Posts by rdhood

Re: Bollocks to this creepy shit.

I'll tell you whats going on: People LIKE the idea of a smart speaker. They like that it can voice control automation. They like that it cant deliver information on commmand. What they DONT like is that almost every single piece of information goes through a central computer that records EVERYTHING. At this point, it is really going to be recording EVERYTHING , and not just a few seconds of shit after someone yells "Alexa". Suddenly, every sound in the damn room is a key for your speaker to report back to central command, which means it would record virutally all the time.

We want the smart speaker that works without the internet and a direct connection to Google/Facebook/Amazon

Re: Fuck!!!

"It's "fuck" when humanity gets to the stage that it trusts a consumer product vendor to provide mission-critical information!"

Um...in that case, we are all "fuck" We depend on consumer product vendors to provide mission critical information all of the time. Look in your CAR. If you are SCUBA diver, you still rely on a WATCH and a PRESSURE GAUGE and DEPTH GUAGE to go on your SCUBA TANK.. These are ALL consumer products that provide mission critical information upon one relies on the way to and during a dive. And this is just a TINY portion of products that are mission critical that we rely on every single day.

The next time you get in a car or start your oven, try to do it without relying on those "fuck" consumer products that you claim. You are left with a Flintstone's car and a hot rock.

re:"anonymous data" is effectively a lie.

Bingo. Data taken out of context is much less useful. Data in context is not anonymous if one looks closely enough.

Re: The old business model is the best...

"1. User replaceable battery.

2. microSD card slot.

3. Let the user install their own apps."

Oh, and a spiff that no one else gives you: a working FM radio. So if you need to catch that sports event that is blacked out or on a paid channel, you can listen to it on the radio.

Re: I'm of two minds about this

"I don't think the US REALLY cares about 3D printing of guns though, not enough to make up charges against this guy. "

You don't know U.S. liberals. People who fear just holding a gun. People who prosecute kids for using a pencil like a gun and saying "Pow". YOU don't know squat about the U.S.

Re: More bloat in an already over bloated OS

"Which means that you can't redistribute it. It in no way means that Microsoft gets to treat your machine as if they own it."

And that, folks, is the crux of all of this. Microsoft is planning on actively scanning everything you do on your system. In my paranoid world, it means that they probably already are

Re: Be much more interested in...

" I'm in the process of weeding out my micro usb cables that don't work at all, ones that look like they're charging but aren't, and ones that are too thin for my Samsung charger to trust to Rapid Charge."

I did this about 6 months ago. I threw away all of the crappy chargers and cables... tossed them so as never to be tempted to use them again. And I only buy known quality stuff... It makes a huge difference to be using quality cables and chargers everywhere.

buy used...

"At my last phone upgrade, I bought a pre-owned iPhone 7 Plus for $400, "

This. I purchased a used Galaxy S8+ for $300. I see people in this forum slam those phones over and over again, but the S8/S8+/pixel 2/etc really are all fine phones. The problem is the price. Nobody would be saying "theres too much this or that or we dont need this or that " if they were giving them away (well, maybe Reg posters would, lol). In may area (a major metro city in the U.S. ) rock bottom prices on a used S8/S8+ right now are $300, and on an S9/S9+ $400., unlocked.

And at $300, I think an S8+ is well worth it.

Re: democracy

The United states is a Democratic Republic. It is NOT a democracy. It does not claim to be a democracy... except for some liberals who would like it to be so that California and New York could rule the country.

Don't click links in email....

I'm just going to say the obvious: DONT CLICK LINKS IN EMAILS.

This scam fails utterly if the user goes to the Netflix site and logs into their own account. It only succeeds if someone has clicked on a link sent through email.

Just the other day, Google sent me a notification with a G**D*** link in it, and I sent them back a "WTF is this?" message. The average user CANNOT differentiate between a real/fake, and should just about NEVER click a link unless someone has specifically said to them: "I'm sending you a link". And that is what we ought to be teaching the average joe.

Re: Autopilot fun

"I predict flocking behaviour will be an interesting failure mode for fully autonomous cars..."

Your prediction is already wrong. That was the fault falure mode of all GPS systems for the first 15 years of their existence.. just like your boat example above. We are WAY past that. Waymo already does realtime traffic sensing and makes offers to divert around jams while using their mapping system. It makes sense that they would put this logic, that they already posses, in cars to drive around jams.

