* Posts by Dave 126

10622 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010

BBK mixed-grill realness: Realme's pair of 7s are two more reasons not to spend over £300 on a smartphone

Dave 126

Re: 65W fast charging!

Li-ion batteries are most damaged by heat when they are more fully charged. Fast chargers start charging an empty battery quickly but then slowcas the battery fills up.

The charging controller does things intelligently, and the temperature of the battery is one of the factors that it measures.

You'll likely find your phone getting far hotter in a car in a summer's day, especially if it's doing duty as a sat nav.

Dave 126

Ideally you would only charge up to around 85% at night, in order to maximise battery life span. (Some Sony phones would allow you to set a value at which charging stops). Additionally, its best to keep the phone charged above 40%, for the same reason.

A fast charger can make battery-preserving top-ups more convenient for the user.

Need next-gen connectivity but don't want to break the bank? Samsung's Galaxy A42 5G is a bin-raking £349

Dave 126

Re: Training

I used £25 Alactel Pixi 3 for a couple of months... fine for calls, maps, WhatsApp, podcasts. Merely usable for web browsing. Not really viable for watching video or for taking photographs. It was nice, though, not to be worried every time I dropped it.

Then I used a £45 Huawei Something-or-other, sold at half its normal £90. Very usable all round, though all attempts to get a decent launcher to stick would fail. Much nicer than the Alactel though. Again, no worries about breaking it.

Upgraded to a second hand Google Nexus 5 and cheaply and easily replaced its (never really big enough) battery. Superb in all departments except battery size and camera. Everything was easier to do than the two really cheap phones.

Sod it. Bought a Galaxy S8 for around £500, ten months after its first release (a time period at which Samsung flagships are usually reduced by a third) and glad I did. No real compromises in the hardware side, no software issues that took more than ten minutes to sort out. Consistently not irritating to use for the last thirty months, and likely to remain fit for purpose for many months to come. Fitted big case and glass screen protector to add to its robustness.

All three phones have proven to be good value, but in different ways.

Laptops are on fire! In a good way (if you're selling). PC sales race to highest growth rate since 2011

Dave 126

Re: Smokescreens

Some people are disabling Simultaneous Multi-Threading because of security concerns. Benchmarking suggests disabling SMT typically decreases the performance of a CPU by 25-35% - though they didn't test an 8 core Intel CPU because it was unlikely to impact gaming performance (and that the impact on productivity workloads would be expected to be in line with those chips they did test)

https://www.techspot.com/article/1850-how-screwed-is-intel-no-hyper-threading/

Why is IoT locked in 'proof-of-concept hell'? Stakeholders don't talk to each other, and return on investment is hazy

Dave 126

> It could not be what the article is talking about.

Indeed. A link to rest of this analyst's speech would be handy for more context.

Dave 126

Re: Hmph

Maybe previous relationships between IT and physical security departments might give clues as to how to work together? I would imagine in areas of personnel access and assess tracking, the security department would be a large stakeholder.

Dave 126

The article isn't talking about IoT in the sense of connected baby monitors and the ilk (rushed out by companies with poor security and unnecessary data grabs, unnecessarily dependant upon an unreliable web service), but of deployment of devices inside companies - asset tracking, door access etc. Without a link in the article to the rest of what the analyst was saying, it's hard to know exactly how they were defining it, but they did appear to be focused in business applications. (The original definition of IoT wasn't that things were connected, but that each 'thing' had a unique identifier. )

To say it isnt proven is not true - asset tracking (barcodes on equipment, for example, fulfil the original definition of IoT) and remote sensing (which would fulfil more contemporary definitions of IoT) is comon in industrial settings.

What's that, Lt Lassie? Three terrorists have fallen down a well? Strap on these AR goggles and we'll find 'em

Dave 126

Re: This is wrong

There may well be situations that dangerous for humans but fairly safe for dogs, due to their speed and low silhouette. There may also be situations that become safer for a dog if it is not tied to the immediate vicinity of a slow-moving human. Then of course there are situations that aren't immediately risky, and this system allows a dog to cover a larger area in less time - again, by not being tied to a slow biped.

Dogs and other animals, such as horses and pigeons, have been used in wars, and their handlers don't treat their lives lightly.

