Wifi triangulation on my iPod touch (using Skyhook) would consistently place my location about a block away when I was at home.
Good enough (and plenty impressive) for travel directions or a feeble attempt at "where the hell am I at?" on a device without GPS, but lousy for pinpointing the location of stolen goods.
So, as to implications: It implies nothing except that the device thinks it's in the same neighborhood.
I've seen Wifi triangulation be scary-accurate, but mostly it's way too coarse to determine which door to knock on (and it has no idea how accurate its result is, unlike GPS).
Skyhook is the service that my 1st-gen iPod Touch would use for location data. (I don't know about current Apple products, because I don't have any.)
It doesn't work on IP addresses at all, but rather by listening for nearby 802.11 beacons and triangulating your location using their signal strengths, using MAC addresses (or rather, BSSID) to uniquely identify each access point.
I was generally very impressed with its performance in rural Ohio. Pretty much within 100 yards, no matter what, as long as I had an open internet connection with which to query the database and at least one fixed Wifi signal. (I still think this is pretty awesome for a glorified MP3 player.)
Google uses a similar method for their Android devices when GPS is unavailable. It located me in a downtown Chicago hotel within a few feet, with no GPS fix, but so far hasn't been as generally accurate as what I experienced with Skyhook's service on the old iPod.
Wigle can be used for similar stuff, these days, and caters to those who enjoy wardriving.
Mechanical locks are generally pretty easy to open.
For the round locks that are common on such things as small safes, a small screwdriver (preferably with a 90 degree bend, but any regular screwdriver with an appropriately-sized blade will do) and a bit of small, stuff wire will open it in a hurry, and not really leave any identifying marks behind.
It is just spiced-up vinegar, but it's not so unique in that regard. The difference between Tabasco and other similar concoctions is that the Tabasco peppers are fermented in open barrels covered with copious amounts of salt covering them for a long time, while most other forms of bottled pepper goo use the peppers mostly fresh and skip the fermentation step.
I like it on some things, but then I also like various forms of vinegar on some things as well. Nonetheless, we go through the Tabasco sauce at such a rate at my house that I've considered buying it in gallon jugs.
As to loss of smell, there are chemicals that can do that in a very permanent fashion, but AFAIK they're not present in peppers (or Tabasco). I've seen people snort straight Tabasco, and recover quickly once the laughter dies down...
And it's a requisite part of a Bloody Mary, which is also made with vodka.
So, meh. Cool story, bro, but I'm blaming the rumor mill. If Tabasco could cause loss of smell, then my ghost pepper and habernero habit would've ruined my nose long ago...
How do you dry your clothes? I live in the US and have mostly natural gas appliances, but my (very!) old entrance wiring has 60-Amp main fuses (240V split-phase). The electric clothes drier, alone, wants a 30A 240V circuit, so that hypothetically uses half by itself.
Now, I know you can dry your clothes with gas too (though it isn't too common here for whatever reason), but that's still just not very much power for other things that are generally electric, like power tools or an air compressor, fridge, microwave, toaster, etc....not to mention electronics, lighting, etc. (The lights in my home office alone use 600W when turned up.)
My house would not survive with 32A 240V service, even if I didn't use it to dry my clothes, unless I was being very careful about not switching too many things on at once -- especially if we're running power tools when working on the house.
Around here, 200A service is common for new home construction, my 60-amp service is considered very weak, and 3-phase is very rare except for commercial and industrial applications: I couldn't get 3-phase power even if I wanted it, as my neighborhood is not cabled to support it, nor are most others.
(And never mind an apartment that I lived in once, which had an electric forced-air furnace which consumed 8kW by itself, an electric range, and an electric water heater...all running from 240V split-phase.)
Everything on the car is electically powered. Yes, there is a manual "emergency" provision for breaking, but without power to charge the system, you get about the same out of the volt as ANY powered-off vehicle. Try it with you own car; with the engine off, you'll get 2-3 good cycles out of the breaks before you're screwed.
Firstly, you're very wrong. The Leaf has lots of electrically-assisted stuff, but the brakes and steering are anything but complete drive-by-wire: There's still a steering column with a rack and pinion that mechanically turns the wheels. There's still a brake pedal with a master cylinder attached which directly operates the slave cylinders at the wheels.
The only difference between this arrangement on the Leaf and just about everything else is that these components use electric motors for power assistance, whereas traditionally hydraulic pressure or incidental vacuum performed these roles...neither of which make much sense on an electric vehicle.
Secondly, meh. I've been moving dead cars like this for years (I've probably logged over 200 miles of it) -- YOU go try it.
I can quickly stop both my own car (usually a compact, at least by American standards), and the towing vehicle (usually a small pickup truck), with no power-assisted brakes (ie: engine off), and with no braking help from the other vehicle. One must obviously push rather hard on the pedal, but things do stop expediently. Hydraulic automotive brakes are cool like that, and are quite fail-safe indeed.
Same with power steering (or lack thereof): Things work fine without.
(News flash: Did you know that, not so long ago, both of these things were considered optional equipment on a new car?)
And the question is not how long it takes to charge a Leaf to a high state of charge, but rather how long it takes to charge a dead Leaf so that it can travel another 5 miles under its own power, since that is the range discussed in TFA. How long is that?
