Doesn't the Z2 Force have the easily-scratched plastic screen?
Posts by MondoMan
612 publicly visible posts • joined 8 May 2007
Motorola extends modular phone adventure for another year
Advanced VPNFilter malware menacing routers worldwide
HTC U12+: Like a Pixel without the pratfalls, or eye-watering price tag
Autonomy ex-CFO Hussain guilty of fraud: He cooked the books amid $11bn HP gobble
Uber's disturbing fatal self-driving car crash, a new common sense challenge for AI, and Facebook's evil algorithms
SpaceX blasted massive plasma hole in Earth's ionosphere
Exploding alien bodies' space death-rays gave Earth its radiation cloak
Cops jam a warrant into Apple to make it cough up Texas mass killer's iPhone, iCloud files
Google's phone woes: The Pixel and the damage done
Chinese whispers: China shows off magnetic propulsion engine for ultra-silent subs, ships
Saturday 28th October 2017 13:41 GMT
Re: There's little point going fast...
You're right about flow noise ruining your own sonar; however, high speed is very important tactically and strategically, as it allows you to rapidly change the location of your sub.
Tactically this is important to e.g. outrun a torpedo or quickly get a 2nd bearing on a contact in order to estimate its distance. That's why a common submarine tactic is "sprint and drift". It also allows you to move ahead of your target and stealthily sit and wait on its predicted path.
Strategically, sustained speed allows you to quickly reposition your subs within or among theaters, often without your opponents noticing.
NSA bloke used backdoored MS Office key-gen, exposed secret exploits – Kaspersky
Sony remembers it once made a great little phone
Thursday 31st August 2017 17:34 GMT
X Compact is nice
I recently picked up a US version X Compact for $300 at Amazon and really love it. Although the article snubs it as a midrange phone, I haven't noticed any slowness, and by flashing it with the UK version firmware, the fingerprint scanner works great. I've also read that it really is constructed as IP68 waterproof, but Sony doesn't want to make a legally binding claim on that in the US.
$600 is way too much for the new Compact mentioned in this article.
Japanese sat tech sinks Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activists' hopes
Wednesday 30th August 2017 05:04 GMT
Re: a matter of pride?
@veti
Your analogies are flawed.
You might as well worry about Scotland's caber toss being "...only "sustainable" because they're the only country doing it at a significant scale." If other countries took it up at similar scale, whole forests would have to be mown down.
Better analogies are the descendants of traditional whaling-based societies continuing their traditions, or people collecting mushrooms on public lands (e.g. national forests).
Node.js forks again – this time it's a war of words over anti-sex-pest codes of conduct
Phisherfolk dangle bait at dot-fish domain
Don't buy Microsoft Surface gear: 25% will break after 2 years, says Consumer Reports
Friday 11th August 2017 23:43 GMT
Re: CR's procedures
"CR very often listed "insufficient data" in lieu of any reliability prediction for new model years of cars that had not undergone any significant design changes since the previous model for which data were available"
Actually, I remember it as being the opposite -- the "insufficient data" was for those models that HAD undergone significant design changes.
Friday 11th August 2017 23:39 GMT
Re: Not really a "survey"
@ Updraft102 and a_yank_lurker
Like most people, you're both implicitly assuming that CR's self-selected "sample" of users both (1) represents faithfully the population of all laptop buyers and (2) represents faithfully the frequency and *types* of use of said laptops. Both assumptions are not valid, and thus it's scientifically invalid to make inferences such as "to say that Surface devices are less reliable than the competition does not seem to be a stretch at all" or "The failures is an unusually large number for that small a sample."
As ayl notes, CR also CR "refuse to take any advertising and manufacturer samples. They run tests on products they bought at retail", which is valid and enormously helpful. However, they've been suffering greatly as magazine subscriptions decline, their subscriber base ages, and people are no longer willing to wait for months for products to be tested.
Thursday 10th August 2017 18:23 GMT 
Not really a "survey"
In fairness to Microsoft, CR's "survey" consists only of asking CR subscribers to fill out long forms of details on all the sorts of things CR reviews. Thus, aside from sample bias and response bias, they've got a very low response *rate* just because of how bloody long it takes to fill out their form.
Watch this nanochip reprogram cells to fix damaged body tissue
Wednesday 9th August 2017 02:47 GMT 
Lots of hype for a very simple low-tech process
This seems to be a minor technical modification of a standard technique in molecular biology. For more than 40 years, biologists have been inserting DNA and/or RNA into cells by putting a DNA/RNA solution in contact with the cells, then applying a voltage which both makes tiny holes in the cell membrane and causes some of the DNA/RNA to move through the holes into the cell.
In this case, they seem to have made a tiny electrode patch (which they misleadingly call a "chip") and have developed appropriate voltage and contact conditions to transfer the applied DNA/RNA solution into normal skin cells (perhaps removing or penetrating the outer layer of dead skin cells first?).
