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Example, please? I work in high-volume consumer electronics and I've never seen this done.

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Plenty.
Every piece of equipment you sell is tested using a plethora of equipment where functionality is determined by license. HP did it in the 90s, Agilent continued it now, Keysight is still doing it. The difference between their $3000 CROs and their $2000 CROs is either embedded in the firmware or activated via bolt on dongles.

Speaking of dongles do you know one of the differences between AMD's Threadripper and Intel's Xeons? The former supports NVMe RAID in the CPU leading to blazing fast speeds. The latter (named VROC), well for that one you need a tiny little dongle that you plug into the motherboard so the firmware enables this support that is already naturally part the silicon. Well they're all about the dongles now, but in the past you could buy upgrade "vouchers" which allowed you to download and activate software utility on Intel's website to enable hyperthreadding on its desktop processors.

That's not new either. Your UID is low enough so you should remember AMD selling two different processors, one with a multiplier unlock and one that was locked by cutting a set of laser jumpers on the surface of the package. I owned one of those lovely cheaper AMD processors, you know the ones that always ended up with a graphite pencil mark on them to bridge the jumpers and basically increase the value of the CPU by $50-100 depending on model.

But it's not CPUs either. While the modern day QuadroRTX is a world apart from the standard desktop GPU, it used to be identical with features in the desktop GPU disabled via driver support. Man was there a cat and mouse game over that. It was once as easy as forcing the Quadro driver to install. Then NVIDIA locked that out in the GPU BIOS so you needed to flash a custom BIOS to get it to install. Then they tried setting a resistor on the motherboard. Yeah when running my 3D modelling software as a home hobby I could spend $1000 more on a Quadro K5000, or I could just buy a GTX690, bust out the soldering iron, move 2 resistors to the right, and then spend the spare $1000 on hookers, ... or you know invest in my future or something.

You know why my Samsung TV doesn't support WiFi via the Samsung WiFi dongle? Because I didn't pay $100 more to have a single line changed in the config file in the embedded software in the TV. To be fair you get different "hardware" for $100 more. You get a $20 WiFi dongle and one of the USB ports on the TV has a sticker on it saying "WiFi" instead of "USB 3". Fortunately a quick Telnet into the TV combined with factory default logins and passwords and I saved myself a cool $80. I do wish I had that WiFi label though.

Though by far the dumbest one I've seen was posted on Hackaday: the Casio fx-82ES. This 20EUR calculator lacks complex numbers which are available on the 35EUR Casio fx-991ES. While early models allowed you to do the AMD trick and use a pencil to bridge 2 pads with graphite (a soldering iron would be a better idea) and make the calculator think it's more expensive, the current model removed those pads. No worry though thanks to a buffer overflow attack you can keep mashing the ( key 7 times + ANS over and over again until the calculator appears to crash, suddenly forgets what it is and now magically has all the complex features of it's older brother, almost twice the price.

Clearly you don't open electronics. Seeing model table showing what model something is on account of what activated already existing features it shipped with it is nothing out of the ordinary: https://cdn.instructables.com/... This calculator hardware is one of 24 possible models depending on where resistors are placed and the colour of the case the hardware is in.

But I've never seen it done, because if you're going to sell in any appreciable volume, the costs "was

The compubody sock is the future of open office productivity

https://www.instructables.com/...

block the wavelengths of light that comes from LED and LCD

Has nothing to do with wavelength, but with polarization of the light. Anybody who has looked at screens with polarizing sunglasses is familiar with the effect.

Exactly, which to be fair they are honest about on the Kickstarter page:

RL Glasses block LCD/LED screens through horizontal polarized optics (we found out about this after coming across a 2017 WIRED article). By flattening and rotating the polarized lens 90 degrees, light emitted by LCD/LED screens is blocked, making it look like the TV or computer in front of you is off.

IRL Glasses are in beta. This means they are compatible with most TVs (LCD/LED) and some computers (LCD/LED). IRL glasses do not yet block smartphones or digital billboards (OLED).

Of course that doesn't prevent the OMG SCREEN BLOCKING GLASSES headlines that clickbait rags like Wired are throwing around.

It reminds me of a "privacy monitor" I saw some time ago, where you remove the polarizing film from a monitor and put it on a pair of glasses. You see the normal display and everyone else sees a blinding white screen.

It's not a "headphone jack," it's an analog audio jack.

You mean the 3.5mm 4-wire headset jack?

