Posts by Google

Spoiler alert: Google's would-be iPhone killer Pixel 3 – so many leaks

Perhapds their stance on user privacy?

"OnePlus is tracking users actions without anonymizing data" - https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/10/10/227207/oxygenos-telemetry-lets-oneplus-tie-phones-to-individual-users

"a new report says that there's still a OnePlus app that can grab data from the phone and send it to servers in China without a user's knowledge or express consent. " -

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/01/27/0013220/oneplus-is-again-sending-user-data-to-a-chinese-company-without-user-consent

.NET Core 2.1 – huh, yeah – what is it good for? Bing, apparently

I've just migrated a personal site with about a hundred daily users from Windows to the cheapest Ubuntu VPS my provider offers. This means half the processor power and memory compared to the Windows VPS and a third of the price. They even have special offer going on Ubuntu boxes saving me even more monthly costs.

The MS SQL database was replaced with MariaDB, simply because MS SQL doesn't support 18.04 (yet, or at least when I commenced migrating my core site). Though there were some minor niggles the EF Mysql provider works fine.

Performance is just as good if not better (page requests consistently below half a second) and it turns out administration of a Linux box is a lot easier if not more fun. Setting up Nginx with Letsencrypt was a breeze as was forwarding traffic to the dotnet process.

It's a funny world when I can wholeheartedly recommend .Net devs to migrate their sites to Ubuntu.

Palmtop nostalgia is tinny music to my elephantine ears

Re: Buyer beware

If only it were so..

Much as I'd like to join you in fantasizing about modern psions and n950's, I did have the foresight to attach a redundant bluetooth keyboard. Sure, reading and writing the odd email works fine despite the annoyance of seeing screen estate go to waste but don't think about a quick trip to tumblr or detour via other image heavy sites https://lostinmobile.com/2017/03/02/why-i-think-i-need-a-psion-style-device-but-wont-be-buying-the-gemini-pda/

Re: Buyer beware

My approach exactly.

It's hard not to fall in love with the concept when your inner geek is still alive. Then I realize the horrible screen estate efficiency of Android and the inner skeptic wins over. Is android ready to be used almost exclusively by keyboard and shortcuts or will users keep smudging and wiping their screens, ad nauseum.

In the mean time we're waiting on a n950, e7 form factor replacement.

Nokia should have released a remake of their n950 or communicator series instead of their 3310.

Buyer beware

I too almost pre ordered one (a gemini) but then a number of things dawned on me

The ceo has a bad reputation among indigogo's public for failing to deliver https://mobile.twitter.com/thezxkingpin/status/837554886250135553

Their release date of november seems rather unrealistic - we've not seen a working keyboard or software and they're not answering technical questions on indigogo. For the form factor to work the software needs to match and vanilla android or a plain linux distro won't do without a stylus or mouse.

Android and apps are made for portait mode unless you're watching netflix, which negates the keyboard need. When is the last time you decided to use your 7" or less phablet in portrait mode? I tried using my nexus in landscape orientation last night and it was horrible.

US telly stations fling malware-tipped web ads at unsuspecting surfers

Adblockers are a security precaution.

Chrome lives in dog years: It's seven years old but just turned 50

Those damn poorly coded sites

"...Isolating each Tab made the browser more resilient by allowing a poorly-coded Web app to take down just one process, rather than the whole browser."

If a site can take down the browser, is it the site (nee, Web app) that is poorly coded or the browser?

Northrop wins $55bn contract for next-gen bomber – as America says bye-bye to B-52

Re: Why not give the money to NASA

Though the US is not too keen on it.

The Space Preservation Treaty was a proposed 2006 UN General Assembly resolution against all space weapons. Only the United States of America voted against the treaty, with Israel abstaining.

The resolution No first placement of weapons in outer space, which emphasizes the prevention of an arms race in space and that "other measures could contribute to ensuring that weapons were not placed in outer space." 126 countries voted in favor to 4 against (Georgia, Israel, Ukraine, United States),

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarisation_of_space#Outer_Space_Treaty

So just what is the third Great Invention of all time?

Vaccination. It's the reason influenza no longer comes around and shuffles 20 million off our mortal coils.

