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Comment Google being Google (Score 1) 239

Google's problem is they're so big that they'll completely screw over their own projects if they don't align with the corporate roadmap. Look at the likes of iGoogle and Google Reader. Both products were popular but I'm sure some genius in Mountain View decided to shitcan them because they "competed" with Google+.

Now I can't say for sure how many people did move to G+. What I can absolutely say is that I'm not one of them. I used to use iGoogle and now I use My Yahoo. So instead of enjoying whatever metrics they used to gather from me and ads they now get nothing. Google+ is what it is and occasionally I look at it, but presently Google offer nothing which could be called a homepage and so I take my eyeballs elsewhere.

I have no idea what InBox is but the way it's being talked up would make me incredibly fearful of what could befall GMail. GMail is popular because it is online email with a nice GUI - nothing more, nothing less. It they replace it with some bullshit "stream", or a "network", or "social experience", or some glorified "wall", then they can fuck the hell straight off. Put that shit over in G+ where it belongs and don't even think of integrating or replacing GMail with it.

Comment Re:My main complaint about the Pro 2 (Score 1) 101

The high DPI manifest entry and APIs only turned up with Windows 8. It's hardly surprising that legacy applications don't support it or make declarations in their manifest to that effect. Even applications which are in active development might be using legacy APIs or DLLs that make it a non-trivial problem to solve.

It's not confined to Windows either, Linux and OS X suffer from similar problems.

Comment Re:I have a Lenovo Miix 2 (Score 1) 101

It weighs more, you can't leave the keyboard behind making it very heavy and large for a table.

Yes you can. You just lift the tablet out of the stand and walk off with it. The stand itself does a little heft to it because it has to counteract the high centre of gravity of the tablet. Microsoft's solution is kickstand which significantly increases the footprint the thing needs to stand on. Oh and no keyboard for you unless you fork out a small fortune to buy it as an accessory.

And it completely lacks a digitiser: so no handwritten note taking, drawing etc etc.

I doubt that holding a 12" tablet to take notes is an ideal use though I concede it doesn't have an active stylus. You could of course just buy a "dumb" stylus for a dollar and install one note all the same. Or use the keyboard. The one you get included with it.

But yeah, apart from all of that it's exactly the same ^^

Who said it was exactly the same?

Comment Re:My main complaint about the Pro 2 (Score 1) 101

I find it annoying too. Windows (and OS X and Linux) has long been used with low dpi screens so software can look really awful with a high DPI. All the menus, buttons, and toolbars are teeny tiny. So there is now a high DPI aware flag that software is supposed to use to declare it's conformance with new APIs.

Problem is some software proclaims itself high DPI aware but still doesn't look right - Google Chrome in particular has fiddly little buttons. If software doesn't say it's aware then by default Windows will scale the window but then you get a somewhat blurry upscaled window. It's possible to change the scaling and to disable it entirely from shortcut properties but it's clear that desktop operating systems still have some way to go to get things right.

Comment Re:I decided against this phone AFTER pre-ordering (Score 1) 69

I preordered a OnePlus during the 1-hour, no 2-hour, no 8-hour sale where their systems collapsed under the load. I wasn't even sure if my preorder had been successful or not because I didn't get an acknowledgement until the day after. The whole thing was a clusterfuck of epic proportions. I was also told ETA 6 weeks but this dropped to 2 and suddenly the package was with me with no dispatch notification. So their IT and general customer interaction are seriously bad.

But the phone itself is excellent. It's easily comparable to a Galaxy Note and I have to remind myself it only cost half the price. I got a 64GB phone for £279. Build quality is excellent, the screen is bright and high DPI, the battery life is very good and it has a very good software experience thanks to Cyanogenmod. My biggest gripe is the charging cable (which looks very spiffy) is too short and the connector is upside down compared to other phones. Firefox also doesn't appear to be able to play hardware accelerated h264 properly for some reason which I assume is a fault in the software since no other app has the problem. Otherwise it's a great device.

Comment It's been 30 years for cryin out loud (Score 1) 194

So in all of this time researching solar panels, are you telling me nobody checked into the glass or the pattern of glass on top of the panels themselves? And they also did not look into the various wavelengths of light that penetrate through the glass to know what works better and what works worse?

Pardon me, but is this a joke? This seems like such an obvious area of research related to the industry of gathering solar power that I almost can't believe it wasn't studied before now. What am I missing here?

Comment Re:It has nothing to do with the part counts (Score 1) 293

That's marvellous if you are along the corridor of chargers. Not so marvellous for the vast number of people who aren't. Or who can't afford a Tesla.

It's not hard to envisage every gas station having chargers some day (or diners / supermarkets / convenience stores who want to attract business while vehicles charge). That day is still some way off.

Comment Re:UPS (Score 1) 236

The numbers I provided are actually generously overstated, as you'll only hit them when you're 100% loading everything.

When you're doing something useful (like playing a game), you don't have all 4+ CPU cores loaded 100%, nor do you have all 2+ GPUs 100% loaded, so their actual power usage is significantly lower than their max TDP. It is extremely difficult to put 100% load on a highly parallel resource like a multi-core CPU or (multiple) modern GPUs, and to do both at the same time (while doing anything useful) is exponentially more difficult, and extremely system specific. Even with a stationary target like a console, developers still struggle to fully utilize all of the hardware after 5+ years of experience with it.

Comment Re:UPS (Score 2) 236

Are you running quad SLI? No? Then your computer isn't using 700W of power. Typical gaming rigs these days rarely break 200W, even though they may be sold with 1000W (or more) PSUs.

Even with four GTX 980s in quad SLI, they would only be drawing 4*165W (= 660W) at peak. Even with a $1000 CPU (~130W TDP) and a dozen drives you're still going to be extremely hard pressed to get anywhere close to 700W.

Also, here's a 865W UPS for $180, that's pretty typical pricing and hugely oversized for a single machine.

Comment Re:Root Your Device? (Score 3, Funny) 54

I guess someone would have to tell us how to detect it, or something else equally helpful to actually PREVENT this threat. Warnings are pointless without a plan.

Just google for "free antivirus and sexy girl screensaver APK". Lots of Chinese warez sites have it. The app asks for a lot of permissions but only to see if there are viruses hiding in your text messages or contacts.

Comment Re:Ba Da ... (Score 1) 400

It's one thing to not default search to Google, but it would be another entirely to remove it from the list. As I don't run Mint, I'm assuming you mean the latter by "actively prevent". Even Mint can't use the standard Firefox branding or search plugin (perhaps it has an affiliate id in out), there are other ones which would work.

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