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Bug In Fire TV Screensaver Tears Through 250 GB Data Cap
jfruh (300774) writes Tech writer Tyler Hayes had never come close to hitting the 250 GB monthly bandwidth cap imposed by Cox Cable — until suddenly he was blowing right through it, eating up almost 80 GB a day. Using the Mac network utility little snitch, he eventually tracked down the culprit: a screensaver on his new Kindle Fire TV.
A bug in the mosaic screensaver caused downloaded images to remain uncached.
I would ask why we still have screen savers
Although it isn't a hard-and-fast rule, screensavers nowadays are less about preventing burn-in and more about utilizing idle displays. For example, on a Linux-based machine, it's not unusual to have screensaver options that let you display the system load and uptime. Photo screensavers are another prime example. If I'm in my home office for an hour at a time, but only using the computer for 10 minutes, why not have my otherwise idle screen act as a large digital photo frame? You are correct in asserting that power consumption is an issue, but display technology has come a long way, so my 24" monitor draws much less power than my 19" CRT. Reducing power usage is a wonderful slogan, but modern society has a very poor grasp on exactly how much power their devices consume compared to their microwave, water heater, air conditioning, dusk-to-dawn lighting, and other amenities. It's great to hear that your cell-phone charger now reduces it's power consumption by 95% when not in use, but do you have any idea how that compares to an running your AC and heat an extra day each fall/spring, microwaving your pre-cooked meal every other night? /rant