It takes 21 hours to charge a Leaf from flat to full at 120V, which is supposed to be good for 105 miles of city driving.
Rounding things slightly to make the math simple, and we see that it takes about 20 hours of charging to go 100 miles in-city, or an average rate of about 5 miles-per-hour. So, assuming a constant charge rate (which it isn't -- batteries, in general, tend to accept a charge faster the flatter they are), you'll be be juiced up for another 5 miles of moderate speed travel in about one hour, and certainly less than "SEVERAL HOURS".
It's inconvenient enough to never want to make a habit of doing it, but far from the end of the world or a self-imposed Jeremy Clarkson SNAFU.
If I saw someone stranded in their Leaf outside my house, and all they needed was some electricity, I'd help them push it into the driveway, round up an extension cord, and invite them in for a bit (unless they smelled -really- bad), just as I'd offer a jump to someone with a dead battery, or give whatever gasoline I might have handy to someone who had run their tank dry.
I've fixed disabled cars in parking lots and at the side of the road for total strangers, I've removed the back seat from a car at a gas station after a lady had locked her purse and keys in it, and I've pulled cars out of ditches in the winter. I try to do whatever I can to help just because I can and I usually have the tools with me to do it. The only payment I accept for this sort of unexpected work is "thank you."
I certainly am not the only nice person in the world, though. Others have helped me as well, in one case going so far as to make a steel fitting to repair a radiator hose that had been eaten by the alternator fan, at a factory in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. I didn't even have to ask: I just pulled off the road near their loading dock in a cloud of steam, popped the hood, and looked around. Random folks came out, looked with me. I said I didn't need any help. I went to use
Good luck towing the LEAF with a strap or chain - the entire undercarriage is covered in plastic for aerodynamics. Unless you decide to hook up to the suspension arms which is a good way to ruin your alignment. There's also no mechanical neutral so towing the LEAF with the drive wheels on the ground may cause serious damage (so claims the manual, anyway).
Why not just screw the included recovery hook into the front bumper?
Manuals are often wrong and/or overprotective. I don't expect everyone to be able to get this stuff right, but this is Slashdot, not the editorial section of the local news rag. Towing a Leaf a few miles is no different, electrically, than driving a Leaf down a very long hill.
The same smart people who designed the heater to draw power even when the climate control is set for A/C (Not to mention the fact the heating system uses coolant and a heater core instead of heating the air directly, requiring a degas tank, pump and hoses)?
The heater is commonly active on any car when the AC is in use. Even one with manual controls: Select appropriate vents, turn AC on, adjust fan speed for a comfortable amount of artificial wind, and then add heat using the temperature knob. Doing it this way helps reduce humidity, and allows for effective bi-level cooling.
It's not the same arrangement as a common home HVAC system, but it doesn't have the same requirements either.
As another poster pointed out, the opposite is very useful in cold and/or rainy weather: Using the defroster vent with heat and the AC on (some cars do this irrevocably in the defrost position, while others have a manual switch for the compressor) rapidly removes condensation from the inside of the window glass.
Meanwhile, the Leaf uses water cooling for some of its electronics. As long as this is the case, using the waste heat to warm up the passenger compartment is free, since the pump was already running anyway for cooling purposes.
As to your 30-second song and dance, I think you meant to say that you have 15 minutes to connect the charging cable, at least according to Nissan. Furthermore, if you don't have a schedule set, it charges immediately as soon as you connect it without pushing a button, as long as the car is off.
About the only way to improve on that behavior is to make it telepathic.
And setting up a schedule is pretty plainly documented on page CH-18 of the manual, though it looks rather self-explanatory to me: It's all GUI-based.
Is there anything else that you think the smart folks at Nissan got wrong other than the range indicator (which, as I mentioned previously, I don't think is wrong)?
I keep a set of jumper cables in the trunk. I've only used them to help other people rather than to get my own vehicle(s) going, but I'd guess that they work just as well going the other way.;)
And I'd so much rather just go turn a wrench and get a tire changed, than wait for someone else. It just takes a few minutes.
In my neck of the woods, it's not alarmingly uncommon for apt folks to have lifts in their home garages to do all manner of work. Sure, it's mostly there because they own or restore nice cars and like to do things themselves, but they'll have their buddy Joe bring his truck over and change the ball joints (or whatever) in exchange for an occasional bit of cash.
I don't know if this is legal (it might be, might not be - we're pretty relaxed with building codes and zoning around here), but I also don't know if your argument is pivoting on the razor-edge of legality or the much broader line that separates practicality from actual legal action.
WRT changing oil: I can imagine that some of the EPA forms are onerous, and that's a shame. You should only have to certify (by your own signature) that you collected n gallons of oil and either burned it yourself in a proper used-oil furnace, or that you delivered n gallons to someone who has such a furnace.
A friend of mine has a completely legitimate used-oil furnace in his small warehouse. I bring my meager used collections over to him, and he's thankful enough to let me use his heated space for the occasional winter car repair. (And if I had a lot of used oil, he'd come and collect it from me himself, and produce a receipt for the same.)
