Hacker News Reader

andykingon Blackberry's Euro MD ignores iPhone questions in BBC interview

I concur. The trains and trams in and out of Sheffield are very much Android territory. Not even new Android devices (Galaxy SIII, Nexus 4 etc) - they are generally devices a generation or two behind.

Mind you, there is That Guy who sits watching Pointless on streaming TV on his iPad on the way home each night...

andykingon Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter

The current modus operandi of most pirate radio operators is to run as a legitimate internet radio station - remove all reference to the FM broadcast frequency from the website and promotional materials, promote yourself as "the internet's no.1 grime station" or whatever.

Then, when Ofcom come calling, the FM transmission is "someone relaying our internet broadcast, we don't know who it is."

andykingon Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter

In the UK, Ofcom provide quite a good overview of spectrum allocation here: http://spectruminfo.ofcom.org.uk/

This rather psychedelic PDF is linked from the above page: http://www.roke.co.uk/resources/datasheets/uk-frequency-allo...

It doesn't say which allocations are good or bad - just what each slice of spectrum is used for. People like the mobile operators are only really interested in spectrum above the 800MHz area. This is where the competition for spectrum and billion-pound licence auctions come into play.

Cellular companies are interested in line-of-sight frequencies in the UHF and SHF bands, where range is smaller but robustness of coverage is high. Then, they just blanket their desired area with cellular towers. VHF travels further, at the expense of robustness - it's ideal for broadcasting, but not for two-way data services. If you cleared FM and transplanted the existing 3G service onto, say, 100MHz, you'd find all sorts of interference issues.

87.5-108MHz, for instance, is used for FM broadcasting all over the world (except Japan where it's down in the 70s). The receivers will be available for the foreseeable future - certainly for my lifetime. If the band was vacated and all radio migrated to digital, the pirates would simply use it. It is of such little value - so it may as well be kept, rather than switching to digital for its own sake.

andykingon Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter

This isn't true - I'm in the radio industry. High-level discussions have been taking place on the future of DAB digital radio, but there are no plans to switch off FM radio. It's FUD that's been spread over the past few years.

At the very most, we will see a migration of national (and possibly large regional) stations to DAB in the next decade. FM will still remain up and running for local commercial and community radio - and an expansion of this is planned once the spectrum currently used by national broadcasters is released. The current FM and MW spectrum is of little use for new technology like mobile broadband - they are more interested in the current TV spectrum and up into the GHz bands.

All this is currently under discussion, though, and nothing is confirmed. The status quo remains for now!

andykingon Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter

I don't suppose it's any more than a few mW - Ofcom don't seem to be interested in / able to remove the many high-power pirate radio stations, often with awful dirty signals, dotted around the UK (particularly London) so this would be a long way down their list of priorities! Even in rural Yorkshire, I get the "delights" of Phatt 100 and others every weekend.

Agreed though - anything throwing unwanted noise onto the RF spectrum is a Bad Thing, however low-power it is (see powerline networking).

andykingon Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet

I got rid of my TV licence when it came up for renewal at Christmas, and just watch on-demand content via iPlayer now. (Well, that was all I did before, but I've removed the little-used TV receiver from my house now.)

I can see them charging for computers in the future - but how would it work? Would they suddenly charge every office, for instance? We have an office with no TV but full of computers. None are used for TV viewing, live or otherwise. You just don't watch TV at work. It sounds like it could make them a lot of extra money!

andykingon The sorry state of neighbourhood design in America: a mother writes

I didn't own a car for the first nine months living here. I live opposite a railway station, and work opposite another. Why have a car?

What followed was a period, after about six months of this, of abject depression. I turned up at the station in the morning, went to work, went to the station to come home, and messed around on the internet all night. Going anywhere other than work was not possible, especially in the evenings when the last train is at 9.30pm or so. The railway line I live on just runs into the city where I work, nowhere else, it's a minor branch, so going anywhere else was a lengthy and expensive undertaking.

It was starting to make me ill - I never did anything, saw anyone, just work-home-work. I had to buy a car to enable me to carry on living here, otherwise I would have quit. Now, I have a fairly active life, I have the opportunity to do all kinds of things, and my quality of life is vastly improved.

