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Comment Re:Memristors are (potentially) awesome (Score 1) 77

Today, the chips die somewhere around 200 to 300 ÂC after a few hours, if nothing else gives out first. Indeed, if all components and connectors could withstand much higher temperatures, one could reduce the size of heatsinks drastically.

Source: I've worked with and designed high temperature electronics, highest temps my colleagues had electronics for was 250 ÂC, obviously for a limited lifetime of 1000 hours. I've also done chip design for mobile phones, where I experienced the torture testing called HTOL, 1000 hours at 125 ÂC in operation. Most expensive PCBs I've come across in my career.

The reason to have good cooling is to avoid high temperatures. The other alternative is too be able to be withstand high temperatures, which is a niche discipline, so ultra costly and very limited in terms of components. So most of the world went to the first option.

Comment Re:noahs ark/flood (Score 1) 158

No, the Abrahamic god did. The Christian god got a partial reset (most likely because a full one wasn't doable) where Jesus pushed the angle of compassion, as told by Saul / Paul. You can push that aside but then you miss the point of the New Testament. Which a lot of people, many Christians included, then have in common with you.

Comment Keep the distance to social media (Score 1) 20

More and more I see social media and mankind as the ultra slow version of Marvin the Paranoid Android talking to a space ship's computer that then commits suicide.

There's no serious problem thinkable to which social media is ever truly the optimum solution.

Luckily, nowadays, it's at least perfectly acceptable to state that one stays away on purpose. But we should kick the habit. Getting youngsters off it is just the start.

Comment Re:Use protection (Score 1) 50

When signal has pending messages for a user, the signal message server sends an empty "ping" notification for the signal user to Apple. iOS notification service delivers the notification to signal. Signal then wakes up and picks up the encrypted message from the cloud, decrypts it, and pops a notification containing the plain text.

Wait what...? So any messenger app has to go through Apple, Google or perhaps even Samsung to get a message delivered to a phone? Or is this just Apple specific?

Comment medical Re:14 years? (Score 1) 62

Automotive stories are often fun, but I'll raise you one, from my previous employer where a medical customer wasn't too convinced with the presented automotive certification (IATF) and such, with the words: "you must understand, we're medical, we're not such a fast moving world as the automotive industry, 10 years retention doesn't cut it, we'd even need to discuss 15 years,... You see, the oldest product we still sell today came onto the market 35 years ago..." They need 15 years of development and production data retention after last sale, IIRC. But very funny to witness someone address the automotive sector as "fast moving"...

Comment Re:never? (Score 1) 44

Hindsight is 20 20. I was in the mobile industry, and Apple made a bold move and carried it out properly. Unlike Nokia they tapped new users, which is one reason it didn't fail, contrary to Nokia, had they produced phones that break when they fall, in the opinion of about anyone I spoke with about the topic. And I spoke with many, I've even manned an exhibition at MWC at some point.

Regarding precision, on my Nokia internet tablet I got near pixel precision, yes, not at the level of using a mouse on a pc but miles above what a finger on a display can do. But it just doesn't matter anymore, usage has changed. Power users were the least convinced, they held on to their Nokia communicators and N95 for a long time.

Comment Re:never? (Score 1) 44

Exactly, Apple didn't want to use resistive touch which was very precise, so they developed multi touch capacitive glass screens. The first iterations were not all that, but somehow the world suddenly accepted a dropped phone to be broken. Nokia couldn't have made the iPhone a success, because their customers would never have accepted a phone that breaks when dropped. Not until way after the iPhone made that acceptable. Same for one day battery use before needing to recharge, another thing that the iPhone got people to accept.

As for keyboards, sliders, etcetera, sure, more screen real estate is better, but for instance a touch area on the back or the fixed mouse idea were interesting. Meanwhile, the world moves on and all mobile apps and sites take into account that a part of the screen is sometimes obscured by fingers which aren't too precise.

Comment Re:never? (Score 2) 44

Actually, all phones had plastic displays for unbreakability untill the iPhone, indeed glass because shiny. Glass also conflicted with resistive touch sensing, but Apple/Jobs worked around that by pushing for a finger touch device. We've all accepted it ages ago, but having your hand in front of the screen is not optimal. Typing on an on-screen keyboard, where your key presses are obscured by your finger is really not all that. Sadly, no alternative made it, partially for being too cumbersome, too expensive or just not from Apple. The international press lapped up the iPhone, partially because it wasn't Microsoft. The iPhone however, was practically the first phone that broke when dropped. And to my astonishment, the world not just accepted that, they embraced it.

Comment Re:I run Debian and i3 / Sway (Score 1) 116

I hear you. I used HP-UX and Linux at university, then some Solaris, and various others, coming back to HP-UX professionally then Linux. Having a terminal partially below other windows but active and pasting and typing in them is hard to go without once it's in your workflow.

Nowadays, kids don't even learn moving windows around, getting spoonfed on tablets half the time. And crippled windows and Mac the other half.

BTW Windows doesn't even have edge resistance on move. It will be a cold day in hell before the rest of the usability features is available.

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