Alex Meehan

That’s awful news to read this evening. Thinking of his wife and the band tonight. A sad day.

iPhone 17 Pro Max review: Apple’s best business phone is all about the battery

YouTube video by moneycontrol Qatar Economic Forum 2025 LIVE: Tesla CEO Elon Musk Speaks at 2025 Qatar Economic Forum | N18G

Dunno who the interviewer is, but Elon Musk is currently getting spanked via video link in an interview in Qatar. Quality viewing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEpA...

YouTube video by Fallow This Is Why Vegetables Taste Better In Restaurants

This is fantastic. How to cook vegetables properly. This whole channel is a goldmine for anyone into cooking. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOZ4...

I was in the US exactly one month ago. At that time, $100 cost around €98 euro. Today, it costs $88. Nuts.

Trying out Lidl’s new Thermomix dupe: ‘I don’t take direction from a robot well’ Supermarket’s Monsieur Cuisine comes at a fraction of the price and promises to take the hassle out of home cooking

I had the lend of a thermomix for a few weeks once while recipe testing a book and it was grand but not much less hassle than normal cooking TBH. I think chefs rave about them because they allow very busy people to multi-task in pro kitchens. www.irishtimes.com/food/2025/04...

I remember looking into the back of what looked like a mechanics shop to see a guy actually machining replacement parts by hand because they were no longer commercially (or affordably?) available. Made me realise we live in a culture of excess and throw away things far too easily. Humbling.

The rise of ‘Frankenstein’ laptops in New Delhi’s repair markets Technicians in India’s refurbished laptop shops give discarded electronics a new life.

One of the things that impressed me about visiting India was the repair culture. Every side street seemed crammed with tiny shops repairing mopeds, tuktuks, sewing machines - anything. www.theverge.com/tech/639126/...

I'm seeing more and more posts on social media that have obviously been generated by AI. I find myself thinking "if you couldn't be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it?"

Also, one argument I've heard for not including better cameras in laptops is that the lid is usually too thin to accomodate the housing. But a Studio Display is twice the depth of an iPhone, so they definitely could have included one. I just looked it up, a high-end 4K camera module costs $25.

That's nuts. I remember some of those streams back in the day, on the old band house site. You guys were early adopters to streaming.

Ha ha. I actually don't have one. I use a Mac Studio and Studio Display. I think given the price of the SD, the fact it doesn't have a 4K camera is kind of outrageous. I can only guess they held it back for a future update, but it's not a cheap piece of kit.

I was on a zoom call this weekend with seven or eight people, and the variation in quality was huge. Some people looked like they were skype calling from 2009.

I'm sure you're right and I know not everyone has the bandwidth but 4K video was introduced in the iPhone 6 in 2015, and it's still not in a MacBook Pro. I find that really odd. It feels like it's artifically been held back to give Apple a future feature to have 'in the bag' - know what I mean?

This is one of the ways future generations will be able to visually date historical records of this period. At some point, the tech will tick over and ALL video calls will be 4K and anything less will look ancient. Just wondering why it's taking so long?

It's continually amazing to me that in a world of 1080p and 4K cameras in smartphones etc, that so many people appear to be satisfied with awful video on Zoom calls etc. EG - anyone see the potato-cam pixelated group chat video in the Switch 2 unveiling? Why are we settling for this?

Curepedia: An A – Z of The Cure (Author Q&A/ DJ set) | The Sugar Club presented by The Sugar Club The acclaimed book, Curepedia, written in 2023 by music journalist Simon Price (Guardian, Quietus), was described as an encycl ...

Cure fans (and Alternative 80s lovers) of Dublin! I'm doing a #Curepedia talk at The Sugar Club on Fri 11 Apr with writer Paul McDermott @learnandsing.bsky.social, followed by a @spellboundclub.bsky.social DJ set till 1.30am! Tickets from thesugarclub.com/tc-events/curepedia/ See you there.

Saw this for the second time last night. Much funnier than the previous run. The script has been tightened up and it's really funny. A fun evening out.

Mac OS Sequoia's AI-powered notification summaries are laughably bad. They often deliver summaries of mails that say the exact opposite of what the mails actually say. Why would someone want this on their computer?

Review: The Renault Scenic E-Tech EV: a practical, high-tech family crossover What happens when a tech, rather than a motoring journalist reviews an EV? Read on as Alex Meehan puts the new Scenic E-Tech EV through its paces

I've written my first car review. "The first thing most drivers do when they sit into a car is connect their smartphone to override the in-car system." www.businesspost.ie/products/rev...

Possibly some kind of future proofing of the infrastructure. Or maybe, there are people who are only now getting fibre, and it costs the same to put bigger pipes in, and I'm not really the main market.

Yeah, I think you're right. Our house is a heavy data user, but we've barely touched the sides of our 1GB connection. Our problem is that 1GB arrives into the house (and my main work machine) but falls stupidly off via Wifi elsewhere in the house. Lucky to get 100mb/s at the back of the house etc.

This is neat. Looks like the already great 1GB fibre connection running to my house is getting upgraded. Be interesting to see if they can provide an actual 10GB connection and what it will cost.

Apple innovation and execution — Benedict Evans It matters that Apple’s new Siri will be late, and it matters more that Apple didn’t realise. Is it more than that?

This is fascinating. www.ben-evans.com/benedictevan...

There's a unique pleasure to stumbling upon an album you listened to intensely 25 years ago and then totally forgot about. Currently loving Gold Against the Soul, the Manic Street Preachers 1989 (!) record.

" They can then sell it for upwards of £1,000 to the customer. This provides profits in excess of £500 per device."

"The smuggler, once they have transported the locked phone abroad, could receive £400. The final reseller — who may work in a shop or use an online platform — will pay £40 to a hacker to have it unlocked."

"A thief who stole an iPhone 15 in London will sell it — locked — for about £100. The handler will then sell it to the smuggler for £200. If either the thief or the handler were able to unlock the phone, they could double their returns."

A phone is stolen in London every eight minutes. We follow their trail Only a fifth of phones stolen in London remain in the country, so where do they end up?

This is an excellent break down of what happens to smartphones stolen in the UK. Almost certainly the same scams are run here too: www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/art...

‘If there’s a bar in heaven it would be like this’: the Long Hall, the pub where Bruce Springsteen has whiskey behind the bar Bruce Springsteen has his own special bottle of whiskey behind the bar for visits to the pub that he regards as his “Dublin local” – the Long Hall on South Great George’s Street.

@craigatcof.bsky.social one for you Craig: www.independent.ie/irish-news/i...