Five bag $300,000 in bug bounties after finding 55 security holes in Apple's web apps, IT infrastructure

Dave 126

This story makes a good counterpart to the Reg article:

'Want to set up a successful bug bounty? Make sure you write it for the flaw finders and not the lawyers' -https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/08/cisa_bug_bounty_panel/

This team started their search for vulnerabilities in Apple's systems without reading any detailed bug bounty documents from Apple - they'd just followed the story of a previous hacker who was awarded $100,000 by Apple, and thought they'd give it a go in good faith. They also noted that it started as a side project for them, but Covid lockdown left them with a lot more time on their hands. Their write-up (linked in this Regard article) is well worth a read ( or at least a slim, it's detailed! ), and it was published with the blessing of Apple's security team

Teracube whips out cheap, fixable phone with removable battery and four-year warranty

Dave 126

There have been some Samsung Galaxy Active phones and some Sony phones that had swappable batteries and were waterproof. The closing mechanism and gasket does add bulk over glue though.

A waterproof case can be done, but it only shifts the sealing problem elsewhere - i.e, between the phone and the case, as opposed to the battery compartment cover and the phone.

That said, for outdoor adventures bulk isn't such an issue (lots of big pockets on jackets or rucks sack straos to attack the phone to), so a first party waterproof case is viable (though possibly not economically viable, since the cost of injection mould tooling is spread amongst only a fraction of the phone's buyers.)

Dave 126

Re: A suggestion for a long life

Also, the first generation of 5G phones were power hungry, and the current gen isn't being bought in huge numbers (because they are more expensive, the user might not have 5G where they live, or the user doesn't see any clear advantage to it) so it's possible that a current 5G version of a phone model won't be as well supported by the custom OS crowd into the future as its 4G brother.

Dave 126

One of the brands best known for the sustainability and transparency of its supply chain is the outdoor clothing company Patagonia. It should be no great surprise that many consumers who are concerned about the natural world also like to spend time in the great outdoors. Where it rains. Where there are rivers and puddles.

If I was pitching a phone at people who are concerned the environmental impact of the phones, I'd make it waterproof.

Dave 126

Re: If....

It's plausible that Apple have designed features into the logic boards that allow them to easily (read: cheaply) test them before they are reused; certainly they have solid data on the reliability of logic boards and thus have confidence that reusing them in a refurbished phone isn't going to result in the same phone being returned six months down the line.

Another issue is that Apple will only sell refurbished phones that are 'as new'. The external, visible parts are glass and metal (easily recycled, low environmental impact, fairly cheap to make once tooled up) can just be replaced with new parts. 'As new' includes waterproofing though, and that requires accurate placing of proprietry adhesives/gaskets and likely an expensive machine for depositing a hydrophobic coating on internal parts.

(I don't know that Apple use a vapour-deposited coating, but Samsung do. That's likely enough to make me have Samsung replace my phone's battery rather than attempt to do the job myself)

Dave 126

By weight, silicon chips takes an awful lot of energy to produce compared to, say, pressed steel or cast aluminium. Fortunately, they don't weigh that much compared to cars. As you can see, I don't have any figures off the top of my head, so can't make any meaningful analysis except to say 'it's complicated'. Another factor: it isn't ecological concerns that have stopped me upgrading my phone for three years and my laptop for ten years - it's just that they are still fit for purpose in a way that their predecessors never quite were. It took generations of phones and laptops to arrive at models for them to mature.

More than complicated: it's complex. Let's assume, for argument's sake, that car and ride sharing cuts down the number of cars that are manufactured. For that to work, people would have to have upgraded their 2005-era phone to one that has GPS. (Just an example, I know that the whole concept of ride sharing is itself more complex in reality than it is on paper).

Tl;dr: this stuff is important, but it's also complex and worthy of careful study. Let our emotions motivate us, but let our intellects guide us.

Apple's T2 custom secure boot chip is not only insecure, it cannot be fixed without replacing the silicon

Dave 126

Re: This could be good news!

Indeed, back up. That also covers you for leaving your laptop on a train, having it stolen, fire, flood and acts of dog.