IR blaster

Like the IR blaster

OMG... forgot about that one. I had a Galaxy S5, and it controlled nearly every device in my house! Easily worth it just to not have to search my house for remotes.

Re: "The main problems..."

"So when they realise they have a crappy failing business model that doesn't provide any recurring revenue they can start charging for storing video"

This. everyone wants another revenue stream. The fact is, there are apps out there that will coordinate RTSP streams from multiple cameras to a storage device ... no 3rd party internet required. But those manufacturers that DID support that in their cheap cameras , INCLUDING MI, have removed that functionality so that they could charge you for cloud storage and viewing. That is a big steaming pile o'crap that is really killing the home security setup, as well as any sort of privacy.

Still wouldn't see me back anything with money i couldn't afford to risk losing!

And as crowdfunding goes ,those are words to live by.

I have bought into 4 campaigns similar to this. Two panned out and delivered a first round of product, and subsequently failed a month or two later, and two others never delivered anything. The value that I received from the two delivered items was exceptional. The problem was that they should have charged more and accepted fewer orders and they might have made it as a business. But they charged too little, were overcome with orders, and the projects that initially delivered subsequently failed.

Bingo! So, NKorea builds 200 missiles for 5 warheads and launches. The U.S. needs 2x/4x/6x/?? that number of WORKING anti missile missiles to ensure that none get through because we don't know which missiles have nuke warheads. The numbers game quickly overcomes missile defense systems.

Re: It is inevitable...

"This is just another step in the lifecycle of the IT mega-corporation: they've hit the stage where they are now driven by greed as opposed to any desire to innovate, and projects that are not making money are sidelined or dropped. At the same time, it becomes harder and harder to kick off anything new or innovative because the board/shareholders need proof that the new project is going to be profitable to a desired level within a given timeframe..."

In a nutshell, that was my experience at HP for the last 20 or so years.

Re: Google and Intel;

"Intel shouldn't be selling CPUs still at this point that are still vulnerable,"

Bingo. Or, at the very least, they need to release new performance numbers and admit that they have lost the speed crown.

Re: I brought in several models ago

"But would you trust the footage of your suicidal stunt being missed due to a shoddy cheap knock off?"

I have been using a "shoddy cheap knockoff" for a year. I guarantee that 99/100 could not tell the diff in footage between this and a gopro. Yes, I would trust a shoddy cheap knock off.

Re: Will this help current phones?

I imagine that, in the beginning, that Google thought that they would put out updates and the bloatware pushers would update THEIR respective images and send out an update. I imagine that Google DID care, but they couldn't fathom that ATT/Verizon/Sprint/Tmobile would sh!t on their customers. Once realized... and with a few really really nasty bugs floating around like a time bomb, Google finally acted.

Re: Whitman did the right thing

" I expect HPE to come thru. "

Like DEC/Burroughs/Unisys/Sun/SCO/computercodejour before them?

In case you haven't noticed, that does not happen, EVER, in this biz. I'm not saying it can't, just that it hasn't.

Re: I worried about the Nav bar...

This is the way it works on my $60 Huawei phone, and its fine. There is absolutely no reason for the nav buttons to be visible all of the time.

The bio version of Stargate Replicators....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Stargate)

Self assembly taken to the extreme...

600,000

I would suggest Minimum Viable population. Research has suggested that the number is between 160 and 40,000 people, with about 5000 being a true starting point. 600,000 is just a stupid number.

which hardware company has ever been too big to fail?

Re: These "new" iPhones

"Not saying others copied Apple rumors but clearly this began the design process before any bezel-less Android phone shipped."

"Clearly"??? Not to me. You obviously have inside info on ALL of the major manufacturers design processes so that you can make this "CLEAR" conclusion. But, Apple fanboi, let me say this: the bezel-less design is an obvious goal, just as it was for monitors and TVs. OBVIOUS!

Re: "Might have to move a couple more big cities"

"China is making more progress towards environmentaly sound travel than any other country..."

Yep. That is because they are a polluted mess. The same could have been said about the U.S. decades back. It seems the will to make progress is stronger when you can't breath.

Re: Who still uses farenheight for things like this ?

"The Register has to sadly support our old American neighbours. "

While that statement might make sense for any random person from the U.S., any American who is reading this article will generally be very well acquainted with different temperature and measurement systems. In fact, most of us wish the U.S. would just change so that we wouldn't have to learn every formula in two systems.