but am watching high-def videos daily. I've never had a blu-ray disk player either. Had dome DVDs and a player but haven't been using them for the past few years. Who ever buys this physical garbage any more when everything is available over the net?..
Power over USB-C was one of the two good things in the last year update (the other good thing being lower processor power consumption). It now runs off any USB or USB-C charger (not only Apple's), including an airliner USB socket through a tiny adapter. The speed of charge varies upon the source wattage, of course.
A socket constantly falling off was my top annoyance with the previous model. Guess, I am NOT one of those people who keep the device sitting squarely on a desk. I hold it in all sorts of positions and move it around.
All the other design changes have either been a downgrade or no-improvement. Damn Apple, it's been 5 years since the last redesign, and you've produced such a disappointment.
Maximum permitted exposure (MPE) in 1500-1800 nm band is the same for the eye and the skin. For continuous-wave light it is 0.1 W/cm2, for pulsed light it is 1 J/cm2. Reference: ANSI Z136.1, see Tables 5a and 7.
In other words, if the 1550 nm laser beam is not burning your skin, it is safe for your eye.
This is remarkably untrue at other wavelengths, where light is dramatically more dangerous to the eye than it is to the skin.
If the camera was focused for visible light, IR would be out of focus.
...unless the camera was focused at something else at another distance, or simply moved out-of-focus, and the 1550 nm image accidentally came in-focus.
Also, as I've written in another comment, the filter doesn't have to be effective at 1550 nm, because the Si sensor itself is insensitive that far into IR. This depends on the technology used to make the filter. For example, an interference-type spectral filter may perform very well in its designed wavelength range, but simply becomes transparent outside of it.
P.S. An additional possibility: for Si sensor, the filter has to reject 700-1100 nm band. Si is transparent beyond 1100 nm, i.e., the sensor is completely insensitive to longer IR wavelengths. So the filter doesn't need to be effective at rejecting 1550 nm, and I guess it isn't.
While I don't know the actual filter construction, a couple possibilities come to mind. First, the filter may be bonded or integrated or be a deposited layer on the sensor itself, and a physical crack in the filter may propagate into the sensor chip. Second, any filter has a finite suppression, and I don't see why the one in the camera has to have it high. So some fraction of light can still get through it, and that could be enough to damage the sensor.
As the original article duly explains, the laser light at the wavelength of 1550 nm used by this lidar scanner does NOT reach the retina of the eye. At this wavelength, it is fully absorbed in outer parts of the eye (cornea, lens, etc.) before it could get focused into a tight spot on the retina. This makes this wavelength (relatively) eye-safe, comparing to visible and some other wavelength ranges. There is no such protection for the camera however, whose glass optics happily focuses 1550 nm into a small spot... so the sensor damage may happen.
Laser safety regulations are primarily concerned with (a) no damage to humans, especially their eyes, and (b) laser beams not setting things on fire. Neither of this has happened in this incident. So we are good.
If you are interested in technical details of laser safety, read ANSI Z136.1 standard. Warning: it requires technical expertise.
This is great news. I am an academic researcher and I fully support it. I've been working at two good small research institutes. Neither has journal subscritpions. Sci-hub works but is unstable and technically illegal. Getting the gorilla-sized funding agencies force the open model will finally get the journals to update. Never mind the screams from Nature, the established businesses always say this... then they adapt, quickly!
The whole post is a troll. The guaranteed job system has been tried on a large scale in Soviet Union. There every adult able to work had to work, and not being employed (after a certain short time period) was a crime. I'd say the universal basic income sounds better than that.
While I agree Apple stuff is pain in the ass when it breaks, the problem is, it is amazing when it works. Understandably you may not be seeing much of the latter perspective:). Name me another notebook that
- has 4 or 2 TB SSD (Microsoft surface is still 1 TB maximum) and - does not blow the fuse in an airline seat on a long-distance flight. That fuse triggers at around 80 W (just at the edge with the previous MagSafe 85 W adapter), while most "pro" machines with reconfigurable everything at this level have 200 W power consumption.
Go find that in a hotel room, in vacation home, etc. That's a huge dongle to carry around! There are a few laptops that do not have ventilation openings at the bottom, MS Surface and the previous (2013) MacBook Pro are some of them. All the rest have shitty thermal design that requires air flow under the bottom.
