Posts by Dave 126

To truly stay anonymous online, make sure your writing is as dull as the dullest conference call you can imagine

Re: The ultimate test

I haven't seen him for ages.

Re: Method?

> Search Register forums for "kinda" and multiple uses of commas, separating individual words. All caps, but light use. Possible jokes, and similar timestamps.

Again, that describes many of *my* posts, but the above AC wasn't me.

(Sometimes I *x* when I can't be arsed to x)

Re: "he shall ever ever know it"

Many of my posts contain examples of points 1 to 6, as above. I'm not the above AC though!

Re: I see a market here

> The problem is that in doing so it will make it unreadable so no one would be interested in what you are going to say anyway.

Yep, that'd be a problem for activists and political figures, less so for criminals.

E.g: "if you shoot T. Hancock of 23 Railway Cuttings East Cheam I will deposit 3 BTC in your wallet".

Shit, if the hitman had a webform (like Amazon) instead of an email address, the would less scope still for idiosyncratic language.

Re: Writing style seems unlikely to personally identify you

> Out of the whole internet....no way.

In reality, other clues - such as your posts' time stamps as regards your likely timezone - could be used to rapidly shrink down the areas of t'web to be examined.

Re: translate Youtube comments into passable English on the fly

> The sheer processing grunt needed for such an operation does not exist and probably won't for another 1000 years

It depends upon what the input is. Sometimes we use language to describe something fairly objective, such as how to assemble a desk. Sometimes we might use seek to use language so formally, so free of ambiguity, that computers could follow our instructions. Or people with whom we have a business contract.

And at another point of the spectrum, we have poetry and jokes.

> could such technology be packaged as a browser plug-in, enabling the viewer to translate Youtube comments into passable English on the fly?

Doubtful. I think comments like "ur so gay you faggot" already tell us more than enough about the young cretin who wrote it.

Four techies flummoxed for hours by flickering 'E' on monitor

Re: No, it wasn't a long long time ago .........

My cheap but cheerful car stereo still has issues like this. FM reception suffers if I leave my 3.5 mm aux car plugged in. Audio quality through the aux car suffers if I use the head unit's USB socket to charge my phone. But hey, the stereo takes SD cards so I forgive it.

(The vehicle came with a Sony head unit that despite having RCA inputs on the rear would not accept aux input. Apparently it needed either a Sony CD changer or else a microcontroller-based DIY project to enable aux-in. I took it apart and tried soldering cables directly to its disc drive daughter board, but was left with a lot of left over screws and no sound. I took some irrational satisfaction in torturing such an obstinate but of kit to death)

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

You can download a direct port of Dune II for Android for nowt... It lends itself well to tablets!

Cardiff did Nazi that coming: Hackers slap Trump, swastikas, Sharia law on e-sign

Re: An ill fated name

That billboard has been there since the late nineties.

Still, most of us here know the Reg subtitle writer has a volatile relationship with dried frog pills.

Don't make Aug 21 a blind date: Beware crap solar eclipse specs

Re: How nice.

Didn't Newton also stick a needle between his eyeball and eyelid?

We need a Jackass-style 'dont try this at home' notice.

Pinhole projection methods

There are also ways of projecting an image of the sun onto a sheet of white card.

Googling will give you instructions on the set-up.

As a bonus, you don't have to bend your neck up!

New iPhone details leak: Yes, Apple is still chasing Samsung

Re: Apple excels in iterative technical improvements, and marketing

You do know you can use generic multi-purpose mice with OSX, right? It does require you to purchase a mouse though, and the really covetable mice are expensive - but, in my opinion, totally worth it.

You can also reduce your carpel tunnel syndrome by varying your input methods - consider a mouse *and* graphics tablet, or touchpad, or trackball, or LeapMotion...

Re: AR

Much like the Google Night Sky app, but more so.

Re: Project Tango

That's fine Mark, don't buy it, or just don't use it if it happens to be incorporated into your next phone.

