Posts by gskr

HP bows to pressure, reinstates free monthly ink plan... for existing customers

Re: Alternatives?

Yea - Colour laser printers that take cheap generic toner - win win win.

Brother are one of the few laser printer brands left that still accept cheap generic toner cartridges

I've got a Dell C1760NW - which has served our household well for the last 4 or 5 years, and still going strong (although Dell no longer make printers). Nice and compact too (for a colour laser) Running costs are minuscule - I can get a full set of compatible toner cartridges for about £15 from amazon.

Still if you only ever print a few pages a month getting that for free for the lifetime of the printer is pretty sweet too I guess - although a cheap HP inkjet's lifetime is unlikely to be more than a couple of years based on my previous experience with cheap inkjets (never again)

Rental electric scooters to clutter UK street scenes after Department of Transport gives year-long trial the thumbs-up

Re: Rental sucks.

Yeah I agree - we hired a couple in Adelaide last year, quite fun as a tourist - (but the geofence area was pretty small, and took ages to get the app setup)

But rental ones are NOT going to be useful for commuters/shoppers in general - they'll only be in the city centres (so wont help with the first bit of the supposed last-mile leg from house to tram/train station), and the end bit/city centre bit is usually not a problem for commuters/shoppers on foot.

Allowing privately owned ones on the other hand (where you can go directly from your house to the train station) might well encourage people to switch from cars to public transport - and I think that's what's needed if you're serious about reducing car use.

One does not simply repurpose an entire internet constellation for sat-nav, but UK might have a go anyway

"the possibility that the government has considered this after consulting experts in the field and may have ideas beyond the obvious"

experts?

Haven't the British public had enough of experts?

So therefore our great bald headed bespectacled leader and his floppy haired puppet have patriotically started purging the civil service of those overrated doomsayer "experts", to be replaced with proper flag waving yes-men - sorry I mean true patriots of course. Advisers who will happily endorse whatever ideas our leadership propose.

I mean when even Theresa May publicly calls the government out on this (re David Frost's appointment as security adviser) its not even trying to be subtle.

Still will of the people and all that

Rule Britannia!

If Fairphone can support a 5-year-old handset, the other vendors could too. Right?

Re: Consumers aren’t being served by Android

I had (still have) a G4 too, although its been retired a long time ago. The mainboard had been replaced at somepoint due to the bootloop issue. Was getting fed up with the lack of software updates, but that wasn't what caused me to retire it.

I tried to replace the battery twice, but twice the "genuine" LG batteries turned out to be some knockoff that had less capacity than the years-old original. Gave up and bought a Honor View 10 about 2 years ago (which has recently been updated to Android 10 - I'll probably hold onto it for another year at least I hope).

I recently pulled out the old G4 out the drawer to set up as a webcam for my PC, (using DroidCam) as theres no way I'm paying stupid money for a cheap-knockoff webcam due to current shortages when I have a way better one for "free" already in my old G4!

HTC breaks with tradition to push out 2 phones someone might actually want to buy

Yeah I had an original HTC Desire - was a very popular phone back then.

But updates.... NOPE

Refuse to buy a phone from a manufacturer that doesn't support them. I'm looking at you too LG

Despite the Trump ban I've found Huawei/Honor to be loads better at updating their phones.

Might look at the pixel 4a for my next phone, but its definitely price dependant... I really don't want to spend more than about £350

Mirror mirror on the wall, why will my mouse not work at all?

Re: Right click

Oh Time computers, now there's a company I DO NOT miss.... I had a fairly expensive laptop from them - always grieved me that they wouldn't give you a proper windows CD - had to pay for the "recovery" CD, because they'd put some borked version of windows on (that I think prevented you from using non-approved drivers or something, which of course they never updated) and they'd messed with the disk partitions in such a way as to add a hidden recovery partition.

When I had to went to reinstall windows from a separately sourced windows CD - that'd corrupt the Master Boot Record somehow, and the only way to sort that was to use the recovery CD to "fix" the MBR. (but after that was able to at run my clean copy of windows). Of course I had to do several windows installs followed by MBR fixes with the recovery CD over the lifetime of that machine, cursing Time every time... glad they went bust!

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

Yes - very simple. Dont buy HP (or any of the other manufacturers that DRM the print cartridges)

The headline price might be cheaper, but the long term price most certainly is not!