I worked in the aid biz for awhile and have some mixed feelings about audiologists, but not all bad. Aids don't frequency shift,

Seems like you haven't worked with hearing aids in decades, because they absolutely do shift frequencies. Given that you declared that they don't do this thing which some have done since 1998, it's not clear how much value your anecdotes on this subject will have. I became aware of it simply by reading literature on the subject quite some years ago, and I've never even worked in the industry, so it's not like it's a secret.

Supposedly, it's not just a hearing test you get at the audiologist - a *good* one would be at least looking into the "why" a little bit, as an aid might not be the whole answer to your issues - the cause of the loss might be ongoing and at least somewhat correctable.

Yes, that sounds like a good reason to go to an audiologist. An app might actually be able to help with that as well, though; if certain types of hearing loss tend to correlate with certain reasons for hearing loss, then the app could recognize that and suggest that you go to one. Of course, for liability reasons, the app will always do that — but it could actually give the audiologist useful information as to what they might be looking for.

I might be a "cord never". I used to get cable TV (basic analog package) when I'd move into an apartment and there was coax lying on the floor. When I moved to a place with no coax, it was rabbit-ears or nothing. Now, on my own house, I have a homemade OTA antenna.

Broadband has been via fixed wireless or now FiOS.

Luckily there already exist Fashions that defeat recognition systems. Just change your look every day. Or put some InfraRed LEDs in your hat. Until all the cool kids are wearing CV-evasive cyberpunk fashion just change your style from time to time. It's as easy as putting on a baseball cap or turning on/off its LEDs.

Landlines work in a lot of cases where the power's down, at least in the States. Not sure about UK.

And the voltage on a land line can be useful for recharging USB devices in no power situations....

http://www.instructables.com/i...

Bollocks! There are plenty of tools for creating on the internet. For example, you can download and install a tool on your Android phone that allows you to build applications - right on the phone (e.g. Android Studio etc)

The problem is you have to roll up your sleeves and not only get started, but follow through. That requires focus over time - which apparently is in short supply. Instant gratification does not build the next creative thing (whatever that may be).

There is no free lunch. There is no easy button for life.

I don't understand why existing engine bays have not been reused to fit motor/battery into existing car platforms.

This is commonly done -- in fact, it's easy enough to do that some technically-minded people like to convert their own gasoline-powered cars to electric in their garage.

The only problem with doing that is that you end up with a pretty mediocre electric car with lots of design compromises -- a car designed from the ground up with electric in mind will have much better range, performance, and handling. That, as much as anything, was what separated Tesla from the rest of the automobile manufacturers in terms of how its electric cars were received by the public.

far more accurately it is about cheap water.

Too bad potable water doesn't grow on trees. Or fall from the sky.

The problems with potable water are entirely self-made. People want to live where there isn't enough, or political borders prevent people from moving away from areas where there isn't enough to areas where there is enough. Anyone or any corporation exploiting lack of cheap water can only do it because of these two things.

So for example having a nuclear plant close to a desalination plant. The nuclear plant can use the waste water from the desalination plant, so you recover the energy that the nuclear plant would otherwise us to pump water.

You have that backwards. You can use the waste heat from the nuclear plant (about 2/3 of the energy it produces) to drive thermal evaporative desalination at a lower electrical cost than reverse osmosis. Unfortunately people have this irrational hangup over the word "nuclear" and don't want to drink water desalinated via heat from a nuclear plant, even if it's less radioactive than natural fresh water sources. So we needlessly throw away 2/3 of the energy our nuclear and fossil fuel plants generate in the form of waste heat.

This little pragma gem exists to prevent pineapples, presumably: /* This command is not used by release products other than those allowed to perform restore boot. */
#if WITH_RECOVERY_MODE && (!RELEASE_BUILD || WITH_RESTORE_BOOT)
MENU_COMMAND(setpicture, do_setpict, "set the image on the display", NULL);
#endif

ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.

I pointed to some blinking Christmas lights and told a couple of kids in our coderdojo that there is software code in those lights. 15 years ago most blinking Christmas lights relied on a bulb filament's heat bending a bimetal contact away from a fixed contact or an analog oscillator. Now it's cheaper, more reliable, efficient and flexible to use microcontrollers and LEDs whose flickering might not be entirely random.

I haven't experimented with that myself, but there seems to be several different options. From DIY to ready made.

DIY:
http://www.instructables.com/i...

Out of the box, but a bit pricey:
https://1sheeld.com/:

I'm pretty sure I could build a drone from junk, or otherwise not-registered parts. Just like I could 3D print a (crappy) gun to avoid gun control legislation.

