* Posts by Max Watson

17 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jul 2007

Bad news for Tencent: Chinese companies steer employees away from Weixin or WeChat

Max Watson

Wait what? Weixin is just WeChat's Chinese name. They're the same app.

Boffins bash Google Translate for sexism

Max Watson

Chinese isn't gender-neutral

When written, Mandarin does differentiate between genders (even though when spoken, there's no differentiation because the pronunciation is the same). Something's not right with this research or this article.

Max Watson

Re: gender-neutral languages

What's worse about this is that Chinese doesn't have gender-neutral pronouns. When spoken, there's no differentiation between He, She and They/It - but when written, the characters used are different for each. That means that whatever research they did on this was either based on a false premise or not explained correctly.

Spies still super upset they can't get at your encrypted comms data

Max Watson

How about just get better at police work

That was fast... unlike old iPhones: Apple sued for slowing down mobes

Max Watson

Re: "To provide a better experience to customers"

You're basing this on observations not facts. The cpu throttling is proven to only relate to battery demand performance

Max Watson

Re: Not smart

False, the cpu throttling is not based on age at all.

Max Watson

There are many reasons the battery is not easy replace. Creating a user serviceable battery compartment wastes valuable space inside the unit. The battery itself is usually a custom shape for greater efficiency. And warranties are harder to accidentally void by not being able to easily swap the battery with a non-standard replacement

Max Watson

Re: Probably on a sliding scale

That's not how this works. The throttling is purely based on the battery ability to provide peak voltage demands.

Max Watson

Re: That probably explains..

A bigger battery won't overcome the technical degradation of lithium ion batteries. Also no one wants a heavier phone than needed

Max Watson

Re: "To provide a better experience to customers"

@erikj No it wouldn't because the throttling is only when the battery peak voltage is diminished

HP excessive packaging world record put to the test

Max Watson
FAIL

Dabs.com

Dabs.com have a terrible habit of putting smaller boxes in really large oversized boxes. It's mainly annoying for me because I have to collect all my packages from across campus and carrying a box suitable for carrying a flat pack garden shed isn't exactly easy.

McAfee false-positive glitch fells PCs worldwide

Max Watson

@N2

I wasn't suggesting a restore would remove a virus. Just undo the modifications to the system files that McAfee has done so you can boot your system properly again.

Max Watson
Boffin

System Rollback

Windows PCs should be able to perform a System Restore via booting from a Windows install CD. This should undo the actions of the anti-virus program and may even reverse updates to the virus definitions.

ICO queries Heathrow T5's huge fingerprint scam scan

Max Watson

Fingerprints

Fingerprints are not that big of a deal. As long as they keep to within the data protection act, then the data will only be held for a short while. I would much rather my fingerprint was taken than a photograph.

Why you should care that Jimmy Wales ignores reality

Max Watson
Thumb Down

Re:Citizendium?

Not really because it lacks content. It is going about things the hard way - and while it does produce some good content - it'll be forever behind other sites doing similar activities unless they change their article creation strategy.

Et tu, Gmail? Simple hack defeats last barrier to decades-old attack

Max Watson
Thumb Up

Fixed

Google seems to be redirecting all their services to https addresses now.

Net radio saved from certain death

Max Watson

Streamripping

As long as people have the ability to record audio going through their PC soundcard, it will be impossible to prevent streamripping. Adding DRM doesn't stop the ability to run a sound recording application to record the track as it plays back. This is why I dislike DRM, because it just prevents one aspect of illegally sharing and distributing music and video - and yet so much effort and money is put into running and supporting it. Dum dum.