In the 1990s, we had the megahertz wars. Beginning in the 2000s, we had the core wars. Now, we have the wattage wars. Other performance measures have stagnated as manufacturers try to reduce power consumption to give us laptops and tablets that go for 10+ hours on a charge.
Based on what I've seen drain my phone's battery quickly, I want to see the Waze battery test. Pair the phone to the car's Bluetooth, stream music in the background, and leave the display on in full sunlight. I doubt most phones will exceed 4 hours.
"...the maximum distance between any 2 charging stations is about ~150 miles."
Uh, no. Take a look at North and South Dakota, Montana, or a lot of other states out West. Also, a lot of interstate routes lack nearby Supercharger stations, and you'd have to take a significant detour to be able to quickly charge a Tesla. The Supercharger network still needs more stations. It's a lot better than Mary Barra (of GM)'s recent commentary to the effect that they wouldn't support infrastructure unless it helped everybody. Um, hello, you're trying to entice people to buy your Chevrolet Bolt with an iffy refueling network. The least you can do is support improving that iffy refueling network.
I have: - 2011 MacBook Air i5 13.3" - still runs well on OS X 10.11. Works well casting video to Chromecast. - 2011 iMac i7 27" - has gotten slower and slower with each OS update, upgrading to SSD a year or so ago fixed that. Now runs very well with OS X 10.11. - 2012 iPad mini - deceased due to digitizer problems. Got slower and slower with each OS update, also, could not keep more than one webpage tab stored in RAM at once. Was planning to upgrade it anyway due to the performance, but the "ghost touch" on the digitizer made it unusable. I will probably get a refurbished iPad mini 2 to replace it (it has twice the RAM and shouldn't have as many problems keeping webpages cached). - 2015 iPhone 6S - this replaced a Nexus 4 with a dying battery. Still works well, obviously.
The desktop and laptop seem to have better longevity than the mobile devices. I will replace the mobile devices when they break or when running the current OS makes them too slow. The desktop and laptop still perform very well and look like they will have several more years of usage left. Similar newer Apple desktops and laptops seem to benchmark about 50% higher than the ones I have, which is not enough for me to consider an upgrade. Honestly, when the time comes, I could see replacing both the iMac and the MacBook Air with a midrange 15" Dell laptop. At that point, I might upgrade to a 10" size iPad, since I would no longer have an ultraportable laptop to travel with.
Has your battery capacity declined? CoconutBattery will now measure the battery capacity of iOS devices, but you have to connect them to an OS X machine running CoconutBattery. My original 32 GB iPad mini still had 87% capacity after two and a half years of use.
I wish MS had been more upfront about the fact that Windows 10 is advertising/personal data collection-supported software. Between the automatically installed Candy Crush Saga, the Get Office and Get Skype ads which reinsert themselves with every Windows update, and of course the keylogger, Microsoft should be paying the end users substantial sums of money to run Windows 10.
The Podcasts app on iOS 9 is unusable (hard to navigate, no full screen video). I bought one other app before buying Pocket Casts, which works a lot like the older, better Podcasts app used to work. I know fewer people are using podcasts, but there is no reason for Apple to redesign the app to turn people away from it.
I went to MotoGP in Austin a few years back, and stayed a few extra days to check the place out. I doubt I will ever go back. They have a great foodie scene, but a lot of cities do these days. Traffic was terrible the entire time I was there. Worse than Chicago, Atlanta, or Miami. Every 20 minute trip took well over an hour. GPS with traffic data was no help. I went to some state or national park, way out of town, and got held up for 20 minutes in stop and go traffic at some sort of Podunk Festival in a tiny town along the way.
I also made a day trip to San Antonio, which I liked a lot better. I wouldn't touch Austin with a ten foot pole.
AT&T used to offer hotels a cheapo $15 per month DSL plan. I think it was 512k download. From my experience, a lot of Hampton Inns shared this connection via wifi across the whole hotel.
$15/month here with TWC's Everyday Low Price. I'm sure this plan will disappear when they merge with Charter and Brighthouse and they will only offer cheap internet to households with verifiable low income.