Personally, I'd get a lot of use out of being able to wave my phone around, massage the data in CAD, then pick up some CNC machined plywood from my local timber merchants. Perhaps it's the irregularly shaped walls of this old cottage I live in.

But hey, more power to you if you can wield the dividers, saws plains and chisel and create something beautiful.

Wave your phone over your next PCB project, and receive a custom 3D printed enclosure through your letter box the next day.

Even if you don't use it yourself, it might still benefit you indirectly - just as CAD helped to reduce the cost of cars and factories.

Re: $1400?

There was a great cartoon on a 1980's Beezer comic annual: a lad walking down the street with his fancy new Walkman, put out to see Richie Rich strolling along with a hi-fi speaker each side of his head, each suspended from a helicopter above him.

(It might not have been the Beezer, it might not have been Richie Rich)

Re: $1400?

People who have a spare $1,400 to spend on a phone are the same who have enough spare cash to buy wireless headphones, Lightning wired headphones or just a dongle for each one of their existing headphones.

It's the people who buy a $140 phone who are most likely to require a 3.5mm socket.

Re: Project Tango

Basically, I've been wanting to mess around with this 3D machine vision malarky since that MIT student got a MS Kinect connected to a PC with two days of its release.

Like a camera, the tech might really come into its own once it's available on a handheld - or at least portable - device.

Re: AR

Low latency machine vision (i.e object recognition etc) has applications beyond games. Engineers, architects, designers and tinkerers will get at least something out of it (just as they have from CAD which benefitted, like games, from GPUs. CAD, to my mind, allows ideas to escape the computer and exist in meatspace. AR may similarly. )

No doubt people will use AR as a way of selling stuff, too - try a jacket on virtually, capture your shirt size from your body, see what your kitchen looks like painted blue. It might prove to be these type of applications that gets AR onto popular handsets.

Project Tango

Project Tango. Currently pricey. RAM intense. Google hiring SoC engineers.

Apple ARkit currently power hungry. Apple has been hiring GPU engineers for some time.

Microsoft boast of custom silicon in their HoloLens.

I look forward to seeing the results of experiments in this field.

HP Inc reveals dockable, wearable VR workstation for the office

Re: In the UK ?

> Our weather is famous for its clemency and predictability...

Especially indoors! :)

Re: Well it does solve the cable issue

More than half the surface area of the machine is exposed to air, which is comparable to a standard laptop.

The machine is lifted away from the user's back by the rucksack's padding. Personally I get on well with rucksacks with a suspended mesh against my back, but grooved padding is another tried and true approach to rucksack design. Curiously, stomping up a mountain carrying a dozen kilos can make you a bit warm too, so it's far from a new design consideration.

Re: Chocolate bicycle.

Traditionally CAD wasn't mainstream, but in some sectors its very high price was still more than worth while for the savings it brought. The mainframes used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I don't have enough technical knowledge to judge if there is some way of not having to carry the PC around. Is there no wireless protocol (radio, visible light spectrum or whatever) that can allow a round trip of input from the users helmet to a workstation and back again with sufficiently low latency? We keep hearing of promising experiments with Li-Fi, and I would have assumed those high frequency market traders have funded the development of optical signal switching gear.

Microsoft Surface laptop: Is this your MacBook Air replacement?

Re: ... but will it

> get a laptop that isn't made* by microsoft. (*I don't know which chinese company actually makes them. Perhaps 'branded' would've been a better word)

Maybe 'designed' or 'commissioned' might be better words still. No doubt the actual factory will have had some input ("if you change the angle of this rib it'll be 2% faster with our machines") as it's daft not to listen to your contractors, but the design - the evaluation of compromises, what to put in, what to leave out - is Microsoft's. 'Branded' suggests merely its original meaning: marking a generic object (originally a cow) with your mark.

Re: Still in two minds about the ports..

