Posts by Dave 126

Re: But a 14KW Power Wall...

> Given that even NASA's lithium batteries explode, I'd be very surprised by any "magic sauce" claimed by a commercial battery maker working down to a cost

Again, NASA, like Boeing and Samsung, have to consider weight. If you don't have that constraint you can make your Li-ion battery less power dense and with no danger of the cells being overly compressed (which is what did for Samsung's Note). It's not a 'magic sauce' as you put it, it's just that you have more space to treat the Li-ion cells the way they want to be treated.

Re: Recall?

The Samsung issue was caused in part by the supplier making batteries slightly too big, fitted to a chassis with no give. (By contrast, I've just replaced a swollen battery from my Nexus 5, but the plastic Nexus 5 case-back would pop off if the battery swelled extremely.)

How many million iPhones have been sold, against how many verified iPhone fires?

It is possible to make Li-ion batteries safe. The issue is implementation.

Re: Possibly listening to

Sweet Regina's gone to China

Maybe she'll do spot of spying

With micro-cameras hidden in her hair

- Burning Airlines Give You So Much More

Re: Recall?

There were some issues with Sony-made batteries in laptops of various brands around 2007, IIRC, but very few cases of flaming laptops since.

The fires we hear of today are mostly eCigarettes, especially the ones people have 'modded' themselves, or of a particular Samsung phone (the final analysis says there were two different faults, one being the supplied batteries being a smidge too big).

Done properly, there isn't an issue with Li-ion batteries per se. So yeah, be wary of cheap tat.

Re: But a 14KW Power Wall...

A power wall doesn't have the same weight constraints as portable gadgets, so more safety features can be incorporated in it. It is certainly in Musk's business interests to ensure no power walls cause a fire.

Actually, the photo reassured me that she didn't receive any permanent injuries. She was singed, as per the article.

I can't blame you for not studying the photo more closely if you're the squeamish type, though.

Re: I believe...

Hehe, I think I must be missing something here, possibly a joke.

How can blogs.com make you use a different password to that which you use on Jones.com, unless blogs.com knows your jones.com password? :)

Re: Ahh colloquial meanings of words.

>Be warned: go to the Carolinas and be very clear what you mean when talking to women

It seems that it was your very clarity of expression ("I don't fancy you enough... you're a munter") is what got you in trouble!

When the Bonzo Dog Band was touring the States by bus, Viv Stanshall wearing a pair of trousers fashioned from green hotel towels and the rest of the band looking like freaks and oddballs, they were pulled over by a policeman:

"Have you boys got any drugs?"

No, goodness no, they replied.

"Are you carrying any guns, any knives?"

No, no, officer.

"Then how do you expect to defend yourselves?!" asked the incredulous officer.

"With good manners!" replied Stanshall.

Re: someone somewhere will have to pay the tax

>We are doomed I tell ye doomed.

Pull yourself together man! And make sure your pitchfork is at hand :)

Re: off

WiFi doesn't eat my battery too much, but GPS has always caned power regardless of which Android handset I have. I can't imagine leaving it on all day. Shit, the measly 500mA that my car stereo USB port supplies isn't enough to prevent my phone discharging whilst using GPS (I set fire to the 12v cigarette lighter socket, so that option's out).

Though I usually know where I'm going, I occasionally load Waze to get an idea of what fresh surprises the Highways Agency as in store for my travelling pleasure, and the app requires GPS.

Re: "There's no way to customise this in current software builds: you get what you're given."

My last few phones have had microSD card slots, and to be honest they have caused me more trouble than they have been worth. Some apps will store their data on the microSD card by default, so this causes unexpected results if I decide to take out the microSD card in order to play its music contents through my car stereo, or to put in my compact camera (I have a few microSD > SD card converters on my dashboard).

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not judging you for wanting a microSD card slot, but the point of my post now is to highlight the disconnect between my desire for a microSD card slot and the reality of actually trying to use it - especially between different devices. Oh, and on top of that I lose the damned tiny things.

For sure, if I did a lot of commuting and was in the habit of watching locally-stored video on the train, then for sure a nice big microSD would be nice... but really, it's best treated as built in storage once it's fitted to the phone. And for watching video whilst seated, it isn't a chore to use a microUSB thumbstick. If you want a microSD card in order to swap data between devices, then you have to sacrifice having the card's data encrypted.

