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I bought the 10 pack here for under $5/bulb, delivered. The 15W bulb is about bright as a 70W incandescent, and they are fully dimmable without buzzing. Given they will last, very conservatively, 20 times as long as an incandescent, they will end up costing me the equivalent of $0.25 per bulb.

I like them because they last forever, and I'm not so worried about the cost of electricity, but living down here in Southern California, it's nice to cut the amount of heat output from the bulbs - keeps the house cooler, and I'm not having to run air conditioning at all.

You should learn how to online shop.

That took all of a few seconds to find, at $0.20 each in a large lot that you could simply resell to your neighbors for dirt cheap and get your initial investment returned before even using the bulbs themselves.

I really wish people would actually try to look to see if what they're talking about is correct, or not.

Oh, and if you don't like the focus, you can simply remove the lens plate and allow the LED to run at its natural viewing angle.

In my house I use the right bulb for the right purpose. Bathrooms and closets get incandescents

For me, it has to be incandescent for the bathroom. Condensation is a problem. I need the heat of the incandescent to insure the water does not accumulate in the fixture and make both an electrocution and fire hazard.

Note to "Relion Group"... I have seen numerous advertisements of yours advising anyone taking some drug that had an unintentional side effect to call you and your attorneys will sue the hell out of the manufacturer. Can you please start running ads to the effect that if you have had a house fire or electrocution due to condensation in an electrical fixture designed for incandescent but retrofitted with a bulb it was not designed for to personally sue those Congressmen that voted this requirement into law?

So far I have had three CCFL retrofits fail from failure, what appeared to be a voltage spike damaging either one of the input diodes or one of the two inverter transistors, or the noise spike may have buggered the timing of the inverter to the point the ballast inductor saturated with the resultant current spike doing the damage. In all cases, the device failed shorted, and the resultant current surge caused a brief flash of fire to escape the enclosure, evidenced by the carbonized area around the blown devices. I will not have those halogen rod lights in the house for the same reason. You can place a flammable near one and ignite it.

Many of the LED offerings available have poor heat sink design, which becomes apparent once you install the thing.

The saving grace of the old incandescent is when it quit working, it simply quit. And there wasn't much way for the fire to get out of the bulb unless you physically broke the bulb.

Not to say I am against LED or CCFL altogether. I have retrofitted a lot of fixtures to use 100 watt ( yes, 100 watt ) LED chips, albeit I only run them around 20 watts or so, and get lots of light. If your LED is running too hot to hold, its running too hot. I ended up making quite a few of my fixtures using old aluminum cooking utensils - they were thick, had good thermal heat sinking properties, and were cheap at garage sales and thrift stores.. thick aluminum ashtrays/bowls work nice. LED's give you a lot of artistic freedom to work with various colors and extremely simple dimmer circuits, as well as being quite safe due to their much lower operating voltages. The commercial offerings are pricey right now, but if you care to get the guts and roll your own, you can be quite free to express your artistic side and make something unusual.

Build it right, don't overdrive it, and the LED should last longer than you will.

So far, I have had extremely positive results from my efforts in building LED's into my stuff. I highly recommend both the 100-watt chips I linked to ( but running them substantially less than that ). Ten watt chips using similar mounting methods are also available, and run very well from current-limited 12 volt sources. ( I run my 10 watt ones at about 9 volts/200 mA or so... about 2 watts or so each ). I have already seen lumen degradation and chip failure of devices run full power, so I don't do that. Those things are rated for excellent heat sink design, which I have yet to achieve.

I notice bitcoin mining is attracting a lot of attention from China.

Here are 1200 vendors selling hardware processors designed specifically to mine bitcoins

Do not forget that there are still lots of ways to get all the parallel I/O pins you want on a tablet... run a USB link to an Arduino.

No sense much trying to do a lot of numerical heavy lifting with an Arduino. It simply does not have the horsepower or memory for it. It can act as an intermediary between a tablet which has all sorts of horsepower, and a platform controlling motors and reading sensors.

If the application is quite menial ( say datalogging ), an Arduino can handle it quite nicely on its own when coupled with appropriate storage blocks - but in and of itself, just maintaining a FAT filesystem alone would be difficult for an Arduino, yet a piece of cake for a Raspberry Pi.

