Posts by goldcd

Home streaming is killing..

I can't think of any of the previous "clampdowns" that ever did anything to help "the industry"

I humbly think it's just a nice little money-maker for those eternally doing the clamping down, and gives the industry the misguided feeling that they can simply halt the progress of technology and consumption.

A "Twisted Vapers RDA" is just the "tank"

i.e. bit where the eliquid is heated up by a bit of wire.

Whats of much more interest is the unmentioned "mod" - the bit your screw the tank to, provides the current, and actually contains the battery.

Decides to spend week porting Portal?

He was staying with the in-laws, wasn't he?

I'm anti-gun, but can still never see it working

for a start, what crimes would a smart-lock actually prevent?

Most people shot with guns were meant to be shot with a gun by the person firing the gun - so they're still all in play.

Then the suicides - unless you say build in a 24 hour delay.

The only obvious one I can see are children accidentally killed whilst playing - but if you can't be bothered securing your gun, you ain't going to be buying this.

Or maybe it would encourage people to simply leave their guns lying around?

Encouraging theft maybe? Pretty sure it wouldn't take more than 30 mins with a drill to return the gun to free-fire.

Fringe cases "when the gun is wrestled out of your hand" - well if you didn't have a gun in the first place, that one goes away.

Oh I'll stop waffling on now, but it's all a bit silly.

I bought myself a Vive for Christmas

My wife still disagrees as to the value of this purchase, but let's put that to one side for now (and hope she eventually will).

There's seated VR where you can sit in place and can look around - which is fun, but not really revolutionary. Your head replaces a stick on your joypad.

Then there's "Full Room VR" where you get to wander about, and when it works, is a revelation.

I know most of you reading this are cynics and without trying it yourself, I'm unlikely to win you over, but please, please try it.

Tilt-Brush, the MS-paint of VR art, allows you to wave you hand in the air to draw a 3-dimensional squiggle.

You then take a pace forward and look at this 3D thing from another angle. It just sits there. Floating in imaginary space. You can walk around your squiggle, put your head through it, it's mesmerizing, *this is VR*

The low level tech that supports this is pretty irrelevant (inside out/inside in etc) - what actually matters is the physical space you have available, and at least in suburban-UK that space is going to cost you way more than the tech you choose to map yourself into it.

I'm not sure plugging Chinese manufactured x into Chinese manufactured y

a few thousand times, counts as a "skilled IT job"

Can't help but this is still all on Verizon.

They made the drug, and now we're picking on the addicted consumers of it.

I call bullshit.

You're *really* trying to tell me that one person dropped a million dollars on "in-game-diamonds" (or whatever it uses).

really?

REALLY?

Seems to make sense.

If Openreach have failed to deliver something to you, you don't complain to them - you complain to your ISP that your have your contract with.

Your ISP has to pay somebody to answer your call, apologize for the f'up, sort out another engineer if needed - all stuff entirely out of their control and directly the fault of Openreach..

Yes, it's annoying that you've been messed about and don't have your broadband - but it's not actually costing you money to complain, unlike it does for your ISP to answer.

Now my all means try to get your ISP to give you something for the inconvenience, but you're not entitled to all of what Openreach paid them.

It's the problem all campaigners have

Your job is as equally tied to the "problem" as your notional enemy.

However your "enemy" can diversify into anything they want.

Pick your battles carefully, be "against cancer" or "rising sea-levels" - not anti "smoking" or "hydrocarbon CO2".

Allows you to pivot on your target, without coming across as a self-serving crank.

I mean ffs, some of us still like smoking - but pro-cancer is thin on the ground. The only reason you wouldn't appeal to the broader market is because there are already big-boys there. You went niche, and you're reaping.

I loved computers

My parents didn't (I think mainly was actually my grandmother, an ex-teacher, who thought they were evil).

I hit a run of Christmas presents that were "not what I'd asked for".

Anyway, to my point. Yes - I wanted one to play games with, but I did try out my half-arsed coding on them. My first real qualification in IT, was when I did my Masters (couple of weeks of java and rdbms).

I now work in IT.

