Boot up: Win 8.1 Wi-Fi woes, nail varnish security, Archos smartwatch, and more

Plus China Mobile adds Samsung for 4G, the trouble with browser encryption, the problems for camera makers, digging into Android numbers, and more

Here’s your new security for your laptop when you travel. Photograph: Facegoop

Some Windows 8.1 PCs are still suffering from limited or no Wi-Fi connectivity >> Softpedia

Several users have reported limited or no Wi-Fi connectivity, a bug that previously affected Surface tablet, but now became a widespread issue also targeting PCs and other tablets.
Fast-forward two months after launch and users are getting the same errors, with many turning to the official Microsoft Community forums to express their frustration.

Seems to be Centrino-related - so principally affecting those using older machines.

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Don't want your laptop tampered with? Just add glitter nail polish >> Wired.com

Some travellers affix tamper-proof seals over ports or chassis screws. But these seals can in fact be replicated or opened cleanly in minutes by anyone with even minimal training, Michaud and Lackey said. They instead advise borrowing a technique from astronomers called blink comparison. Here's where the glitter comes in.
The idea is to create a seal that is impossible to copy. Glitter nail polish, once applied, has what effectively is a random pattern. Once painted over screws or onto stickers placed over ports, it is difficult to replicate once broken.

Neat and inexpensive.

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Firefox phone - first impressions >> Kelli Shaver

Using a low-end Keon Firefox:

This phone won't blow you away if you're used to an iPhone or a newer Android phone. There are times where it is downright sluggish by comparison, but let's look at the target market.
This is a phone designed to bring the internet to people who otherwise can't afford to buy a smartphone, which is still the vast majority of the world's population. This phone is more than capable of delivering on that promise. It gives you the internet, in full colour, on a large display, with a decent amount of memory and storage space.

Which is fine, except it will be competing against very cheap Chinese Android phones. Where is its unique selling point (USP), given that those rivals will be also be able to run browser apps - and downloaded apps too?

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China Mobile expands 4G lineup as Samsung to Sony add handsets >> Bloomberg

China Mobile is selling 13 handsets for its fourth-generation network, up from four devices at the start of service three weeks ago, as market leader Samsung Electronics and rivals vie for early adopters.
Samsung's Note 3 is available for 5,399 yuan ($892) before subsidy at China Mobile's store at the carrier's Beijing headquarters, in addition to the Note 2 that went on sale earlier this month. The Note 3, the most costly device offered on the 4G network, is available free with China Mobile's most expensive monthly service plan of 488 yuan.

Though iPhone pricing won't be available until 17 January, however.

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Reading digital sources: a case study in ship's logs >> Sapping Attention

A historian goes digital:

Ship's logs can illustrate what it might mean to build this historical expertise on a digital source base. The sources I've been working with--climatological records from the National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration--are obviously historically interesting and neglected. In addition to the Maury collection I've been examining, it contains extensive records of the US Navy in World War II, the Japanese merchant marine over much of the post-Meiji period, and millions of other records that show the commercial and military interconnections of the world at sea. They're problem is that they are essentially intractable to more traditional forms of historical analysis, while still significantly less complicated than the massive textual collections in which I (like most humanists) see the greatest potential for future research.

And here's the video.

A year of early American shipping travels, visualised

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Archos smartwatches teased with "pebble-like" design >> SlashGear

What we're seeing with the very, very brief preview of the set of watches - plural - that Archos are bringing to CES is a display attached to a band. Suggesting this machine is "pebble-like" implies that we've got an e-ink display, and by the looks of it, they've got a curved display ready for action as well.
Archos is known for bringing on devices with rather low costs, and this watch collection appears to be no stranger to that legacy. They've suggested that they'll have a smartwatch as inexpensive as £50, likely less than $100 USD for showing off at the Las Vegas-based convention. What could such a machine possibly do with such a tiny cost?

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What's wrong with in-browser cryptography? >> Tony Arcieri

Why not put cryptography in the browser? Isn't it inevitable? This is a perpetual refrain from various encryption products which target the browser (names and addresses intentionally omitted). While the smarter ones try to mitigate certain classes of attacks by shipping as browser extensions rather than just a web site that a user types into their address bar, there is definitely a push to a model where you can get the latest greatest crypto code by typing a friendly address into your URL bar.
What's wrong with this? And will WebCrypto fix it? I don't think so. Let's look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of in-browser cryptography and the WebCrypto API.

Most of the ugly is the fact that it's in a browser. He specifically has a go at Kim Dotcom's MEGA and its promises of security.

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Japan mid-tier camera makers face shakeout as smartphones shatter mirrorless hopes >> Yahoo Finance

Panasonic, like peers Fujifilm Holdings and Olympus, has been losing money on its cameras since mobile phones that take high-quality photos ate into the compact camera business. This year, compact camera sales are likely to fall more than 40% to fewer than 59m, according to industry researcher IDC.
Meanwhile, sales of mirrorless cameras - seen as a promising format between low-end compacts and high-end single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras - are sputtering as buyers put connectivity above picture quality.
A 40% drop in Panasonic's overall camera sales in April-September left the imaging division vulnerable as the company's mid-term plan to March 2016 demands unprofitable businesses turn themselves around or face the axe.

Connectivity is the logical must-have for cameras to have any chance of competing with smartphones.

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Thoughts on Google's Android version charts >> Beyond Devices

Jan Dawson digs into the Android platform details, such as screen size:

The "Normal" screen size remains massively dominant, even though it was based originally on the T-Mobile G1, and represents a range of about 3.5-4.5in. Though it has fallen from 100% in 2009, it still represents around 80% of all Android devices hitting the Play store today. Given that almost all new high-end Android devices today have screen sizes in the high 4 inches range and often 5 inches or larger, this is a useful reminder that these devices are not representative of the Android base as a whole.

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