the Trashcan Mac Pro was that it doesn't store much data internally but instead supplies a load of Thunderbolt 3 ports so that your work is accessed from external redundant storage. It's 1TB PCIe SSD is just for your current session. With an hourly Time Machine back up you will never lose more than an hour's work even if you were to accidently throw it out the window.

Re: Man...

I was reading about a film crew's work flow (sports videos) and it involved the raw footage going straight to two drives from the RED camera, and then being copied to more Thunderbolt drives on site. The team would always make sure that they took at least two hotel rooms, with at least one copy of the footage in each.

Samsung 'reveals' what looks like a tablet that folds into a phone, but otherwise we're quite literally left in the dark

Re: Alternative

There have been phones with projectors in the past but really the projector is better as a discrete gadget. Of those who would find a projector occasionally useful, only a small fraction would need it so often that they'd want it integrated into their phone. It'd be far more useful to connect to it by cable or WiFi when required - if only so that you can use the phone to line up content without knocking the projector out if alignment with whatever you've pointed it at.

Re: Why?

> Given that the current vibe is firmly in the 2:1 aka "letterbox" arena, why should anyone want to fold it out square?

The 2:1 vibe is just a function of phone width being a limiting factor. This is why tablets aren't 2:1 and neither are most monitors (unless they've been specifically chosen for gaming or watching cinema aspect ratios.)

What exactly would be the advantage of a foldable or roll-up desktop monitor be?

I can just about envisage a laptop based on this model - a flexible display would mean a 13" 16:10 laptop could fit in a jacket pocket (albeit an easy target for a pickpocket).

Re: This

Actually mobile phones have moved towards a 2:1 aspect ratio because it makes reading websites easier (less scrolling required) given that the chief limiting factor is the *width* of a phone. Video playback isn't the only concern for most phone users. However, video playback is likely the main use for cheap n cheerful Android 16:9 tablets.

When the limitation of fitting in a trouser pocket is removed, we have the 4:3 iPad mini (jacket pocket or handbag) or iPad (coffee table).

Macs to Linux fans: Stop right there, Penguinista scum, that's not macOS. Go on, git outta here

Re: Why Linux on Apple Hardware?

> There's a laptop with 16:10??? Where!!

Shit, I feel terrible now for misremembering and getting your hopes up.

Huawei Matebook Pro is 3:2, like MS's offerings. Sorry again, I thought it was 16:10. Still, discrete Nvidia GPU etc .

Re: Great plan Timmy.

> Still, if a user can configure it so, then presumably malware could (in principal) do so also as a prelude for some kind of boot-time attack.

I guess a hardware switch or jumper could allow a user to do things that malware can't. Still, as you say, it's not worth the effort.

Re: Why Linux on Apple Hardware?

There was once a time when the MacBook Air didn't have any non Apple equivilents for several years And it suited Linus Torvalds - light and quiet being his priorities. At the time he lamented Apple's competitors for not being able to release a similar machine.

These days he uses a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, but likes the look of offerings from Lenovo too.

Non Apple Laptop vendors have really upped their game in recent years, with high Res screens (sometimes s 16:10 or 4:3, at last) and track pads which aren't terrible.

Russian computer failure on ISS is nothing to worry about – they're just going to turn it off and on again

Re: Could be worse

HAL's behaviour wasn't a malfunction as such, it was the result of secretive humans adding orders at a late stage; the result would have been the same had there been three HALs on board.

Arthur C Clarke stressed the importance of triple systems in Rendezvous with Rama.

Re: Which computers is this?

The computer which failed is a part of the ISS, and not a laptop.

The laptops interfacing with the ISS systems are Linux based, both the American and Russian ones. Then there are some European and Japanese laptops. The rest are running Windows:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/12/05/how-are-laptops-used-on-the-international-space-station/#41ef24317e5d

iPhone XR, for when £1,000 is just too much for a smartmobe

Re: Weak reception is a serious fault

I've heard anecdotes of weak reception on iPhones. I went for a walk in the woods with an iPhone 5S owner the other day, and my Exonys Galaxy S8 seemed to give up the 4G around the same time.

I wish there was an app to make my dad aware of the signal level in his phone - he's very fond of ringing me up when he's in a granite-walled bar with the inevitable result that he sounds as if he's in the drink.

Has science gone too far? Now boffins dream of shining gigantic laser pointer into space to get aliens' attention

Re: Not a brilliant idea

Indeed. The Dark Forest view dictates that we be destroyed casually.

Re: We are here, please exterminate us!

They wouldn't destroy us for resources, they would destroy us because they cannot be sure we won't destroy them.

The Dark Forest

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_dangerous_to_communicate

The Fermi paradox is "where the hell is everybody in this near infinite universe?". A possible answer is that everybody is hiding, since the only prudent course of action is to terminate with extreme prejudice any civilization you come into contact with. Even a technically inferior species should be wiped out, since their technology could advance rapidly in the blink of an eye over the timescales this game is being played.

The Dark Forest is the sequal to The Three Body Problem by Chinese sci fi author Liu Cixin. In his scenario, Earth advertising itself with a laser is akin to a naked infant dancing by a campfire in a dark forest full of hidden predators, who will dispassionately and efficiently destroy us as a matter of course.

Slabs, huh, what are they are good for? Er, not quite absolutely nothing

Yet damn near every big TV sold today has 3D functionality - it's usually a by product of the high refresh rate used by the image processing gubbins, so 3D doesn't add to the cost.

Windows-10-nic

I'd assumed he meant Windows-10-nik, as in Beatnik, Sputnik or Refusenik - the "nik" suffix denoting someone associated with the thing in question. From the Russian Yiddish.

Boom! Just like that the eSIM market emerges – and jolly useful it is too

> Apple added a secondary eSIM slot

No, there's one just SIM slot (except in Chinese model). The eSIM doesn't go in a slot.

Here's iFixit confirming that there's just one SIM slot on non Chinese iPhones:

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+XS+and+XS+Max+Teardown/113021

Apple's launch confirms one thing: It's determined to kill off the laptop for iPads

Re: How do they get away with...

A PC isn't fast enough to render a CGI movie either - see 'render farm' , a rack or room of racks contains CPU/GPUs.

>Also it would probably help to put the brains in the keyboard part rather than the screen

The 'brains' of an iPad weigh very little. The battery probably accounts for a fair fraction though.

The MS Surface Book approach was to place a second battery in the keyboard section for the weight balance reasons you outline.

Re: Milspec

One assumes they drop a load of iPads to empirically determine how much force they can withstand before breaking, then calculate how much polyurethane case to enclose an iPad in to meet their specifications.

Otter Box started out making flight cases to house military kit before they used their reputation to flog phone cases.

Re: CAD ... is suited to being run in the cloud

> Real cost, privacy, security, availability

For an engineering company, the issues of cost, security and availability are *exactly* why they would want their CAD models to sit on their own cloud hosted on their premises, with engineers accessing them via a terminal, X Windows, a browser, whatever. This means their IP doesn't have to leave the premises, and isn't stuck on an individual workstation inaccessible to colleagues.

You're a lone wolf, I get it, but most engineering projects involve professionals from various disciplines working together.