I think that governments underestimate the ability of nerds to useless turn junk into somewhat less-useless junk.

The article did mention that this registration would be a voluntary (for now) registration, which the U.N. would have no force to enforce on it's member states. If it actually worked out that way, great. Register your drone if you want to. Then, officials will know where know when registration becomes confiscation.

I can't believe you guys are arguing over the semantics of this. It's a GPS device used to locate a car, and if needed, disable it. Obviously it's not only a GPS, it's got more functionality than just GPS. This allows the dealer to not only disable it, but repossess it if the buyer falls behind on payments. Here's an article about removing a "GPS Disabler": http://www.instructables.com/i...

Asinine behavior like this is what inspires people to write up how to's for removing these things. Turns out a fair number of these how to's already exist.

http://www.instructables.com/i...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://trackimo.com/disable-g...

A home-made faraday bag would be more portable.

Coax is a good way to distribute Over the air TV. I do that. Antennas do not need to be powered or expensive, unless the reception conditions are particularly bad, so if you already have an outside antenna try what you have first.
tablotv
No Cable
Your Free TV
FCC OTA site
antennaweb.org
Making your own antenna is also possible and simple
fractal can type
fractal panel type

Coax is a good way to distribute Over the air TV. I do that. Antennas do not need to be powered or expensive, unless the reception conditions are particularly bad, so if you already have an outside antenna try what you have first.
tablotv
No Cable
Your Free TV
FCC OTA site
antennaweb.org
Making your own antenna is also possible and simple
fractal can type
fractal panel type

Download Weather Satellite images from NOAA:

http://www.instructables.com/i...

I would recommend removing all the wire from the house though. It's an eyesore, lets in spiders through the holes in the walls and is generally useless. Some people might suggest keeping the coax as a selling point in the future, but the people that can only afford Coax aren't going to be able to be able to afford to buy the house in the first place.

Why doubt when you can google? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I like this quote. It indicates that concentrating the Sun's energy on an industrial scale is hardly a new idea:

A legend has it that Archimedes used a "burning glass" to concentrate sunlight on the invading Roman fleet and repel them from Syracuse. In 1973 a Greek scientist, Dr. Ioannis Sakkas, curious about whether Archimedes could really have destroyed the Roman fleet in 212 BC, lined up nearly 60 Greek sailors, each holding an oblong mirror tipped to catch the sun's rays and direct them at a tar-covered plywood silhouette 49 m (160 ft) away. The ship caught fire after a few minutes; however, historians continue to doubt the Archimedes story.

I suspect that any "repulsing" that was done - if any - was more like Romans turning away from hot blinding light, but the fact that a mere 60 sailors could ignite even a rigged dummy without any accelerants beyond those naturally found in a wooden ship is an indication of real power. Imagine if there had been 300 of them.

In the modern day, as the rest of the article indicates, quite a lot is being done and the associated math is provided.

Solar Smelters International has their own Facebook page. And, as I said, you can build your own: http://www.instructables.com/i...

All the rest is simply a matter of scale. Commercial factories often have thousands of square feet of roof space. A typical location in the USA can receive about 5KWh/meter/day power. That's PER day, meaning yes, rain, clouds and night-time included. And because we're talking direct heat-to-heat concentration, the efficiency is a lot higher than photovoltaics,.

So the question is: how skeptical are you?

There is no reason to throw something away just because it needs a new battery.

I still have it. Collecting dust with my HP calculators and Nintendo GBA. Thinking about putting it up on eBay. Maybe someone will want to run Windows on it.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Getting-Windows-31-and-95-on-an-ipod-touch/

And the best part is that you can replace the leather with fungus.

You'll be able to wear a newly made leather jacket to a dinner data with fresh steak on Mars. And even order it off kombucha scoby parchment menus.

Well, you're not supposed to put your beer in there.

Unless the computer is actually a fridge

(the famous Silicon Graphics Refrigerator Project, or: How To Turn a $175.000 High-End SGI Challenge DM Server into a Fridge)

Just responding to several replies to my previous post all at once here.

Remember too airplane electronics is updated on a 5, 10, or 20 year schedule. Whatever power port the USB adapter was plugged into may not have been updated for a very long time, even though things worked.

Unless the USB ports were following the very first standard (back when peripherals were only allowed to draw a piddly 100mA) they still should be watching the current and kill power if there's an overdraw. Age is not an excuse for unsafe behavior since it's always been specified how you should handle overdraw. by the accessory.