I am presently building with an Arduino platform and note I am taking a significant amount of its resources just to deal with two rotary quadrature encoders and two LCD displays.

I am aiming for absolute simplicity. I need lots of low speed I/O and bit-banging special protocols more than anything else ( and I can get it via Arduino's I2C bus ). I will continue with this, but if there is any significant numerical analysis or display, its going to have to partner with something else to do the heavy stuff.

As it is, I intend to use a Parallax Propeller chip if I exceed Arduino's capacity, as most of my needs are menial bit-banging protocols to interface old technologies to newer stuff - and I want it all done in parallel so I do not have interrupt, timing and latency issues. The Propeller chip has eight cores, running in parallel, so each core can be tasked with an individual menial thingie ( UART, SPI, I2C, video, audio, DMX lighting, whatever ), and they will run in parallel without contention or timing issues from waiting for the program counter to be handed to them.

Andre LaMothe has developed a "Chameleon" board combining an Arduino with a Propeller chip if you want to explore this avenue.

A Raspberry Pi would do everything. But then, sometimes a hand calculator comes in handy when you don't want to launch a fullbore compiler to evaluate some mathematical thingie you dream up.

I see a Raspberry Pi ideal for those places you would normally put a full-fledged tablet in... say an interactive kiosk with full display and TCP/IP networking. It has the horsepower to do darned near anything. And lots of hardware I/O as a bonus, where the Arduino solution involves channeling everything from the tablet through the USB bus or network link ( YellowJacket, DiamondBack, or similarly equipped Arduino ).

I guess one of the things I would like to see most is some sort of interface which would adapt to any LCD display out there and let me drive it with the Raspberry Pi output, as there always seems to be some defunct LCD display somewhere that I could repurpose.

Maybe something down the lines of this

A power supply I'll grant you. I forgot that the Pi boards don't come with one, so that puts us a few dollars over budget. Technical expertise and tools were not included for the $3000 computer in 1985, so it would be unfair to complain that the Pi doesn't include them now. You can get better software for free these days which didn't exist at any price then. And then there's computers like the MK908, which is a bit pricier at $55 but includes a case, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, a power supply, and pre-installed software for an essentially plug-and-play experience—just add a cheap USB keyboard and hook it up to your TV.

Businesses will have plenty of incentive to switch to semi-autonomous vehicles for their fleets, provided they're actually safer. That translates into reduced exposure to liability for accidents, less money spent repairing and/or replacing vehicles (and employees), and less lost cargo. If nothing else, their insurance providers will insist on it.

It's like you guys haven't heard of Ali Express. Why would anyone buy anything other than books or movies from Amazon today. The Amazon stores are just buying off Ali Baba or Ali Express and reselling at markup, it makes no sense to buy from Amazon, even less sense if you live outside The Americas, as shipping direct from the manufacturers in Asia is going to be cheaper than shipping to the US and then to Europe/Asia.

Amazon is like the dumb person's Ali Express. If you're dumb, you pay more.

but you can't argue with the price.

Maybe not me, but they can.

Here's some available today...

http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=camera+glasses&catId=0

The 2012-13 Social High School Mountain Bike Racing season starts November 17, 2012, with the much-anticipated SoCal CycleFest, a gala event - with guest star Aaron Gwin - supporting a youth cycling program in the region. The Board of Directors of the SoCal High School Cycling League is proud to announce that this year's CycleFest will take place at Meanda Grove in Riverside. This fifth annual event will include dinner and both silent and live auctions. [url=http://www.go4sporting.com]carbon mtb frames[/url] Highlights of the auction include a fully supported four-day mountain bike trip for two on the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park by Western Spirit Cycling Adventures, a Specialized Carve, and a Turner Flux with Fox fork. The event will include presentations by two SoCal League student-athletes discussing their experiences in the League. The League will also be awarding its first ever Community Impact Award to Jim McIlvain and Mountain Bike Action Magazine for their ongoing work of bringing the SoCal League and high school mountain biking to a broader audience. www.go4sporting.com A highlight of the evening will be a special guest interview with reigning two-time World Cup Downhill Champion Aaron Gwin (Trek World Racing). Gwin is looking forward to CycleFest 2012. www.go4sporting.com "There's a long history of mountain bike racing in the US. [url=http://www.go4sporting.com]carbon wheels bicycle[/url] I was fortunate to be exposed to bicycle racing at a young age, and it's helped me achieve the goals I've set in my career. High school mountain bike leagues are very important, and they deserve to be on the same level as the traditional stick and ball sports in schools." Matt Gunnell, the Executive Director of the SoCal League,[url=http://www.go4sporting.com]carbon mtb wheels[/url] is confident this will be an event to remember. "I'm thrilled to be able to present high school mountain biking in such a great setting with so many great supporters," he said. "As the SoCal League enters its fifth season, we are truly becoming a fixture in the southern California high school sporting scene. www.go4sporting.com http://www.aliexpress.com/store/730826 www.go4sporting.com http://www.aliexpress.com/store/730826 www.go4sporting.com