> How long before USB-D...

The need for USB Type C was clear from the limitations of USB type A* and USB 3 - plug design, speed, ability to extend PCIe bus, power delivery. The specs of Type C should be enough for the next few years (and indeed, the applications I use haven't become radically more resource hungry over the last few years).

After then, who knows what the state of wireless power and data transmission might be?

* Yeah, yeah, I know Sony once USB type A to drive Thunderbolt peripherals - an external GPU for X series laptops. Aw, I kinda miss Weird Sony.

Re: Wot?

MS have also shown the OEMs the way with good screen resolutions, useful aspect ratios and really nice trackpads - in short, trying to the OEMs out of their bad habits. The strategy seems to be working, and every user benefits from the increased range and quality of laptops, including the Penguins.

Re: ... but will it

If you're not going to buy one but only hope to 'aquire' one, then your views mean naff all to Microsoft.

There's some damned good laptops now being sold installed with Linux and full driver support from mainstream brands - can't you just be happy?

Dirty carbon nanotubes offer telcos chance at secure quantum comms

Re: ARyl --> Contains a benzene ring

Presumably the range of the photon in FO cable doesn't depend on how that photon was generated.

To explain it reasonably well requires more room than the article can give it. Try here:

http://gva.noekeon.org/QCandSKD/QCandSKD-introduction.html

Sun of a b... Rising solar temp wrecks chances of finding ET in our system

Re: yep, we're interested in the water UNDER the ice

The tidal forces generate enough warmth to melt water, but do they crate points of heat that might cause interesting chemistry (like our seabed vents) to occur?

GPS III satellites and ground station projects get even later as costs gently spiral

Re: Do you have any idea how GPS works?

Yeah, those piggy-backed Search and Recuse payloads may have been what confused the article's author.

Indeed, after following the link in the article it was this Search and Rescue bit which caught my attention, and prompted some googling on my part.

Apple exits music player biz by killing iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle

Mea culpa

Oops! I stated the capacity of a MiniDisc above as being 700MB, when of course it was closer to 100MB. The playtime of 74 or 80 minutes was equivalent to a 700MB CD, but of course MiniDisc used ATRAC compression.

This means that the iPod held the equivalent of 50 Minidiscs. More than a sockful, that's a veritable shoebox.

Re: At the time, most PCs did not yet have USB 2

Hey DropBear!

64MB hey? That's... nearly an entire album's worth of music, enjoyed through whatever headset Nokia supplied you with! You groovy ursine cat, you!

Hehe, my first MP3 player was a matchbook-sized LG with 32MB... I took it back to the shop because it was next to useless!

Re: At the time, most PCs did not yet have USB 2

FireWire would have been ubiquitous had Steve Jobs not upped the licensing fee per port. This gave Intel cold feet, who were in a position to bring it to most PCs. A meeting between Intel and Jobs didn't go well (shocking,I know)

Sony computers had FireWire because:

- Sony made DV and miniDV camcorders with FireWire connections (i.LINK as they called it, because Sony execs didn't want to use a 'cooler sounding' name than Sony.)

- Vaio stood for Visual Audio Input Output

- The Vaio range was created by the Japanese Sony designer who created the PlayStation. He was a huge fan of Esslinger's work for Apple - note the grooves on the PlayStation. His team also used Macs, after he'd been exposed to them in the US.

Re: At the time, most PCs did not yet have USB 2

> It was the iTunes and marketing that made it a success. Anything else is Apple propaganda. It wasn't the only player to use an HDD to get round the high cost of flash (then).

For the love of God Mage, are you actually suggesting that the iPod offered nothing over that large, clunky piece of shit that Creative made (the one the size of a CD Walkman)? Seriously? The one with the ghastly UI. Really? Or have you got your dates confused?