Part of the story here is those drop-resistors. People ask "why can't the charger and the device communicate two-way?" The answer is those resistors. It costs money to build in communications, not a lot but china's cheap. If you want a cheap charger, 5 cents in resistors beats a buck in an IC and 6 other support components. And back when USB came out, prices were a lot higher. So the chargers just set the voltage and are supposed to shut down if the accessory ignores them and overdraws. But again, that's added cost and China won't support that. They'd much rather overspec on the package and overheat in your cigarette lighter jack. You're more than likely to just fry it after a few weeks of overdrawing abuse, in which case you'll just go buy another one, and that's precisely what they want anyway, so don't expect that to change anytime soon. Ignoring the standard is in their best interest.

There are USB "condom" devices that, in addition to isolating from data comms, will trick both the charger and the iPhone into doing 1A charging.

Yeah.... "firebugs". Do not use them. Ignoring the maximum power rating on your charger is like sticking your fingers in your ears and humming when someone warns you not to do something dangerous. So unless you're trying for a Darwin Award, don't use those. If you insist, then for the love of god don't leave it charging unattended! There's a real risk you'll set your car on fire while you're getting groceries or something.

It's been a while since I read the specs, but isn't this statement contradicting how a USB DCP charger _should_ behave according to BC1.1/1.2 ?
As in, when Idcp goes above what the charger can deliver, Vchg should drop..

Your electronics background should help here. If a device is setting its load to draw a certain power, and your supply can't manage that much current, dropping the voltage is the opposite of what you ought to be doing to maintain power. It's a bit of a paradox problem. "The only winning move is not to play". Shut off. Dropping the voltage will cause most good phones to stop charging. Then the charger rebounds voltage since the load disappears. Then a few seconds later the phone starts charging again. Rinse and repeat. I think most of us have seen a phone do that, chirp chirp chirp chirp, as it continuously bounces between "charging" and "not charging". In case you haven't ran into that, the phone doesn't actually get charged, it's just super annoying for anyone nearby that has to listen to it. So please don't design a power supply that does this, it only helps if you're a cheap power bank that doesn't care but yet somehow has a buck-down regulator that can still operate at voltages approaching the load voltage (typically 3.7v)

5v? What about my old phone which charges at 9v, and my current phone that charges at 12v?

3.7 volts is incredibly common right now in devices. Here's a nice primer for the new arrivals: http://www.instructables.com/i...
Pretty much every cell phone on the planet uses a flat lipo pack since they're currently the best price point for storage-density. Modern semiconductors tend to be made for lower voltages, so this is fine. A li

You can generate plasma at home for a few bucks.

You pay that much for beans?

You can generate plasma at home for a few bucks.

...not more cloud shit...Can they not make a computer with the same specs as the one I got that's a decade old and not be cloud based, or are Window$ sales that bad? Micro$oft can't standardize a new architecture fast enough to force device sales, so they get you with a platform they have complete control over ($$$). $400 (just guessing) for 4 GB of RAM, 16-32GB is hard drive, and 1.2 Gz is not worth it in 2017. You're better off making a desktop, maybe a laptop (it'd be big), from a Raspberry Pi cluster. http://www.instructables.com/i...

It gets worse. We were running Window$ on iMacs. If I could at least try WINE on Linux with it, I would have, but they just bought the equipment and WinEEG needs a USB key to communicate live with the MITSAR. It would of been interesting to find out. I did look into other programs for Linux, but none are as easy to use and the compatible equipment is cheap and archaic in comparison. You can find a lot of biofeedback projects for Linux, but most of those are 2-5 channel and not 21. They do make Bluetooth EEG headsets for phones (iOS/Android) now, but they're junk and the saline solution destroys them over time. They market most of them as devices to improve your mental wellbeing by monitoring your brainwaves. You can be half asleep and get the same results as any "zen master." Fun fact why I'm thinking about it, they made a biofeedback Star Wars force toy way back during episode one or two I think. I don't know about 100 words a minute, but if you need to float a ball in a brain controlled air tube: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com.... Also, if you want to hack that toy with an Arduino: http://www.instructables.com/i...

FTS: "... experiments found that operators monitoring screens reportedly maintained peak performance for 20 hours -- rather than experience the usual drop-off in concentration after 20 minutes.

I've read that TES helps people with ADD / ADHD - it's good to see experimental results from a different field of application that suggest it may be true. It just might be time for me to build my own TES device.