In short, a notebook should not require any add-ons in normal use. Bed is my normal use.
I have a lingering doubt about the current case design. The previous Retina models had ventilation intake and exhaust opening to the top of the case (between the base and the screen). So when placed on a soft bed with all bottom-facing openings thoroughly blocked, they would not overheat. And this is how I work a lot, laying on a bed. That includes gaming that runs at maximum power and spins up the fans to the full speed.
The current design has the ventilation openings at the bottom only, that will be blocked when placed on a blanket or pillow.
Does this result in overheating and slowdown or thermal shutdown when running a computationally intensive task, like a game? Any informal reports on this aspect of thermal performance?
Another complication is that I am using Windows (i.e., no MacOS) that does not use energy saving features, so it will run hotter even when idling.
The touchbar is of course useless under Windows, but I guess I will have to put up with this blinking annoyance. There is still no word of 15" models without the touchbar. Apple keeps pushing this feature on the users. Just as they are pushing USB-C while lots of peripherals in continuing use need normal USB.
4 TB drive is fantastic. Just what is needed for scientists and creative pros who keep a lot of data. This is now four to five years ahead of the nearest competitor (Microsoft Surface).
Because you know, there is a big difference between reducing 32% of normal pollution that's expected on any major urban center, and reducing 32% of a smog so dense and deadly that it looks like you are around a volcano that just erupted.
It's the latter. A few years ago in Beijing I could not stop coughing and thought there was an industrial accident in the area. Now, air was much better than I expected, sorta almost fresh with just a slight acidic scent.
It's about the same in Norway. An acquintance of mine had a work accident damaging his eye. He had to go to a medical center 4 hour drive away, which was done over the night in two taxis (meeting in the middle and swapping him over, so the taxi drivers didn't stray too far outside their normal service areas). He paid nothing, of course. His vision recovered. I guess if his condition were more urgent, he'd get a helicopter.
The whole US medical insurance system is a wrenched loss-loss thing.
I've no idea why shows sell tickets below the market price. Money aside, it is PITA for a top paying customer when I have to go to a reseller rather than buy the ticket directly.
Smart show company: Cirque de Soleil in Canada. In my limited experience tickets are always available for tomorow's show, in all or most price zones, at a price of course. I've just checked tomorrow's show in Toronto, and there are seats. I am happy customer.
Stupid company (okay, stupid in this particular aspect): Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo. Just what tourist would think he needs to plan a visit to the museum a month in advance? Of course I've arrived in Japan and THEN started checking the museum's opening times. Oops. It has limited admission and is sold out beyond the date of my departure. I had to send a dozen emails, make a call, wait a day, then physically schlepp to a reseller in a different part of Tokyo to get the piece of paper (at 7x the price). Boy was that inconvenient. Why doesn't the museum reserve a few tickets a day and sell those at 10-20x the price right there at the entrance?
Just buy one of the macbooks and install Windows there, natively, single partition (i.e., leave no MacOS on the machine), with Bootcamp drivers. Fresh install will be totally free of bloatware.
I'm happily typing this on such machine. Bootcamp drivers are not polished to perfection but they generally work. There is no better designed notebook for Windows, otherwise I would have purchased it already. (Price does not matter.)
1. I will think twice before submitting to any journal of American Chemical Society or Elsevier. As long as I can ignore the litigators without hurting my research group's publications too much, I will. (This means no longer publishing in Elsevier's glorious Journal of Modern Optics. Good riddance.) 2. Long live sci-hub. I use it daily, for convenience. I recomment it to collaborators who are not yet aware of it. (My universitiy's library has subscriptions, but it takes time to VPN and login and respond to requests.) 3. I now budget open-access fees into my grant applications.
As AC has said, functional bags is not Gucci's market segment. It's about statement and fashion. For carrying things try, e.g., LowePro, or any high-end alpine gear.
Well the newly bought Canon item has been lasting for a couple years already. Same stuff as 20 years ago. I can also understand the costs: it takes [Japanese] engineering expertise and thoroughness to make micropower electronics. That's something cheaper ones lack. Same story as Mitutoyo calipers: they cost 5-10x the price of the nearest competitor, and every professional engineer wants to have one because of their quality and reliability.
batteries, chargers, remotes etc for cameras you are far better off finding a reputable 3rd party accessory manufacturer, they charge a fraction of the price... All my canon spare batteries, chargers, remotes etc are all 3rd party and as good as OEM (in some cases better than) and always at a fraction of the cost.