Look, some of your past posts suggest that you've got your timeline of events out of order, but also that you are not a complete fool (even though you haven't gone back and checked your facts despite links being provided for you). So, your memory is a bit muddled, that's alright. Easy to fix: read up on stuff. Not now though, it's nearly pub time. Have a good weekend.

To be fair, I was pleasantly surprised at the choice available when I looked into it. Options are much wider than they were a couple of years back. I guess we have high capacity microSD cards to thank for it!

The Android based players (and phones) give the option to use a music player (UI) of your choice, and of course use their fine hardware for streaming too.

The advantage of a dedicated player (Android-based or otherwise) over a phone is that they have better physical controls.

The Clips are good. The iRivers were great - more features than an iPod - but a scroll wheel would have made them even better. Where the iPods do well is working well with a whole range of wired headphones with remote controls (volume, pause and track skip) from every reputable headphone vendor, available from every high street. There was also a time when iPod docks were near ubiquitous in friend's houses, too, when 3.5mm aux cables always went missing.

Still, were getting to the point where the sound quality if the player is irrelevant - the DAC and amp will be in the headphones, tuned to the physical drivers. Let Samsung spec the DAC, or Sennheiser? I'll take the latter, ta. Sony have donated their high quality Bluetooth audio protocol to Android. The player itself had been relegated to storage (or streaming client) and UI. Keep your phone tethered to your amplifier by a cable, or sit back on your sofa and stream to your Chromecast? Again, the latter.

Re: podcasts

It's a bit of give and take. The easy to use and desirable nature of the iPod gave Apple a base to negotiate with record companies and get iTunes going. The presence of iTunes was then an unique selling point of the iPod. Initially iTunes had DRM on music, but once Apple's hand was strong enough, Steve Jobs removed it.

Still, the iRiver Hxxx series of player/recorders had a USB Host socket (microUSB OTG), so content could be copied from one device to another without a computer. I suspect Apple would have had a hard time negotiating with the record companies if the iPod had such a feature (indeed, even with a computer, it was not straightforward to get music *off* an iPod. Apple could plausibly tell the record companies that people couldn't just visit each others homes and swap their whole music libraries).

Re: Oh no, we need something other than iPhone to prop us up

They probably can't be arsed to retool for Lightening-based iPods, to bring their vision to bear.

Side note: I was chatting to a landowner yesterday, who was thinking of getting into the taking money from rich people game by setting a 'glamping' site. He said that customers all demand wi-fi these days, even if they don't want power. Turns out that where once they would have filled up an iPod, these days they want Wi-fi to listen to music over Spotify.

I like my Sansa Clip players. Only issue is that they are small and black, thus easy to lose or leave in trouser pocket in washing machine. When camping, it's nice to have a FM radio, too, whilst leaving phone turned off (Airplane Mode tends to disable FM radio reception on those phones that have it. )

Oh, Android used to have an issue with the number of files it could index. (Archos made a 500GB Android player, and my mate filled it with tens of thousands of medium bitrate mono audio files he'd ripped from vinyl and recordings of 1960s pirate radio). This issue has probably been fixed now, and if you want the large capacity for fewer, high bit rate files you probably won't encounter it anyway.

The cheaper FiiO players use their own Linux variant, the pricier ones a custom Android. Reviews suggest that they play nice with Fat32 and exFAT SD cards.

Re: Rewriting history again, Like iPhone

Mage, you've written this stuff before, and you've been corrected before. With links and evidence. Please pause.

At the time of the iPod's release, solid state MP3 players were prohibitively expensive per MB, especially compared to Minidiscs (£1 per 700MB disc from Richer Sounds). These MP3 players were a clear proof of concept, but they could not be called a 'tested market' as you call it. It was clear to everyone (even us then Product Design students) that solid state would one day rule, but that time was not then (Sony had refined concepts dating back several years, of the hardware and of UIs on the device and host computer). We were also aware that IBM, prior to merging with Hitachi, had a micro hard disk (1" not the 1.6")- it was being touted in the trade press. It was a given that a HDD MP3 player would arrive at some point.