I have a cheap compact Dell colour laser printer (C1760nw) that has been running fine for the last 4 years. A full set of compatible toners is about £20.

In the 4 years I've had to replace the colour toner cartridges once, and the black ones twice. Black cartridges do ~2000 pages (and colour ~1400)

Unfortunately Dell no longer make printers. However there are other manufacturers that also don't pull this crap. Brother is probably the top current recommendation!

Never going back to an inkjet (DRM or not) - I really dont miss ceased print heads endless cleaning, and short lasting cartridges. If I need a photo quality print I'll just order an online print, but for everything else the laser is more than up to the task.

Dot-com price rises on their way over the next four years: ICANN approves Verisign contract, walks off with $20m

ICANN needs to be brought under the control of an internationally accountable body - eg the WTO. Its current staff/directors all need to be shown the door - ideally a door with bars on it due to whats just a fancy form of theft - together with all their co-conspiritors - ie the monopoly domain contract winners, and all the US govt officials who've taken payoffs from the whole shady racket.

Now how do we the "little people" do that?

Remember the Dutch kid who stuck his finger in a dam to save the village? Here's the IT equivalent

You'd hope he did! Losing a good admin to something thats a pure accident that was very difficult to foresee would be a very poor outcome.

I imagine a change of procedures (eg all critical switches within trolley-height covered in caps) should follow, but that's it

US customers kick up class-action stink over Epson's kyboshing of third-party ink

Moved away from inkjet printers a couple of years ago, and got a cheapish dell colour laser printer, that is compatible with cheap non-OEM toner.

Never looked back!

No more clogged print heads, 3rd-party toner is dirt cheap, and cartridges last ages. If I need a high quality photo print I'll just go to boots or something, but for everything else it works perfectly.

Baby alert! Japan Air lets passengers book seats far away from screaming abdabs

Re: Could we have an oversized Marker

Having experienced that nightmare on a 13hr flight back from down under I'm all in favour of that.

I feel that you should be able to install a thin metal divider on the armrest at least to prevent a portly neighbour's arm overhanging your side of the armrest. If said neighbour has to be placed in the aisle seat so there is some space they can overlap to physically fit in, so be it.

Not so easy to make a quick getaway when it takes 3 hours to juice up your motor, eh Brits?

Re: Charging your car

Literally?

I think you mean Virtually

Phisherman's blues: Bogus Dell support rep extradited from Kenya, admits he conned US colleges out of $900,000

Maybe we should just set up some sort of fund to compensate good causes like universities and charities who might be conned (by virtue of a stupid employee)

Money for the fund could come from a tax on the stupid. To ensure the stupid make regular payments we just need TV adverts promising life-changing sums of money - all they need to do is buy a ticket for a chance to win. Make it extra easy to play - with tickets prominently on sale at every corner shop. Make sure the odds of winning are only published in small print, and kept in boring numerical form (as opposed to easily understood statistics like for example 1/4 of the chance of being struck by lightning)

... oh wait we already have that...

Fantastic Mr Fox? Not when he sh*ts on your lawn, kids' trampoline and your soul

OK... since no ones said it yet

I see loads and loads of answers ranging from Lion Poo to ED209s.

What no-one seems to have suggested yet is confiscating your daughters' speakers, and then go and apologize profusely to your neighbours and ask them to please stop feeding the foxes.

Go-on, man up....

When you play the game of Big Spendy Thrones, nobody wins – your crap chair just goes missing

Re: Our old boss

Clearly someone had been reading too much Roald Dahl

Oz cops investigating screams of 'why don't you die?' find bloke in battle with spider

Redbacks

I'd been away from Australia too long....

Was there last year helping to clear out my Dad's house. Taking apart an old BBQ (with the thoughts of taking it to the charity shop) and a large Redback drops out just where my hands were and starts proceeding slowly towards the flowerbed. At this point I remembered where I was - too long in good old Blighty had clearly eroded my childhood instilled caution against all things deadly.

We were much more careful with the other stuff after that - a few more redbacks were found (and pressure washed away) - but no bites fortunately.

I hope the new owner is enjoying their new BBQ - the only redbacks left now should be the ones that are really good at hiding!