Not having a car is OK if all you want to do is go to work!

andykingon The sorry state of neighbourhood design in America: a mother writes

Saltaire near Bradford, Yorkshire is a world heritage site: http://www.saltairevillage.info/

It was built around a textiles mill and was designed and planned according to the wishes of the mill owner, one Titus Salt. One of his stipulations was that alcohol was to be unavailable in Saltaire. The first bar only opened quite recently - called Titus's. :)

andykingon The sorry state of neighbourhood design in America: a mother writes

I agree with this. I live in the UK, and work in the centre of a major city - and it's nothing other than a pain.

Driving is hard. You are always starting and stopping for endless traffic lights, and when it's not the lights, you're stopping because you've got to weave around clumps of parked cars at the side of the road.

Everything takes so long! I have a parking space where I live, but not everyone is so lucky.

When I was living in the US (northern Indiana suburbs), I was so surprised at how easy everything was - you just get in the car, drive where you need to go on a street that's wide enough for two cars and not plagued with endless parked cars and clutter, park right outside your destination and you're done.

andykingon Why online dating is broken

It was also on in the UK as "Blind Date," with Cilla Black.

"We're gonna have a lorra lorra laughs!"

andykingon Nokia: Yes, we decrypt your HTTPS data, but don’t worry about it

There is no browser for the Lumia phones other than Internet Explorer - they don't allow alternative browsers in the WP marketplace.

andykingon UK still has 13,000 black-and-white TVs

I only watch iPlayer on-demand, once the programmes have been uploaded.

andykingon UK still has 13,000 black-and-white TVs

I was always under the impression that the licence was for the tuner, rather than the actual TV screen. I know that you used to have to get a colour licence if you owned a VCR, because it had a tuner capable of receiving and recording pictures in colour.

Now that we've gone through digital switchover, there are no purely B&W TV tuners - every digital set-top box can receive colour pictures, even if the TV can't display them.

Surely, in this case, the Black and White licence is obsolete?

(Incidentally, I dropped my TV licence this year - I just wasn't using it enough to justify the cost. What little TV I view now is on-demand through the computer. With fibre-optic broadband - paid for with the money saved by not having a TV licence - I can receive an HD picture on BBC iPlayer and it's actually better than the old TV reception.)

andykingon Microsoft Messenger will be retired and users migrated to Skype on March 15

My Windows phone has access to Live Messenger baked-in.

I never use it (I use Skype IM on the computer) but it's there, showing my status as "available," allowing me to publish a custom status message, check-in to places, and all the usual functionality.

It's a cheap model, and attempting to get Skype from the Marketplace results in a "your phone doesn't have enough memory to run this app" error.

Does this mean that I'll not be able to use instant messaging from the phone at all now? I'm not interested in the voice/video features of Skype on my mobile, but I do use Skype IM and it'd be nice to use it mobile.

Or - will I be able to use Skype IM from the phone without needing an extra app, instead of WLM?

andykingon Power surges in Britain caused by millions of people making tea [video]

This system is fairly poor in the UK. It has an ostensibly useful feature whereby local radio stations transmit a flag to say they're currently broadcasting traffic information. This then instructs car radios to interrupt what the listener can currently hear (eg. a CD, a national broadcast) and play the traffic bulletin from the local station. Sounds useful.

In practice, FM radio signals travel so haphazardly that in most areas, you're likely to be interrupted several times an hour with travel news for towns and cities 40, 50, 60 miles away. I regularly get the bulletins for places as far afield as Shropshire, Humberside, Merseyside and Lincolnshire. If, while driving, the signal becomes too weak for the 'traffic off' flag to be received, the radio will simply stay tuned to the FM frequency until the listener manually cancels it.

In addition to this, illegal 'pirate' radio stations have started to take advantage of this feature - some of these transmitters have the traffic flag set to 'on' constantly, with the obvious effect of switching listeners' radios to the illegal station regularly.

Most people have it turned off!

andykingon [dead]

This sort of thing is relatively common in Britain.

After the riots in 2011, several people were arrested and jailed, some for fairly lengthy periods (years) for posting that they were going to start rioting in various towns.

Most didn't actually get involved in the physical confrontation or violence, or even leave their houses, but were charged with "incitement."

There have been similar cases since for less serious matters, particularly when it comes to messages posted on Twitter. I don't recall all the details, but someone was arrested for "threatening" an Olympic diver on the site a few weeks ago.