SpaceX breaks run of scrubs with Starlink launch: Darth Musk finds your lack of faith in on-time launches... disturbing

Dave 126

Re: Week roundups

Eliminate Malaria, yes. And ideally, also eliminate yellow fever, dengue fever, the Zika Virus and chikungunya, as well as many other mosquito-born viruses.

Eliminating mosquitos might be a crude method, and yes, there would be unforseen consequences (though unlikely to be more than a blip compared to the havoc us humans are causing amongst ecosystems in general. I dunno, maybe birds would eat more pollinating insects if mosquitos were off their menu), but it would a big step in tackling human disease.

I'm not qualified to come down either way on this.

Dave 126

Re: Week roundups

Mosquitoes IT angle:

Eliminating / mitigating malaria is near the top of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's to-do list.

When analysis of aid and charities are conducted to give a 'human lives saved per dollar donated' figure, malaria mitigation (read: distributing mosquito nets) comes out top.

Of course a million dollars spent on mosquito nets saves lives right now. A million dollars spent on researching mosquito gene drives *might* prove to save more lives in the long run, but we don't know. Such is the nature of research.

Dave 126

Re: Don't see what Musk hopes to improve

The weather (not under human control) is responsible for some of the scrubs, but Musk's concern is the higher than normal number of scrubs due to issues with a ground-side system (a fuelling system IIRC). It's the issues with this system that Musk wants addressed, since these issues have only recently occured.

Massive news, literally: Three super-boffins awarded Nobel Prize in physics for their black-hole breakthroughs

Dave 126

Re: "...part of a team..."

> You can get a Nobel prize for looking through a telescope nowadays?

No, but if you direct the telescope at the ladies boarding house you'll be considered ignoble.

Dave 126

Re: Math as proof

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics:

A -5 point starting credit.

1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.

2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.

3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.

5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction.

5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.

5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with defective keyboards).

5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann".

10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).

10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this were evidence of sanity.

10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it. (10 more for emphasizing that you worked on your own.)

10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don't know personally and asking them not to tell anyone else about it, for fear that your ideas will be stolen.

10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds any flaws in your theory.

10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly defining it.

10 points for each statement along the lines of "I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations".

10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only a theory", as if this were somehow a point against it.

10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn't explain "why" they occur, or fails to provide a "mechanism".

10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).

10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a "paradigm shift".

20 points for emailing me and complaining about the crackpot index. (E.g., saying that it "suppresses original thinkers" or saying that I misspelled "Einstein" in item 8.)

20 points for suggesting that you deserve a Nobel prize.

20 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Newton or claim that classical mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).

20 points for every use of science fiction works or myths as if they were fact.

20 points for defending yourself by bringing up (real or imagined) ridicule accorded to your past theories.

20 points for naming something after yourself. (E.g., talking about the "The Evans Field Equation" when your name happens to be Evans.)

20 points for talking about how great your theory is, but never actually explaining it.

20 points for each use of the phrase "hidebound reactionary".

20 points for each use of the phrase "self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy".

30 points for suggesting that a famous figure secretly disbelieved in a theory which he or she publicly supported. (E.g., that Feynman was a closet opponent of special relativity, as deduced by reading between the lines in his freshman physics textbooks.)

30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.

30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization (without good evidence).

30 points for allusions to a delay in your work while you spent time in an asylum, or references to the psychiatrist who tried to talk you out of your theory.

40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis, stormtroopers, or brownshirts.

40 points for claiming that the "scientific establishment" is engaged in a "conspiracy" to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike.

40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.

40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will be forced to recant.)

50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no concrete testable predictions.

© 1998 John Baez

Reno4 Pro 5G: At this price point, OPPO's latest phone for the UK market ought to feel better than a mid-ranger

Dave 126

> plugging in to charge fully in minutes kicks the crap out of sitting around waiting for it to sloooowwwlllyyyy absorb power wirelessly.

Why not both? Li-ion batteries last longer if kept between 40-80%, so if someone's daily routine suits (i.e, at a desk) then a Qi pad makes it easier to keep it in that range.

Also, wireless charging ability is a backup if the USB port ever get gunked up or broken, and lets you charge a damp phone (handier for people in sone jobs than others, I grant you). And indeed, by using a Qi pad you're not causing the USB socket any wear in the first place.