Okay, you got a "Low Battery" warning and you're 5 miles from home. The range indicator and battery level gauge are both gone. Do you try to make it home and risk getting stuck in the middle of the street, or pull over and call a tow truck now?
Who here calls for a tow truck when stuck a paltry 5 miles from home?
Seriously. Isn't this what pickup trucks, tow straps, and sons/grandsons/brothers/brothers-in-law/friends + beer bribes are for? I've had cars professionally towed, for sure, but it's always been for much greater distances than that.
It does have hydraulic brakes, doesn't it?
FFS. At 5 miles away, I'd be more inclined to push it into a driveway or a parking lot, ask the nice folks inside the (random) building if I can borrow an outlet for a bit, and maybe offer the homeowner or manager a bit of cash for the trouble.
But more to the point: It's really just a psychological issue. Replacing (or supplementing) a gauge that reads 0 when there's still usable charge left with a gauge that reads (say) 5 just allows for common people to push things even further to the extreme end of things, and likely actually increases the chances of being stuck somewhere instead of reducing them.
Even as an altruist who is in favor of speaking (and receiving) the absolute truth, no matter how ugly it might be, I must say that it's less hazardous to the driver, on average, if the gauge is somewhat pessimistic.
And really: Are we all really so smart here that we must conclude that the other smart people at Nissan didn't already think of this in the delicate and extensive balancing act of creating a car that people actually enjoy owning and driving?
It's not* good for the cells. But it is good for the charging circuitry and for the battery life display, and therefore the health and usefulness of the entire system (which obviously includes more than just a battery) improves when Apple's simple advice is followed.
The problem is not an occasional (once or twice in a lifetime, or maybe every few months) discharge, but when people take this advice to the obvious partially-informed logical extreme and conclude that frequent complete discharge of batteries is somehow better than not.
The main benefit is as follows: Without at least one "complete" discharge (which still leaves quite a lot more than 0V in the cells), the device has no idea what the actual state of a partially-discharged battery pack ever is. But after a "complete" discharge, the battery life display has at least a fighting chance at being close to correct, which is useful to us humans.
* And in general: It's somewhat damaging to "fully" discharge modern lithium batteries. But then, it's also somewhat damaging to recharge them "fully". Or to discharge/recharge them just a little bit. And it's somewhat damaging to leave them floating on the charger all the time. Or to do anything with them when they're too hot. Or too cold. (Or when the sun is in the West during high tide, etc.)
And it's even somewhat damaging to leave them unused in a box in your desk drawer for long periods.
In other words, every battery has a finite lifespan, especially rechargeable lithium cells: The clock is ticking once they're manufactured. Their capacity varies over time, possibly non-linearly but always asymptotically on a downward slope, no matter how they're used (or not used), and extreme usage simply accelerates that trend.
My advice to rechargeable battery users (for all types of battery and user) is as follows: Don't make a habit out of intentionally deep-discharging the thing, because such a habit does more harm than good (and it will probably happen incidentally now and then, anyway). Charge the thing whenever it's actually convenient, no matter what the battery meter says. And certainly do use the thing on battery power alone whenever that's convenient, because that's what it's for.
I've done my fair share of playing Portal 2, and haven't noticed any issues.
I just logged into Steam and entered the ID from the disc jacket. The whole thing downloaded*, and I was able to play it some reasonable time later. Everything worked, aside from a couple of very minor in-game glitches (which are common on any new software from any timeframe, in my experience), and that was all.
The only tweaking that I did was to bump up the graphics settings toward "more pretty."
This is not dissimilar from the other games I have from Steam. Things seem to generally just work.
Meanwhile, if Valve thinks you've stolen something, it won't work. At all. They're not, as far as I can tell, in the business of using subterfuge to combat piracy.
Are you sure that your problem with completing Portal 2 is with DRM, and not a wonky combination of hardware, software, and drivers on your own computer?
*: I downloaded it instead of installing from disc because I bought the PS3 version, which includes a free Steam version to play on a PC...but no disc for it, just a code. Which was fine for me and a steal for about $23 total at release time.
Film grain also isn't neatly rectangular, as pixels are. At high magnification, film fails with a random pattern which our brains are fairly decent at processing into a useful image because it's not too dissimilar to how our own eyes fail in instances of poor focus, lighting, or both.
While I suspect that you'll accuse me of cherry-picking again because I dismissed the rest of your post, I think we can both agree on that. Although I'm still not entirely sure why you steered it in this direction...
You mean those stockholders who buy and sell Google stock on the open market? Those same stockholders who were promised to never have a dividend presented to them? The same ones who don't get any voting rights?
Those stockholders? Really? Because if those are the stockholders you're thinking of, they're all complete fucking idiots for buying GOOG to begin with*, and I don't think anyone at Google gives a fuck about them either.
*: Buying shares in a random child's sand castle at the beach will perform just about as well as an "investment" in GOOG. If it's a really awesome sand castle and others are really interested, they might be able to "earn" some money by selling them later...but that just makes the new owner an even greater fool. At least the kid's happy, though, and when he decides to kick his castle into the sea there won't be a thing that the shareholders will be able to do except gawk at their own red ink.
