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Comment Re:OnePlus not created by Cyanogenmod folks? (Score 1) 38

OnePlus was not the first to contract Cyngn to provide them an OS - they were the second.

Oppo was the first with the N1.

You'll see a trend of Cyngn partners dropping them as Cyngn burns them. Look at the job they did with the N1 - didn't get an official KitKat OTA until after Lollipop became available. (Nightlies don't count since they're unsupported.)

Also, OxygenOS is not an Android "fork" - I would not consider anything that passes Google's CTS and is in fact Google Mobile Services (GMS, aka gapps) certified to be a "fork".

It's Cyngn that's trying to fork Android to create a variant independent from Google.

Comment Re:Tin foil hat time (Score 5, Interesting) 142

The only case I know of where an algorithm was actually backdoored was one of the random number generation schemes... The algorithm in question happens to be (IIRC) quite fast.

In other cases (DES I think??? I could be wrong.) the NSA recommended some oddball changes. No one could find a negative consequence of them so they went in - a decade or so later, it turns out that the original implementation of DES DID have a cryptographic flaw and the NSA recommendations fixed that.

Keep in mind there are two parts of the NSA, ones which have in many ways highly conflicting goals:
1) One part is tasked with compromising the information infrastructure of our enemies - these are the ones who keep on making the news these days
2) Another part is tasked with protecting our critical information infrastructure, especially with protecting data sensitive to national security. These are the people who do Type I crypto certification, worked on creating SELinux, etc. These rarely make the news but in general, from our perspective these are the good guys. You can tell that AES-256 is NOT backdoored by the NSA since they allow it to be used to protect classified information (NSA Suite B - you can assume anything in Suite B is solid since the NSA is using it themselves.)

Comment Re:electricity only (Score 1) 317

Interestingly, Norway is the reason Denmark is one of the few countries to achieve more than 20-25% grid penetration for wind/solar - Denmark's neighbor to the north has EXCELLENT energy storage facilities due to their geography.

(When the wind is blowing/sun shining, Denmark sells surplus power to Norway. When it isn't, they buy it back. Note that they're usually paying far more than what they sold it for due to supply/demand economics.)

Comment Re:And now why this can not be done in the USofA (Score 1) 317

Yup. FYI the hydro facility's output is throttled based on time of day to make the falls look pretty at peak tourism times.

I've seen claims that from 50-75% of the river's flow is diverted to hydro depending on time of day and season (more diversion is allowed in winter when there are fewer tourists) - There is not as much need for a dam thanks to consistent flow and the fact that there's a pretty hefty height difference, although there are dams downstream for large pumped-storage facilities (which provide an alternative to damming the river as far as storage goes) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Comment Re:And now why this can not be done in the USofA (Score 1) 317

Huh? You're not making any sense.

"Because of the Hoover dam image" - what the heck do you mean here?

Yes, hydro is not talked about, and yes, the Hoover Dam (along with the various other hydroelectric dams in this country) is a major reason why - Because it has ALREADY BEEN BUILT AND DEPLOYED FOR DECADES AND IT ISN'T MEETING OUR NEEDS.

We simply don't have enough rivers to dam that we haven't ALREADY dammed. The USA's hydro resources are tapped out - and many of them are encountering severe problems due to lack of rainfall lately. Lake Mead, for example, reached its lowest level since the Hoover Dam was built last year.

Comment Re:Try and try again. (Score 1) 445

That was the thing - it had a healthier third-party developer community than anything else that was out there at the time.

Android pretty much stole all of the legacy WM5/6 usersbase I think - very few WM5/6 people I know went to WP7.

In fact quite a few people I knew (including myself) used crazy hacks such as XDAndroid - my first Android device was an AT&T/HTC Tilt 2 (aka Touch Pro 2) - I still have fond memories of that device. :)

Comment Re:Wrong reason they'll use it. (Score 1) 51

Yeah. Lots of people rave about spec e-peen, but the truth is, even older chips are MORE than powerful enough to provide a good experience except for the niche things like hardcore gaming.

Interestingly, for hardcore gaming, NVidia gave up on the phone form factor. The SHIELD Portable's form factor allowed it to have active cooling for the Tegra4, and the SHIELD Tablet has a phase change heat spreader (aka heatpipe) over its CPU - a predecessor to this stuff Fujitsu is working on.

For nearly all smartphone users, more basic chips (like the Snapdragon 400) are more than enough, the problem has been that until the Moto G, low-end chips got match with piss-poor software quality. Moto is the first company to release low-end phones with software that didn't suck.

Comment Re:Do that for the laptops as well (Score 1) 51

They DO have space restrictions, just not as severe as those in a smartphone.

Interestingly, heatpipes in a laptop are a way to deal with the space restrictions - they allow a laptop to dissipate MUCH more heat in a smaller space.

With smartphones, they simply had to "dissipate less heat".

Although I question how much of a benefit this will really be. As it is, even without heatpipes, smartphone thermal throttles are usually set WELL below the CPU's junction temperature limit - the reason is that it's to prevent other components from getting too hot (like the battery). I remember talking to some Sony engineers, and IIRC, the CPU thermal throttle in most Xperia Z family units is not set to protect any of the internal components, but to protect the user's hand. Fujitsu's tricks might actually reduce the junction temperature at which a CPU can operate without burning the user.

Comment Re:It's all crap. (Score 1) 145

"but since CSI Miami more or less gave up any pretense that it was meant to be and instead was 45 minutes of Horatio being awesome, saving women and children and shooting very heavily armed but remarkably inaccurare bad guys it was actually far more entertaining." - or, why I actually LIKE watching Scorpion. :) It's so bad, it's good!

Comment Re:Try and try again. (Score 2, Interesting) 445

I am currently an avid Android user.

I used to be an avid Windows Mobile user. WM5/6 were actually, when they existed, the MOST power-user/business-friendly mobile OSes out there. They were more geek-friendly than any of the horrifically locked-down "Linux-based" mobile OSes.

Then Microsoft dropped WP7 on the world - an OS which was unusable for nearly 100% of the core WM5/WM6 user base. At the same time, Android was coming onto the scene, which had everything that WM5/WM6's core user base wanted. MS never recovered, they utterly screwed up. NEVER alienate the majority of your core user base, even if it's trying to reach a "new" audience - especially when the "new" audience you're targeting is already drooling over a competitor (Apple).

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