Or Polio debilitates us for the rest of lives.

Jackpot: New hacking group steals 150,000 credit cards from casino

commercial software.

"akin to the level of commentary seen in commercial software."

So, no comments at all then.

Apple's Swift creeps up dev language survey – but it's bad news for VB

Re: Stack Overflow use introduces a big bias

Any new language should skew results. People will start to experiment and stumble upon problems, flocking to stackoverflow.

Same goes for github, new languages need ports of libraries.*

You'd think this is all taken into account though.

*unless, as in the case of Swift, it's compatible with existing ones.

That EVIL TEXT that will CRASH your iPhone: We pop the hood

Just tried sending it to my own iPhone using iMessage. I have a sneaking suspicion Apple is filtering iMessages as it never arrived when other messages did.

Queen's Speech: Snoopers' Charter RETURNS amid 'modernisation' push

Re: Measures will also be brought forward to promote social cohesion

Hate to break it to you, but No. Not even a significant chunk of the population is looking into encrypting their communications.

What they are interested in though is Posh&Becks and Jordan. So maybe we should just rename the next cypher suite after them to rumble up some interest eh?

In the mean time I'm trying to message my contacts via encrypted channels in case the day comes and I need it so it won't set off alarm bells. That and I quite like the idea of my messages only being read by the intended recipient.

Spy-tech firms Gamma and Trovicor target Shell Oil in Oman

"Oxford University is lead consultant on the project acting through its wholly owned subsidiary ISIS Innovation."

Time for a name change?

Jay-Z freestyle attack on Tidal's rivals leaked to Tidal's rivals

AS posted by a fellow commentard in response to another article on Tidal and the music biz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEsJqtiU-2A (Tidal - End The Suffering ) quite entertaining

Microsoft: It's TRUE, you'll get Android and iOS apps in WINDOWS

SUN vs MS

Windows Phone specific API's offered to Android? It's almost like the good old days ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#Sun_vs._Microsoft )

The content business wants Netflix out of Australia

Re: Netflix doesn't want these regions

Upvote for "hideous style of US documentaries". US broadcasters really seem to believe their audiences to be as stupid as they're made out to be around the web. Dramatic "Edge of your seat" music is added to interviewees' mundane one liners followed by lots of CGI with irrelevant beeps to illustrate a soldier taking a step towards the parapet.

Compare some of the ww2 History Channel documentaties with "Wings of the Luftwaffe" documentaries, calmy narrated by a British presenter. You'd think with every action the Japanase took the USA was on the brink of becoming destroyed. Like when the Imperial Navy was hypothesizing building submarines capable of transporting a couple of light aircraft.

Scientists tail whales, hails their tales of record 14,000-mile migration

Re: Human Migration

It doesn't count unless we're walking there and back?

"...a new world record for the longest migration path of any mammal..."

This raises the question, what's the longest migration path of humans? And does their record count as a mammalian one?

Instead of public sector non-jobbery, Martha, how about creating real entrepreneurs?

opportunities we should be grabbing with both hands: education, women and ethics.

I too think we should be grabbing women with both hands(!)

Watchdog slaps American Apparel's youthful naked arse

Another dangerous threat to our fabric of society squashed. Hooray!

...we can all safely head back to the pub to witness far worse.

Google pulls out of gaping Blogger smut black hole

In their failed attempt for everyone to become more "social" by forcing google plus down their throats through shutting down Google Reader they received multiple tons of feedback. Only this time it made a difference.

What gives?

Dutch government websites KO'd by 10-hour DDoS

Kudos to the Dutch MP's having the guts to ask the question on all our minds:

Why couldn't functionality be restored using a backup?*

</sarcasm>

*source: http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/latest-security-news/ddos-attack-brings-down-dutch-national-government-websites/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tripwire-state-of-security+%28The+State+of+Security+%7C+Tripwire%2C+Inc.%29

Drinking to forget? OK. But first, eat a curry... QUICK!

Better skip the post beer if putting traumatic events behind you is the objective:

"People often drink to 'drown sorrows'," according to Kalev. "Our results suggest that this could actually paradoxically promote traumatic memories and lead to further drinking, contributing to the development of alcoholism."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/kiwi_boffins_prove_booze_makes_you_clever/

Another curry!