The 2012-13 Social High School Mountain Bike Racing season starts November 17, 2012, with the much-anticipated SoCal CycleFest, a gala event - with guest star Aaron Gwin - supporting a youth cycling program in the region. The Board of Directors of the SoCal High School Cycling League is proud to announce that this year's CycleFest will take place at Meanda Grove in Riverside. This fifth annual event will include dinner and both silent and live auctions. [url=http://www.go4sporting.com]carbon mtb frames[/url] Highlights of the auction include a fully supported four-day mountain bike trip for two on the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park by Western Spirit Cycling Adventures, a Specialized Carve, and a Turner Flux with Fox fork. The event will include presentations by two SoCal League student-athletes discussing their experiences in the League. The League will also be awarding its first ever Community Impact Award to Jim McIlvain and Mountain Bike Action Magazine for their ongoing work of bringing the SoCal League and high school mountain biking to a broader audience. www.go4sporting.com A highlight of the evening will be a special guest interview with reigning two-time World Cup Downhill Champion Aaron Gwin (Trek World Racing). Gwin is looking forward to CycleFest 2012. www.go4sporting.com "There's a long history of mountain bike racing in the US. [url=http://www.go4sporting.com]carbon wheels bicycle[/url] I was fortunate to be exposed to bicycle racing at a young age, and it's helped me achieve the goals I've set in my career. High school mountain bike leagues are very important, and they deserve to be on the same level as the traditional stick and ball sports in schools." Matt Gunnell, the Executive Director of the SoCal League,[url=http://www.go4sporting.com]carbon mtb wheels[/url] is confident this will be an event to remember. "I'm thrilled to be able to present high school mountain biking in such a great setting with so many great supporters," he said. "As the SoCal League enters its fifth season, we are truly becoming a fixture in the southern California high school sporting scene. www.go4sporting.com http://www.aliexpress.com/store/730826 www.go4sporting.com http://www.aliexpress.com/store/730826 www.go4sporting.com

I'm sorry, but you are wrong. While the EU did allow the manufacturers to dictate the standard, they implemented the standard in late 2010 specifically because there were so many different phone charging connectors. If it was all free love and unicorns, the EU never would have stepped in to force the manufacturers to standardize. Every phone I had prior to 2010 had some odd-ball connector: Motorola used a weird mini-USB that wouldn't charge from a computer, Apple had the "dock" connector, Samsung had an assortment of different connectors, Sony-Ericson had something long with exposed contacts, Nokia used the classic round connector...

Here's what a 2010-era universal adapter looked like.

You can buy simulaor watch phones in in china.

Where do you live?

Before all this, people didn't even think about creating a real competitor for Google or Amazon.

China:
http://bidu.com/
http://aliexpress.com/

Russia:
http://yandex.ru/

Just because you don't know of them, does not mean they are not there or not popular.

Long time reader, no account, but I just had to write something here regarding the comments posted thus far.

I have owned the iPhone 5 for one year now. It came with a wall plug and lightning cable. It has never broken, and works perfectly. When I wanted an extra one to keep in my car, I picked up one from FutureShop (here) when it went on sale for $12.99. The price was so good for a MFi (Made For iDevice) certified cable, that I bought two of them. Neither have broken. I treat them well. One stays in the car and the other stays at work.