That's what I have initially done to replace $180 Canon TC80-N3 camera remote. I got a third-party $20 compatible remote. It lasted for a grand total of 3 weeks, after which the camera connector on the remote broke in pieces. Then I decided brand quality matters, paid $160 on amazon, and got a high-end fake that had ultrashort battery life.
My original Canon remote purchased 20+ years ago is going with zero issues and I had to change the coin battery in it once in 20 years. The quality is there.
Forget handbags, there are high-end electronics accessories being cloned that I would not think would be cloned. The problem is, they do not work as well. Three examples I was personally burned by:
Logitech R800 presentation remote. Problems in the fake: the green laser failed and became faded in some weeks time, ditto detached internally as it was fixed in a small drop of glue, and the radio was unreliable (missed clicks in some rooms).
Canon TC80-N3 camera remote. Problem in the fake: the battery life was 1/15th of the Canon item. I.e., the same coin battery lasted a few months in the fake while it lasted about 10 years in the brand item.
Canon battery charger LC-E6. Problem in the fake: charged slowly, several hours instead of under an hour in the brand item. That one I returned immediately.
In all cases, the fake cost just as outrageously much as the brand item, was labeled as the brand item, and came in meticulously copied brand packaging with manual and all. It was actually impossible to tell the difference... until it developed problems. In two of the three cases, the malfunction was detected beyond the 2-month ebay money back warranty. I managed to return two items to the seller, trashed another. One item was bought on amazon marketplace, two on ebay. For this very reason, I'm now going to reputable dealers only (such as B&H Photo-Video) for any brand name electronics and computer accessory, no matter how small.
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No option for a high-res screen, no option for larger than 1 TB SSD. Apple was there 7 years ago. Next.
but am watching high-def videos daily. I've never had a blu-ray disk player either. Had dome DVDs and a player but haven't been using them for the past few years. Who ever buys this physical garbage any more when everything is available over the net?..
Power over USB-C was one of the two good things in the last year update (the other good thing being lower processor power consumption). It now runs off any USB or USB-C charger (not only Apple's), including an airliner USB socket through a tiny adapter. The speed of charge varies upon the source wattage, of course.
A socket constantly falling off was my top annoyance with the previous model. Guess, I am NOT one of those people who keep the device sitting squarely on a desk. I hold it in all sorts of positions and move it around.
All the other design changes have either been a downgrade or no-improvement. Damn Apple, it's been 5 years since the last redesign, and you've produced such a disappointment.
Maximum permitted exposure (MPE) in 1500-1800 nm band is the same for the eye and the skin. For continuous-wave light it is 0.1 W/cm2, for pulsed light it is 1 J/cm2. Reference: ANSI Z136.1, see Tables 5a and 7.
In other words, if the 1550 nm laser beam is not burning your skin, it is safe for your eye.
This is remarkably untrue at other wavelengths, where light is dramatically more dangerous to the eye than it is to the skin.
If the camera was focused for visible light, IR would be out of focus.
...unless the camera was focused at something else at another distance, or simply moved out-of-focus, and the 1550 nm image accidentally came in-focus.
Also, as I've written in another comment, the filter doesn't have to be effective at 1550 nm, because the Si sensor itself is insensitive that far into IR. This depends on the technology used to make the filter. For example, an interference-type spectral filter may perform very well in its designed wavelength range, but simply becomes transparent outside of it.
P.S. An additional possibility: for Si sensor, the filter has to reject 700-1100 nm band. Si is transparent beyond 1100 nm, i.e., the sensor is completely insensitive to longer IR wavelengths. So the filter doesn't need to be effective at rejecting 1550 nm, and I guess it isn't.
While I don't know the actual filter construction, a couple possibilities come to mind. First, the filter may be bonded or integrated or be a deposited layer on the sensor itself, and a physical crack in the filter may propagate into the sensor chip. Second, any filter has a finite suppression, and I don't see why the one in the camera has to have it high. So some fraction of light can still get through it, and that could be enough to damage the sensor.