So, for the above reasons, I'm curious as to why people demand a microSD card slot instead of just a phone with reasonably-priced ample storage to begin with. However, the above might give a clue as to why microSD card slots are falling out of favour with phone vendors, in addition to being able to charge mark-ups on storage, of course.

Regards

Re: "There's no way to customise this in current software builds: you get what you're given."

Buying a phone every three years isn't rewarding the vendor (I've just stuck a new battery in my Nexus 5, does all one might want from a phone). Buying one every nine months might be. In any case, the best Android phone (by whatever criteria) several two years ago isn't from the same vendor as today, nor is it likely to be the same in two year's time - this means that 'brand loyalty' is limited in its power.

Re: And if you think about it for more than 10 minutes...

Conventional helicopters were developed for military use. However, they have been bloody useful for search and rescue, air ambulances, disaster relief and coast guard operations.

The same is true of so many technologies. So why make the point about the transportation concept outlined in this article?

It's a logistics concept system. Like... the idea of using pallets and forklift trucks to easily shift lots of stuff around. You guessed it, the pallet and forklift system was developed in the Pacific theatre during WWII. The use of shipping containers revolutionised civilian shipping and trade, but hey, they are convenient standard shape to use as a site office or generator set - by both civilian and military users.

Basically, if an engineer develops any transportation system that is cheaper, more reliable, more efficient, quieter etc it will be of interest to the military.

Re: "The internal combustion engine" [...] is designed to use fossil fuels

>The concept assumes the ground and air modules will be battery-powered and therefore more environmentally-friendly than petrol-burning cars, which of course neglects the very real possibility the electricity charging those batteries was generated in a coal-or-oil-fuelled power plant.

It neglects nothing. Whilst burning fossil fuels is likely to play a part in generating said electricity, these fuels aren't being burnt in densely populated cities, i.e in the environment that many people live in. CO2 emissions are a concern, but in a city other emissions and soot are a real health issue.

Re: Any ideas?

Incidentally, I bought the WD My Cloud box at Christmas, and it was in January I plugged it in. I didn't copy data across to it because after setting up an account, it refused to accept the password I gave it that day. Looking for a solution, I couldn't access the WD websites, forums or support pages.

It may be just coincidence that the flaws in the article were discovered in January.

Re: "Multi user systems"

> Mind you I'm still not sure what happens when there's a conflict between two authorised users e.g. who want the lounge at two very different temperatures. There are probably precedents for this as well.

The computer encourages the two humans to fight to the death, or until one concedes control of the thermostat to the other.

Re: You know what's even better than 2-factor authentication?

As I noted this week, the established home automation systems (as used by very rich people for years) tends to be hard-wired into the house. They can afford to have the walls redecorated after installation. Not being wireless drastically reduces attack surfaces.

Similarly, my car - like most - is a network of sensors and actuators... but it doesn't have a wireless connection to anything.

Re: Coverage - and not in the nice way

>Has anyone done any analysis about birth rate defects due to the calf growing up on a microwave transmitter, ... ?

If the health issues from RF radiation are fewer and less severe than health issues arising from an unsupervised births, then the net result is positive. Farmers are motivated to have a healthy herd - though now I'm thinking of Alan Partridges rant against farmers:

"You are a big posh sod with plums in your mouth, and the plums have mutated and they have got beaks. You make pigs smoke. You feed beef burgers to swans. You have big sheds, but nobody's allowed in. And in these sheds you have 20ft high chickens, and these chickens are scared because the don't know why they're so big, and they're going, "Oh why am I so massive?" and they're looking down at all the little chickens and they think they're in an aeroplane because all the other chickens are so small. Do you deny that? No, I think his silence speaks volumes."

Re: Now that is a useful IoT application

With a couple of exceptions (Nest, Alexi), IoT hasn't been marketed that hard by established companies (ones with a reputation to lose). I'm hardly swamped by advertisements for IoT gizmos (but maybe Google will only display adverts for security cameras and baby monitors if I search for 'nappies' and 'teething', which I don't). A lot of the really dodgy security is in the no-name cheap landfill kit - not sure how much is being sold; I don't see much of it about in the wild.