Step 1: Disassemble device. Step 2: Apply Deoxit DN5 (accept no substitutes), sparingly, to contact area of switch (whether membrane or microswitch or whatever). Step 3. Reassemble. Step 4. Exercise switch to help break down the contamination and distribute the Deoxit where it needs to go. Step 5. Enjoy. The switch(es) will likely work better (in all respects) afterward than when new, for years to come.
With Cyanogen on my "old" Droid 1, the buttons work as follows with the screen off and music playing:
Short press of volume up makes things louder. Long press goes to next track (volume stays the same). Short press of volume down makes things quieter. Long press goes to previous track (volume also stays the same). Short press of camera button doesn't seem to do anything. Long press pauses. Subsequent long-press resumes.
It also has similar soft buttons on the lock screen, which may be more convenient depending on mode of travel or environment.
I don't know if stock Android (as supplied by Motorola/Verizon) does any of this or not, since it's been a rather long time since I've run that. But I'm pretty pleased with Cyanogen's handling of buttons while either riding a bike or walking, with the phone unseen in my pocket.
It even works fine with my usual third-party music player (Subsonic), via whatever OS hooks are used to control such things.
Unplugging headphones also pauses. It resumes automatically when they're plugged back in, as long as Subsonic is running in the background (which is, itself, a minefield on these multitasking devices with limited RAM and no swap, but that's another problem altogether...).
And, allegedly, it's also responsive to in-line wired remote controls (which makes sense given the above observation), as well as Bluetooth controls, though I've tested neither since I don't have any kit to do it with.
FYI, etc. And FWIW, I'm otherwise also very pleased with most other aspects of Cyanogen's behavior, and it should run similarly fine on your N1.
I like your cell phone targeting system. Traditionally, GSM and CDMA were kind of hard to get into, but kids these days are doing a lot better with those systems using software-defined radios (and I imagine proper military gear can do even better with a set of apt and well-paid hands making it work).
Both the RFID and GPS jammer concepts are very simple, and that's always a plus for basic munitions.
With cell phones, though: Just plant a flying widget (could be a quadrocopter or a conventional drone or an orbiting B-52 or whatever) up there somehow, armed with the ESN of the target's phone, triangulate the signal as it flies (easy), and either hit it surgically once it shows up outside[1] or non-surgically[2] no matter where it's at.
It's more complicated, but it has the advantage of mobility.
[1]: A rifle and some (these days) primitive image recognition software combined with the vast difference in signal strength between indoor and outdoor phones gets this done neatly enough, without direct human intervention.
[2]: Carpet bombing, bunker busters, whatever. The US military knows how to level entire city blocks with ease when that's a desirable outcome, and such a system will ensure that only the correct city block becomes turns into debris.
You can target the jammers =) like a great glowing radio beacon.
Brilliant! That's right up there in brutal effectiveness and ironic technological failure with my notion (which I really should get around to patenting some day...) of using RFID-enabled passports to ensure that autonomous IEDs only target specific nationalities.
(The lesson for today, kids, is this: The more you fuck with things, the more of a target you become.)
You actually want me to refute the rest of your post?
Funny how you ignored 90% of the content of that post and latched onto the one thing that you thought you could potentially contradict me on.
You really want me to refute every portion of your post? Seriously? What sort of weird masochistic pedant are you?
But as you wish:
But, even dumb TVs have chips!
Yes. So does my toaster, my thermostat, the remote for my car locks, and my flashlight. They do not have general-purpose CPUs, though, which is what Intel is in the business of selling.
TVs are merely display devices.
TVs are radio receivers that include a display device. Display devices which do not include a radio receiver are called "monitors." (The "tele" in "television" is not without specific, direct, and obvious meaning.)
It doesn't matter where the smarts are really.
Yes, it does matter.
In the tv.
...where it will prove useless as methods improve through the inevitable passage of time and the manufacturer no longer offers updates...
In the laptop
That might work at your house. At mine, I use my laptop for work, and my family would not be appreciative of having their viewing habits be dependent on my work schedule. (I will not accept the notion that I'm the only man on Earth who uses a laptop computer as a computer instead of as an extension of the entertainment system...)
Ultimately people want to use the TV as a display for their 'smart' devices.
If this is the case, then there's no point in having general-purpose CPUs in TVs, anyway. (Which I think was my general point, not yours. Glad you agree, though...)
[Boy, that was silly. Why do you ask for such things?]
8. Did I mention that it sounds like you had two different iTunes libraries at this time? Oh, well let me re-iterate; YOU HAD TWO DIFFERENT ITUNES LIBRARIES ON TWO DIFFERENT COMPUTERS!!!!
Is this an appropriate time to point out that I can easily make an independent back up my entire Android device on any computer able to read a micro SD card, in just a few minutes? Without worrying about having "TWO DIFFERENT ITUNES LIBRARIES ON TWO DIFFERENT COMPUTERS!!!!"
Or is this a more appropriate time to point out that I can easily upgrade my Android device without using a separate computer at all? Or that I can just sync the thing with Dropbox no matter I'm at?
All of this iTunes nonsense seems to be very silly, when the device in question has multiple GHz-ish cores, hundreds of megabytes of RAM, tens of gigabytes of storage, and multiple Internet connections. Why can't it just handle the upgrade by itself, like every other computer I've ever owned?
