COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Tizer]

Modest often equates to El Cheapo.....

Like Panbiker, I can't agree with that Stanley. I think we're having different interpretations of the word `modest' here. I would regard Pluggy's `£450-ish' as modest after most of the laptops I saw in my web search yesterday were over £500 and many were over £1000. Also, look at Samsung smartphones versus Apple.

LATER...after another search. How does this HP look from eBuyer? LINK
HP 250 G7 Laptop, Intel Core i5-8265U 1.6GHz, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, 15.6" Full HD, No-DVD, Intel HD, WIFI, Windows 10 Home
£ 449.97 inc next day delivery.
I don't have any experience of eBuyer.

[Stanley]

In my defence.... I didn't say always, I said often.

[plaques]

Computer facial recognition is coming under scrutiny. Link. ' Face recognition police tools 'staggeringly inaccurate'. The impending court case raises some very searching questions. In effect we are all potential criminals until you are proved innocent. Big brother strikes again.

[Tizer]

This will probably interest the techie types, it has a lot of detail...
`Huawei's microchip vulnerability explained' LINK

[PanBiker]

We will see what the backlash is from the US semiconductor manufacturers who will be impacted by Trumps executive order. 44% of one named is a lot of business to lose overnight.

Current generation Talk Talk routers are manufactured by Huawei, so this post is being handled by their technology.

[Pluggy]

Modest often equates to El Cheapo.....

Like Panbiker, I can't agree with that Stanley. I think we're having different interpretations of the word `modest' here. I would regard Pluggy's `£450-ish' as modest after most of the laptops I saw in my web search yesterday were over £500 and many were over £1000. Also, look at Samsung smartphones versus Apple.

LATER...after another search. How does this HP look from eBuyer? LINK
HP 250 G7 Laptop, Intel Core i5-8265U 1.6GHz, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, 15.6" Full HD, No-DVD, Intel HD, WIFI, Windows 10 Home
£ 449.97 inc next day delivery.
I don't have any experience of eBuyer.

I missed this earlier. I can't argue with the HP from Ebuyer, since I have a very nearly identical machine last march from Ebuyer. Mines an earlier iteration. Mine was windows 10 pro and a bit more expensive. It has Ubuntu 18.04 on it now. Its a good machine, I bought the wife an I3 version on the strength of it in May last year. No issues with Ebuyer.

[Tizer]

Thanks Pluggy, that's useful to know.

[Tizer]

My cousin and her husband had gone on a shopping trip to Exeter yesterday so I sent her a message after reading Pluggy's last post. They looked at what was on sale there, went for a coffee and made the decision to buy the £450 laptop from eBuyer. OG's influence extends a long way!

[Pluggy]

I'm fundamentally a cheapskate at heart, but I get involved with a lot of cheap laptops being overwhelmed by Windows 10 especially during updates. In comparison to what I would consider daft priced computers (any thing Apple or some gaming machines) £450 is modest, but in £200 land it isn't. I have a Cubot (who ?) smart phone i bought on ebay for the princely sum of £69(out right unlocked) three years ago. I see no reason to move on. My daughter borrowed my wife's phone recently which didn't come back so I just bought her (my wife) a later Cubot for £69 from ebay. She seems happy with it.

[Stanley]

That means I must have had your old phone for 3 years now Pluggy. Still doing what I ask it to but slow compared to the FM.

[Tizer]

We bought a Pure Evoke H3 DAB Bluetooth radio last October for £120. A lot to pay for a radio but I wanted one that had Bluetooth and also allowing setting bass and treble to help my hearing with voices. It's now not working properly - the sound stops and we can't get it back again, even if we switch off and on several times; but then the following day if we try again it works! It's happening with both radio and Bluetooth so it's not the radio reception at fault. When it goes off it doesn't show the mute symbol but we can toggle the mute button and the symbol goes on and off as usual but there's no sound. I did live chat with Argos where we bought it and they've directed me to a company called Kondor Ltd who will decide what to do.

[Stanley]

Hard luck Tiz, electronics are usually so reliable these days....
I remember Big Harry telling me a long time ago that if a computer survived the first 4 weeks it would run for years. Generally that's still true.