In time, genuinely useful items will be bought by more people, thus coming under greater scrutiny. Lessons learnt in industrial control will filter down to consumer kit. Health services, in an effort to make economies in caring for an ageing population, will look towards remote monitoring of vulnerable people's health to save on the time a community nurse spends travelling between homes.

Home automation has been around for years, but traditionally has been hard-wired into the house (drastically reducing attack surfaces) and expensive. It is the prevalence of now cheap wireless networking that means there are cheap wireless gizmos on the market that aren't as secure as they should be.

Re: 'False' problem?

>This is targeted advertising, finding a group of people who are likely to be susceptible to a certain message and then giving them that message. This method is available to every political party and leaning, so all can use it to deliver their message to the groups they think will appreciate it most.

Mercer doesn't just operate in advertising, that's the issue. So no, their tactics aren't available to all. And do please note, this Reg article only addressed a small part of the Observer article, so it can't claim to refute it.

The issue in question is 'fake news', but not 'fake news' coming from the established media (for all their faults - shit, we're now in a world where Fox News looks sane in comparison) but from upstarts. This strategy has been used in the Putin government for some time - they aren't trying to get you to believe their version of events, but to be incapable of accepting *any* version, leading to division and paralysis. Just like Trump, the Putin government even told everyone that confusing the hell out of everyone was their aim.

Oh, that reminds me Reg - what happened to that Q&A with Adam Curtis we lead to expect on the Reg? It was never followed up.

Re: Finally

> It is only one week after the guardian and only one week after MPs have started raising the question.

And the Reg really downplayed this in its headline when it reported the ICO was investigating Cambrisge Analytica, which struck me as odd at the time. The strange thing about this article is that is says "a data analysis company backed by a Donald Trump-supporting billionaire" but doesn't fucking name him. What the hell? Robert Mercer.

Even for the IT angle, the billionaire in question is worthy of note (he has an interesting IT past). It's like the Reg hasn't even read his bio, yet the Reg is telling us 'there is nothing to see here'. Said billionaire is deliberately and knowingly supporting the spreading of demonstrably false opinions as facts. For gawds sake Reg, doesn't that upset you as journalists?

Private Eye is enjoying record sales.

Re: Optional... apparently

>I currently run a Dell mobile precision 5510 lappy connected to their WD15 dock. it uses USB3 protocol on a USB-C physical hole, so only able to drive 1x 30" at 2560x1600 off the DP port,

I seem to recall that to drive a 5K monitor over USB-C, Apple had to go with AMD mobile GPUs. https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/16/macbook-pro-why-amd-gpu/

Something to do with number of video streams and DP 1.2 vs 1.3 or somesuch.

Re: Optional... apparently

>Can USB-C power a Laptop as well as provide connections for 2 screens, and other USB based devices... cos I can stand to plug in one cable at my desk.

Yes*

* USB-C only describes the physical connector and a way of it describing what else it can do. Not all USB-C ports carry Thunderbolt. Not all Thunderbolt is created equal. Be careful about which cables you use. Do not dispose of in fire. Your home is at risk if you do not keep up repayments.

Example: The LG 5K monitor (5120 x 2880 resolution) connects to a Macbook Pro with only one USB-C cable, and it provides 85W to the laptop, whilst providing 3 USB-C ports at 5Gb/s. Power, video, storage, peripherals in just one cable.

Similarly. But hey, when this old computer of mine does eventually keel over, the kinks will have been ironed out of many of the emergent standards and features outlined in the article.

It's been years since Sony first released a VAIO laptop with an external Thunderbolt GPU - it is only now that this looks to be on the edge of becoming mainstream. Such a set up would suit me very nicely, but I'm in no hurry. Every year I hold off, the more mature stuff becomes.

Re: Shamefaced admission

> (and I expect quite a lot of others will).

And those who don't (either invested in existing motherboards, or have workloads not best suited to the first crop of Ryzen) can look forward to cheaper Intel chips, now that AMD is a credible competitor again.

EDIT:

>They look like ones originally sold for early gen iPhones (because 3.5mm with wider barrels above the rings physically would NOT fit into the IPhone's recessed port).

Clearly you lot knew what I meant! :)