Sounds like good news if you live in the USA but Amazon are still at a disadvantage for international shipping. I can get stuff shipped from China to New Zealand for free, even stuff costing a couple of dollars but anything I get shipped from Amazon is really expensive, if they will even ship outside the USA, most don't. As a result I usually try to buy from China first and only try Amazon if what I want can't be source from China.
From what I have heard the Chinese government is effectively subsidising the shipping costs in many cases and that is probably the core reason US suppliers can not compete. From a consumer point of view the only downside is that it is very slow to arrive, but then again Amazon's cheapest shipping options are just as slow.
While I have some sympathy for the idea I don't think it is practical. The first problem is how many humans does a given robot replace? For example one place I worked used a robot to apply glue to a plastic window on a product. This was not done for cost reasons, the task required a precise control over the amount of glue which was too difficult for a human to do. In this case the robot freed up about about 2 hours a day of a line worker's work load i.e. the robot had a human equivalent work output of about 1/4 of a human. On the other hand a large robot moving heavy items could be replacing 4 humans? Would it be fair to tax them at the same rate? The existence of such a tax would shape the design of the robots to minimise the tax per unit output. I see nothing but a complicated mess coming out of such an idea.
For some reason Youtube thinks that people speaking with a New Zealand accent swear a lot. I was testing the Youtube product tutorial on an Android product which, unlike PC browsers, has the closed captioning on by default. A lot of the technical terms, spoken with a Kiwi accent, were being captioned with obscene words. When I recovered from laughing at just how rude it was being I warned our marketing team that made the video. They were mortified and suddenly had a large task of checking and removing the computer generated captions. It turns out all of our SFW videos had NSFW captions.
Slackware was the first Linux distro I used but creating all those floppies disks was a such a pain so I switched to Red Hat which could installed directly from CD. Now days I don't own a single working computer with a CD drive but I can still read floppies via a floppy to USB adapter. That was back in the 90s, I wonder how Slackware stacks up compare with Mint and Cent OS I use these days?
Because it is a wireless device. Wireless voice communications. Wireless data communications. Plugging in a cable to charge is a PIA. Before USB Type-C there was a 50% change the cable was the wrong way up and in low light you can't see which was is correct. You have to make conscious effort to charge it. With wireless charging you never have to actually think about the need to charge, you put the phone down and when you pick it up it is ready to go. Since my first QI device, a Nexus 4, I have never had a flat battery on my phone.
As for the efficiency who cares? It probably costs me an extra $10 a year in power, money well spend in book. Radio is inefficient too, transmitting watts of power to get microwatts at the other end but who cares, it works.
QI is usable but certainly could be improved a lot as with the cheaper chargers and a thick phone case you do need to put the phone down in the right spot +/- ~5mm. They really need an improved standard that is backwards compatible with the existing standard but is less critical to alignment and spacing. If Apple do go their own way it would be nice if they support such backwards compatibility with existing QI devices ,
My wife and I currently have the Nexus 6. Before that it was the Nexus 5 and before that the Nexus 4, my first QI device. What is wrong with having charging pads everywhere? They are cheap and almost every place I work/relax has one. Why not?
You are right about the placement. I have couple of nicer chargers that have multi coil designs and are angled so the phone naturally falls to good position. This works well, even thru a thick leather cover. Charging is slow but as I have charging pads scattered everywhere I never have a flat battery.
That said the Type-C USB is a huge improvement. I have it on my laptop and think it is great step up from all other USB connectors.
The Nexus 4 had QI wireless charging a few years ago but the Nexus 6 was the last Google phone to have it. I have refused to buy a Nexus 6P or Pixel due to the lack of wireless charging. If Apple introduces wireless charging they will, for the first time, be making a phone that I consider technically better than Google's offering. It would not be enough to get me to change to closed Apple eco system but may sway others.
I note the linked articles make no indication of what wireless standard they will use. Given that QI is used by almost everyone I would hope that is the standard they will follow, but Apple, being Apple, will probably see the need to introduce a new incompatible standard. I hope I am wrong about that,
I was in the USA once when one of these Superbowl things was on so can tell you a wee bit about it. I think it is meant to be the top level of the sport but appears to be only USA based teams. They call the sport football but it is not in any way related to actual football. It appears to be safety focused version of rugby where they are wearing full body armor making the players look more like some mini-mecha from an anime. Not as entertaining as my description might lead you to believe, but this is compensated for by a live concert in the middle of the game and some quite watchable commercials.
Self certification does not mean you can do what you like it just means you have taken reasonable steps to verify compliance in house. We have test cambers of the same quality as a formal test houses so why should we waste time and money testing with an external test house? The key here is we are accountable for doing the tests and meeting the standard. If we certify as meeting CE and we don't then we need to be held accountable and put it right. In the case of LG they need to fix their product at their expense, not tell customer to move devices around. Self certification does not give LG a way out of their legal and moral obligations.