I could have easily bought 10 for $0.89 USD each (here) from China but my experience with the cheap cables from China is that they work for a while then just suddenly stop. They don't handle wear and tear quite so well and the wires inside break near either end. Sometimes the Chinese cables only allow syncing and sometimes they only allow charging. It all depends on the supplier. I've ordered enough of these over the years to know a bad product when I see one.

For my American friends, hit up Monoprice: here or here will have you up and running with a MFi certified cable (so no blocking with iOS 7), and it'll cost you $12. This is a totally reasonable price considering the quality of almost everything Monoprice carries. They run an honest business and I even go so far as to pay the shipping, handling, and import duties just to get their products into Canada.

For the haters out there, I also own several other phones: a BlackBerry Curve (OS 7), a Samsung Galaxy S (CyanogenMod), LG Optimus Windows Phone (OS 7.8). All of those phones charge by standard micro USB but for spare cables and wall plugs I use exclusively BlackBerry chargers. Why? Because without the packaging, they're $12.99 in Canada. The cable itself is thick and sturdy, and the wall plug isn't one of those cheap knock-offs that puts out more noise than anything else, nor does it heat up to the point of discolouring the USB cable. Yes, I've used wall chargers like that.

It's an expensive device and you want to charge it via the magic of electricity. Spend the money and get the right cable.

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is - leave it be.

I will warn you right now that if you are buying "consumer" type stuff ( jewelry, clothes, trinkets ), you better buy in very small quantities, as nothing beats holding one personally and examining it.

and, from you...

Certainly don't trust any filtered feedback you find on the Aliexpress site

Point taken. As I said, I have had an account on AliExpress for about a year now. I left some bad feedback about that merchant that sold me the misrepresented battery pack. The feedback went up, then disappeared. I stated on the feedback the same things I stated on my Slashdot post. The seller left me some bad feedback too - short, and to the point... "very hate buyer". That disappeared too. Well, just to be honest, I felt I needed to back up your statement with my personal experience.

I can see why reseller ratings has some bad reviews, I have experienced likewise for trying to buy stuff I should have bought from Harbor Freight Tools or the dollar stores.

One item in particular I remember is a small LED illuminated ring magnifying glass.. Looks great in the offer. I'll tell ya something - the thing is useless as a magnifier - way too much distortion in the lens. Might as well use the bottom of a coke bottle. Look again at the image in the offer. That must have been one of the better ones. Can you imagine trying to read through that lens?

Most of the stuff I get is not prepared for immediate resale. Often the item is shipped with none of the usual trade dress such as gaudy boxes and printed inserts. In a way, those are kinda useless, as AliExpress sells to a lot of countries, not just USA. Items packaged for Russia are not appropriate for sale in USA. If we want to resale, then we make up our own trade dress and go for it. They just make the item to put in the box.

I will not dispute claims made on Reseller Ratings. From the buyer's point of view, they are probably true. A lot of people are looking for a quick markup with fat margins. There is a lot of people out there with those same intentions, and they are big enough to make money on volume. This "buy here for ten cents, sell for a dollar!" is mostly stuff hocked by late night DIY business televangelists looking for money in his mailbox too.

I see a lot of exaggerated claims. That's why a solid understanding of science/math comes in damn handy. 2000 lumens at 80 lumens/watt ( quite optimistic ) is 25 watts. That's a helluva pull for a battery.

Also its one heck of a lot of heat. Fan-cooled flashlight?

Most likely the manufacturer of the emitter claimed that rating on an infinitely heat-sunk LED.

I have bought several dozen UltraFire WF502 flashlights ( XML-T6 emitter ). I do not think any of them came close to claimed lumen output. They are bright enough, and use the 18650 cell, which is *very* important to me. They are well made and maintainable - that is I can completely disassemble them for cleaning and maintenance instead of having to throw a soiled one away. I figure I get about 500 lumens ( although some claim 1000 lumens ). But realistically, given the capacity of a single 18650 cell, I am very pleased with what I get. About 6.5 watts. Enough energy in a 18650 cell for about an hour of light. I do not want to use multiple 18650 cells because that would result in charge balancing issues, and I want my stuff as simple as possible.

I have bought mine more for "stock in trade" because they won't go bad in storage, and when a disaster strikes, they will become as good as currency for trading for things I need. For me, used 18650 are plentiful - and I very rarely find unusable ones.