Samsung Galaxy A9: Mid-range bruiser that takes the fight to Huawei

Its a nice looking phone, and if it were a bit cheaper I'd consider one.

But at £549 I'd expect a 8-series Snapdragon or equivalent. If Oneplus can do it then so can you Samsung.

I still consider phones to fit broadly in the following price ranges, despite certain manufacturers attempts to shift our expectations towards spending more (Apple/Samsung chiefly, but others too...)

£0-100. Too crap to bother.

£100 - £150 Low-end. Bad camera, not much memory, and low end processor, but can still be usable

£150 - £300 Mid-range. Still fairly bad camera, but probably good enough specs in general for day to day.

£300 - £450 High-ish end. Probably a good processor, and fairly decent camera. Flagship-enough for most.

£450 - £600 Flagship. Should have a top-end processor, very good camera, and good everything really.

£600+ Overpriced.

Convenient switch hides an inconvenient truth

Re: And as any fule kno ...

I think the point was - tripping the breaker didn't trigger the shutdown.

It was only later when that circuit was completed (ie by turning on the projector) that the "red button" shutdown was triggered.

I wish this was clearer in the article - I've had to turn to the comments to educate myself (and I always do for a "On Call" / "Who Me" -> often find just as good if not better stories buried amongst them!

LG G7 ThinkQ: Ropey AI, but a feast for sore eyes and ears

Re: LG G7 ThinQ: Raising a StinQ.

Just don't expect more than 1 android version update (about a year after it appears on a pixel phone)

Automated payment machines do NOT work the same all over the world – as I found out

Re: Cash, always

False. Don't use any old card, but there are specialist cards (such as the Halifax Clarity) that give you a 0% exchange rate fee on foreign spending, and is probably the cheapest way of spending your money abroad - as a money exchange shop will always charge an exchange rate fee when you buy foreign currency.

Look at MoneySavingExpert!

Schadenfreude for UK mobile networks over the tumult at Carphone

Bought my most recent phone from CW (an Honor View 10) - but admittedly via their online tentacle rather than a physical shop. Why CW - well in this case simply as they were the cheapest!

It will be a sad day when the high street is nothing but coffee shops and charity shops. CW are doing as well as can be expected, but its a cutthroat business!

Honor bound: Can Huawei's self-cannibalisation save the phone biz?

Picked up the larger Honor view 10 when it was on sale for £339 - almost the same internals as this one (same chipset and 128Gb storage, but has 6Gb RAM and MicroSD support, and no stupid notch)

Very impressed indeed, and still very happy with the purchase even having not waited for the Honor 10 (or Nokia 7+, which I was also considering).

This new Honor 10 seems to slightly undercut the current price of the View10, is styled differently, but chipset/camera wise is the same, so is a great alternative + has a notch, shiny back and under-screen sensor if you're into those things!

I can see these selling very well indeed!

UK worker who sold customers' data to nuisance callers must cough up £1k

usually I just put the phone down straight away.

Sometimes I get them to repeat the company name and then report them to the TPS (yes my phone is registered!)- depends on my mood.

Blighty flogs Qatar a bunch of missiles and Typhoon fighter jets

Re: Shipbuilding?

In any war the only winners are the weapons merchants...

The only reason for weapons merchants to exist is war, or the potential for one....

BAE...

Hey Qatar... I heard that Saudi Arabia said yo mamma is so fat.... AND I heard they're buying shiny weapons...

Hey Saudi Arabia... I heard that Qatar said...

Hey Shareholders... ££££££

You mean Google updated its smartwatch OS and nobody noticed?

I find my Sony Smartwatch 3 very useful!

It replaced a Moto 360 (gen1) when that ones battery capacity became too dire.

The SW3 has an always on (transflexive LCD) Screen, and easily lasts 2 full days on a charge. Charging is very easy as it has a micro-USB connector, and will fully charge in under an hour. Would love an equivalent watch with Android Wear 2.0 (and NFC for android pay), but unwilling to pay mega-bucks for it, especially as the built in battery pretty much consigns any smartwatch to only a few years life, no matter how well it still works (or not).

So I'd buy again if I can find the above (at a decent price), or possibly more if it retains all that + a replaceable battery. Who's going to step up and make it for me?

Tell the public how much our tram tickets cost? Are you mad?