Anyway, it's 2 megabits down and 1 megabit up. I wouldn't mind more bandwidth, but you can't beat the price. I don't have a cable TV package. Netflix streams just fine so long as you're not doing anything else at the same time. I bought my own modem and don't pay a rental fee. Downloading OS updates or Garmin map updates is painfully slow, but other than that, it works very well in practice. The service has been very reliable over the past year that I've been here.
Since my iPad mini was Left Behind (Apple says 32 bit devices do not support native ad-blocking), I bought Weblock, which works with my older device. Seems to be working well so far, and also works with Google Chrome, which is my preferred browser.
They'd have to be insane to want to take over VW's dealer network, which is notoriously bad. Any new player entering the automotive market would want to follow the Tesla model and do away with the bloodsucking middlemen.
I guess the faster SoC and processor, plus the 1 GB of RAM in the mini 2 make a big difference. I feel like I don't need a retina display on my next tablet, but they pretty much all have it now.
Or wait until the iPad Air 3 comes out, and get one of those. You want as much RAM as possible in these devices. I have a first-gen iPad mini (512 MB of RAM) and you can't even have multiple browser tabs open without it dropping the inactive tabs from the cache so it has to reload when you go to one of the other tabs. It's maddening. The on screen keyboard frequently has delays, and using a Bluetooth keyboard is no better. It is much slower than my Nexus 4 phone.
I like my Android phone but also prefer iOS on a tablet. The newer iPads are better and faster than mine. Now that the full-size iPad is thinner and lighter than it was at the time I got the mini, I think I might go with that instead. We'll see what happens on Tuesday.
I got the latest Chrome update (45.0.2454.85). The default new tab page shows a Google search box at the top and my frequently viewed sites at the bottom. The Google search box at the top is partially opaque and you have to click a "play" button to show the cute little Google search animation. I can only conclude that Google Chrome has blocked Google's own content.
From viewing the disclaimer on Hyundai's video, it appears that their system is designed to disengage if it believes the driver is not present/not paying attention/dead. It says: "Lane keeping assist system - modified not to turn off." Also, did they use a Porsche Cayenne as one of their camera vehicles instead of a Hyundai? Weird.
Looks like the editors won't won't work either. Maybe they're all at Starbucks (which, by the way, editors, has no apostrophe).
How much does being a copy editor at Slashdot pay, and where can I pick up an application? Does the job include complimentary room and board at the Geek Compound?
I've said this before and I'll say it here again, since it's on-topic: Slashdot is dying. It began its death spiral before Malda left. Once he quit, its fate became certain.
A bunch of shit has happened over the years, from FIRST POST!, Natalie Portman, and hot grits in the early days; to Roland Piquepaille's story spamming in more recent history. Eventually, ZDnet or Gizmodo or some other tech site will buy Slashdot and begin integrating it into their own website. Eventually, Slashdot's URL will be only a redirect to the website of its corporate overlords.
Because I'm on my fourth online application and kynect had me in some sort of infinite loop purgatory (in which I wasn't allowed to complete the application process) for the past three weeks. This morning, I finally got a message asking me to upload additional documentation.
For what it's worth, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services is in charge of Kentucky's exchange. The same Cabinet which is responsible for child welfare and has a history of hiding information about child fatalities which occur under their watch.
I've said this many times before, but when CmdrTaco left, it was the beginning of the end for Slashdot. The writing was on the wall for a long time before that, but Malda's departure was a very clear demarcation of where the site was headed. We're witnessing a slow death spiral. Within 10-20 years, Slashdot will no longer exist in its current form. It will be gobbled up by Gizmodo, Techcrunch, CNet, or the likes, and eventually merged into their conglomerate and redirected to the parent company's site.
You wouldn't believe how many people I know were dead set against satellite navigation systems, how they would be forced on us, etc. Every one of those people now owns one, by their own choice.
I think people have a similar visceral reaction to autonomous vehicles, but once they experience not having to deal with the stress of everyday driving, will change their opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
In the 1990s, we had the megahertz wars. Beginning in the 2000s, we had the core wars. Now, we have the wattage wars. Other performance measures have stagnated as manufacturers try to reduce power consumption to give us laptops and tablets that go for 10+ hours on a charge.