Although you

Better get this stuff, http://www.aliexpress.com/item/HOT-High-Capacity-23000mAh-Solar-Charger-Solar-Mobile-Power-Bank-Battery-Charger-for-iPhone-iPad-Tablet/928368152.html

It works for a lot more stuff and you can leave the cell out in the sun while you use your laptop in the shade.

In the mean time, you can get something like this http://www.aliexpress.com/item/HOT-High-Capacity-23000mAh-Solar-Charger-Solar-Mobile-Power-Bank-Battery-Charger-for-iPhone-iPad-Tablet/928368152.html and pair it with a power efficient ultrabook.

Step 1:)

Purchase a waterproof smartphone enclosure from a sporting goods store. Like say, these generic ones. insert the phone inside the protector, and seal it.

Step 2:)

At the local post office, purchase a normal cardboard shipping box. I understand walmart also carries these. Then, buy a can of expanding foam insulation. Squirt the expanding foam insulation into the cardboard box, then, while the foam is still expanding and workable, embed the enclosure inside the foam. (You want to be able to get the phone out of the enclosure later. Keep that in mind.)

Step 3:)

Load the cardboard "shock box" into a "pumpkin chucker" trebuchet. You may need to troll newspapers or craigs list to find someone who has one. (they tend to advertise having them, so all you need to do is look.) Set the angle nigh, then let it rip.

Enoy your ballistic smartphone score.

I wonder... have they tried our Chinese friends?

With traditional manufacturing it makes sense to make things in bulk because you need specialized equipment for everything but if you have a general-purpose printer you can just print what you need.

All well and good until you realize that, for a whole keyboard, you pay $6 (or, how about about $0.09 for keyboard switch - electrical stuff included) and for a single 3D printed key cap you pay about $10.
Well, we can ignore the case of exquisitely unique keyboards, can we?

Ummm... the government already has this technology. It does not need your WiFi. Any radio or TV station does fine as a signal source to illuminate the area with an RF field.

I am sure you have noticed if you have ever used a rabbit ear TV antenna that your TV became quite sensitive to where people were in the room. Even changing your position on the bed was quite noticeable if you were trying to receive a weak signal.

By using multiple antennas, triangulation, and signal processing to correlate the signal each antenna received, it is quite do-able to triangulate onto anything moving in the RF field, and determine each moving things position, velocity, direction, and acceleration.

This is quite useful for "seeing" what's on the other side of opaque walls. Light does not make it through the wall, but RF does.

Its a fascinating thing to see these things work. I have a hankering to build a 3D version of one being 3D glasses are becoming available that do not require me to lug around a huge display screen.

Rudimentary ones can be built with little more than the business end of the 10.525 GHz microwave source commonly used for supermarket door sensors.

I don't trust any site whose product descriptions don't match the product specifications.

Ex: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2013-New-4rd-Generation-16GB-Black/891966448.html
"2013 New 4rd Generation- 16GB - Black"
Tablet Data Capacity: 32GB

Same thing for: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2013-New-Iconia-Tab-A210-10g16u-10-1-Inch-16GB-Tablet-Gray/891858062.html
2013 New Iconia Tab A210-10g16u 10.1-Inch 16GB Tablet (Gray)
Tablet Data Capacity: 32GB .... title says 16GB; iconia a210 normally ships with 16GB
Network Communiction: Built-in 3G,Bluetooth,Wifi,4G LTE,External 3G ... Highly doubt the 3G, 4G, external 3G
Processor Manufacture: Samsung ... iconia a210 ships with an NVIDIA Tegra 3
Memory Capacity: 2GB ... Maybe this is right, but the A210's I've found online have only 1GB

Unless someone real (not just an A/C, and someone with a normal comment history) can attest to this place, I'll be avoiding it completely, an recommending others to do the same. Looks way too shady.

I don't trust any site whose product descriptions don't match the product specifications.