Even my router does better than that, with a mere fraction of the speed and capacity of a modern iDevice. (And before anyone tries to form an argument to justify this behavior, please realize that at their heart, they're all just little *nix boxes, and are capable of all the standard *nix tricks. And all of them are faster/better than my first Linux box was (which also didn't need any outside help to get things done)).
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Wifi triangulation on my iPod touch (using Skyhook) would consistently place my location about a block away when I was at home.
Good enough (and plenty impressive) for travel directions or a feeble attempt at "where the hell am I at?" on a device without GPS, but lousy for pinpointing the location of stolen goods.
So, as to implications: It implies nothing except that the device thinks it's in the same neighborhood.
I've seen Wifi triangulation be scary-accurate, but mostly it's way too coarse to determine which door to knock on (and it has no idea how accurate its result is, unlike GPS).
Skyhook is the service that my 1st-gen iPod Touch would use for location data. (I don't know about current Apple products, because I don't have any.)
It doesn't work on IP addresses at all, but rather by listening for nearby 802.11 beacons and triangulating your location using their signal strengths, using MAC addresses (or rather, BSSID) to uniquely identify each access point.
I was generally very impressed with its performance in rural Ohio. Pretty much within 100 yards, no matter what, as long as I had an open internet connection with which to query the database and at least one fixed Wifi signal. (I still think this is pretty awesome for a glorified MP3 player.)
Google uses a similar method for their Android devices when GPS is unavailable. It located me in a downtown Chicago hotel within a few feet, with no GPS fix, but so far hasn't been as generally accurate as what I experienced with Skyhook's service on the old iPod.
Wigle can be used for similar stuff, these days, and caters to those who enjoy wardriving.
And there are others...
Mechanical locks are generally pretty easy to open.
For the round locks that are common on such things as small safes, a small screwdriver (preferably with a 90 degree bend, but any regular screwdriver with an appropriately-sized blade will do) and a bit of small, stuff wire will open it in a hurry, and not really leave any identifying marks behind.
It is just spiced-up vinegar, but it's not so unique in that regard. The difference between Tabasco and other similar concoctions is that the Tabasco peppers are fermented in open barrels covered with copious amounts of salt covering them for a long time, while most other forms of bottled pepper goo use the peppers mostly fresh and skip the fermentation step.
I like it on some things, but then I also like various forms of vinegar on some things as well. Nonetheless, we go through the Tabasco sauce at such a rate at my house that I've considered buying it in gallon jugs.
As to loss of smell, there are chemicals that can do that in a very permanent fashion, but AFAIK they're not present in peppers (or Tabasco). I've seen people snort straight Tabasco, and recover quickly once the laughter dies down...
And it's a requisite part of a Bloody Mary, which is also made with vodka.
So, meh. Cool story, bro, but I'm blaming the rumor mill. If Tabasco could cause loss of smell, then my ghost pepper and habernero habit would've ruined my nose long ago...
Awesome. Thanks!
I've long observed both behaviors, and your description fits nicely with the functional overview that I keep in my head.
(Now I'm even more dangerous.)
How do you dry your clothes? I live in the US and have mostly natural gas appliances, but my (very!) old entrance wiring has 60-Amp main fuses (240V split-phase). The electric clothes drier, alone, wants a 30A 240V circuit, so that hypothetically uses half by itself.
Now, I know you can dry your clothes with gas too (though it isn't too common here for whatever reason), but that's still just not very much power for other things that are generally electric, like power tools or an air compressor, fridge, microwave, toaster, etc....not to mention electronics, lighting, etc. (The lights in my home office alone use 600W when turned up.)
My house would not survive with 32A 240V service, even if I didn't use it to dry my clothes, unless I was being very careful about not switching too many things on at once -- especially if we're running power tools when working on the house.
Around here, 200A service is common for new home construction, my 60-amp service is considered very weak, and 3-phase is very rare except for commercial and industrial applications: I couldn't get 3-phase power even if I wanted it, as my neighborhood is not cabled to support it, nor are most others.
(And never mind an apartment that I lived in once, which had an electric forced-air furnace which consumed 8kW by itself, an electric range, and an electric water heater...all running from 240V split-phase.)
Firstly, you're very wrong. The Leaf has lots of electrically-assisted stuff, but the brakes and steering are anything but complete drive-by-wire: There's still a steering column with a rack and pinion that mechanically turns the wheels. There's still a brake pedal with a master cylinder attached which directly operates the slave cylinders at the wheels.
The only difference between this arrangement on the Leaf and just about everything else is that these components use electric motors for power assistance, whereas traditionally hydraulic pressure or incidental vacuum performed these roles...neither of which make much sense on an electric vehicle.
Secondly, meh. I've been moving dead cars like this for years (I've probably logged over 200 miles of it) -- YOU go try it.
I can quickly stop both my own car (usually a compact, at least by American standards), and the towing vehicle (usually a small pickup truck), with no power-assisted brakes (ie: engine off), and with no braking help from the other vehicle. One must obviously push rather hard on the pedal, but things do stop expediently. Hydraulic automotive brakes are cool like that, and are quite fail-safe indeed.