(My phone supports wireless charging, but I've never bothered buying a charging pad. The redundancy aspect is reassuring though)

Apple seeks damages from recycling firm that didn't damage its devices: 100,000 iThings 'resold' rather than broken up as expected

Dave 126

Re: Really?

> I would like to see global legislation in place to say that all kit (not just Apple - I'm looking at you Microsoft) must be designed so that "consumable" components (batteries, screens, storage) can be replaced simply (that does not necessarily mean by a user)

You're right to highlight the user part.

There is a tension between 'right to repair' and the nascent EPR legislation around the world, though only a tension, so it might be mitigated by by design. What is EPR? Initiatives to make the manufacturers responsible for end-of-life disposal of a product. Ultimately, 100% of products will end up disposed of (recycled or land fill) even if every effort is made to repair them along the way. EPR attempts to minimise landfill. It then follows that products would be designed to be easier to dismantle for recycling, since this would save the manufacturers money. We already see this in the use of glue instead of screws (amongst the other advantages of glue such as minimising mechanical stress risers and providing a waterproofing gasket).

I'm not against Right to Repair. I just wish that its advocates gave themselves greater credibility by understanding and then acknowledging eventual End of Life issues and factors, and working towards solutions that are genuinely good for the environment and the consumer.

Dave 126

Re: I suspect ...

> If I take my phone to the recycling centre, I don't have any say in what they do with it

That's your choice to relinquish ownership.

You're a private citizen. You put your cardboard out for the council to collect every week. But if you had a tonne of cardboard and delivered it to the private recycling depot you'd get £25 for it.

You can see there's a scaling thing here? Take aluminium cans. One can isn't worth much. But if you put in the labour to collect and crush them, you'd add value and be rewarded for it. That nice big lump of aluminium would be yours and you would sell it - not just leave it out for the council to collect.

> Apple expect to be able to tell people what to do with devices that have left their control

Only the phones *are* in Apples control - they belong to Apple. They didn't dump them on a council recycling centre, they paid a company to do a job.

Dave 126

Re: The Waste Makers

Dan 55's link is actually to a Guardian article that doesn't mention Apple, but is focused on electronic waste being sent to developing nations under false pretences of reuse, when in fact they are to be dismantled (often dangerously in the case of CRT televisions and fridges, and environmentally damaging).

So having phones responsibly recycled by a Canadian company would, on paper, appear to be the much better approach.

Dave 126

> if Apple handed them to the recycling firm, then the recycling firm owned them.

No, Apple paid the firm for a service.

>If a stuff is dismounted, it seizes to exist, therefore how could Apple own something that doesn't exist anymore ?

Same way that a demolished building is still a very real pile of rubble, useful stone and dangerous asbestos - it's still very real stuff that has to be disposed of responsibly.

Or a written-off car is a very real lump of scrap metal and possibly useful parts - that belong to your insurance company.

> if a contract goes against a law (right to repair) then the contract is invalid

Eh? Any right to repair only applies to stuff that you own.

Dave 126

Re: The Waste Makers

> ban that company's imports from entering if they don't conform to safety and sustainability goals.

That would of course include phone vendors who don't send out software updates after a couple of years, then.

Sustainability goals also dictate the ease of recycling once the phone is beyond economic repair (either because it damaged, or because the hardware is so out if date that it can't reasonably do what users expect if it). Eventually, 100% of phones sold need to be recycled economically. Not every phone sold needs to be repaired. The use of glue rather than screws makes dismantling easier to do in bulk.

Dave 126

Re: The Waste Makers

> And how come Apple's products are so badly made they end up in dumps by the 100,000 ?

The lawsuit mentions half a million phones during 2015 to 2017, in which Apple sold around 300 million iPhones world-wide (though perhaps I should be taking figures for the immediately preceding years). So, that's roughly one in a thousand. However, many of those phones will have been damaged by dropping or by water damage, not faults of manufacturing. Conversely, the dismantling centre in question likely isn't the only one Apple was using.

Tl;dr: your figures alone don't support Apple phones as being any more poorly made than any other brand of phone. You need more data and context before asserting that claim.

Dave 126

> Just because they made it, it doesn't mean it's still theirs once they've sold it.

Yet the phones in question *did* belong to Apple, not to end users - presumably units that been swapped over by Apple or traded in.

