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Random thoughts.... [Tech Edition]

www.theverge.com

Logitech officially discontinues its Harmony remotes

The CEO told The Verge in 2019 that the remotes were a small part of its business
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

I remember having a Harmony 555. That was back in the day when I had an AV receiver, an HTPC, an Apple TV and a digital TV receiver. My receiver didn't have enough HDMI inputs so I had to have a couple things wired with HDMI straight to the TV and run sound via optical to the receiver. Having a single remote that could power the entire mess up and switch everything to the correct inputs by pressing a simple software button marked "HTPC" was awesome. Especially since you could set up all of this in an (arguably terrible, but working) application on the Mac and then sync the settings over USB.

I don't have an AV receiver with a million inputs and pointless settings anymore, I have a soundbar that turns on and off with the TV and obeys volume commands from the TV remote. The TV has a built in HD PVR and apps for all the things I used to have several devices for. The need for a universal remote is completely gone. I guess I'm not alone here.
 
One of those devices that I've never personally had a use for but I liked knowing that it existed. I still have a bunch of remotes for old devices like my VHS recorders, CRT TV and vintage CD player so one of those would actually be more useful for me now than ever before. :LOL:

I still won't buy one.
 
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s Nvidia GTC keynote

So much stuff, probably a 1000 page press release to go with it. My head hurts.
 
I'm tethering my laptop off of my phone and it decided to run updates from the App Store. An unknown number of gigs of new updates. My bandwidth widget peaked at 36MB/s. 5G is nice.

And I haven't even had my COVID shot yet.
 
I have the option to replace my now 3-year-old Huawei P20 with a brand-new iPhone SE (2020), for free. Does anyone here or own or know anyone who owns an iPhone SE (2020)? Is the battery as bad as it sounds on paper? What about the camera, can I expect it to be decent? I don't need much from a phone, but I would like three things out of it: compact size, a good camera, and decent software.
 
I wore bluetooth ear defenders with active noise control most of the day today. Active noise control means there are microphones that let normal sound through so you can hear people around talk.

My mate sometimes likes to sneeze so loud he wakes the dead and I stood next to him when it happened. Quite a funny sensation when the echo coming back from the forest was louder than the actual sneeze.
 
Tram said:
I have the option to replace my now 3-year-old Huawei P20 with a brand-new iPhone SE (2020), for free. Does anyone here or own or know anyone who owns an iPhone SE (2020)? Is the battery as bad as it sounds on paper? What about the camera, can I expect it to be decent? I don't need much from a phone, but I would like three things out of it: compact size, a good camera, and decent software.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry much, sure the battery could be better, but I wouldn't see it as a phone that couldn't handle day between charging.

webcache.googleusercontent.com

iPhone SE (2020) review

The 2020 iPhone SE is slim, affordable and (was) future-proofed
webcache.googleusercontent.com webcache.googleusercontent.com
 
Amazon had the Logitech G903 on sale yesterday at £61, so I got myself a spare for when this one inevitably kicks the bucket.

I tried to strip it down yesterday to clean it, I was too scared to remove the battery (all the guides show it bending, that can't be good for a lithium pack) but hopefully I got far enough to give the switches a decent blow out and spray with switch cleaner/lubricant.
 
I was thinking about this recently. Remember the days where if someone left you a voicemail message, it wasn’t stored on your phone, rather you had to call your voicemail and listen to messages that way?
 
93Flareside said:
I was thinking about this recently. Remember the days where if someone left you a voicemail message, it wasn’t stored on your phone, rather you had to call your voicemail and listen to messages that way?
Click to expand...

Around these parts, if you try to call someone and end up in voicemail, you hang up.

Everyone hates it, nobody ever EVER uses it and the carriers all still actively push the feature down everyone's throats by default. This has been going on for decades and I don't understand why they just don't give up.
 
93Flareside said:
I was thinking about this recently. Remember the days where if someone left you a voicemail message, it wasn’t stored on your phone, rather you had to call your voicemail and listen to messages that way?
Click to expand...
That is still the way, to the best of my knowledge... the purpose of voicemail is to come into play when your phone is not reachable, after all.
 
DanRoM said:
That is still the way, to the best of my knowledge... the purpose of voicemail is to come into play when your phone is not reachable, after all.
Click to expand...

The original iPhone introduced something called "visual voicemail". It's pretty much audio clips listed in an interface similar to SMS. It's got its own tab in the iPhone "Phone" app to this day, but on my iphones the tab have only ever had a button to call voicemail. Since voicemail isn't a thing here, the carriers haven't bothered to implement it I guess.

And besides, I thought the purpose of voicemail (for those that use it) was to screen calls when you see who it is and can't be arsed to pick up. :p
 
It's still a case of calling into the provider to retrieve voicemail here. It's in case you have no signal or the phone is off as DanRoM said.
 
I haven't had this for years. I've had iPhones since 2013 or so and the visual voicemail is the only thing I'm used to now. I remember having to press and hold 1 until I saw the flip phone I had dialing voicemail. I had assumed this eventually went away with all smartphones doing a type of visual voicemail.
 
Ehh... the visual voicemail is actually the same voicemail as provided by the carrier - at least it is for me. I have the visual thing as well, but I can still also call that random number, so at least in my case it all exists side by side.
 
Perc said:
Around these parts, if you try to call someone and end up in voicemail, you hang up.

Everyone hates it, nobody ever EVER uses it and the carriers all still actively push the feature down everyone's throats by default. This has been going on for decades and I don't understand why they just don't give up.
Click to expand...

This is the way.
 
I have both voice-mail options...the default for android is the "long-press-1" style, but then T Mobile has a separate "Visual Voicemail" app that works identically to the system I had on my last iPhone, the 4s.
 
gaasc said:
This is the way.
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No... I will not call these people back. I will tell these people "I need voicemail because I get enough spam calls that I don't trust numbers that aren't saved in my phone."
 
My phone will transcribe voicemails to a lovely text message I can quickly read and decide whether a call back is warranted.
I'm a physician so voicemail is actually necessary for me; I have people calling from office phones that don't have the ability to send a text message.
 
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