The "reprogramming" part stems (ahem!) from the last two decades' enormous advances in the understanding of the molecular mechanisms that specify cell type, much of it from "stem cell research". For many cell types, simply injecting DNA or RNA from one or a few specific genes is sufficient to change that cell's self-image. If the new self-image of the trans cell (e.g. blood vessel component) is more suitable than the old, Bob's your aunt.
Google diversity memo: Web giant repudiates staffer's screed for 'incorrect assumptions about gender'
Tuesday 8th August 2017 07:33 GMT
Re: WHAT are you talking about? -- yep, you're right
From the actual manifesto
"Women, on average, have more:
• Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
• These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.
"
Now, I've always seen programming, like math (not calculation, but actual math), as primarily a creative aesthetic endeavor. There's beauty in data structures and program architectures. According to the Googler's claims above, women should be flocking to programming as an artistic field!
I think the Googler has made a good start in its document, but has not fully thought out, not precisely defined, and not properly researched its descriptions of human traits and tendencies. This document clearly needs a much longer incubation to be anything of substance. For not recognizing the immaturity of its document, perhaps it's better that the Googler move on to a different company.
GPS III satellites and ground station projects get even later as costs gently spiral
Tuesday 1st August 2017 01:00 GMT
Re: "ground system"
The OCX "ground system" is just the command and control system for the GPS constellation. Whereas the previous systems were located in just a few places worldwide, this new system seems to be intended for deployment to dozens (hundreds) of locations at various capability levels. You don't want *everyone* to have the capability to turn the sats on and off and alter their orbits.
Sun of a b... Rising solar temp wrecks chances of finding ET in our system
Tuesday 1st August 2017 00:33 GMT
yep, we're interested in the water UNDER the ice
Phil, you're exactly right.
The article errs in claiming that "Other bodies such as Enceladus and Europa lack these processes, and with no help from greenhouse gases, the temperature is determined solely on the energy they receive from the Sun."
The large tidal forces generated by the proximity to a gas giant planet can create plenty of internal heating in such moons, and are thought to be the energy source powering Io's famous volcanoes. Talk about climate scientists missing the forest for the trees!
Confessions of an ebook eater
Wednesday 26th July 2017 23:35 GMT
Re: screen size and reading glasses
I find it easiest to be in front of something like a 32" WS monitor with multiple reading windows open and a bit of extra screen space for the odd search, calculation, or notes. One can easily get reading glasses adjusted for the slightly more distant large screen.
Dear racist Airbnb host, we've enrolled you in an Asian American studies course
I still haven't found what I'm malloc()ing for: U2 tops poll of music today's devs code to
Redmond puts wall around Windows 10 for Chinese government edition
Australia considers joining laptops-on-planes ban
Tuesday 16th May 2017 05:26 GMT
theft's the issue, not boredom
Smartphones are plenty to keep most occupied during flights -- it's the likelihood of theft of laptops from checked luggage that's the real issue.
Delta's baggage policy, for one, notes: "Computers or computer-related equipment are not allowed as checked baggage. You can, of course, bring your laptop computers as carry-on."
America's mystery X-37B space drone lands after two years in orbit
Let's go live to the Uber-Waymo legal war – and see what's happening
Thursday 4th May 2017 19:02 GMT
Re: stalling the technology
Waymo is still developing its technology -- their cars are frequently visible driving in the Mountain View area, at least.
All the excitement up in SF may help explain the high housing prices there -- police "encountering" stabbings on the street and so forth. Who wouldn't want to live there and have a front row view?
China 'hacked' South Korea to wreck Star Wars missile shield
Alert: Using a web ad blocker may identify you – to advertisers
BT's spam blocker IDs accident claims as top nuisance call
It gets worse – now WD says Toshiba memory business sale breaches joint venture terms
Thursday 13th April 2017 04:19 GMT
Re: US Nuclear Industry
"Highly radioactive" wastes are those with a short half-life -- the longer the half-life, the less radiation it emits per unit time.
That's why you let the fresh waste sit for a few years/decades while the worst stuff decays, then put the much-less-radioactive remnant down a salt mine so it doesn't get into people's food and bodies.
Dieting cannibals: At last, a scientist has calculated calories for human body parts
Boeing details 'Deep Space Gateway' for Mars mission staging
Researchers sink scalpel into Lazarus crew. Yup. Autopsy shows distinct hacker tradecraft
One in five mobile phones shipped abroad are phoney – report
Wednesday 29th March 2017 16:10 GMT
Prime ain't no sign of quality
All it means is that the vendor stores their stock in Amazon's warehouse for shipment via Amazon's system.
You've got to read the fine print for "Sold by Amazon.com" to have a decent shot at avoiding fakes (not that that worked for a couple of "Samsung" cell batteries that weren't...).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