Suffering silicon: Benchmarks for Apple's A14 chip are in, but post-Intel Macs, when they arrive, will tell the real story

Dave 126

Re: Mobile is not laptop or desktop

> However, there's a reasonable argument that the phone-level processors won't really work well enough for laptop or desktop use cases.

The iPad version of Photoshop has been out for a year now, and there haven't been any complaints about its performance (just complaints about it not yet being feature-complete, a few tool-specific niggles, and its reliance on Adobe Cloud). Civilization VI also runs a treat on iPad, though I don't know how useful a benchmark that is!

Some applications are more relient on GPUs and other hardware such as video encoders than they are CPUs, and other work has I/O as the chief bottleneck.

For those tasks that are really CPU dependant, Apple will be making Intel Mac's for another two years. That could well be enough time for Apple to scale up production on CPUs that challenge Intel at the high end.

Dave 126

Re: Ha!

It's possibly tangential, but I wish I could force some Windows processes to confine themselves to a single core - that way the system would be responsive enough for me to shut the runaway process down using task manager.

Dave 126

Re: Ha!

> I'm not. Those things are so thin, it's not like it's going to get any more cooling than the phone would.

It's surface area that's important for cooling, not volume.

If the Samsung Galaxy S20 Fan Edition doesn't make you a fan, we don't know what will

Dave 126

Re: confused

I'm with you that people should have a choice of size, Cedric. Just as they have a choice of clothing and in which pockets they stash their possessions. I for one don't understand why people keep their phones and wallets (!) in their back pockets, but I see many people who do.

However, the height of the phone doesn't directly impact the width of the phone, and it is the width of the phone that determines how comfortable it is to grip in the hand. As to being able to reach the top and bottom of the phone with one's thumb - well that's partly a software UI issue.

Taller phones don't always allow text to be made bigger (not all websites reflow text to allow that) - so it's not an eyesight issue. However, displaying more lines of text on a taller phone does reduce the amount of scrolling required of the user.

Dave 126

Re: A 600£ or 700£ price is now considered not hard to swallow? For a phone?

Paying for the hardware through a network operator contract?

The advantages of buying the phone outright are:

- you can often negotiate a better SIM-only tariff, since you're not tied to the network operator. They'd rather have some money from you than no money.

- you're covered by the Sales of Goods act - faulty hardware must be refunded or, if you choose, replaced. Conversley, a phone supplied by the network operator is their property until the end of contract, and they used to insist on a faulty phone being sent away for two weeks to be repaired.

- wider choice of hardware

- take advantage of a special offer in hardware

- no operator bloatware

The network operator isn't the only group that offers finance. Even some phone vendors such as Apple offer financing in hardware, if you don't want to go down the credit card route.

Dave 126

Re: Why I Am Not A Fan

Good for you. It has a smaller battery and no OLED screen. Some folk value that, some don't. Horses for courses etc.

Dave 126

Re: Technically impressive, but it's been Samsunged

> Very bright on full brightness but fairly aggressive adaptive brightness when I turned on auto-brightness.

The auto-brightness adapts to the user over time - you manually correct the brightness for first few days, and phone then makes better guesses at what you want. Works quite well, though beware of some apps in bright sunlight- it is possible to burn the OLED screen - irritating if it's because the phone itself pumped up the brightness.

Decluttering duplicate apps, swapping Back and Task Switcher back to normal, disabling Facebook etc etc takes about ten minutes. Installing BxActions takes another five minutes and a couple of quid for the device to gain full control of the extra Bixby button.

Dave 126

Re: Digital watches

Changing batteries - a bugbear, but far cheaper and easier than getting a mechanical watch serviced! G-Shocks can go about ten years between battery changes.

There are some solar and kinetic quartz watches that can soldier on almost indefinitely... I believe that Seiko have ironed out the issues their early Kinetic watches had with flaky capacitors.

Dave 126

Re: confused

The phone is only 10mm taller than the S9, making it around the same height as many Galaxy Note models, let alone other 'phablets'. There won't be a significantly greater bending moment.

For sure, nobody wants a foot-long phone, but a few extra mm in height causes fewer problems than a few extra mm in width.

Dave 126

I like my digital watch because I *don't* have to care about it - it was cheap, it's accurate, damned near indestructible and the battery lasts for ten years.