As the original article duly explains, the laser light at the wavelength of 1550 nm used by this lidar scanner does NOT reach the retina of the eye. At this wavelength, it is fully absorbed in outer parts of the eye (cornea, lens, etc.) before it could get focused into a tight spot on the retina. This makes this wavelength (relatively) eye-safe, comparing to visible and some other wavelength ranges. There is no such protection for the camera however, whose glass optics happily focuses 1550 nm into a small spot... so the sensor damage may happen.
Laser safety regulations are primarily concerned with (a) no damage to humans, especially their eyes, and (b) laser beams not setting things on fire. Neither of this has happened in this incident. So we are good.
If you are interested in technical details of laser safety, read ANSI Z136.1 standard. Warning: it requires technical expertise.
Do you mean there is an actual law, or just your university regulation? What is your country? I guess some weird one like France :))?
This is great news. I am an academic researcher and I fully support it. I've been working at two good small research institutes. Neither has journal subscritpions. Sci-hub works but is unstable and technically illegal. Getting the gorilla-sized funding agencies force the open model will finally get the journals to update. Never mind the screams from Nature, the established businesses always say this... then they adapt, quickly!
The whole post is a troll. The guaranteed job system has been tried on a large scale in Soviet Union. There every adult able to work had to work, and not being employed (after a certain short time period) was a crime. I'd say the universal basic income sounds better than that.
While I agree Apple stuff is pain in the ass when it breaks, the problem is, it is amazing when it works. Understandably you may not be seeing much of the latter perspective :). Name me another notebook that
- has 4 or 2 TB SSD (Microsoft surface is still 1 TB maximum)
and
- does not blow the fuse in an airline seat on a long-distance flight. That fuse triggers at around 80 W (just at the edge with the previous MagSafe 85 W adapter), while most "pro" machines with reconfigurable everything at this level have 200 W power consumption.
Interesting. I wouldn't say that from the pictures. Half the bottom panel is ventilation grille.
Guys, sigh, don't tell me how to work. I'm too old to reconsider my habits :).
Here is the use case (not actual me): https://www.shutterstock.com/v...
Go find that in a hotel room, in vacation home, etc. That's a huge dongle to carry around! There are a few laptops that do not have ventilation openings at the bottom, MS Surface and the previous (2013) MacBook Pro are some of them. All the rest have shitty thermal design that requires air flow under the bottom.
In short, a notebook should not require any add-ons in normal use. Bed is my normal use.
I have a lingering doubt about the current case design. The previous Retina models had ventilation intake and exhaust opening to the top of the case (between the base and the screen). So when placed on a soft bed with all bottom-facing openings thoroughly blocked, they would not overheat. And this is how I work a lot, laying on a bed. That includes gaming that runs at maximum power and spins up the fans to the full speed.
The current design has the ventilation openings at the bottom only, that will be blocked when placed on a blanket or pillow.
Does this result in overheating and slowdown or thermal shutdown when running a computationally intensive task, like a game? Any informal reports on this aspect of thermal performance?
Another complication is that I am using Windows (i.e., no MacOS) that does not use energy saving features, so it will run hotter even when idling.
The touchbar is of course useless under Windows, but I guess I will have to put up with this blinking annoyance. There is still no word of 15" models without the touchbar. Apple keeps pushing this feature on the users. Just as they are pushing USB-C while lots of peripherals in continuing use need normal USB.
4 TB drive is fantastic. Just what is needed for scientists and creative pros who keep a lot of data. This is now four to five years ahead of the nearest competitor (Microsoft Surface).
32% decrease OF WHAT?
Because you know, there is a big difference between reducing 32% of normal pollution that's expected on any major urban center, and reducing 32% of a smog so dense and deadly that it looks like you are around a volcano that just erupted.
It's the latter. A few years ago in Beijing I could not stop coughing and thought there was an industrial accident in the area. Now, air was much better than I expected, sorta almost fresh with just a slight acidic scent.
It's about the same in Norway. An acquintance of mine had a work accident damaging his eye. He had to go to a medical center 4 hour drive away, which was done over the night in two taxis (meeting in the middle and swapping him over, so the taxi drivers didn't stray too far outside their normal service areas). He paid nothing, of course. His vision recovered. I guess if his condition were more urgent, he'd get a helicopter.
