Posts by sharkyblunt

OK, Google: Why does Chromecast clobber Wi-Fi connections?

My wife has been on at me for weeks to phone up Virgin and complain because our SuperHub keeps borking, dropping the 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSIDs about once a day and only works again after a reboot. I was too busy / lazy to do so. Could it be that my expert decision not to blame Virgin was in fact an inspired one and it's our two Chromecasts that are at fault?

What is this bullsh*t, Google? Nexus phones starved of security fixes after just three years

Lineage OS FTW

As others have said, two year planned obsolescence from a consumer device worth hundreds of pounds is obscene. For tech savvy people there's always the option of doing an unlock and Lineage OS install, which gets monthly security updates well pas the stock ROM's demise.

In my case I bought a Xiaomi handset at half the cost of an iPhone or Pixel and replaced the stock ROM as soon as my boot-loader unlock code came through. The initial installation process is definitely not consumer friendly, and there were teething problems on some of the weekly builds, but now it's done I've basically got a flagship spec phone and a near-stock Google ROM with the latest patching for half the price.

Caption this: WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Edward Snowden finds North Korea's efforts to catch up with the NSA's surveillance capabilities surprisingly easy to uncover.

Google bugle sounds patch release for Android Stagefright 2.0

Android Patching

I have to say, having recently flashed CM 12.1 nightlies on my phone, I'm pleasantly surprised at how quickly CyanogenMod roll out Android patches posted to AOSP. I'd have been waiting 6 months if I'd relied upon my manufacturer and carrier to roll out the latest O/S and security patches.

Google seriously needs to examine cutting out the manufacturers and carriers in its patch regime if it wants to stay ahead of iOS. If I was Apple I'd be ploughing research money into finding Android flaws, knowing that the bulk of Android users are powerless to patch against them.

Windows XP beats 8.1 in December market share stats

Windows XP - tip of the (non-websurfing) iceberg

Presumably these stats way under-call the amount of XP workstations out there too. I went for a hospital appointment recently and saw XP terminals all over the placfe, which presumably don't surf the web and therefore don't show up in these stats, The same goes for the number of XP based EPOS terminals and even cash points you still see around the place.