At the time, most PCs did not yet have USB 2, so there was no easy way to transfer music quickly. Those of us with Minidiscs (we were students, a key market demographic for such gizmos) used TOSLink to copy CDs. The graphic design students had Macs with FireWire ( for high resolution scanners, soundcards and MiniDV camcorders) which was plenty fast enough for music.

The iPod was released, and it was good. Not that we bought it - it was bloody expensive and only worked on Macs. However, it was a very well designed product. It charged and synced over a single cable, and whilst being comparable in size to a MiniDisc player it was far smaller than a sock full of two dozen Minidiscs. Whilst my Sharp MD722 had a big scroll wheel, it wasn't used for track selection (no need for a single album). It offered clear advantages to the user over what had gone before - capacity, size and user interface. That prior Creative Jukebox based on a laptop HDD and styled on a CD player was just horrible.

If course in time similar products emerged, usually using the same Toshiba HDD. I had the Creative Nomad Zen (poorly made, the 3.5mm jack soldered directly to the PCB), returned under warranty for an iRiver H320 (superb, more flexible than an iPod, could record line in and mic, could have used a scroll wheel for navigating big libraries though!). The Sony Music Vault - nice hardware but hampered by not being able to play MP3 players, only ATRAC ( this probably resulted from pressure from Sony's publishing wing, and indeed is probably why we aren't now discussing the Sony iPod - they had all the parts they needed from a technical perspective). Etc etc.

All the while, the cost of solid state memory was falling, as all people au fait with computers knew it would, and Apple could see their portable music lunch being eaten by mobile phones (the word 'convergence' had been bandied around Product Design circles since around the year 2000, probably best personified by the Palm-based Sony Clie PEG NX60, in contrast to Steve Jobs' 'Digital Hub' presentation), and Jobs was persuaded to explore an Apple Phone. Hehe, he didn't like having to present a 'Motorola ROKR with iTunes' on stage!

Oh, I repaired my iRiver by giving it a hard disk from a dead iPod, a straight swap - so what's this you're writing about ZIF connectors? A later generation, I assume?

The iPod was a very well thought out implementation of other people's technologies - but hey, a good implementation is important and a skill not to be underrated.

The ultimate full English breakfast – have your SAY

Re: Proper Full English

If you can't get proper tea to drink with your full English breakfast then engine degreaser makes an acceptable substitute. And vice versa.

Sadly, the best 'English' breakfasts are in Cardiff at Tuck-Ins. They used to open at 3am to serve bin-men and taxi drivers, and the occasional international rugby team after a post-match drinking session. You could feel your arteries fur over as you ate, the bacon was that good.

Great. Now I've got Procol Harem's A Whiter Shade of Pale in my head, set to images of eggs being fried in grease.

Re: Nobody has mentioned toast....

It's impossible to find a good breakfast in the posh part of Bristol... all the eateries keep finding new ways of faffing them up. There was a very good greasy spoon Clifton before it moved down to the city centre, then it closed down completely - its name escapes me.

Re: Scrambled eggs

Why not both? :)

Re: Proper Full English

I'm with TheBishop all the way here. If someone put a touch of cheese and butter into the baked beans during cooking I wouldn't object, though.

Re: Runny eggs ?

Runny yolk, yes please. Runny white, no thanks - unless I'm in France eating a galette crepe complete, in which case I 'do as the Romans'.

Inside the ongoing fight to stamp out govt-grade Android spyware

How does the marketplace for bug bounties work? Does the NSA outbid Google, for example? Or do criminals pay better? Are these zero-day vulns still stumbled upon by individuals, or do they require teams of skilled and motivated folk?

Just idle curiosity on my part. I'm not a security researcher. I imagine a paycheck from Google or GCHQ would be less hassle to receive than some crypto currency from Uncle Tony. What price a Google night's sleep? :)