Posts by Sparks_

America's anti-hacking laws are so loose, even Donald Trump Jr broke them. So, what do we do about it?

Spell-check

Gotta wonder why Junior's spell-check defaulted to "bully" and not "fully". Something in his messaging history...perhaps his ex or daddy might have an answer?

YouTuber cements head inside microwave oven

Re: I have always thought...

Can't make a call when already started recording video.... Perhaps this is a new phone feature to build in, an emergency services call button on the camera just for such instances. Then the discussion with the dispatcher asking "he's done what?!!" is recorded for posterity.

Perhaps add an auto-submit to Darwin award comittee button too...

Looking through walls, now easier than ever

With this tech you can see them have it too!

'My REPLACEMENT Samsung Galaxy Note 7 blew up on plane'

Re: has there been any news on WHY they catch fire?

This exactly!

Plus why do many of the "eruptions" take place just after power is switched off or the device has been taken off charge? That power & ground short may be through a badly managed diodeless buck convertor using synchronously switched MOSFETs instead (let both on at the same time and direct battery short though small inductor on a high-current handling path)....

...at least that's where I'd start looking in debugging.

Zombie Moore's Law shows hardware is eating software

Moore's law is misquoted too much. The original observation is about price per computation power over time, which still seems to be holding well. The misquotation is usually price per gate, based on silicon area, or some other manufacturing derived metric. But the original macroscopic "whole compute" level figure is still tracking well. Note that "compute" is both hardware, software, or next-gen-whateverware, whatever that may be.

Exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phablets recalled immediately

On second thought, perhaps a contrived frantic search for those exploding batteries is the laxative for a blocked port?

Sammy needs to get the containers of TVs, frudges, erc to Xmas market too.

Watch for shipping containers full of these catching fire, stuck in ports and on Hanjin vessels during the Hanjin bankruptcy

Nest developers become Oompa-Loompas in Google shake-up

Re: "creating a unified Internet of Things platform" @paulf

Had the same types of troubles, it'd drop network connection at 2am, then fail to reconnect, with a menu in screen, requiring reentry of all SSID & PW via the terrible rotate & push UI while half asleep to turn on/off heat/AC depending what was running or not when it borked. Woken in a sweat from wasted energy from house baking from heating on that doesn't register in their efficiency calculation, or can't check via the app and pipes freezing in winter while away...

Got rid 2 years ago (returned to nest), switched to EcoBee3 (open API, and those Canadians make a really nice device that's not crashed once).

Meanwhile nest still sends monthly emails about how much energy I've saved? Go figure.

WhatsApp is to hand your phone number to Facebook

Re: FUCK OFF

You bring up an interesting point. If you ever (that's ever, not just currently) put up a mugshot on WhatsApp (or Instagram for that matter) then they already have your face (or other parts!) for recognition purposes.

Paris, cos selfies

Hope you also triggered the account deletion request too.

Whether they actually delete, accidentally have it in database backups, or have a system as incompetence as the plod's face recognition database is yet to be seen. Could be interesting if not.

Anti-theft kill switches in smartphones just got a little less creepy

Lower level than OS

The protection is already built into the last few families of mobile SoCs (e.g from Qualcomm, Apple, etc), operating at a lower level than OS and application software. Its down in the radio/DSP firmware. The benefit is that as soon as the device is powered on, even without booting, it can be locked, preventing data/ID/financial theft. This is a good thing.

Surface Book nightmare: Microsoft won't fix 'Sleep of Death' bug

Same thing sarted happening on W7 on an HP laptop a few months ago after some of their "updates". A slept computer will wake up in the middle of the night, churn for a while, then sleep again (sometimes). Frequently it will not return to sleep and drain the battery, with no crash dump or saved files. Other times it fails to sleep and overheats (in briefcase after it wakes up). I've caught this a few times. A few nights ago it woke from sleep in the wee hours of the morning (just happened to be awake and saw and heard it wake up), opening the lid there's no screen on, or response to any user input.

My guess is they screwed up the power management long ago, and have been getting away with it by luck or ignorance. Now they have a monoculture device that just happens to exhibit the failure frequently, and this not blamed on odd machines or user configuration.

Seattle Suehawks: Smart meter hush-up launched because, er ... terrorism

Re: Optional

Interestingly, according to the article, city officials claim they are not capable of censoring/redacting documents, so how did they choose from the proposals in the first place? Was it the technical assessment of cheapest bid wins? If so, is the cheap design so badly engineered that it is inherently a risk? Thus keep it covered up because there's no security in obscurity...

Samsung's little black box will hot-wire your car to the internet. Eek!

"government-grade security"

So it upgrades your car? If it's only a two door it'll install a couple more for the passengers in the back.

Which keys should I press to enable the CockUp feature?

Re: There was only ever one proper gag on Windows...

The prior gag was to apply the soldering iron to switch the horizontal scan coil wires in the back of the TV. Surprised student/owner claims Auntie has her evening news subtitles backwards to all and sundry until a few puzzled channel changes later....