Same with power steering (or lack thereof): Things work fine without.
(News flash: Did you know that, not so long ago, both of these things were considered optional equipment on a new car?)
And the question is not how long it takes to charge a Leaf to a high state of charge, but rather how long it takes to charge a dead Leaf so that it can travel another 5 miles under its own power, since that is the range discussed in TFA. How long is that?
It takes 21 hours to charge a Leaf from flat to full at 120V, which is supposed to be good for 105 miles of city driving.
Rounding things slightly to make the math simple, and we see that it takes about 20 hours of charging to go 100 miles in-city, or an average rate of about 5 miles-per-hour. So, assuming a constant charge rate (which it isn't -- batteries, in general, tend to accept a charge faster the flatter they are), you'll be be juiced up for another 5 miles of moderate speed travel in about one hour, and certainly less than "SEVERAL HOURS".
It's inconvenient enough to never want to make a habit of doing it, but far from the end of the world or a self-imposed Jeremy Clarkson SNAFU.
If I saw someone stranded in their Leaf outside my house, and all they needed was some electricity, I'd help them push it into the driveway, round up an extension cord, and invite them in for a bit (unless they smelled -really- bad), just as I'd offer a jump to someone with a dead battery, or give whatever gasoline I might have handy to someone who had run their tank dry.
I've fixed disabled cars in parking lots and at the side of the road for total strangers, I've removed the back seat from a car at a gas station after a lady had locked her purse and keys in it, and I've pulled cars out of ditches in the winter. I try to do whatever I can to help just because I can and I usually have the tools with me to do it. The only payment I accept for this sort of unexpected work is "thank you."
I certainly am not the only nice person in the world, though. Others have helped me as well, in one case going so far as to make a steel fitting to repair a radiator hose that had been eaten by the alternator fan, at a factory in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. I didn't even have to ask: I just pulled off the road near their loading dock in a cloud of steam, popped the hood, and looked around. Random folks came out, looked with me. I said I didn't need any help. I went to use
Why not just screw the included recovery hook into the front bumper?
Manuals are often wrong and/or overprotective. I don't expect everyone to be able to get this stuff right, but this is Slashdot, not the editorial section of the local news rag. Towing a Leaf a few miles is no different, electrically, than driving a Leaf down a very long hill.
The heater is commonly active on any car when the AC is in use. Even one with manual controls: Select appropriate vents, turn AC on, adjust fan speed for a comfortable amount of artificial wind, and then add heat using the temperature knob. Doing it this way helps reduce humidity, and allows for effective bi-level cooling.
It's not the same arrangement as a common home HVAC system, but it doesn't have the same requirements either.
As another poster pointed out, the opposite is very useful in cold and/or rainy weather: Using the defroster vent with heat and the AC on (some cars do this irrevocably in the defrost position, while others have a manual switch for the compressor) rapidly removes condensation from the inside of the window glass.
Meanwhile, the Leaf uses water cooling for some of its electronics. As long as this is the case, using the waste heat to warm up the passenger compartment is free, since the pump was already running anyway for cooling purposes.
As to your 30-second song and dance, I think you meant to say that you have 15 minutes to connect the charging cable, at least according to Nissan. Furthermore, if you don't have a schedule set, it charges immediately as soon as you connect it without pushing a button, as long as the car is off.
About the only way to improve on that behavior is to make it telepathic.
And setting up a schedule is pretty plainly documented on page CH-18 of the manual, though it looks rather self-explanatory to me: It's all GUI-based.
Is there anything else that you think the smart folks at Nissan got wrong other than the range indicator (which, as I mentioned previously, I don't think is wrong)?
Hmm.
I keep a set of jumper cables in the trunk. I've only used them to help other people rather than to get my own vehicle(s) going, but I'd guess that they work just as well going the other way. ;)
And I'd so much rather just go turn a wrench and get a tire changed, than wait for someone else. It just takes a few minutes.
AAA? Meh. But to each his own, I guess.
Is it possible to keep a discussion about natural gas (and, I'd guess, fracking) out of a story about a financial/power protest?
Where are you from?
In my neck of the woods, it's not alarmingly uncommon for apt folks to have lifts in their home garages to do all manner of work. Sure, it's mostly there because they own or restore nice cars and like to do things themselves, but they'll have their buddy Joe bring his truck over and change the ball joints (or whatever) in exchange for an occasional bit of cash.
I don't know if this is legal (it might be, might not be - we're pretty relaxed with building codes and zoning around here), but I also don't know if your argument is pivoting on the razor-edge of legality or the much broader line that separates practicality from actual legal action.
WRT changing oil: I can imagine that some of the EPA forms are onerous, and that's a shame. You should only have to certify (by your own signature) that you collected n gallons of oil and either burned it yourself in a proper used-oil furnace, or that you delivered n gallons to someone who has such a furnace.
A friend of mine has a completely legitimate used-oil furnace in his small warehouse. I bring my meager used collections over to him, and he's thankful enough to let me use his heated space for the occasional winter car repair. (And if I had a lot of used oil, he'd come and collect it from me himself, and produce a receipt for the same.)