Based on what I've seen drain my phone's battery quickly, I want to see the Waze battery test. Pair the phone to the car's Bluetooth, stream music in the background, and leave the display on in full sunlight. I doubt most phones will exceed 4 hours.
Agree completely. Only a matter of time until /. is only valuable as a domain name, and someone buys it to redirect to CNET.
"...the maximum distance between any 2 charging stations is about ~150 miles."
Uh, no. Take a look at North and South Dakota, Montana, or a lot of other states out West. Also, a lot of interstate routes lack nearby Supercharger stations, and you'd have to take a significant detour to be able to quickly charge a Tesla. The Supercharger network still needs more stations. It's a lot better than Mary Barra (of GM)'s recent commentary to the effect that they wouldn't support infrastructure unless it helped everybody. Um, hello, you're trying to entice people to buy your Chevrolet Bolt with an iffy refueling network. The least you can do is support improving that iffy refueling network.
More likely, the domain will probably be sold and redirected to Gizmodo or CNet. Slashdot has been in a slow, downward spiral for years now.
I have:
- 2011 MacBook Air i5 13.3" - still runs well on OS X 10.11. Works well casting video to Chromecast.
- 2011 iMac i7 27" - has gotten slower and slower with each OS update, upgrading to SSD a year or so ago fixed that. Now runs very well with OS X 10.11.
- 2012 iPad mini - deceased due to digitizer problems. Got slower and slower with each OS update, also, could not keep more than one webpage tab stored in RAM at once. Was planning to upgrade it anyway due to the performance, but the "ghost touch" on the digitizer made it unusable. I will probably get a refurbished iPad mini 2 to replace it (it has twice the RAM and shouldn't have as many problems keeping webpages cached).
- 2015 iPhone 6S - this replaced a Nexus 4 with a dying battery. Still works well, obviously.
The desktop and laptop seem to have better longevity than the mobile devices. I will replace the mobile devices when they break or when running the current OS makes them too slow. The desktop and laptop still perform very well and look like they will have several more years of usage left. Similar newer Apple desktops and laptops seem to benchmark about 50% higher than the ones I have, which is not enough for me to consider an upgrade. Honestly, when the time comes, I could see replacing both the iMac and the MacBook Air with a midrange 15" Dell laptop. At that point, I might upgrade to a 10" size iPad, since I would no longer have an ultraportable laptop to travel with.
Has your battery capacity declined? CoconutBattery will now measure the battery capacity of iOS devices, but you have to connect them to an OS X machine running CoconutBattery. My original 32 GB iPad mini still had 87% capacity after two and a half years of use.
I wish MS had been more upfront about the fact that Windows 10 is advertising/personal data collection-supported software. Between the automatically installed Candy Crush Saga, the Get Office and Get Skype ads which reinsert themselves with every Windows update, and of course the keylogger, Microsoft should be paying the end users substantial sums of money to run Windows 10.
The Podcasts app on iOS 9 is unusable (hard to navigate, no full screen video). I bought one other app before buying Pocket Casts, which works a lot like the older, better Podcasts app used to work. I know fewer people are using podcasts, but there is no reason for Apple to redesign the app to turn people away from it.
I went to MotoGP in Austin a few years back, and stayed a few extra days to check the place out. I doubt I will ever go back. They have a great foodie scene, but a lot of cities do these days. Traffic was terrible the entire time I was there. Worse than Chicago, Atlanta, or Miami. Every 20 minute trip took well over an hour. GPS with traffic data was no help. I went to some state or national park, way out of town, and got held up for 20 minutes in stop and go traffic at some sort of Podunk Festival in a tiny town along the way.
I also made a day trip to San Antonio, which I liked a lot better. I wouldn't touch Austin with a ten foot pole.
AT&T used to offer hotels a cheapo $15 per month DSL plan. I think it was 512k download. From my experience, a lot of Hampton Inns shared this connection via wifi across the whole hotel.
$15/month here with TWC's Everyday Low Price. I'm sure this plan will disappear when they merge with Charter and Brighthouse and they will only offer cheap internet to households with verifiable low income.
