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Vaping is better than smoking? What kind of government is this?

http://www.engadget.com/2015/0...

I'm not sure what *you're* smoking.

What do you think Microsoft hardware is? Made in a factory in Redmond by Microsoft employees? Hahaha. Microsoft has long had their hardware designed by ODMs and made by CMs. According to this article [infoworld.com], Taiwanese company Pegatron makes the Surface tablets, and is also an iPad supplier.

*Every* American electronics company these days outsources their manufacturing and frequently their design to Asian companies. No one does any of that stuff here any more, except defense contractors of course.

That is simply not true. Many electronics companies have outsourced their manufacturing but they still mostly keep the design in-house. The Surface was designed in Redmond, WA, (http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/31/microsoft-surface-3-design/)

Apple products are famously designed for the most part in Cupertino. Amazon designs its Kindles in Silicon Valley. I could go on...

Pay no attention to all the technologies that came before it.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/0...

No time to work on bugs when you're busy conducting a witch hunt because "blue-haired" is 100% actual hate speech. That and all their drum beating about diversity and culture, it's a wonder they've managed to get anything done of late.

These guys did it:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/0...

They're in Boston now, I talked to them about it for a while and they're two very awesome people. There are many other articles out there about their time living in the woods while developing their projects.

I'm all for helping little guys get started, but it's amazing how much they miss out on. Even high profile projects (like the Raspberry Pi) seem to miss out on things like FCC/CE/UL certifications.

Another one that I like to point out is the Ouya. They were trying to deliver an Android Box, a controller, and a custom Android build and marketplace for the same price that most other companies were asking for just an Android Box. It was pretty easy to tell from the start that they were going to have to cut a lot of corners on the product to meet the price they advertised.

I've been using Sync.com for the past year. They've been sort of in beta but releasing features. 5GB free.

SpiderOak is decent but they recently dropped their free plan, so not sure what's going on there.

MEGA was great but Kim.com said last week in Wired that the company is run by criminals

Tresorit is good but expensive. Maybe that's why they've been around so long.
Bitcasa pulled a Wuala last year and closed down their consumer cloud storage after a lawsuit. That's pretty much it. There's OwnCloud which is do it yourself. And BitTorrent Sync which is kind of do it yourself but they've been adjusting pricing so it's bait and switch as well.

Just fyi there was a time when apple did not allow apps to use the camera flash as a flashlight. They said it was a inappropriate use of hardware. Years ago now but some of us still remember. http://www.engadget.com/2010/0...

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/...

I have a pretty decent phone. A flagship phone that's now 3 years old, the Moto Razr Maxx HD. It's a bit long in the tooth, but it still has a sharp, bright screen, decent battery life, and while it's not lightning fast, it does everything I need smoothly and comfortably.

But Moto doesn't sell it anymore. I'm pretty sure it's EOL anymore, which probably makes me SOL.

But it keeps chugging on, and as a consumer, shorting of reading tech sites like /., I would never know that there's any problem at all. Meanwhile, my security keys are being lifted, my email passwords are stolen, and somebody's posting Donkey pictures on my Facebook account and I have no idea how or why.

But, even if I *weren't* SOL, there's the issue that, while my Linux laptop gets updated daily, and my Windows laptop gets updated weekly, my phone gets updated (perhaps) a few times per year.

See the problem, yet? We're seeing just the bare beginning.

The bright boys at Google need to figure out a way to update Android and bypass the carriers, or at least, provide a side-channel way to roll out security updates, or their whole ecosystem will collapse in an orgy of viruses and malware.

For my next phone, I just might make sure I can run Cyanogenmod on it, if for no other reason than the hope of getting security updates in a reasonable timeframe.

I didn't realize that anyone signed up for Prime for their streaming video, their catalog is subpar to Netflix, I just treat it as a value-add to their Prime shipping.

If Prime Instant Video were free then a poor service might be justifiable, although even then it couldn't be considered an asset if it's poor. But Amazon actually increased the cost of Prime membership when they added Prime Instant Video so in no way can it be considered free.