Additional information - there are a bunch of card readers at all the tram stops that a sensible person might assume are part of some sort of oyster card equivalent system.

In actual fact the company that was tasked to deliver the scheme was sacked by TFGM after wasting several years and a huge amount of money. Now they are kindof up and running using a very crippled scheme. The cards (which you have to apply for and then have posted to you) can only be preloaded with individual (bus) tickets / passes (bus or tram) bought in advance (that are equivalent to the range you might be able to buy from a bus driver) There is no means of just putting money onto the card and having it work out and deduct the cost of your travel automatically - no sir- because despite the fact London has managed to do just that for over 14 years its beyond the wit of the those in charge of Manchester's public transport. No single tickets can be used for multi-mode transport. Many different bus companies operate different routes, and sell their own day/week passes (that cant be used on each other, or the tram). The few multi-mode passes available are too expensive to be worthwhile for most people, and some of them are only available from travelshops (of which there are a grand total of 2 in Manchester) To load individual bus tickets you need to go to a newsagent or a Travelshop.

There's a whole bunch of other craziness around this scheme, the extent of which makes it a massive waste of time for post people. Needless to say its a disaster in its current form. Read https://startupsventurecapital.com/a-beginners-guide-to-using-my-get-me-there-manchester-s-hilarious-attempt-at-reinventing-london-s-70a6d1dde246

So does it surprise me a question as simple as "What does it cost for a tram ticket" is too hard for TFGM - unfortunately... no

Software update turned my display and mouse upside-down, says user

Re: Now it can be told...

Ah yes the classics. Once I once redirected a colleague's firefox shortcuts to a batch file that shut down the computer after 5 minutes. Was hilarious watching him run virus scanners etc, until I finally owned up :)

UK third worst in Europe for fibre-to-the-premises – report

For the last 5 years the local exchange has been fibre, enabled but the cabinet has not.

For about the last 2 years the openreach checker has been saying "Your area is currently in our plans to be upgraded with Fibre to the Premises (FTTP), however we follow a different design and build process for FTTP so you won't see updates at each stage. When you are able to place orders you will see the Accepting Orders message. In some instances our FTTP plans change. If this happens you will move though the journey stages normally."

Very helpful BT, no time estimate, no means of obtaining a time estimate, just a choice of ADSL2+ or nothing here in the centre of Manchester, with a vague promise of something at some indeterminate point in the future, that might never happen.

Hi Facebook, Google, we think we might tax your ads instead – lots of love, Europe x

Free Trade works when there is a level playing field.

In Europe a company can base itself where there are the lowest taxes, and is not further taxed by selling to other european countries (a flaw in the single market).

The same flaw applies when there are free trade agreements that cross to other countries that do not account for the tax regimes properly.

Now with physical goods you (normally) apply import tarrifs/custom charges at the border to account for the differences in tax regimes, and allow domestic players to compete fairly with international players that have lower costs.

Surely the way to fix this is to apply an "import tax" to digital goods sold by non-domestic companies (regardless of the domain name they put in their website, with this tax variable depending upon the tax regime of the parent company's country) If they choose to base a company domestically that's fine, but profits can only be shifted overseas by paying a profit transfer tax equivalent to corporation tax. Obviously any purchases the domestic company makes from the parent need to be taxed at the import tax too to prevent avoidance of this tax. (Eg "Brand licensing", "loan interest", "coffee beans")

So the likes of google have the choice

1) Have a UK subsidiary. Pay only domestic taxes, but ANYTHING they transfer to the parent company is taxed.

2) Be based internationally. An import tax applies to all sales, digital or not. This tax should level the playing field.

Fixing low tax bases within the European single market is a separate issue. Really its a flaw in the whole single market concept, so unless you force corporation tax to be normalised you'll need some sort of compensation tax paid to every other country in the single market that you do business (presumably based on the percentage of business done in that country * the corporation tax difference in that country)

OK realise thats not all that simple, but surely cleverer economic minds than mine can sort something!

Microsoft extends free Windows 10 S to Win 10 Pro upgrade offer

Never understood why they'd try Win 10 S on a high-end computer like the Surface - its just a really poor fit.

(Sensible) people don't spend a grand on a computer to be limited to a few curated apps and light web surfing (on Edge only).