Not having to care about it is what is so good about it.

Dave 126

Re: Paid publicity

If The Reg didn't write positive reviews of phones from other vendors, you might have a point about the Reg taking bribes. As it is, if I were Samsung I would want more value from my bribes.

The Galaxy S range has always popular. This model is made cheaper mainly by making design choices that impact its appearance (it has a completely flat screen without the curved edges, a plastic back instead if a glass back, and it has thicker bezels) rather than compromise its performance or function - so it's not unreasonable to pitch it at people who care more about features than they do a shiny appearance. We might fairly call them 'enthusiasts' if 'fans' is a bit of a stretch. You'll find Galaxy S owners well represented over on XDA Forums.

The cheaper flat screen without curved edges is a plus point to anyone who fits screen protectors to their phones, and to anyone who finds reflections annoying.

The resolution is lower than that of its pricier siblings, but many people run their phones at lower-than-native resolutions anyway in order to save battery.

Are Samsung facing stiff competition from Chinese rivals and others? Of course they are. Will a OnePlus or Honor phone be a better fit for many people? Of course.

Dave 126

Re: confused

> How is that screen ratio remotely sensible?

Reading text, mainly. At its width of 2.9" (on par with previous Galaxy S models) you can read about 10 words per line, but with its extra height allows more lines. (I'm using width and height with respect to portrait orientation, and I'm assuming text size for normal eyesity at 2')

The dimension of a phone that is most constrained (by the need to hold it in a hand or fit it in a pocket) is its width. The height of the phone isn't as constrained by pockets.

Dave 126

Re: A 600£ or 700£ price is now considered not hard to swallow? For a phone?

Generally, the extra money buys you a better screen and and better cameras, wireless charging and waterproofing - a faster SOC isn't always noticeable in many day to day tasks. Having had an OLED screen on my phone for a couple of years I'm a convert, though it's increasingly available on cheaper phones. And without waterproofing, my total cost of phone ownership would be multiples of what it actually has been.

My relatively bulky Panasonic LX-7 can take better photos than my Galaxy S8, but not by such a margin that I always carry it with me.

There's nothing currently on the market that tempts me to upgrade from my Galaxy S8, and I'll run for as long as possible. I'm not sure that would be true if I'd bought a phone that was half the price.

Talk about working smarter: NASA scientists searching for craters on Mars train AI software to do the job for them

Dave 126

Re: What's that you say, NASA?

It's inevitable that a new field of human endeavour (information systems) is going great to borrow and steal words from existing areas.

When we're talking about complex adaptive systems (which some computer systems qualify as) then areas such as biology and ecosystems are bound to be plundered for words and concepts. And hey, it's a two way street - computing science has given plenty back to the study of biology. It's no coincidence that progress in genetic research roughly follows Moore's Law, or that Alan Turing did important work in morphogenesis and self-organisation.

If we want to consult dictionaries, then it's worth noting that that the most common definition of intelligence is merely 'the ability to solve problems', with no mention of scope or method. 'AI' as it is currently used satisfies that definition. I think Joe Public is only too aware that computers still do stupid and frustrating things due to a lack of 'common sense' - or of 'Artificial *General* Intelligence'.

Dave 126

Re: What's that you say, NASA?

*Marketing* hype?

The term Man Machine Symbiosis was the title of a 1960 paper by Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider - the man who foresaw and gained funding for ARPANET, and to who the founders of Xerox PARC credit as the father of the GUI. Oh, he was also the project director for a precursor to UNIX. Okay yeah, you can say he 'sold' the concepts to the people holding the purse-strings, but he was a psychologist and engineer, not a mere marketing bod.

So, not a newly coined term, and I assumed that most researchers in the field are familiar with him. Certainly none of them let the biological root of the term Symbiosis cause them unhelpful confusion.

Boot, virus, icon etc etc - all terms borrowed by IT from other fields, without any great confusion.

Microsoft touts its Surface Laptop Go as 'cheap' option – but that price quickly goes up for useful RAM and storage

Dave 126

Re: 4GB is plently enough RAM

It's rare that I run up against the limits of the 4GB RAM in my ancient laptop, but my CAD models only have a few parts (think chairs, not combine harvesters) and my Illustrator documents are only usually a single page and the artwork fairly simple - saved documents are usually only a few MB in size. Still, going for 8GB and having some headroom seems sensible.