Snowden SLAMS iPhone, claims 'special software' tracks users

In the mean time GHCQ/NSA is happily eavesdropping on journalists: http://boingboing.net/2015/01/21/british-spy-agency-intercepted.html

Where's your news item on this, Vultures?

Facebook worth more than Portugal? Hell, it's worth a LOT more than THAT

So, what about the effect of Facebooking making people unhappy?*

How will we factor that into our unicorn numbers?

Is Tim saying whatever I'm doing it adds $minimum_wage_rate to the GDP?

*http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21583593-using-social-network-seems-make-people-more-miserable-get-life

DNA egghead James Watson sells Nobel prize for $4.8m, gets it back

According to wiki...

this is what he said on intelligence and race:

“there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”'

Which seems more reasonable than saying "white people are superior" and reasoned from a scientific point of view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Provocative_comments

Will tech titans SWALLOW upstart where Apple guru Steve Wozniak works?

Go Forth (Virtually)

"Well, comment on the article,private"

"I can't Sir, I don't know what it's going on about"

Judging by the nr of comments, this is how we all feel. Perhaps an article for the PHB's.

Google pushes 'go' on Android Studio

Re: The King is dead....

I think Xamarin starts offering value when you're developing for two or three platforms (iOS, Android and WinPhone).

In preparation of my Xamarin adventure I read Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms by Microsoft Press and it too recommends familiarizing yourself with the platform specific Xamarin API's. So if you're targeting a single platform there will be overhead. Familiarity with C# and .Net might balance things out again though.

Re: The King is dead....

Allow me to differ.

Using Xamarin Forms I attempted to write a sample app. To add something as plain as a checkbox I had to download a community developed controls nuget package which when deployed and their checkbox is added to a simple grid made the whole grid disappear without so much as an exception, never mind trace output. the labels they replaced worked fine before though.

When it's a struggle to get a simple checkbox to show up I quickly cut my losses and switch frameworks. There is no point in continuing if you know this is the struggle it's going to be. I'd rather spend my development hours developing than beating my head on the keyboard and save myself from a future of slow and frustrating debug cycles.

Syrian Electronic Army in news site 'hack' POP-UP MAYHEM

Adblocks are more than an eliminator of annoying ads, they're a security measure. It's not a rare occurrence for ad networks to serve up malware.

Imagine if they decided their network of Syrian fighters could use some extra funds and targeted flash instead for your banking credentials to be send right back the first time you login to your banking site.

Bittorrent wants to sink Dropbox with Sync 2.0

BT's cloud?

Shame there's no mention of how the product works and if it's in any way related to the original Bittorent protocol.

Article: "The premium version it's announced – US$39.99 a month – claims unlimited-size file storage" yet according to wiki there is no cloud, only your devices:

"The user's data is stored on the user's local device instead of in a 'cloud', therefore requiring at least two user devices, or "nodes," to be online in order to synchronize files between them", and

"There is no limit on the amount of data that can be synced, other than the available free space on each device"

Either something has changed and they're now another cloud storage provider or they're charging you for storage on your own devices.

My guess is the former.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_Sync

NOKIA - Not FINNished yet! BEHOLD the somewhat DULL MYSTERY DEVICE!

Good luck to em! With those edges, It does look like a large Iphone 6.

In the mean time, I'm not holding my breath for a n950/E7 equipped Android coming anytime soon.

Finnish PM: Apple has DESTROYED FINLAND

Nokia got out in time. Phone hardware right now is a race to the bottom. Only Apple seem to be able to sell sexy and overprice.

Instead they should have lingered on fighting cut price one plus handsets? Their imaginate hardware design wouldn't have saved them when all people want is a large display in their hand.

Much as I like them, the world didn't want an E7 or N900, two of Nokia's top models.

They were either too visionary (their Debian based tablets) or lagging (N9).

Google's Eric Schmidt's shock confession: Steve Jobs is.... MY HERO

Pirates of Silicon Valley

Pirates of Silicon Valley Will do fine thank you, we don't need another movie. It captured the spirit of the times pretty well and even the actors resemble Woz, Steve, Steve and Bill.