Who here calls for a tow truck when stuck a paltry 5 miles from home?
Seriously. Isn't this what pickup trucks, tow straps, and sons/grandsons/brothers/brothers-in-law/friends + beer bribes are for? I've had cars professionally towed, for sure, but it's always been for much greater distances than that.
It does have hydraulic brakes, doesn't it?
FFS. At 5 miles away, I'd be more inclined to push it into a driveway or a parking lot, ask the nice folks inside the (random) building if I can borrow an outlet for a bit, and maybe offer the homeowner or manager a bit of cash for the trouble.
But more to the point: It's really just a psychological issue. Replacing (or supplementing) a gauge that reads 0 when there's still usable charge left with a gauge that reads (say) 5 just allows for common people to push things even further to the extreme end of things, and likely actually increases the chances of being stuck somewhere instead of reducing them.
Even as an altruist who is in favor of speaking (and receiving) the absolute truth, no matter how ugly it might be, I must say that it's less hazardous to the driver, on average, if the gauge is somewhat pessimistic.
And really: Are we all really so smart here that we must conclude that the other smart people at Nissan didn't already think of this in the delicate and extensive balancing act of creating a car that people actually enjoy owning and driving?
It's not* good for the cells. But it is good for the charging circuitry and for the battery life display, and therefore the health and usefulness of the entire system (which obviously includes more than just a battery) improves when Apple's simple advice is followed.
The problem is not an occasional (once or twice in a lifetime, or maybe every few months) discharge, but when people take this advice to the obvious partially-informed logical extreme and conclude that frequent complete discharge of batteries is somehow better than not.
The main benefit is as follows: Without at least one "complete" discharge (which still leaves quite a lot more than 0V in the cells), the device has no idea what the actual state of a partially-discharged battery pack ever is. But after a "complete" discharge, the battery life display has at least a fighting chance at being close to correct, which is useful to us humans.
* And in general: It's somewhat damaging to "fully" discharge modern lithium batteries. But then, it's also somewhat damaging to recharge them "fully". Or to discharge/recharge them just a little bit. And it's somewhat damaging to leave them floating on the charger all the time. Or to do anything with them when they're too hot. Or too cold. (Or when the sun is in the West during high tide, etc.)
And it's even somewhat damaging to leave them unused in a box in your desk drawer for long periods.
In other words, every battery has a finite lifespan, especially rechargeable lithium cells: The clock is ticking once they're manufactured. Their capacity varies over time, possibly non-linearly but always asymptotically on a downward slope, no matter how they're used (or not used), and extreme usage simply accelerates that trend.
My advice to rechargeable battery users (for all types of battery and user) is as follows: Don't make a habit out of intentionally deep-discharging the thing, because such a habit does more harm than good (and it will probably happen incidentally now and then, anyway). Charge the thing whenever it's actually convenient, no matter what the battery meter says. And certainly do use the thing on battery power alone whenever that's convenient, because that's what it's for.
I've done my fair share of playing Portal 2, and haven't noticed any issues.
I just logged into Steam and entered the ID from the disc jacket. The whole thing downloaded*, and I was able to play it some reasonable time later. Everything worked, aside from a couple of very minor in-game glitches (which are common on any new software from any timeframe, in my experience), and that was all.
The only tweaking that I did was to bump up the graphics settings toward "more pretty."
This is not dissimilar from the other games I have from Steam. Things seem to generally just work.
Meanwhile, if Valve thinks you've stolen something, it won't work. At all. They're not, as far as I can tell, in the business of using subterfuge to combat piracy.
Are you sure that your problem with completing Portal 2 is with DRM, and not a wonky combination of hardware, software, and drivers on your own computer?
*: I downloaded it instead of installing from disc because I bought the PS3 version, which includes a free Steam version to play on a PC...but no disc for it, just a code. Which was fine for me and a steal for about $23 total at release time.
Film grain also isn't neatly rectangular, as pixels are. At high magnification, film fails with a random pattern which our brains are fairly decent at processing into a useful image because it's not too dissimilar to how our own eyes fail in instances of poor focus, lighting, or both.
Digital pixels are not perceived the same way.
If only the Nazis had won the war, such experimentation would be a foregone conclusion.
(And Godwin wins again, perhaps in record time.)
While I suspect that you'll accuse me of cherry-picking again because I dismissed the rest of your post, I think we can both agree on that. Although I'm still not entirely sure why you steered it in this direction...
You mean those stockholders who buy and sell Google stock on the open market? Those same stockholders who were promised to never have a dividend presented to them? The same ones who don't get any voting rights?
Those stockholders? Really? Because if those are the stockholders you're thinking of, they're all complete fucking idiots for buying GOOG to begin with*, and I don't think anyone at Google gives a fuck about them either.
*: Buying shares in a random child's sand castle at the beach will perform just about as well as an "investment" in GOOG. If it's a really awesome sand castle and others are really interested, they might be able to "earn" some money by selling them later...but that just makes the new owner an even greater fool. At least the kid's happy, though, and when he decides to kick his castle into the sea there won't be a thing that the shareholders will be able to do except gawk at their own red ink.
To clean/repair hard buttons (ie: switches):
Step 1: Disassemble device.