It's great software but I do wonder when they will fix the spell checker so you can change the language from US English to the local language without the need to read help pages every time.
That is true for Part 15 but there are other regs, certainly in CE, that specifically spell out that products must operate normally in the presence of defined emissions. Even without EMC reg most countries have fit for purpose consumer laws and any home or office equipment that is not immune to the low power transmitters used by WiFi transmitters would not be considered fit for purpose.
Yep, you are right. I have only ever had one product fail immunity testing during product development and it was trivial to fix. Emissions is always the harder one with the standards becoming tougher over the years and the number of fast signals increasing in designs. A significant number of our designs need design changes to address emissions before reaching the market.
I suspect you are right in this case but it is still inexcusable. I work so a similar size company and if we self certify we still test internally and have records to back up our test. To be fair I suspect it the emissions testing we focus on but I know we specifically test against frequencies know to be used near our gear. For example our marine products are tested near a 25W VHF transmitter etc. Secondly we have reputation to up hold, if customers reported such a thing we would test to reproduce and modify our product for future production, then supply a free modified version to anyone who reported the issue on original product.
As someone who has produced a few products sold around the world I can't see how this monitor reached the retail selves. To sell you generally need to pass immunity and emissions compliance test to FCC or CE standards depending on the market. Emissions means you don't transmit signals above a specified levels and immunity requires your products are not affected below a specified level. The levels vary with frequency and standards but generally the immunity threshold is several magnitudes higher than the emissions thresholds for non-transmitting devices. The WiFi device is an intentional radiator so is allowed higher emissions levels, at it operating band, but immunity levels for the monitor should be able to handle it easily.
It sounds like a clear failure of the LG monitor and if the nature of the failure reported is correct it sounds like it is not up to standard for immunity. Assuming the problem reported is in the USA then it will be the FCC standards that apply. If I was an owner of an affected LG monitor I would be demanding a copy of the immunity compliance test report. The test report will document what power level was used for the WiFi frequencies and these can be compared with the legal limit for WiFi devices.
Bottom line is this should never happen on modern products. I know my teams have spent many hours modifying product designs to ensure compliance before we release to market. If LG have not done this then they need to step up and fix the problem at their expense, before the FCC demand a product recall.
I have only been using Linux at home for many years now and in my last job I was only using Linux too, so had not really used a Windows system for a few years when I started using it again for my current job. My first impression was that it was much more stable and usable than in the past, but still inferior to Linux in usability for my type of usage. The stand out exception where Windows has got worse was forced updates. Such a huge distraction and nuisance and feels so primitive compare to Linux. Maybe they will sort it one day, but I suspect I will move on to job that does not force me to use Windows before they fix it.
Agreed, I brought every Nexus phone offered up to the Nexus 6. I refused to downgrade to Nexus 6P or Pixel. If the Pixel 2 is also missing wireless charging the its a deal breaker, no sale. I have yet to see a single new feature on recent phones that would make abandon my wireless device that never needs plugged in for one that needs plugged often.
I am running 100Mbps up and 100Mbps down with a static IP address and unlimited data for NZD$99 a month (~ US $72). I'm told I can now have a 1Gbps service which is tempting but I have yet to max out my current connection.
More roll out is good news, I know a couple of people who are a few meters short of the current service areas. Yes, like me, they are in Auckland but I know fibre is already available in smaller centers like Levin, where my family is. For farmers it would be great news as DSL services typically don't work on the long copper runs they have, whereas fibre should work fine. I suspect it will be a long time before someone comes up with a cost effective way run fibre out to them so I guess they will remain an unserved 15% for a long time.
BTW I had a real battle to get connected as I am multi-unit dwelling (4 joined town houses) and Chorus (the cable installer/wholesale provider) will only connect multi-unit dwelling if all properties agree to be connected and only two of us want the service. I wrote to my local MP, the Minister of Commerce and the Commerce Commission. To her credit the local MP contacted Chorus, who had be refusing to connect me for about a year, and they had a change of heart. The installers still tried to connect all four units but only got as far as my unit when they realised the last two units did not sign up for a connection. As a result I actually have 3 fibre connection on my property!
When I brought my MBA 13" back in 2013 I was happy to have a quality device that was portable but ran Linux ok (except the camera). The screen was low res but there was nothing on the market that looked close and was known to run Linux ok. Fast forward a few years and the screen was getting really annoying and I came to realise that fancy aluminum case was probably the reason for poor WiFi performance.