Ex: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2013-New-4rd-Generation-16GB-Black/891966448.html
"2013 New 4rd Generation- 16GB - Black"
Tablet Data Capacity: 32GB

Same thing for: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2013-New-Iconia-Tab-A210-10g16u-10-1-Inch-16GB-Tablet-Gray/891858062.html
2013 New Iconia Tab A210-10g16u 10.1-Inch 16GB Tablet (Gray)
Tablet Data Capacity: 32GB .... title says 16GB; iconia a210 normally ships with 16GB
Network Communiction: Built-in 3G,Bluetooth,Wifi,4G LTE,External 3G ... Highly doubt the 3G, 4G, external 3G
Processor Manufacture: Samsung ... iconia a210 ships with an NVIDIA Tegra 3
Memory Capacity: 2GB ... Maybe this is right, but the A210's I've found online have only 1GB

Unless someone real (not just an A/C, and someone with a normal comment history) can attest to this place, I'll be avoiding it completely, an recommending others to do the same. Looks way too shady.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Presell-Teclast-G18-8-dual-camera-tablet-pc-with-3G-SIM-card-slot-GPS-bluetooth-MTK8377/750423859.html

Have you seen the wholesale price of tablets in China?

http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=android+tablet

Replace the capacitive screens with something cheaper, buy in bulk, and you're almost at $35.

Prior art:

  All Categories >"watch phone" 14,158 Results - http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=watch+phone&catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20130320145905

Yeah, but suppose I want a smart watch that keeps the display oriented so I can read it, now matter which direction my arm is pointing, that's the stuff of patents.

Prior art:

  All Categories >"watch phone" 14,158 Results - http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=watch+phone&catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20130320145905

Also, the top "features" for a phone in Africa are Torch and Radio, neither of which are top on the list of smartphone features.

Not for US vendors. Other phone manufacturing nations are ready to step into the breach.

http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?shipCountry=us&shipCompanies=&SearchText=android+phones+light&exception=&CatId=5090301&pvId=217-350436&manual=y&jump=kwref&needQuery=y

If the biggest problem you have with it is the battery life, then fix the problem - just replace the battery!

Since you're posting to Slashdot I'm going to assume you are willing to do some soldering if you have to.

Invest $15-25 and you can get 2x or 4x the battery life; that tablet only came with 2500 mAh if the other posters here guessed your model correctly.

Make sure the new cell will fit, then have at it!

This being /. I thought I'd post a link.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/group/Ultrasound-Scanner-Machine-System/703294_210600024.html

Percentage of wages supported my point of "didn't need to sacrifice my first born". I mean, everybody knows buying a tire factory in India is the way of tomorrow in term of ROI (wink) but who can afford it?

Ahhh, but you CAN still invest your money in an Indian tire factory via equities and bonds. That's why ROI for the panels is so important. If I'm tying up my capital for 15 years, I want to be sure it all works out! I have the money for an install, but right now it is sitting in equities earning over 10%... now, I don't expect to get that kind of return consistently, but I need to know what I'm up against.

I see you are not risk adverse. Tell you what: if you can get around custom taxes (or have them at decent level), maybe you can try to import the panels for your own use (instead of for resale) and arrange for a local installer to put them up and running... maybe even get some rebates from feds or whoever.

Source - Me, I had a 6kw system installed last fall, to the tune of about $31,000 - pretax rebate.

Ah, I know now why the US citizens pay through their noses maybe 4-6 times more than the selling price including transport by fast courier... their govt needs taxes! (that's bonkers. A family that pays less on power bills will have more money to spend on something else)

Warning: may have backdoors planted by People's Liberation Army.

The current generation of cheap Android tablets is already available with 2048*1536 Pixels. http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Quad-Core-2GB-16GB-Onda-V972-1-5GHz-WIFI-Android-4-1-9-7-Retina-IPS/742101228.html

even another dumbphone costs $150 or more.

Ummm ... really?

The Samsung store won't sell you phones, neither does Sony nor Microsoft... they just chase you to a carrier store so you can buy the locked one.

Then vote with your wallet and buy from people who still value freedom. You'll save a boatload of money and get a better product to boot.

http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?jump=kwref&isFirstJump=y&SearchText=android%2Bphones&CatId=5090301&g=n&manual=y

Well, if I wanted to buy online, I'd just go to play.google.com and be done with it, as well. (Though, if you're careful, you can find most carriers sell Nexus phones unlocked. There are few that unfortunately DO sell them locked...).

At least Google doesn't look as sketchy as that site.