If I had a point, it's that I see no issue with children playing games, or staring at a screen within reason.

What's important is to make them see that they can put something they've made onto that screen.

To switch subject:

Children read books for the stories initially.

They are then asked to just stick something down on a piece of paper (What I did over the weekend) etc.

Then they're asked to read books that are well written, and maybe write down why they think they're well written.

Then they're asked to take that and apply it to what they read.

Whole point of this, is to initially show them something that they enjoy - and then show them how they could make something like that themselves.

That, is education.

They can't help themselves, can they?

*CLEARLY* this is designed to be solely flopped out on the veneer of your local apple-store, to add some interest. Although maybe would have been wise to remove the 2nd-"samey"-half.

Selling it though?

Kind-of misses the point. I personally would love to get an insight into Apple's industrial design process - the people, the motivations, the conflicts, the resolutions - blunty what would make it interesting.

"Here's what we made".. that's not interesting, and devalues the process. Sure, "Steve liked it", is a process - but maybe a bit of vision would be of benefit in these cynical times.

I don't see espionage

just good old-fashioned capitalism at work.

If you find yourself with an OS you haven't paid for - you should maybe question why it was free.

I'm a long-term Android user, and as such have accepted that I'm being subsidised by Google, and I'm OK with this. I benefit from the data-mining. Really quite nifty to be able to shout at my daydream headset to "show my photos of San Francisco" and see my geo-tagged holiday from 5 years ago, or slightly more disturbingly "show me pictures of Percy" and see pictures of my black moggy... actually I'm still bemused how they do this.. but impressive none the less.

Where I have concerns is where this information spreads beyond google. Not that I trust them, but I get a benefit and know they'll be sued to oblivion if they say record & publicly post my incognito browsing history.

Once you start using a third-party-rolling of AOSP, then well you might save a few quid upfront, but be careful..

Eye-tracking is the breakthrough we need

Or more specifically, that and dynamic rendering, that can shift processing to where you're actually looking, and leave the rest of the image a blur in your periphery.

Rendering something you're not looking at is pretty wasteful.

I can't help but think, if I were a security exec

who answered that question as "non-invincible", there's a fair chance I'd be replaced pretty sharpish with one that could "answer the question correctly"

Why he's doing it? A hard question

How he's doing it? Much easier - he's got a shit-tonne-pile-o'cash.

If Thiel did not have a giga-hoard-o'spondoolies, then this story wouldn't be here.

Backing Hogan I could respect him for - it was to my liberal sensibilities reprehensible and I'd give a nod to anybody who underwrote him.

Actually, I think that's maybe my point - you can admire the actions of people, without having to like or completely agree with the person. It's.. well sortof how society works.. and well 'people'.. my own mother drives me up the wall, and I believe my brother voted for Brexit.

Did the Dalai Lama wear Gucci? - well frankly I don't give a toss, as I don't have the responsibility of judging him as a person.

Short of running for president, none of this matters (god help me, if I was judged on my whims).

Now when you run for president though..

HTF still uses Yahoo for anything?

Seriously?

I've mentally pegged them with lycos, altavista & geocities

Well let's all just hope this is "strategy"

We need some of that, as the alternative of "being made an example of" doesn't strike me as appealing.

Yep - this is the phone to convert iOS users

My issue is that it's " the phone to convert iOS users" and not really the phone their existing market actually wanted.

And their conversion strategy was to make something that looks the same but is "slightly better" in every way.

Bluntly I can't see anybody switching to Android solely on the basis of a slightly better camera, battery, VR experience, voice activated assistant and all the rest. It might be better, but you need to offer more to get people to switch their existing OS.

As an existing Android user, I just feel "nice specs", but most of the features are software, which will be shortly available on equivalent phones costing half the price.

In summary I have no issue with the continuation of the 'Pixel' range representing high-end google stuff - what I resent is the killing of the Nexus brand.

I am also confused

but mainly around how they managed to criminally profit more, than Sky lost..

Surely it's supposed to go the other way - e.g. Sky lost a million and they made a criminal profit of 1/2 a million.