The whole US medical insurance system is a wrenched loss-loss thing.
I've no idea why shows sell tickets below the market price. Money aside, it is PITA for a top paying customer when I have to go to a reseller rather than buy the ticket directly.
Smart show company: Cirque de Soleil in Canada. In my limited experience tickets are always available for tomorow's show, in all or most price zones, at a price of course. I've just checked tomorrow's show in Toronto, and there are seats. I am happy customer.
Stupid company (okay, stupid in this particular aspect): Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo. Just what tourist would think he needs to plan a visit to the museum a month in advance? Of course I've arrived in Japan and THEN started checking the museum's opening times. Oops. It has limited admission and is sold out beyond the date of my departure. I had to send a dozen emails, make a call, wait a day, then physically schlepp to a reseller in a different part of Tokyo to get the piece of paper (at 7x the price). Boy was that inconvenient. Why doesn't the museum reserve a few tickets a day and sell those at 10-20x the price right there at the entrance?
Just buy one of the macbooks and install Windows there, natively, single partition (i.e., leave no MacOS on the machine), with Bootcamp drivers. Fresh install will be totally free of bloatware.
I'm happily typing this on such machine. Bootcamp drivers are not polished to perfection but they generally work. There is no better designed notebook for Windows, otherwise I would have purchased it already. (Price does not matter.)
1. I will think twice before submitting to any journal of American Chemical Society or Elsevier. As long as I can ignore the litigators without hurting my research group's publications too much, I will. (This means no longer publishing in Elsevier's glorious Journal of Modern Optics. Good riddance.)
2. Long live sci-hub. I use it daily, for convenience. I recomment it to collaborators who are not yet aware of it. (My universitiy's library has subscriptions, but it takes time to VPN and login and respond to requests.)
3. I now budget open-access fees into my grant applications.
Problem solved. Next obsolete technology, please.
As AC has said, functional bags is not Gucci's market segment. It's about statement and fashion. For carrying things try, e.g., LowePro, or any high-end alpine gear.
Well the newly bought Canon item has been lasting for a couple years already. Same stuff as 20 years ago. I can also understand the costs: it takes [Japanese] engineering expertise and thoroughness to make micropower electronics. That's something cheaper ones lack. Same story as Mitutoyo calipers: they cost 5-10x the price of the nearest competitor, and every professional engineer wants to have one because of their quality and reliability.
batteries, chargers, remotes etc for cameras you are far better off finding a reputable 3rd party accessory manufacturer, they charge a fraction of the price... All my canon spare batteries, chargers, remotes etc are all 3rd party and as good as OEM (in some cases better than) and always at a fraction of the cost.
That's what I have initially done to replace $180 Canon TC80-N3 camera remote. I got a third-party $20 compatible remote. It lasted for a grand total of 3 weeks, after which the camera connector on the remote broke in pieces. Then I decided brand quality matters, paid $160 on amazon, and got a high-end fake that had ultrashort battery life.
My original Canon remote purchased 20+ years ago is going with zero issues and I had to change the coin battery in it once in 20 years. The quality is there.
Forget handbags, there are high-end electronics accessories being cloned that I would not think would be cloned. The problem is, they do not work as well. Three examples I was personally burned by:
Logitech R800 presentation remote. Problems in the fake: the green laser failed and became faded in some weeks time, ditto detached internally as it was fixed in a small drop of glue, and the radio was unreliable (missed clicks in some rooms).
Canon TC80-N3 camera remote. Problem in the fake: the battery life was 1/15th of the Canon item. I.e., the same coin battery lasted a few months in the fake while it lasted about 10 years in the brand item.
Canon battery charger LC-E6. Problem in the fake: charged slowly, several hours instead of under an hour in the brand item. That one I returned immediately.
In all cases, the fake cost just as outrageously much as the brand item, was labeled as the brand item, and came in meticulously copied brand packaging with manual and all. It was actually impossible to tell the difference... until it developed problems. In two of the three cases, the malfunction was detected beyond the 2-month ebay money back warranty. I managed to return two items to the seller, trashed another. One item was bought on amazon marketplace, two on ebay. For this very reason, I'm now going to reputable dealers only (such as B&H Photo-Video) for any brand name electronics and computer accessory, no matter how small.