But if you needed a phone NOW that's unlocked, running to the Apple Store seems to be one of the few options available. Though I think I saw Best Buy sells crappy older phones as unlocked as well (Say... a Nexus S era phone). And practically speaking, the real reason to need an unlocked phone is travelling overseas - great if you can plan it out, not so great if it's been dumped on your lap at the last minute and need it now.

Oh, and a good reason carriers may not want you to unlock your phone while on contract? Roaming fees! They are extremely lucrative. It's also why a lot of carriers make it hard to sell a bare SIM card with service (T-mo being one of the few exceptions) - they'd rather you roam on their network and pay $$$$ than pick up a card and pay the local rate. Only in the EU and such where people buy phones separate from their service is it easier. But in the US... forget about it.

The Samsung store won't sell you phones, neither does Sony nor Microsoft... they just chase you to a carrier store so you can buy the locked one.

Then vote with your wallet and buy from people who still value freedom. You'll save a boatload of money and get a better product to boot.

http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?jump=kwref&isFirstJump=y&SearchText=android%2Bphones&CatId=5090301&g=n&manual=y

The hobby cells bring out a connection point between cells for both cell voltage monitoring and charge balancing. You will find charge balancers as well at most hobby shops dealing with lithium cells. Every lithium pack I have run across so far has either had an in-pack balancer or a connection for an external balancer.

My interest in battery packs was piqued about a dozen years ago when I had numerous Makita Ni-Cd battery packs fail after sometimes no more than three usages. I disassembled the packs to find the cells damaged by overcharge, each pack having one or more cells that had grown a filament ( whisker ) inside which prevented one cell of the series stack from taking a charge. The charger, trying to establish stack voltage, charged and charged and charged to no avail. The cells vented and vented and vented until there was no electrolyte left.

It was the way I was using the cells. As a homeowner, I charged the pack for a use, used maybe 5 percent of the energy in the pack, then left the tool alone for a month or so. The cells had uneven self-discharge rates and some would not have any charge at all. When I picked up the tool, sometimes I would try to use it again, but the leakiest cell already could not hold its own and the stronger cells rammed current through the weakest one in reverse, ruining it and causing it to grow a whisker inside, shorting it out. The destruction of the remaining cells happened when I tried to charge the pack.

So, to combat this, I redesigned my charger to trickle 30 milliamperes through the pack at all times, and left the pack in the charger. Never had the problem again.

Later, I got a good-sized box of spent lithium laptop battery packs from a recycle kiosk at a local store. The owner was kind enough to let me have at them before sending them on. I disassembled every one of them to discover what killed them. Most were simply cycled to death, but several had some quite interesting failure modes involving the charge management board built into the packs.

One benefit I got was a nearly unlimited number of perfectly good 18650-size lithium ion batteries for use in flashlights and for powering all sorts of other little gadgets I make in the lab. There are all sorts of electronic things made in China that use the 18650 cell.

http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=18650+flashlight&catId=0&manual=y

I intend to use some quite large lithium cells for off-grid power backup, but being they are expensive and dangerous, I took it on myself to design a system for charging and monitoring the cells to make sure, and I mean damn sure, that nothing goes wrong. I ended up making a DC-DC converter that draws power from the whole stack, yet uses the power to charge each cell individually. No- this is not a scheme to get power for free, rather it is my way of equally redistributing all power available in the entire battery pack equally among all the cells of the pack. If some cells are weaker, the stronger cells are "taxed" more to provide supplemental charging current to the weaker cells. "Electronic communism" if you please. All cell voltages are forced equal by the charger. The microprocessor running the battery management board keeps track of each cells ability to supply or need of charge, as well as stats such as cell impedances, temperatures, and rates of parameter changes. The data is made available as a web-page on a 192.168.xxx.xxx addy, same kind of page as a setup page in a router. Simple HTML with graphics driven by sizing a colored pixel.

I saw another write-up where Boeing has been having problems of this same ilk. What they are going through is precisely what I am trying to avoid.

http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2020241385_787deadbatteriesxml.html

Funny thing is I used to work for a company bought up by Boeing. I got laid off in the buy-up.

You can thank me later....

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Mele-F10-Flying-Mouse-Air-Mouse-And-Keyboard-Remote-Controller-Three-In-One-For-Android-TV/582628817.html

A year or so ago I was perusing the made-in-china web site and found a page where you could buy a Long March missile booster and launching platform (included payload nacelle but no payload, bring your own fuel). The part I found most disconcerting was the little "add to basket" icon...