In the mean time, if you need a good read about Apple history, one could do worse than start at folklore.org. It's a collection of stories written by members of the original Macintosh team. Inspiring.

CNN 'tech analyst' on NAKED CELEBS: WHO IS this mystery '4chan' PERSON?

So many gems

"your files floating in the ether" Sprinkled with fairy dust?

"hacking is against the law" You don't say

"running a password app" download it from the itunes store!

We could go on..

Microsoft parts Azure cloud, reveals NoSQL doc database

Keen to find out what's it like I head over to the Microsoft Document DB site (named like there are no others, just like MS SQL) to download myself an installer.

Turns out, its a Document DB as a Service offering. Say what? Has this world gone stark raving mad? I can no longer develop locally but have to rely on an external party. When will this stop?

argh.

LulzSec supergrass Sabu led attacks against Turkey – report

Federal

I don't think that word means what you think it means

MH17 -- SA-11 / BUK complexity

rt.com

Russia Today has been waffling on quite a bit how it's likely the Ukraine, not rebels, fired the missile. Some of noteworthy pieces

http://rt.com/news/174868-ukraine-buk-falsification-continues/

http://rt.com/usa/174796-intelligence-malaysia-plane-mh17-us/

http://rt.com/news/174412-malaysia-plane-russia-ukraine/ - Ukrainian Su-25 fighter detected in close approach to MH17 before crash - Moscow

Over there, there are no good guys.

NEW, SINISTER web tracking tech fingerprints your computer by making it draw

Re: Description...

https://securehomes.esat.kuleuven.be/~gacar/persistent/the_web_never_forgets.pdf

The crucial bit the article is missing is on page two of the pdf - a text string will be rendered differently in each browser.

Carlos: Slim your working week to just three days of toil

Right you are. I also meant paid leave instead of "time leave".

That's what you get trying to post a sneaky comment during work hours...

It's not a new idea, Mark Twain favored it a long time ago for people to become more creative, not consume more: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

I myself have arranged for 20% of my time to be saved as time leave, allowing me to travel more. An arrangement even sweeter than the one suggested in the article.

Apple ships security fixes for iOS, OS X, Safari ... basically EVERYTHING

Re: 7.1.2 iOS update...

Started the updater after freeing the required gig or so (update itself is about 25MB, so I'd reason it backs up locally). Updater hung. Resorted to a reset after checking this article's comments. Rebooted just fine, palms a little sweaty rebooting mid-update. Heart rate subsided. Side effects not mentioned in release notes.

Today's get-rich-quick scheme: Build your own bank

As recently adopted by the ECB http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27717594

Yes, you get to pay them to store your money. In return you get access to your money without any funny business - as a bank should work. Unlike Northern Rock where you turn up and they're free to go "we dont have it". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N_mb1AfeOY

Student promises Java key to unlock Simplocker ransomware

Colour me an idiot, but..

I don't think (under)grad status is indicative of ability...

Snowden's Big Brother isn't as Orwellian as you'd think

In short...

We're not living in 1984 yet so we're ok? Nevermind constitutional rights being trampled on and rive abuse http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/05/sod_squad_found_feeding_nsa_surveillance_info_to_drug_enforcement/

Tech that we want (but they never seem to give us)

A mass market Nokia n950 or an E7 with something other than Symbian (Android/Sailfish/QNX)

Hopefullly http://neo900.org/ will deliver but a E7 form factor with the same, solid feel is more desirable.

Concerning Windows Phone and its relevance to the larger business

Blackberry seems to tick all the boxes too but was never mentioned.

With TheRegister getting so chummy with MS lately this article leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Facebook reveals 700TB of tiered RAM and flash power Graph Search

A waste of talent

It's still bloody sad to see the world's most talented people recruited to work on sites ordering posts on what people had for breakfast and parsing sites (Google) just to show relevant ads.

You'd think at least a better business model would have come out of it rather than just another sites relying on ads.

'You can keep it' - Brit's nicked laptop turns up on Iranians' sofa

Is that a botlle of booze in the background?

A sneaky sip of the strong stuff in Iran? Better not let the local gestapo find out

pic: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/4/12/1365777639554/Laptop-in-Iran-009.jpg