[Tizer]

Computers seem to be OK but then they've been around for a long time now. It's the other stuff that fails. We bought a sound bar for the TV and to use with the tablet via Bluetooth. The tablet/sound bar Bluetooth connection is fine for playing music files but not for playing iPlayer podcasts - they keep breaking up.

Huawei has taken over Africa!...
`Why Huawei's Google woes worry Africa' LINK
Buried in that report is this: `Critics of Huawei operations point to a report in January 2018 in French newspaper Le Monde that found that the computer system at the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, which was installed by Huawei, had allegedly been compromised. The discovery found that for five years, between the hours of midnight and 0200, data from the AU's servers was transferred more than 8,000km away - to servers in Shanghai. The allegations were denied by the African Union and Chinese officials.'

[Stanley]

"data from the AU's servers was transferred more than 8,000km away - to servers in Shanghai."
That wouldn't surprise me in the least Tiz. Not necessarily for nefarious reasons, there is such a thing as maintenance back-ups.
Another thing Big Harry told me was that all international calls should be free as they were a minuscule part of the load on communications links. The vast preponderance of traffic is data transfer. When he worked at Salomons in the City and rang Janet at another merchant bank half a mile away the call was routed through Hong Kong where the hub used by Salomans was located. That was over 15 years ago, what must the flow be like now?!

[PanBiker]

Nearly 40 years ago, I was using an Italian forward store data repeater on the HF bands to communicate with my mate across town. You sent text messages from your computer linked via Amtor modems into your transceiver. The messages were addressed and stored and could be retrieved later by logging in using your callsign. It used some of the protocols and procedures that are now commonplace in email.

[Tizer]

`Would you recognise yourself from your data?' LINK By Carl Miller Research director and author, Demos
This is worth reading to find out how many different ways data is being collected and distributed. Miller did his own research and it also shows that many organisations don't understand their obligations under the new data protection regulations.

[Stanley]

Interesting article and yet another reason to avoid smart devices! I saw a report in PE that Amazon Echo has an app that you can switch on that will alert your phone if it hears certain noises like breaking glass while you are out. This means that they are listening all the time and recording data. (Of course we knew they did this as they have to listen all the time for a request) As PE pointed out, this could lead to some interesting requests for data during divorces......
I wouldn't give one house room!

[Stanley]

Normally at this time of day I would be sat quietly in the rocking chair reading..... But my new router arrived this morning so I bit the bullet and installed it. Unusually it's twice the size of the old one but I have it installed and working and I've persuaded it to talk to my Freesat box and TV so that's OK.....
I got a resolution to another small problem as well. I Ordered some new cutters from Banggood. The payment went through but no word on the delivery. I emailed them yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to get a reply from a human this morning. All is well, just a matter of delivery time.....

[Stanley]

Later I found that I had a dead phone. I had to play with it for a while to get into settings and educate it about the new router and password. One small but important innovation is that the router identification and password are on a small detachable card so no more peering at the back to get the information.

[Tripps]

I keep calling out 'Alexa - dim the lights' but nothing has happened as yet.

Perhaps she doesn't like my Lancashire accent.

[Stanley]

It's listening to you 24X7 David. I'm surprised you even allowed her house room.....
On a related security matter.... If one had a screen with a built in camera and microphone how could you make sure they were not operating under the control of someone else?

[Big Kev]

On a related security matter.... If one had a screen with a built in camera and microphone how could you make sure they were not operating under the control of someone else?

Depends how the mic and camera are connected to the machine. Is the monitor connected with hdmi? Are there separate USB connections?

The simple 'fix' for the camera is a bit of black tape

[Stanley]

Redundant questions Kev because I have neither. It was just a general query.....

[Stanley]

I'm not sure what this means but news is that Apple is closing down its iTunes application.... (LINK)

[Stanley]

See THIS report of a vulnerability in Windows. Unusually it is the NSA who have issued the warning. Ironic since one of the threats is 'Eternal Blue' which is NSA generated attack ware which was leaked.
Ubuntu users have seen a lot of update activity in the last few days. I wonder if it's related?