Prime Instant Video was announced in Feb, 2011, but they didn't increase the cost of Prime membership until March 2014.

When they announced the price increase, one analyst said: he was surprised that no additional services were announced as part of the price hike, but noted that Prime’s “value to consumers has risen greatly over the past nine years, as the price has been held flat.

You just attach it directly to the PCIe bus with a dedicated controller like PCIe SSDs today rather than through the existing SATA ports http://www.engadget.com/2015/0... . Over time, the other interfaces will catch up. x4 Gen3 PCIe goes pretty quickly...

Make them send you a check. I only mention this particular instance because I received a (very small and clearly token) check for VZW crippling my Motorola V710 after advertising it as having fancy Bluetooth features.

Similarly, I bought a G1 and was subsequently disappointed by Google's handling of Android. Didn't get a check from that, though. Just stopped buying phones with Android on them.

Yes. Be afraid, very afraid.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/03/commodore-usa-goes-extreme-stuffs-a-2-2ghz-quad-core-i7-into-it/

That was announced in June.

Although I suspect he's just being primed as a trojan horse for another unsuspecting tech company that holds a chest of patents that Microsoft wants.

Apparently Elop is also out as part of the layoffs. Most likely he'll get a big payout for his part.

You didn't look at the correct picture (assuming this one is not a fake... link straight from wikipedia, by the way).

Digital music was well on it's way before apple produced the iPod. And let's not forget the LG Prada which came out almost a year before the iPhone, it was the first phone with a capacitive touchscreen and that form factor.

Forget it? I never knew of it in the first place. Which makes it a strong example of the grandparent's point.

Fun fact: the first reports on it already called it "iPhone look-a-like". http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/18/lgs-ke850-prada-official-iphone-says-wha/

Yeah, I have a T540p with the big spring-loaded touchpad acting as buttons. You can (somewhat) adjust the size of the area that counts as a "left-click". Hopefully this is just a passing fad as they are re-introducing the buttons on some models.

Looks like the T550 series will have physical mouse buttons again.

No, I believe this is actual backwards compatibility. From Engadget:

All developers need to do is approve a game for backward compatibility for it to work

Microsoft may not be able to automatically put these games on Xbox One due to legal or contractual issues. It seems the only reason 100% of games will not be available is if a publisher deems backwards compatibility to be undesirable for their business.

Also to quote Microsoft's announcement website:

The digital titles that you own and are part of the Back Compat game catalog will automatically show up in the “Ready to Install” section on your Xbox One. For disc-based games that are a part of the Back Compat game catalog, simply insert the disc and the console will begin downloading the game to your hard drive. After the game has finished downloading, you will still need to keep the game disc in the drive to play.

I would have guessed that "downloading" here means disc-to-hard drive. To your credit, it is unclear.

The biggest problem is the lack of updates for devices. This happens across all phones, regardless of how much you pay for them. The other thing to mention is that there are some really decent phones for $100 - $200. Stuff like the Moto G and E are actually quite good devices. They lack a few features of the higher end phones, You shouldn't need to spend $700 on a phone to get a decent experience. There are phones out there that prove you don't have to. There are phones like the Lumia 635 that are $30 when it goes on sale that people find perfectly adequate. Why spend $700 on a phone when there are devices out there that will get the job done.

I'm sure they will figure something out after the Fukushima disaster.

Just take a look at this samurai robot

People growing up under oppressive governments have much fewer problems with cheating — because cheating government is a fair game. It rubs off — and the attitude is quickly extended to non-governmental institutions large and even smaller ones.

This is not "racism" — ex-Soviets like myself often have the same problem... A cheating Western student fears (or used to fear) the shame of being exposed. A Chinese — or a Soviet — fears merely getting caught. Like a speeding ticket — there is no shame in driving fast, only in being stopped by "the bear".

China today uses drones to catch cheaters — America had not felt the need for such measures. Perhaps, it was a foolish attitude, because we the immigrants bring all our traits to the "wonderful tapestry of diversity", not just the good ones...

Anybody dealing with Chinese companies (or Russian ones, if you can find any), ought to be careful and not depend merely on trust.

