When I feel the phone growing hot in my pocket, I don't have to guess why. Menu→Settings→Battery usage, and high on the list I invariably see the Economist. Yesterday it spent about a minute helping me read the magazine. Later, in my pocket, the app went into battery-burning mode, spent eighteen minutes working the CPU as hard as it could, and then I noticed the heat. (A few weeks ago it did the same on my desk, and the phone reached 71°C before I noticed.)

Last Friday, just before flying home, I thought I'd check whether it had downloaded the latest issue, as it supposedly should do automatically every Thursday evening. No, it hadn't. Further, it refused to download the issue then, saying I wasn't connected to the internet and would I please try later. I read my mail and surfed the web, then tried again. Still no internet connection, said the Economist. I couldn't read the magazine during that flight.

That's when the app is broken. When it works as intended, it's not much more pleasant. It has the mark of the navel-gazer, it doesn't remember which articles I've read, registering a print subscription requires the user to (I quote the on-screen instructions) hit back twice, then log in again, and it sports advertisements that glue themselves to the screen. Swiping right is supposed to lead to the next article, but those ads stay right there. The only way to read on is to return to the main menu, scroll down and select the next article.

Yes as I write this, half the reviewers have given the thing five stars. Why do people tolerate such suckage?

Update: I wrote to the Economist and cancelled my subscription, saying that much as I appreciate the magazine, I appreciate a working phone incomparably more. Four days later they sent me a fixed version of the app by email. I infer from this that the Economist people may tolerate a suckful app, but they don't like it when their readers decamp. Makes sense: If the app is acceptable to their customers, it's acceptable to the Economist. I'm still no closer to understanding why people tolerate suckage in general.

Update: The updated version is in the Android Market now, but it still drains the battery occasionally. Suckage, tolerate, why oh why.

We have two access points at home, and wireless clients can roam freely, keeping their IP address.

Most clients can. Android phones and tables could not. For example, if a Motorola Xoom (Android 3.0) was in range of both APs, then it would switch to the other AP every 3-4 seconds.

The problem was that one AP was set to support only 802.11g, while the other was set to support b/g. Setting both to G-only solved the problem. The Xoom now connects quickly and keeps its connection (so long as it remains still at least).

Short version: Samsung Kies (Samsung's own program for backing up and upgrading Samsung phones) bricked my Galaxy S while upgrading it. Combining Heimdall with some recipes from other blogs allowed me to save the device.

Long version: (more…)

A little bit of 3G first: A 3G connection is in one of several modes, ranging from PCH (which uses hardly any power and can't transfer payload data) to DCH (which uses much power and is used for bulk transfers).

The way Archiveopteryx handles IMAP, POP and SMTP is very battery-friendly. (more…)

The normal linux pptpd will talk to the normal Android PPTP client, but brokenly by default. The magic (more…)

Archiveopteryx uses OpenSSL by default starting with version 3.1.3. Sadly, it runs noticeably better than with Cryptlib.

Compatibility with other TLS stacks is clearly better. (more…)

Another browser test (I'm looking at you, android). These signs are mostly ones I've used in 2008-9 (with some added for symmetry etc.), and I do not think they are too odd to be worth rendering.

Signs:

Arrows and that kind of thing: (more…)

API documentation is a particular subclass of literate programming. What makes it special?

First, its audience is diverse. Some readers know almost as much as the maintainers about the subject, others are rank beginners. Many know quite a bit about some parts of the subject and are almost ignorant of other parts. Some readers like to point and click, others prefer dead flat trees, others again prefer on-screen plain text such as man pages (I do, because I can type much faster than I can point and click). (more…)