They should be giving it away free to computer manufacturers building low-end (sub £200) computers that compete more in the chromebook price range, as surely thats its only reason for existing? I imagine that in that market it might be able to shave a bit off the cost of the computer, whilst doing all that was asked of it, driving traffic to bing and the windows store + providing an upgrade option to those who wanted more. In the high-end market though... NO!

iPhone lawyers literally compare Apples with Pears in trademark war

Gah.

Apple lawyers - Like regular lawyers, they just don't bother to shave off the pointy beard or hide the horns

Still I don't need any more incentives to avoid their products now - the products themselves are unappealing enough

I've got a 2013 Macbook Air - which at the time compared quite favourably in spec, quality and price with the equivalent Windows ultrabook-type laptops.

Now in 2017 Apple are selling a (more expensive), but more or less unchanged model (apart from a newer processor). Its still got the same RAM, storage and low res screen.

However that's still the most appealing laptop they sell, as all the others are more expensive and lose all the usefulness of things like SD card slots, regular USB ports and magsafe chargers.

The iPhone has no headphone port

The Mac Pro is hugely expensive, under-powered and unexpandable.

Bad Apple.

TVs are now tablet computers without a touchscreen

I've got a 50" Panasonic Plasma TV (TX-P50GT50) that cost £800 in 2013, and is still under warranty (just)

Fully intend to keep it for years to come assuming it keeps going, and no reason it won't.

As a late Panasonic plasma it does a fantastic picture, 3D, and the netflix and iPlayer apps still work fine. Updates stopped pretty much straight after I bought it, but its still doing its job so who cares.

I just want a great screen - got a chromecast and PS3 for supplying other smart content, and those are easily replaced.

Hate the idea of Android TV. That will be slow to start up, and will stop getting updated within a year, and then be vulnerable to the latest android exploits.

Microsoft's in-store Android looks desperate but can Google stop it?

This effort seems doomed to fail before its even started.

So If Microsoft has given up on running its own store, and accepted that most developers are likely only going to develop Android and iOS apps then why not just revive project Astoria, and pump out some more WM10 phones?

WM10 is a great OS, however its lacking phones and Apps. Project Astoria solves the app problem (as it allows android apps to run on WM10 without modification). Add a few nice phones and you're in business, running all Microsoft's services and apps naively to boot.

UK's 'homebrew firmware' Chinooks set to be usable a mere 16 years late

Re: Of all time?

Surely the badge of "most incompetent procurement of all time" belongs to the Nimrod MRA4

£3.8 Billion straight down the toilet, when it was cancelled in 2010, at which point the project was 7 years late, and 789M over budget - and all that was left to show was some scrap metal

Palmtop nostalgia is tinny music to my elephantine ears

Although headphones don't interest me, I do have other tech vices. Bought a 1st gen Moto 360 smartwatch, and found it great. However after 2 years the battery had degraded from providing maybe a day and a half of use, down to dead before leaving the office. Apart from the battery it was still working fine, and fulfilling its original purpose, but the battery is kind of important!

iFixit guide to replacing the battery made it look nigh-on impossible for fat-fingered me.

Saw a Sony Smartwatch3 going for £70 in Currys, so just bought that instead!

Now I find its not going to be updated to Android Wear 2.0, (which is a shame as the built in NFC would have made it a prime candidate for android pay)

So do I buy an NFC/Android wear 2.0 compatible watch (of which the only one is the new LG watch sport) for £350 - no way, but doesn't stop me wanting it...

How Rogue One's Imperial stormtroopers SAVED Star Wars and restored order

Loved it

Yes!! It felt like a proper star wars film.

Not just a bratty kid as the main character (as in Ep1) or villain (as in Ep7) to sell merchandise to 12 year olds.

I actually thought the Peter Cushing CGI was pretty good, certainly not completely perfect, but close enough to not distract from the film. Carrie Fisher however was awful - so blatantly CGI I'm surprised they bothered. I appreciate she didn't get much screen time, so maybe didn't warrant the effort, but c-mon - way brighter than her surroundings, face was much rounder than real life (at time of EP4). Couldn't they have just got a similar-ish looking actress to wear a wig, and take the shot from behind, so her face wasn't in focus? It'd have worked just as well without putting that stain on an otherwise fantastic movie.