Where is my Thunderbolt high speed LAN network connection? 10G Ethernet is prohibitively expensive, this has 40GB built in. Why can't I use 10G or so of that to network?!

It's been a thing for a while, just connect two compatible systems with any old Thunderbolt cable.

Macs got it with 10.9 in October '13: http://www.macworld.com/articl...
Windows apparently got a driver from Intel to support it in April '14: http://www.engadget.com/2014/0...
I can find a bunch of questions about it on Linux but haven't found anything conclusive about support. It doesn't look like there's been much work at the moment, likely because Thunderbolt systems are few and far between aside from Macs.

But this just seems like something that even basic testing should have caught.
Did they not run this thing on the ground for a few weeks?

It was tested by the same guys that tested the Boeing 787 for only 247 days ...

I find that a 23", 1080p display is enough to watch Netflix. As a bonus, it means I can easily tolerate the lower quality setting which Netflix Canada had to add for us because most of our ISPs have ridiculously low monthly caps.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/0...

Yes, Except for hollow optical fibers. Dunning-Kruger yourself.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/0...

Oculus has talked about 7 diffrent headsets and they have shipped 4 and plan to ship 1 more in less than a year.

Steam has shipped how many headsets?

Oculus:
DK1 - shipped
Crystal Cove - demo'd never shipped
DK2 - shipped
Crecent Bay - demo'd never shipped
GearVR - shipped
GearVR S6 - shipped
CV1 - shipping in future

Valve:
http://www.engadget.com/2015/0...
Vive - demo'd
DK1 - shipped only to select partners/developer houses
CV1 - shipping in future

I'm about 6 months into driving a Passport.
I am pretty happy with it, I do like the larger screen when I need to read spreadsheets, email is well thought out, the "keyboard + touchpad" is clever.
Haven't noticed it crashing like my last android (HTC One).
Some Android apps easily available from the Amazon app store.
Built-in map navigation was hard to use, adding google maps helped.
The only thing I really miss is having the Uber app... but I'm getting by with traditional taxis (which is fine for work travel mainly, so I don't miss uber... much).
It does have a learning curve; worth taking an hour or two to learn ui-gestures and keyboard shortcuts.
*shrug* which is fine for me, I don't expect power tools to have zero learning curves.
I bought unlocked through Amazon, apparently you can see them in AT&T stores as of Feb 2015 (haven't looked myself, just passing the note along in case you are ever out phone shopping in person to try "look and feel."

the dream of "millions more streaming online" is just a dream

It's reality, not a dream, and has been for a while. It's hard to find numbers to put this into perspective but I found some info from IEM San Jose (december 2014) and DOTA2. IEM had 4 milion live viewers during a two day event. DOTA2 reached 2 million simultaneous viewers with a total of 20 million viewers. While NCAA is bigger than both events combined the numbers are not that far off either. NCAA is an old organisation with a 50 year television history that has a lot of resources to promote it's events. As eSports have time and demography on their side I expect that eSport will continue to grow. Especially now television broadcasters are starting to pick it up.

The mass appeal of watching someone play video games is just not there.

That statement makes me wonder if you've actually watched eSport. In my mind it's no different than watching people play baseball or tennis.

Google allows you to unbundle all of the google-centric services from your phone and use whatever cloud APIs or App stores you want.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/0...

Methods are improving and materials are improving. As costs continue to drop and more materials become available, look around your home and ask: What objects could be replaced with replicas made of metal, ceramics, even advanced composites of wood or stone. A composite maplewood desk. A custom designed set of steel silverware. Porcelain plates. Ceramic bowls. Iron composite free weights. I have a painting I purchased at an art museum. It would be neat to be able to snap a photo, get home and have a replica suit of armor. Surely this won't cover everything, but certain kinds of objects will simply be available now, whether or not you purchased them directly (simply by having the materials necessary). It will be interesting to see how the market reacts, but in terms of the products that get replaced, to the innovations that build on top of this.

They must have different rules there.