Yes, vacuums DO exert a massive amount of pressure, or rather our atmosphere does and because there's no counter-balance in a vacuum that pressure is fully felt. The numbers are easy to get: about 14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level. That means about 15 pounds of force for every square inch of material, which is not a large area. You can throw a little math at something to figure out the total force a given area takes.

Also it turns out vacuum pressure is something that companies have to worry about, so they've tested it and posted demonstrations online. Here's one of a company subjecting one of their tanks to a vacuum and it failing in a spectacular fashion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

This isn't Hollywood, this is a company that makes tankers for transport.

Mythbusters (which I'm sure you'll deride as being Hollywood) has a great episode where they try it with a tougher tanker and it dues survive under effectively full vacuum... until they drop something on it and dent it, at which point it fails spectacularly.

As a related thing to forces from a vacuum (or rather the sudden failure) have a look at ping pong ball cannons. You evacuate a tube with a ball in it, and then suddenly open up the end. The pressure wave can drive the ball to extremely high speeds:

http://www.instructables.com/i...

8 watts from the kinetic

http://www.instructables.com/i...

There you go garbage 1 watt panel. How much anyone want to bet that 8 nice panels and batteries are far cheaper than these ?

And for people who have never been to Vegas walking is not how how you want to get around, unless you are real fond of heat stroke.

A few older gaming laptops had an HDMI input port that was hooked to the LCD, such as this one:
http://www.pcworld.com/article...
And this one:
http://www.computershopper.com...

I don't know of any that would feed the keyboard out though.
You could build something like this without the Pi:
http://www.instructables.com/i...

The vacuum pump that will give you the high vacuum so they won't burn out before you can blink is the problem.

you'll need a diffusion pump as a second stage to a regular pump

something like this

http://www.instructables.com/i...

You will also have to coat the interior of the tube with some sort of getter to keep the vacuum.

and then there are the seals

I believe that would make a fine penis pump. I can't wait to try it!

The vacuum pump that will give you the high vacuum so they won't burn out before you can blink is the problem.
you'll need a diffusion pump as a second stage to a regular pump
something like this
http://www.instructables.com/i...
You will also have to coat the interior of the tube with some sort of getter to keep the vacuum.
and then there are the seals

You don't need to 3D print a finger to fabricate a fingerprint, a simple laser printer is enough:

http://www.instructables.com/i...

Sorry, but wrong. Makarov pistol is made for opening beer bottles, not AK. In fact I own a Makarov and opening beer bottles was the only use of it for the last 8 years.

when you can build your own for hundreds less with less effort? Do you have money to waste?

Print one, just make sure there are no patents protecting it first...
This looks safe, maybe. Also, it does not seem to be a secret.
http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printing-Whistle/

How about a pencil cup, toothpick holder, or a keyfob made from a CT scan?

http://www.thingiverse.com/thi...
https://www.youmagine.com/desi...
http://cdn.instructables.com/F...

"How do you deal with the effects of electromagnetic radiation?"
"You interpose a material that stops it"

http://cdn.instructables.com/F...

Do you like DYI? Take a look here. http://www.instructables.com/i... It's for DCF77 (Germany Station) but surely it can be fitted for NIST.

Here's a bunch of different ones you can build. If it was me I'd just get a Raspberry Pi with a screen as that would be easiest.

Raspberry Pi Based:

  Pong Clock, GPIO Clock, another one, AlarmPi, some more examples

Arduino Based:
type 1 type 2

expert mode,another one, ye olde tux style

Here's a bunch of different ones you can build. If it was me I'd just get a Raspberry Pi with a screen as that would be easiest.

Raspberry Pi Based:

  Pong Clock, GPIO Clock, another one, AlarmPi, some more examples

Arduino Based:
type 1 type 2

expert mode,another one, ye olde tux style

Not sure it has a proper name, or at least a human-pronounceable one.

Check out Google Sketchup.

I think it's worth mentioning that the Pi Zero likely has the ability to broadcast data, though not in the way you might expect. (I can't say for certain because I don't have one yet) There are a few examples on the web about how to do this: http://www.instructables.com/i... I tried this recently on the Model2, and it worked well. Obviously you would need something on the receiving end to listen + decode, but I don't think it would be too difficult. People have been doing this with HAM radio for ages. If the antenna is a decent size, the range is pretty good. You could easily cover a house with low bitrate data. I'm sure this is in violation of lots of FCC rules, but meh.

http://www.instructables.com/c...
Then, each year, you can give him more parts to build the Analytical Engine.

http://www.instructables.com/i... (linking to instructables as the real server is already kind of slow).