Step 2: Apply Deoxit DN5 (accept no substitutes), sparingly, to contact area of switch (whether membrane or microswitch or whatever).
Step 3. Reassemble.
Step 4. Exercise switch to help break down the contamination and distribute the Deoxit where it needs to go.
Step 5. Enjoy. The switch(es) will likely work better (in all respects) afterward than when new, for years to come.
Old post, hope you read this:
With Cyanogen on my "old" Droid 1, the buttons work as follows with the screen off and music playing:
Short press of volume up makes things louder. Long press goes to next track (volume stays the same).
Short press of volume down makes things quieter. Long press goes to previous track (volume also stays the same).
Short press of camera button doesn't seem to do anything. Long press pauses. Subsequent long-press resumes.
It also has similar soft buttons on the lock screen, which may be more convenient depending on mode of travel or environment.
I don't know if stock Android (as supplied by Motorola/Verizon) does any of this or not, since it's been a rather long time since I've run that. But I'm pretty pleased with Cyanogen's handling of buttons while either riding a bike or walking, with the phone unseen in my pocket.
It even works fine with my usual third-party music player (Subsonic), via whatever OS hooks are used to control such things.
Unplugging headphones also pauses. It resumes automatically when they're plugged back in, as long as Subsonic is running in the background (which is, itself, a minefield on these multitasking devices with limited RAM and no swap, but that's another problem altogether...).
And, allegedly, it's also responsive to in-line wired remote controls (which makes sense given the above observation), as well as Bluetooth controls, though I've tested neither since I don't have any kit to do it with.
FYI, etc. And FWIW, I'm otherwise also very pleased with most other aspects of Cyanogen's behavior, and it should run similarly fine on your N1.
I like your cell phone targeting system. Traditionally, GSM and CDMA were kind of hard to get into, but kids these days are doing a lot better with those systems using software-defined radios (and I imagine proper military gear can do even better with a set of apt and well-paid hands making it work).
Both the RFID and GPS jammer concepts are very simple, and that's always a plus for basic munitions.
With cell phones, though: Just plant a flying widget (could be a quadrocopter or a conventional drone or an orbiting B-52 or whatever) up there somehow, armed with the ESN of the target's phone, triangulate the signal as it flies (easy), and either hit it surgically once it shows up outside[1] or non-surgically[2] no matter where it's at.
It's more complicated, but it has the advantage of mobility.
[1]: A rifle and some (these days) primitive image recognition software combined with the vast difference in signal strength between indoor and outdoor phones gets this done neatly enough, without direct human intervention.
[2]: Carpet bombing, bunker busters, whatever. The US military knows how to level entire city blocks with ease when that's a desirable outcome, and such a system will ensure that only the correct city block becomes turns into debris.
Brilliant! That's right up there in brutal effectiveness and ironic technological failure with my notion (which I really should get around to patenting some day...) of using RFID-enabled passports to ensure that autonomous IEDs only target specific nationalities.
(The lesson for today, kids, is this: The more you fuck with things, the more of a target you become.)
You actually want me to refute the rest of your post?
You really want me to refute every portion of your post? Seriously? What sort of weird masochistic pedant are you?
But as you wish:
Yes. So does my toaster, my thermostat, the remote for my car locks, and my flashlight. They do not have general-purpose CPUs, though, which is what Intel is in the business of selling.
TVs are radio receivers that include a display device. Display devices which do not include a radio receiver are called "monitors." (The "tele" in "television" is not without specific, direct, and obvious meaning.)
Yes, it does matter.
That might work at your house. At mine, I use my laptop for work, and my family would not be appreciative of having their viewing habits be dependent on my work schedule. (I will not accept the notion that I'm the only man on Earth who uses a laptop computer as a computer instead of as an extension of the entertainment system...)
If this is the case, then there's no point in having general-purpose CPUs in TVs, anyway. (Which I think was my general point, not yours. Glad you agree, though...)
[Boy, that was silly. Why do you ask for such things?]
Is this an appropriate time to point out that I can easily make an independent back up my entire Android device on any computer able to read a micro SD card, in just a few minutes? Without worrying about having "TWO DIFFERENT ITUNES LIBRARIES ON TWO DIFFERENT COMPUTERS!!!!"
Or is this a more appropriate time to point out that I can easily upgrade my Android device without using a separate computer at all? Or that I can just sync the thing with Dropbox no matter I'm at?
All of this iTunes nonsense seems to be very silly, when the device in question has multiple GHz-ish cores, hundreds of megabytes of RAM, tens of gigabytes of storage, and multiple Internet connections. Why can't it just handle the upgrade by itself, like every other computer I've ever owned?
Even my router does better than that, with a mere fraction of the speed and capacity of a modern iDevice. (And before anyone tries to form an argument to justify this behavior, please realize that at their heart, they're all just little *nix boxes, and are capable of all the standard *nix tricks. And all of them are faster/better than my first Linux box was (which also didn't need any outside help to get things done)).
As if anyone with an iDevice wouldn't have discovered this on their own, soon enough.
(Cue antidisestablishmenterianist Apple apologists in 3...2...)
(I always wanted to use that word. Give me a break.)