In Switzerland, patents expire in 20 years. Trademarks don't expire, but must be periodically renewed. So why is a patent from 1985 still valid? How can a patent cover logos and brands, which are covered by trademarks? TFA doesn't have much information, and what it does have doesn't make sense. The most plausible explanation is that the journalist is simply incompetent.

This article states that it is a trademark, not a patent, and that the trademark has a 30 year duration, and it is expiring soon. It doesn't explain why the trademark is expiring.

As of June 2014 there were 1 billion active Android users.

That makes 1% equal to [drum roll] 10 million devices as of 10 months ago, so the current number is bigger. That's NOT an insignificant number, Google. Do something!!!

At a price of $350, it's hardly expensive for a watch.

It's not a watch. It's a fashion accessory. And nobody who is somebody would be caught dead wearing a $350 version . . . Apple is going after the folks who will dish out $10,000 for a watch: http://www.engadget.com/2015/0...

$350 for a watch? How vulgar and ordinary!

http://media.engadget.com/img/...

Not if it's symmetric. But a side button for the thumb would suck on an asymmetric mouse.

I use a right-handed mouse with my left hand, the Logitech Mouseman Optical (URL is a picture of the thing). It has a thumb button which I click with my ring finger of pinkie finger, and I love this setup by far over any other, at least for office work.

Well well well, look what just made the news. It was predictable.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/0...

The Logitech K310 is reasonably OK to use and the build quality is pretty good. It is just an averagely nice keyboard although I do wish it had backlighting. http://www.engadget.com/produc...

The unique feature of this keyboard is that it is washable and yes I mean rinse it in a stream of running water whilst scrubbing it with a detergent brush. Have you any idea how filthy and bacteria-ridden is a typical office or home keyboard?

Try looking here.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/0...

Now claims that the FCC legally defined the term broad band internet based on speeds.

  The section you listed did not define broadband specifically, it renumbered section 8.11 to read as 8.2 in the law (which is unconstitutional) and restates the law verbatim.

The interesting part here is that I cannot find the official release of when they voted to change the definition of broadband for the speeds. The vote happened jan 29 of this year but I cannot find the report/disclosure on it. So maybe it has been redefined again or maybe the FCC's order for the definition based on speed is still in the works or something.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cf...

The interesting thing is the FCC just recently redefined the speeds of officially defined broadband to 25m down and 3m up. If any portion of the connection doesn't meet or exceed that, it's not broadband as far as the federal government and FCC is concerned. What if the ISPs redefine their offerings as 24/3 or 50/2.5 up and down respectfully. That would suggest that all this new regulation could be avoided if they simply didn't offer "broadband".

Interesting point. That makes me question, would not offering "broadband" be against the franchise agreements they have in place with cities that keep competition out? Probably dependson the specific agreement with each city?

I have trouble figuring out just how an ISP can do actual harm to me when it's my choice to pay them or not for their service. If I don't like the deal they're offering, I don't pay them.

If you have no other option for broadband and your requirements are broadband, then you are harmed either by the actions of the ISP or by the lack of an ISP when you decide not to pay them.

Second, you credit the FCC for not harming people in the same way you might credit a robber for not shooting a clerk for cooperating during a robbery. It's the threat of violence that's a problem. Same thing goes for countries that lack first amendment style protections. Few are actually physically harmed. They're just too afraid to speak. They opt out of discussions the government doesn't approve of.

Well, since most broadband is already piggybacked into homes on existing infrastructure that the title 2 regulation put in place, you can say that the FCC created the mess that people are wanting fixed by title 2 regulation in the first place. Now they are claiming that by giving them more power under title 2 regulation, they can fix that.

Here is an interesting thought exercise though. The rules I have bothered reading so far say

A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service

The interesting thing is the FCC just recently redefined the speeds of officially defined broadband to 25m down and 3m up. If any portion of the connection doesn't meet or exceed that, it's not broadband as far as the federal government and FCC is concerned. What if the ISPs redefine their offerings as 24/3 or 50/2.5 up and down respectfully. That would suggest that all this new regulation could be avoided if they simply didn't offer "broadband".

the guy buying a watch for $25 will not buy a $300 watch

the guy buying a $10,000 watch will not buy a $300 watch

wait...

http://www.engadget.com/2015/0...

ok, yeah, they're fucked

For anyone who might have had a doubt...The new MacBook (MSRP $1300.00) requires an $80 dongle to connect to anything.

