android

Why this latest attempt to resurrect the Commodore brand will probably flop

Dave Farquhar Android, Retro Computing , , , , , , , , ,
Why this latest attempt to resurrect the Commodore brand will probably flop

The Commodore brand is back again, this time on an Android smartphone. For a premium price, you get an Android 5.0 phone with the Commodore logo on it, preloaded with VICE and an Amiga emulator, which, between the two of them, emulate just about everything Commodore ever made, except, perhaps, the products that can be emulated with the Android calculator app.

But I don’t expect this attempt to be any more successful than earlier efforts to resurrect the brand.

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Expect a rough road ahead for Flash

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , , ,

Adobe has patched Flash twice in two weeks now. The reason for this was due to Hacking Team, an Italian company that sells hacking tools to government agencies, getting hacked. Hacking Team, it turns out, knew of at least three unpatched vulnerabilities (also known as “zero-days” or “0days”) in Flash, and exploits for these vulnerabilities were among the things that got breached.

That’s why Adobe is having a bad month.

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Meet Waze, the crowdsourced GPS

Dave Farquhar Android , , ,

I’ve read a few things here and there about Waze, a crowdsourced GPS that runs on smartphones, including those that run Android, Apple, and Windows. Its premise is simple: Based on how traffic is moving, it figures out the fastest way to get where you want to go. It adds intelligence to the GPS.

The trade-off, of course, is that it’s tracking you too. The data is anonymized, they promise, but it’s up to you to decide whether it’s a showstopper.

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How to disassemble a Nook Simple Touch to remove or replace a battery

Dave Farquhar e-readers , ,

If your Nook Simple Touch won’t power on, or is displaying a question mark (?) on its battery indicator, I have a four things to try. But before you go to the trouble of disassembly, try charging the device with a different charger. Some chargers fit more tightly than others, and as devices like these age, they can get picky about their chargers.

If a charger change doesn’t give you an easy fix, the next step is to disassemble it, unplug the battery, wait a good 30 seconds, then plug it back in and reassemble.

You’ll need a very small slotted screwdriver or another sharp and semi-flat object, and a T5 Torx screwdriver.

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Build the best, most secure wifi in your neighborhood

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT, Servers and Networking , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My neighbor asked me for advice on setting up wi-fi in his new house. I realized it’s been a while since I’ve written about wi-fi, and it’s never been cheaper or easier to blanket your house and yard with a good signal.

Blanketing your house and yard while remaining secure, though, is still important.

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How I set up Asus parental controls

Dave Farquhar Android , , , , ,

I’ve mentioned Asus parental controls on its Android tablets such as the Memo Pad 7 HD, but never elaborated on them. Here’s how I set them up and why, so you can make your own decisions about how best to set an Asus tablet up for the child in your life.

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What to look for in a 2014 bargain Android tablet

Dave Farquhar Android , , , ,

I guess I owe an apology for not writing and posting this last week, when $40 tablets were all the rage as doorbusters. Cheap Android tablets are back again, and people are going to buy them–so it pays to buy one worth having, rather than one that’s going to drive you nuts.

Here’s what I look for, and you should too: Read more

The Moto E, two weeks later

Dave Farquhar Android , ,

I’ve been using my Moto E for a couple of weeks now, and sometimes impressions over time are much better, or at least more useful in the long run, than initial impressions.

I still like the phone, but I’ve discovered a few things, mostly good.

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The ultimate budget smartphone: The Moto E

Dave Farquhar Android , , , , , ,

I wanted to like the Moto E, for sentimental reasons. The Motorola who made this phone isn’t the same Motorola who made the MC68000 CPU in my Amiga, and it’s not the same Motorola that built the hulking briefcase-sized bag phone Dad toted around in the 1980s, but the logo is the same.

The stingy Scottish miser in me wanted to like the phone too, because it costs $129. A few short months ago, the only phones you could buy new for under $130 were cheaply made no-name phones like the Blu Advance with half a gig of RAM, a low-visibility screen, a low-end processor you didn’t want and an Android that was a few versions out of date, encased in lots of cheap plastic. Next to the Moto E, the Blu phones lose what little appeal they had.

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A Comcastic-ally bad idea

Dave Farquhar security , , , ,

If you haven’t heard about it, Comcast has plans to build a wifi network for its subscribers, on the back of its other subscribers’ routers. What’s worse is it’s an opt-out service. If you don’t hear about it and say something, you’re a hotspot for any other Comcast customer who happens to wander by.

I’m not a Comcast customer. I’m in Charter territory, and I’m not a Charter customer either. But I have so many problems with this it’s hard to know where to begin, so I sure hope other ISPs don’t copy this. Read more