I don't have much cause to do video editing, but with an SSD some simple editing of HD video isn't a headache.

I can envisage jobs (more complex CAD simulations and visualisations) where I'd benefit from much more RAM, but those same tasks would also benefit from from more CPU GPU grunt, and possibly better Thunderbolt implementation - i.e, starting with a different machine that's actually designed for such stuff.

As it is, I like the 3:2 screen of this Surface laptop, and I'll will read up on its performance with a stylus ( though the stylus is an optional extra that bumps the price yet higher)

Dave 126

Re: Apple prices without the desirability

@ST

jake was suggesting that this laptop, *if bought second hand*, might qualify as a 'who cares machine'. You have only been referring to its new retail price, which is moot to his point.

There would have been more ambiguity in jake's post had he used a single full stop followed by a line break, but he didn't.

It's 2020 so not only is your mouse config tool a Node.JS Electron app, it's also pwnable by an evil webpage

Dave 126

Re: I like Electron but...

If you works for you, that's grand. I've not used my MX Master mouse without the Setpoint software, so in a way my ignorance is the mirror image of yours! :)

That said, the Logitech Setpoint software for Windows includes a clone of OSX's 'Exposé' task-switcher which I value greatly and map to one of the mouse's many buttons. It's only selectable if Setpoint detects you're using an MX mouse, oddly.

Beyond that, I've only used the software to configure buttons, which I assume Windows can do natively. There's also an option in Setpoint to have different button configs for different applications, and I attempted to map keyboard keys to various mouse buttons to streamline my Civ 5 experience (turns out I was playing it wrong).

I don't need any software to tell me the mouse's battery level, since the mouse has LEDs for this purpose.

I'm not really a gamer, but someone who is might have a different response to your question.

Dave 126

Re: And further back in the chain...

Ideally, yeah, and that would put pressure on the OS developer to implement the genuinely useful features that are currently present in, for example, Logitech's mouse config software. Maybe it's moving that way - see Microsoft's recent efforts in defining the way a trackpad should work (as opposed to tiny track pads many laptops once had). Apple of course has greater control over trackpads (usually very good) and mice ( to a sometimes note mixed reception)

Until that day, however, some users derive great benefit from the extra features and options that only found in the mouse vendors' config suites. Other users will use devices that aren't mice ( graphics tablets, accessibility devices). Gamers will always delight in a bespoke config suite.

Singapore Airlines turns A380 into a restaurant, delivers plane food to homes

Dave 126

Re: Empty prose.

Yeah, it's odd to see a Reg journo refer to booze as "tat".

Included with the sold-off trollies were:

40 mini bottles (187ml) of Australian white wine

40 mini bottles (187ml) of Australian red wine

one full-sized bottle of Champagne

one sleeve of Tim Tams

one sleeve of savoury biscuits

one 200g packet of smoked almonds

two Qantas business class amenity kits (featuring ASPAR Travel Essentials skincare products)

a 100% combed cotton Sheridan throw made exclusively for Qantas First Class

two pairs of Qantas Business Class pyjamas – one M/L and L/XL (if you want a smaller size, just give them a few washes in hot water)

It's powered by a mega-corp AI, it has a Liquid Mode, but it's not a T-1000. It's Adobe's PDF auto-reflow for mobile

Dave 126

Re: RE: Ideal to proof read before printing

To be clear:

There is a need for a PDF reader to make the reading of existing PDFs easier on mobile screens.

I did not mean that there was a need for Adobe's specific solution.

I did mean that that there is a clear problem: reading existing PDFs with the default reader on Android can be a pain. This problem has been partially addressed by PDF readers from 3rd parties that offer text reflow and more zoom and scrolling options.

Even the above suggestion that PDF text be copied and pasted into a text editor is just more evidence that the problem exists.

Mage's argument that there is no need for a better PDF reader of any description because PDFs shouldn't be used isn't helpful in the context of, for example, consulting an instruction manual PDF for a washing machine error code. Mage's 'solution' does nothing to make for the millions of extant PDF files on the web easier to read when one doesn't have a big screen to hand.