Despite that, thoroughly enjoyed it. Its a definite must-see for any fan

White House report cautiously optimistic about job-killing AI

Re: Anothe aspect

@Bob - I think that's exactly what future governments are going to have to tackle.

For "Fun" I've done a bit of simple arithmetic. NB there's a lot of variables left out!

Suppose we have a company "Acme Products" (for simplicity a fully domestic company that unlike amazon etc pays proper corporation tax and performs in house manufacturing, distribution and retail sales of its widgets). Lets say that it currently employs 10,000 people: 1000 back-office employees (ave £25k salary), 1000 involved in the manufacturing arm (ave £25k salary), 100 in distribution (ave £25k salary), and the rest (7900) in retail (ave £15k salary). Total wage bill = 171M (lets ignore heating, NI, training, uniforms etc for now)

Now lets say the company brings in £500M in widget sales each year (excl VAT), and has additional costs of £229M in terms of raw materials, rent for retail units, electricity for manufacturing etc - so makes £100M a year profit.

The company pays 20% of this profit as corporation tax (= £20M) and its employees pay ~30% of their wages as tax = £50M, so a total of £70M goes to the government as tax.

Now lets suppose the in the future it is able to automate the majority of its manufacturing, distribution and retail operations. So distribution goes to 10 (drone truck watchers), Retail to 790 (store robot supervisors) and manufacturing to 100 (factory robot supervisors). Lets say they incur no addition costs for this. So its just the wage bill that changes, to just £34.6M.

So now the company makes £236.4M profit per year = £47.28M corporation tax & the wages make just £10.38M tax for the government. ie, £57.66M total, £12.34M less than the old regime.

But its worse than that of course, because those 8100 unemployed people (who cant be retained as robot supervisors, or aren't needed anyway) now need lets say £10k each unemployment benefits = 81 M. Clearly the government cant afford this, as its now £12.34M worse off!

So in the simplest terms we'd need to increase the corporation tax to cover that £93.34M shortfall = an approx 40% increase in corporation tax to a total of 60%

Is that a solution... not really - just a starting point. I mean are people still going to be able to afford to buy widgets when so many people are now just barely getting by. The government needs new ways to prevent all the wealth ending up in a few pockets, or the entire economy is going to eventually stagnate and die.

Facebook pays, er, nope, gets £11m credit from UK taxman HMRC...

What you need is a "Money Leaving the country" tax.

If the profits stay in the UK then they can be taxed at the existing corporation tax rate.

Any money that leaves the country that goes to another company in the corporate structure (however that might be - "brand licencing", "coffee beans purchase" or however the company chooses to dress it is taxed at the same rate. Obviously make it Illegal to avoid this tax by moving the money through a 3rd party or something.

If they try to avoid this by not having a taxable UK company - then just set a rule that they are forced to above a certain turnover or percentage of their global sales - even if that's just a virtual sales and marketing office - or pay a hefty export tax, that happens to be the same as the same as the corporation tax (on top of VAT of course)

Not saying its quite as simple as that, or there's no flaws that need working out - but it'd be a good start!

Good God, we've found a Google thing we like – the Pixel iPhone killer

Nice phone, but the design isn't exactly thrilling, and its WAY too expensive.

The HTC 10, Moto Z, LG G5, Samsung Galaxy S7, and OnePlus 3 are all flagship phones at significantly less money. (Especially the OnePlus 3)

Are timely software updates really worth the (large) price premium when sites like XDA developers exist if you care that much?

Now you can tailor Swift – Apple open-sources the whole shebang

tailor Swift?

Oh dear...

You win bad title pun of the week - congratulations!

Amazon's new drones powered by Jeremy Clarkson's sarcasm

I forsee some issues...

Lets see one of those land on my apartment balcony (having to fly under the balcony above, and then drop vertically in a small area that the giant drone may or may not fit in (bit hard to judge from that video), whilst avoiding the furniture and plants. Then I'll believe its a viable service...

New Nexus 5X, 6P smarties: Google draws a line in the sand

Nice, but not worth it

Nice phones (especially the 6P) - although its just a bit too big for me.