Anyway, it's 2 megabits down and 1 megabit up. I wouldn't mind more bandwidth, but you can't beat the price. I don't have a cable TV package. Netflix streams just fine so long as you're not doing anything else at the same time. I bought my own modem and don't pay a rental fee. Downloading OS updates or Garmin map updates is painfully slow, but other than that, it works very well in practice. The service has been very reliable over the past year that I've been here.
Since my iPad mini was Left Behind (Apple says 32 bit devices do not support native ad-blocking), I bought Weblock, which works with my older device. Seems to be working well so far, and also works with Google Chrome, which is my preferred browser.
They'd have to be insane to want to take over VW's dealer network, which is notoriously bad. Any new player entering the automotive market would want to follow the Tesla model and do away with the bloodsucking middlemen.
I guess the faster SoC and processor, plus the 1 GB of RAM in the mini 2 make a big difference. I feel like I don't need a retina display on my next tablet, but they pretty much all have it now.
Or wait until the iPad Air 3 comes out, and get one of those. You want as much RAM as possible in these devices. I have a first-gen iPad mini (512 MB of RAM) and you can't even have multiple browser tabs open without it dropping the inactive tabs from the cache so it has to reload when you go to one of the other tabs. It's maddening. The on screen keyboard frequently has delays, and using a Bluetooth keyboard is no better. It is much slower than my Nexus 4 phone.
I like my Android phone but also prefer iOS on a tablet. The newer iPads are better and faster than mine. Now that the full-size iPad is thinner and lighter than it was at the time I got the mini, I think I might go with that instead. We'll see what happens on Tuesday.
I got the latest Chrome update (45.0.2454.85). The default new tab page shows a Google search box at the top and my frequently viewed sites at the bottom. The Google search box at the top is partially opaque and you have to click a "play" button to show the cute little Google search animation. I can only conclude that Google Chrome has blocked Google's own content.
Yeah, "3D-Printed Car Takes It Is First Test Drive."
See also:
http://youtu.be/8Gv0H-vPoDc?t=...
From viewing the disclaimer on Hyundai's video, it appears that their system is designed to disengage if it believes the driver is not present/not paying attention/dead. It says: "Lane keeping assist system - modified not to turn off." Also, did they use a Porsche Cayenne as one of their camera vehicles instead of a Hyundai? Weird.
Looks like the editors won't won't work either. Maybe they're all at Starbucks (which, by the way, editors, has no apostrophe).
How much does being a copy editor at Slashdot pay, and where can I pick up an application? Does the job include complimentary room and board at the Geek Compound?
I've said this before and I'll say it here again, since it's on-topic: Slashdot is dying. It began its death spiral before Malda left. Once he quit, its fate became certain.
A bunch of shit has happened over the years, from FIRST POST!, Natalie Portman, and hot grits in the early days; to Roland Piquepaille's story spamming in more recent history. Eventually, ZDnet or Gizmodo or some other tech site will buy Slashdot and begin integrating it into their own website. Eventually, Slashdot's URL will be only a redirect to the website of its corporate overlords.
Because I'm on my fourth online application and kynect had me in some sort of infinite loop purgatory (in which I wasn't allowed to complete the application process) for the past three weeks. This morning, I finally got a message asking me to upload additional documentation.
For what it's worth, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services is in charge of Kentucky's exchange. The same Cabinet which is responsible for child welfare and has a history of hiding information about child fatalities which occur under their watch.
I've said this many times before, but when CmdrTaco left, it was the beginning of the end for Slashdot. The writing was on the wall for a long time before that, but Malda's departure was a very clear demarcation of where the site was headed. We're witnessing a slow death spiral. Within 10-20 years, Slashdot will no longer exist in its current form. It will be gobbled up by Gizmodo, Techcrunch, CNet, or the likes, and eventually merged into their conglomerate and redirected to the parent company's site.
You wouldn't believe how many people I know were dead set against satellite navigation systems, how they would be forced on us, etc. Every one of those people now owns one, by their own choice.
I think people have a similar visceral reaction to autonomous vehicles, but once they experience not having to deal with the stress of everyday driving, will change their opinion.
I thought it said "Geek Squad Filmed in Natural Habitat for the First Time."