It's sad that this news story doesn't even shock me. It's so common here now. (Mind you, this lad looks like he'd be safer off the roads.)

andykingon Show HN: re:me keeps track of unresponded texts

How will I prevent it from showing me messages that I have no intention of replying to?

For instance, SMS spam, or advertising and informational messages from my network provider ("your latest bill is ready to view"). I don't reply to these - from your description, it seems like they'd stay as notifications of unresponded messages indefinitely.

andykingon Indiana Jones journal mystery solved

In the UK, they don't do this - they send it on to the recipient, but hold the mail at the office until the recipient travels down there and pays postage plus a £1 fee.

andykingon 15 years of KDE e.V.

Are there any nice Linux distributions that are primarily based around KDE that I might have missed? I use Kubuntu right now, but it always feels a little like a second-class citizen compared to the mainstream Ubuntu.

Does anyone have any recommendations? The sheer number of distros on Distrowatch is a little overwhelming.

andykingon Set Up a Raspberry Pi as a Personal Web Server

This isn't even a link to an article. It's a link to a category on Lifehacker, which then links through to an article, which then links through to another article at: http://www.jeremymorgan.com/tutorials/raspberry-pi/how-to-ra...

andykingon Alone Together, Again

Years ago, when my SO and I calculated our compatibility using OKCupid, there was a way to run a report on items that decreased compatibility. We didn't have many, but it was helpful to talk about the few things we did disagree on. I wonder if they were able to do something similar before their marriage; maybe it would have helped.

We didn't meet on a dating website, but my current partner and I have done pretty much this. We sat down, and talked, and had a very frank, logical discussion of the things we disagree on, to try and weed out any red-flag issues before they became issues. It transpired that politically, we're quite different - but we both think it's pretty boring to be with someone who feels the same as you on every issue, all the time. I think it was good to do that - to talk thoroughly through things in a calm way, before they turn up in a completely unrelated fight.

andykingon The Internet is experiencing severe outages across North American and Asia

Not in "my location." And they wonder why people use the Pirate Bay...

andykingon New $250 Chromebook

$250 in the US, £249.99 from PC World in the UK. That's just over $400. Even if you take off 20% UK sales tax, that's still $320.

Last time I checked, the exchange rate wasn't £1=$1!

andykingon Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal released

I couldn't get used to Unity and didn't want to stick with the increasingly antiquated and patched-up 10.04, so I made the switch a while ago at home to Xubuntu.

It's not the perfect desktop, but I've got it almost how I want it, and it largely gets out of my way. I particularly enjoy the two-second login time.

andykingon Global market share of Google Public DNS and OpenDNS

My ISP doesn't even provide its own DNS servers - their DHCP dishes out 8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4 to customers.

Is this a good thing, or just them being cheap?

andykingon IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

Excellent. I currently use a local ISP, because it's the only way I can get a decent speed where I live (there's a local FTTC network called Digital Region).

But I'm likely to be moving out of their coverage area at some point, so I'll add this to my list to consider when I do. Thanks!

andykingon IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

This seems to have been rumbling on for some time now - at least for the past five years or so.

My OS supports IPv6, my home router supports IPv6, but at no point have any of the home ISPs I've used (three in the past five years - BT Internet, Be and Origin Broadband) made any mention of any sort of IPv6 support.

I'm not au fait with the workings of such huge operations, so is there any reason for ISP adoption of IPv6 to be so sluggish? It's not like it's been an overnight thing. I'm aware it's unlikely to be a simple case of flipping a switch, or installing a new software package - but we do appear to be approaching an IP crunch.

Are there any consumer ISPs that do offer customers a block of IPv6 addresses for use, rather than (or as well as) a single IPv4 address?

andykingon Google Motorola faces German ban after Apple victory

Another day, another ban.

Let's just ban the lot...

andykingon How Much Is a Fun Job Worth?

I thought this, too, when I started a job in a city centre for the first time - great, I'll take the train, and get so much work done on my commute instead of driving!

No - it's impossible to work on a rattly, wobbly old train, standing up, or crushed into a seat with some guy's elbow digging into you. You can barely read a book or Kindle on there, let alone whip out a netbook and work. So it's just wasted time every day.

andykingon Amazon's Play

I don't see an ad:

  $ cat /etc/motd
  Welcome to Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.2.0-30-generic x86_64)

  * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/