The 5X would be a great phone were it not for some inexplicable shortcomings:

1) No QI charging

2) 16Gb/32 Gb (not expandable) storage options - come on its late 2015! good reception is not universal + data plans are not unlimited (mostly), so dont give me that everything in the cloud nonsense

3) 2Gb RAM. Most higher end phones come with at least 3GB now. I know it runs fine now with 2GB, but what about in 2 years time (afterall one of the main draws of a nexus is the long update window)

My 3 year old Nexus 4 has the same 16Gb ROM/2Gb RAM as the base 2015 5X (+ wireless charging) Doesn't seem a worthy upgrade to me!

Price: - 5X 32Gb (only one I'd consider) is £350 from some retailers.

In the same price range:

A new 32GB galaxy S6 can be had for around the same money. (And if you want to spend more you can get a bigger capacity one too)

A 32GB LG G4 can be had for around £300 new. That has expandable storage.

Both of those phones have better specs (and wireless charging - although with the G4 you need a replacement case) Decided the much better hardware in the G4 was a worthy tradeoff for having to wait slightly longer for software updates.

Hands on with Google's Nexus 5X, 6P Android Marshmallow mobes

What to do...

Hm, Not exactly thrilling.

Still don't have a sure-fire replacement for the trusty nexus4

6P = too big (as was last years nexus). Quite expensive

5X = hobbled. Why only 2GB ram & 16Gb late 2015? thats the same as my 3yr old Nexus4!! Also loses the handly wireless charging.

The competition:

Sony: Small, but expensive & slow updates (& the z5 compact has only 2Gb ram)

Honor: Cheap, but unlikely to ever see an update (& has the rubbishy EmotionUI)

Samsung: Powerful, but expensive, crappy UI, slow updates, rubbish battery

LG: Too big, questionable battery

HTC: Expensive

Motorola: Probably the best of a bad bunch (decent price, gets quick updates, good battery), but the cheaper X Play isn't very powerful, and the X Style is too big!

Is it too much to ask for a reasonably sized, reasonably priced, reasonably powerful handset that lasts a full day and gets timely updates?

Airbus promises Wi-Fi – yay – and 3D movies (meh) in new A330

As it's personal screens, and a fixed angle I would have thought this is the perfect case for an autosterioscopic screen (glasses free). But they'll probably cheap out and go for "passive" 3d screens (with cheap cinema type glasses)

Space station 'nauts will use URINE-FUELLED ESPRESSO MACHINE

Branding fail

Was I the only one who saw the proposed name of this contraption (ISSpresso) and mentally add a "P" to the start?

Feds crack down harder on 'lasing'. Yep, aircraft laser zapping... Really

How about this plane?

Get the YAL-1 Airborne Laser test bed back in the air.... and then adopt a return fire policy :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

Ho, ho, HOLY CR*P, ebuyer! Etailer rates staff on returns REJECTED

No problem with ebuyer returns personally, had a motherboard that went bad after about 10 months, contacted them and explained what I'd tested, they took it back, saying they would test it themselves, and a few days later confirmed faulty and sent me a slightly higher model replacement, as they had no stock of the original. That was a few years ago mind!

Samsung's squillionaire supremo scuttles siblings' shares snatch

Didn't even read the article - but had to post a kudos for the alliteration overload in the title.

Google puts Nexus 4 back on sale, sells out pronto

Managed to snag a 16Gb one last night @5:10. 1 - 2 weeks away it says - just hoping before Christmas!

The un-expandable memory is a slight downer - but I figure I can scrape by with 16Gb, and everything else about it is awesome. The killer feature though is that its a pure google phone (sim free) so will get all the future updates from google. Any other android handset has a limited lifespan (without resorting to custom ROMs of course)

Brit retailers tell Amazon and Google to pay their taxes

As I see it one of the common tax avoidance techniques works like:

Company A is based in the UK - and has a parent (company B) in Luxembourg or something.

Money that would normally remain in company' A's accounts as profits is transferred to company B as a "brand licensing fee" or something - so appears as a cost on company A's accounts.

Because its that money that's transferred from A to B that you are missing the tax on that's where you need to focus the reforms.

Introduce a new tax that applies whenever a company pays a parent company (or another company owned by the parent) that is outside the country of company A, and not covered by another form of tax (eg import duty on physical goods bought from a parent company would make it ineligible for this). Tax is 27% (ie same as corporation tax). Add some checks so that company B isn't doing something like charging £1M per cardboard box that company A buys. Problem solved.