Hmmm... are you sure it wasn't actually a battery pack?

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/FACTORY-MK808-Mini-PC-Android-TV-box-4-1-Dual-Core-1-6-GHz-RAM-1GB/707744275.html

I have one. they exist. They're no game-changer.

You mean you can not think of this? At $40, postage included?
I pity your cognitive capacity.

even if this is useful as just a web browser, this is going to be a market changer.

They've been on the market for a while. I have half a dozen of them, given others to family and friends as Skype terminals.

http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=android+usb+pc&catId=0&manual=y

A lot of SMEs in parts of Asia have started using them as basic office PCs as well. I'd say Dell is trying to get on this wave before it peaks.

Search Alibaba for "Netbook": "185,881 Product(s) from 2,239 Supplier(s)". You can buy individual items. "Hot sell Mini Notebook 10.2 inch laptop Atom D425 Processor 1.8G Memory 1GB HDD 160G netbook wifi camera - US $217.00 / piece ", from Shenzhen Lihaicheng Tech Co., Ltd. Many sellers will ship directly to the US. Quality may be iffy, but there are seller reputations, and it's probably no worse than eBay.

Some of these are probably the same machines the big names were selling.

Nah, the answer of artificially funding a business because it's "better for the local economy" is as far off the mark as you can be. It simply doesn't correlate. What do you have then? A local business that's propped up by debt dollars injected into the economy by all the student loans and mortgages. Held for historical reasons, but not practically useful, and essentially acting as a broken window.

Without meaning any disrespect, I'd classify the above as a failure of imagination... (the risks of looking to the world through "principle based, black-and-white only glasses" - one doesn't look how to solve a problem, only how well possible solutions fit to some principle one keeps so dear)

E.g. what about transforming the bookstore in a coffee shop where one can read books? With a minor investment, even some eBooks can be made available on tablets owned by the coffee-shop. I know I'd spend some hours (and some money) every week, would it be close enough to my home; if there are others like me, possibly would be just enough to keep a former bookstore keeper in (another) business inside the community. Would this still be a "broken window"?

Plenty on AliExpress: http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=android+mini+pc&catId=0&manual=y

These Class D amplifiers claim to be 90% efficient.

I have a few of these I got from China. Its amazing how much sound I can get driving these with a single 18650 lithium cell. Sure not as loud as my bigger class T amps, but about as loud as that vacuum-tube radio I had as a kid ( 50L6 output... remember 'em?).

I have been tracking low-power stuff as I intend one day to go off-grid, but I do not want to give up my creature comforts to do so.

I have a CHEAP digital pen (cost me 25$) called the "greenpoint mobile notetaker" (which i think is a pegasus notetaker rebadged).... its ultra simple. it works under linux and what the linux software gives you is a simple svg map of what you drew on a piece of paper. Its just a normal pen with a little tracking unit that somehow tracks everything you write... I dont use it too much, but the times i have its not failed me so far.

http://scratchpost.dreamhosters.com/software/Pegasus_Notetaker/ will pull svg's from the pens tracking device thing

but it looks very much like this http://www.gadgetvictims.com/2009/12/digital-note-taker-pen.html

I find it works ok, but i've not really used any other digital pens, so i have no point of comparison - but at 25$ (which was on sale at the time) i just went "sure why not" and later found out it supported linux (which was a nice surprise).

I had previously looked at things like livescribe and went "no linux support, wont bother". There are one or two i can see on aliexpress http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-USB-Digital-Pen-Digital-Mobile-Note-Taker-Digital-Handwriting-Capture-Device/519494331.html but i dont know if they're based on the same thing (and they're twice the price i paid) and hence will still support linux

Free shipping,boxchip,ALLWinner A13, 7.0" Android 4.0;512MB/4GB, 5 points touch capacitiive touch.Tablet PC Price: US $42.00 - 53.50 / piece

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/free-shipping-boxchip-ALLWinner-A13-7-0-Android-4-0-512MB-4GB-5-points-touch-capacitiive/648623535.html

That page is 404 already. This is why I never buy shit from aliexpress. Dealextreme is as low as I will sink.