Uh, you mean just like this real research which does that?

If this thing came out in a parallel universe where the iPod didn’t exist, it would be hailed as a god. No, the problem is the iPod’s head start — its catalog of music, movies, apps and accessories are ridiculously superior to the Zune’s

The Zune was cancelled shortly thereafter. The product finally became good, but it was too late. I smell the same fate for windows phone.

This seems indicative of sense that the rules do not apply to me.

Nobody who would vote for Hillary Clinton will care about things like this.

That's a broad and largely inaccurate statement.

A lot of them will care very much, but not enough to vote for a candidate with much more serious flaws.

I highly doubt it, her cult of personality is too big. Articles defending her using the tu quoque defense are already popping up. Hillary Clinton could tap dance in stilettos on a box full of puppies and PETA would praise her for mercifully saving them from a life of enslavement. If you really cared, you would simply abstain from voting for that particular office. A vote for the lesser of two evils is still evil. If the only choices I had for 2016 were Clinton or Bush, I wouldn't vote for either.

I think that's a mistake.

I think the politicians are terrible, I also know my knowledge is limited, and it's possible that I'm either underestimating them, underestimating the difficulty of the job, or underestimating the necessity of getting your hands dirty.

Just listen to this interview with someone who ran for Prime Minister of Canada and failed quite spectacularly, dirty hands are amazingly effective.

Either way abstaining entirely just hands power to the extremists who have made the situation so awful to begin with. The real solution is for as many people to vote as possible, if you vote for the politician who is slightly less evil then the next pair of candidates are going to be slightly better. It wasn't luck that trimmed the 2012 GOP field of everyone not-Romney, the Republicans realized that when dealing with an election where people paid attention and voted they couldn't get away with a Tea Partier heading the Presidential ticket. If you make a habit of not voting for "evil" candidates you're going to go from Mitt Romney to Ted Cruz, is that really the outcome you're looking for?

This seems indicative of sense that the rules do not apply to me.

Nobody who would vote for Hillary Clinton will care about things like this.

That's a broad and largely inaccurate statement.

A lot of them will care very much, but not enough to vote for a candidate with much more serious flaws.

I highly doubt it, her cult of personality is too big. Articles defending her using the tu quoque defense are already popping up. Hillary Clinton could tap dance in stilettos on a box full of puppies and PETA would praise her for mercifully saving them from a life of enslavement. If you really cared, you would simply abstain from voting for that particular office. A vote for the lesser of two evils is still evil. If the only choices I had for 2016 were Clinton or Bush, I wouldn't vote for either.

There might be some hoopla on Twitter and Fox News for a few days, and then there will be some stragglers like with Benghazi, but it will mostly fade out of the mainstream media within a few hours from now.

What does this have to do with Benghazi? If anything there's a major difference in that Clinton actually did something wrong in this one.

The point isn't whether she did something wrong or not, the point was there will be very few people talking about this in the future, regardless of her actions. The media will quite simply ignore this because they will be in the tank for Hillary the way they were for Obama in 2008 & 2012. I didn't vote for Obama, but I was actually glad that he got elected in 2008, because that meant that neither Hillary Clinton nor John McCain would be president.

It's becoming too complicated to verify everything. Last week it was revealed how NSA has a spyware kit for firmwares of all HDD brands. It's getting pretty crazy.

We're not even over the NSA hard drive hacks and now this?

Next you're gonna tell me Americans shove food up people's ass for freedom. Oh wait they do.

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive?
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware?
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of worldâ(TM)s computers: report
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago

"hard drive" isn't even mentioned in the summary. You idiots got misdirected.

The focus should be on the fact that all hard drives from major brands can be fucked with by the NSA and there are no solutions, the focus shouldn't be on some fucking hacking group:

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive?
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware?
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of worldâ(TM)s computers: report
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago