Posts by Dave 126

Re: Maybe it's time for a kickstarter campain...

It likely wouldn't be very cheap or power-efficient, either. The development costs would be non-trivial, shared amongst a not-massive customer base. You would still want to audit the results - again, not a casual undertaking - so you might be better off with an existing SoC and auditing that. Also, your target market might ask themselves if they really need good graphics in their secure comms gadget. In the above steps, there is scope for human OpSec to be compromised or deliberately infiltrated - formal verification is possible for code but not human groups.

Organisations wanting security seem to be happy enough with Blackberry software running on iPhones.

The issue is in part binary blob drivers from Qualcomm and other device manufacturers meeting the open source community's ethos.

For sure, there's always something faster around the corner. However, the processing requirements of user's evolving tasks over time isn't necessarily linear.

I hear you about foil backed insulation, but the walls are relatively thin which means than any signal that gets through the windows can reach reach most of a room. I usually get good reception in new builds, compared to the centuries-old limestone buildings round here. Floor to ceiling glazed patio doors can't hurt signal in new build houses, either.

What is criminal is building a new house without whacking a load of Cat6 cable in the walls prior to plastering - it'd be far cheaper than powerline or WiFi repeaters, and cause less RF interference too.

Yeah, when I read a lot of tech blog articles about mobile phones or Wi-fi gear I can't help but think of those timber and stud-wall houses so common in the US, in contrast to Cotswold limestone or Cornish granite homes.

If your mum has decent wired broadband, a pico-cell might be a solution, but network operators do love placing hurdles in the way (for example, EE insist that you get your mobile handset from them with all their bloatware, and even then only a Galaxy S or iPhone).

If I suspect a friend is at home beyond cell coverage I use WhatsApp to invite them down the pub. If I think he's in the pub, I use SMS. It works for me, but it's 2017 and I really shouldn't have to think about it. The good news is that his local has the best pub quiz in the city - due in part to the lack of data signal.

Re: Google Drive Help Forum "top contributor"

> You get a free product staffed by volunteers

It's a paid-for product, as stated in the article. As for the staff, at least they are able to read unlike some people who for some reason feel qualified to comment.

Re: Apple's next

Or possibly just the continued development of productivity application such as Adobe LightRoom for iPads.

Who knows? :)

OSX and its forebears have jumped architecture a few times; it's unthinkable that Apple haven't had OSX on ARM running internally for years.

Re: Most people don't need a powerful computer...

> So what happens when amateurs want to edit their home movies?

That's a software issue, not a hardware issue. The decoding of video is routinely offloaded to hardware decoders anyway (which are present and correct on Sanpdragon SoCs), and GPUs are used to apply effects. The rest of it is IO, which with solid state storage is plenty fast enough.

For editing HD video for YouTube on occasion, there'll be no problem in using ARM native software. Someone who more regularly edits 4K video isn't going to consider these machines anyway.

Ditto gamers - gamers pore over every spec of the machines they want to buy, with battery life barely making the list. They won't buy one of these by accident.

Re: Imagine a netbook with a SIM card. Bingo

And I remember when a netBook was a Psion machine!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_netBook

The EEEPC was well known, but Sony amongst others had been making small x86 Windows notebooks (and even weird things with half the keyboard on either side of the screen) for a few years before. I think it was the use of Linux to enable otherwise slow cheap hardware that initially led to Netbooks, until more RAM and newer CPUs made Windows less slow on them. Many weren't used for much more than web browsing, hence the article drawing the parallel.

Re: Is it only battery life...

Yep, it's battery life - not only is ARM more efficient for native tasks, but the ARM SoC takes up less space than an x86 motherboard leaving more room for battery in these machines.

Re: Emulation ?

The emulator runs in a just-in-time basis, converting blocks of x86 code to equivalent blocks of ARM code. This conversion is cached both in memory (so each given part of a program only has to be translated once per run) and on disk (so subsequent uses of the program should be faster, as they can skip the translation). Moreover, system libraries—the various DLLs that applications load to make use of operating system features—are all native ARM code, including the libraries loaded by x86 programs. Calling them "Compiled Hybrid Portable Executables" (or "chippie" for short), these libraries are ARM native code, compiled in such a way as to let them respond to x86 function calls...

.... For the most part, Windows 10 on ARM should be identical to that on x86. The most notable exception is perhaps that there's no Hyper-V virtualization, and since so many of its features depend on Hyper-V, no version of Windows 10 Enterprise for ARM.

_ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/hp-asus-announce-first-windows-10-arm-pcs-20-hour-battery-life-gigabit-lte/

For sure, for some users. Other users were attracted to the Note range for reasons other than the stylus, such as SD card slot. It's interesting that no other vendor sells a phone based on good stylus support.

For keyboards, the Qwerty Moto Mod keyboard looks interesting, and IMHO a detachable keyboard makes more sense for a phone than a permanently attached one. (If keyboard develops a fault it can be swapped out, phone vice versa, keyboard can be used on the train but then left in your bag when you go to the pub).

Bernard Woolley: That's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He has been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act.

Re: pron on the cp

> Seeing a load of porn sites being accessed in his browser history, mixed with accesses to his email account, is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

The copper himself has said he had no proof. Relying upon the word of a single witness is NOT beyond reasonable doubt. In any case, 'beyond reasonable doubt' is for criminal courts, and nobody is saying a crime has been committed, not even Knacker of the Yard 'imself.

Re: pron on the cp

The copper himself has said he has no proof.

> No filter on the gov network?

Have you actually thought about what you've just said? These are the people who decide our laws - so placing power in the hands of the white/black list curators (who are....?) is not a good idea. Read some Jonathan Swift (Flappers), and read some more, possibly some treatise on logic, politics, human nature, keep reading, and maybe get back to us.

Okay, so you haven't bothered? Well, the flappers were people who held flaps over the ears of the powerful. Nobody seeking an audience with the powerful would get far unless they got the favour of the flappers.

Er, the burden of proof is on those making the accusation, not the accused - for criminal cases. So why should Green present a defence?

For civil cases it's a balance - but who is the wronged party in this case? Exactly.

Sheeiit, the French are far more civilised here - they just assume that every politician is having an affair and so continue discussing the actual policies (or else rioting or protesting as their mood suits... but nothing as dreary as discussing unattractive people's sex lives).

Re: So Many Questions

> They all need to be fired on all sides by the sounds of it! Green for porn on his machine,

The copper himself said he can't prove that Green watched porn in his computer. How do you square your statement with 'innocent until proven guilty'? Do you really want a situation where democratically-elected representatives can be got rid of based on a single individual's say-so without evidence?

Hell, it's like you don't remember the CCTV footage that didn't agree with the policemen's account of the words exchanged during Plebgate'.

Habeas Corpus. Show me the body [of evidence] (or please remain quiet. There's too much noise around already). Ta muchly.

Re: Much whataboutery about nothing

> For most employees, it is a sackable offence though

He's a representative of his constituents, not an employee. If 75% of his constituents approved of hardcore unicorn BDSM (for example, obviously), why the hell should their elected representative be sacked? And sacked by whom? Where would the power of the sacker come from? Shieeet, and here was me thinking that IT folk could examine systems usefully...

Re: Poor excuse for a politician

Just ignore UT, if you quickly check his posting history you'll see why.

> Every single time I have been upstairs to look at a the PC of a person important enough to have a secretary PA, the PA knows the password.

Indeed, and an 'important person' often has staff with access to snail mail and paper files too.

There is the issue of a constituent having a reasonable expectation of correspondence addressed to an MP only being read by the MP or by a very limited number of others - five or six seems excessive. However, if a topic is really sensitive or confidential, then perhaps seeing the MP in their surgery is a better option. Or, as in one episode of Yes Minister, hiding in the bushes outside their front door.

Re: Apps not platform

> I would consider that badly written programs are developments problems not hardware problems.

iPhones and Android phones aren't just different hardware though. They are different OSs, with different development environments and tools. I'd assume that these factors have some bearing on app reliability.

Re: Health Risk?

I remember some poor fella falling a couple of foot into his arse at a house party after the log that formed the seat of a rope swing snapped. Unfortunately for him, he had a glass bottle in his back pocket, and he sustained cuts to his cheek. Luckily for him, it was a 35cl bottle of rum so at least his lacerations were sterilised.

Re: They don't regard the extra pennies on making a phone even a little bit future-proof as worth it

My Xperia P received updates to 3 Android versions, my Xperia Z3C a couple (before I dropped it). Whilst @heyrick might have a point about older Sony phones, any prospective buyer would do well to go beyond his single comment and get the lay of the land from reading threads in XDA Developers or sonesuch.

If anyone here knows of a site that has tracked manufacturer updates of phones over years, please do share. :)

Re: always wondered why..

Google can't - prior to Treble, an Android update for a specific handset required binary blobs (developed for a Google-issued update for a specific chip) to be sent by the chipset vendors to the original device vendors.

Re: £300 refurbished? You've been ripped off.

A two year old Apple A9 SoC is still a very capable chip, aided by very fast NAND storage, too. See the Anandtech benchmarks. Looking at the silicone alone doesn't give you the whole picture though - how a device performs is a function of software and hardware.

The SE is the width of a playing card. The larger iPhones, and many Android phones, are the width of a postcard. Both playing cards and postcards are 'mature technologies', with the former being designed to be easily held and manipulated in one hand whilst showing some limited information clearly, whilst postcards are designed to display more information, a photograph, in more detail.

The original iPhone replaced phones that were largely used for calls, SMS and other text-based messaging services. Since then though, people use their phones for a wider range of tasks, many of them photo and video based.

Also, if you buy your handset outright then you are protected by the Sales of Goods Act - if it proves to be unfit for the purpose for which it was sold, such as malfunctioning through no fault of your own - you have the right to refund or replacement. This is not the case if you get your phone from your network operator, who might insist on sending your phone off for repair for a few weeks.

Re: Speed

And one assumes that those vendors with capable iPad apps won't have much trouble rolling out an ARM Macbook application - it'd largely just be changes to the UI.

Re: Problems looking for a solution?

If read AOs sentence in context, you'll see that is what he meant and what he wrote.

In any case, creativity stems from waste and redundancy - it's more fun to have an excess of processor power than vice versa!

Re: bootcamp?

Genuine questions for a more technical bear than me:

Is it feasible to have OSX run on ARM but offload some tasks to an x86 processor as required? Or:

Is is feasible for OSX to run on ARM, and then Xwindows (or whatever the equivalent is) into an x86 instance of OSX that is spun up when required?

Either way, the ARM chip is primary, but the computer contains an x86 chip to be used occasionally.

It seems to me that the applications that people use 80% of the time (Safari, email, LightRoom etc) are those that can be quickly compiled for ARM by Apple or others, leaving the x86 chip for legacy applications on occasion.

Re: About time, I think

It's a question of how to roll it out to the public. You could imagine an ARM Macbook and x86 MacBook Pro range, for example... or maybe not. I really don't know. Apple like to keep their message as simple as possible.