Last year I notice the Dell XPS13 DE and it made my MBA look crap. There was no sign of a better Mac on the horizon. The Dell was physically smaller than the MBA but had a physically bigger display and higher res. Add full support for Linux out of the box and it was a no brainer. As much as I like my MBA the Dell is a far better machine.
Apple really need to take the laptop feature update cycles seriously of they want to retain market share, but it is going to be a few years before I look at them again.
If I had mod points I would mod this as it exactly what I think happen. Sony was always the company to buy electronic devices from if you could afford it, until they became a media company. Then they stopped caring what the customers actually wanted and later became downright hostile to their customers.
Dumping the media section would free the electronics division to refocus on making stuff consumers really want, but I think they will never be able to recovery their lost reputation. The damage done by the media execs is repairable and should be a lesson for all hardware companies.
Interestingly Apple are different. People brought Sony hardware because it was technically advanced. Some people like me by some Apple products for the same reason but most Apple buyer buy Apple for trendy reasons. I will buy a Mac Book because it is still open but the iPhone is locked down by their media/apps divisions and I will not buy one as technically it is inferior to the Nexus device I use. However the bulk of iPhone buyers don't care about the lagging and locked iPhones, they are a status symbol for them. By marketing that way the Apple hardware has not been killed the same way the Sony hardware was.
When I lived on China I occasionally looked at installing Chinese apps, via Play Store, when mandatory for things such as banking. They typically demand app permissions for everything, including stuff that had no relevance to the purported application. I know from working with my team of developers in China they don't dig into options, if a solution works they move on to the next thing. If ticking 'All permissions' make the app work my team would chose that unless I told them to spend more time and work out what is really needed. Therefore when presented with a Chinese app that wants all permissions I was never sure if it was a lazy app developer or overreach of the company developing the app. I refused to install these apps unless it was absolutely critical to my needs, such as getting paid.
My argument is simple. A meter measures, nothing else (ignoring quantum physics). A device that controls the power in a house is not a meter. If such a device is called a meter is is incorrectly named, probably the handy work of a marketing department. Yes, I am being pedantic, but where I come from (New Zealand), smart meters are immune to the risk of property damage because they are meters and only meters.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like good news if you live in the USA but Amazon are still at a disadvantage for international shipping. I can get stuff shipped from China to New Zealand for free, even stuff costing a couple of dollars but anything I get shipped from Amazon is really expensive, if they will even ship outside the USA, most don't. As a result I usually try to buy from China first and only try Amazon if what I want can't be source from China.
From what I have heard the Chinese government is effectively subsidising the shipping costs in many cases and that is probably the core reason US suppliers can not compete. From a consumer point of view the only downside is that it is very slow to arrive, but then again Amazon's cheapest shipping options are just as slow.
While I have some sympathy for the idea I don't think it is practical. The first problem is how many humans does a given robot replace? For example one place I worked used a robot to apply glue to a plastic window on a product. This was not done for cost reasons, the task required a precise control over the amount of glue which was too difficult for a human to do. In this case the robot freed up about about 2 hours a day of a line worker's work load i.e. the robot had a human equivalent work output of about 1/4 of a human. On the other hand a large robot moving heavy items could be replacing 4 humans? Would it be fair to tax them at the same rate? The existence of such a tax would shape the design of the robots to minimise the tax per unit output. I see nothing but a complicated mess coming out of such an idea.
For some reason Youtube thinks that people speaking with a New Zealand accent swear a lot. I was testing the Youtube product tutorial on an Android product which, unlike PC browsers, has the closed captioning on by default. A lot of the technical terms, spoken with a Kiwi accent, were being captioned with obscene words. When I recovered from laughing at just how rude it was being I warned our marketing team that made the video. They were mortified and suddenly had a large task of checking and removing the computer generated captions. It turns out all of our SFW videos had NSFW captions.
Slackware was the first Linux distro I used but creating all those floppies disks was a such a pain so I switched to Red Hat which could installed directly from CD. Now days I don't own a single working computer with a CD drive but I can still read floppies via a floppy to USB adapter. That was back in the 90s, I wonder how Slackware stacks up compare with Mint and Cent OS I use these days?
Because it is a wireless device. Wireless voice communications. Wireless data communications. Plugging in a cable to charge is a PIA. Before USB Type-C there was a 50% change the cable was the wrong way up and in low light you can't see which was is correct. You have to make conscious effort to charge it. With wireless charging you never have to actually think about the need to charge, you put the phone down and when you pick it up it is ready to go. Since my first QI device, a Nexus 4, I have never had a flat battery on my phone.
As for the efficiency who cares? It probably costs me an extra $10 a year in power, money well spend in book. Radio is inefficient too, transmitting watts of power to get microwatts at the other end but who cares, it works.
QI is usable but certainly could be improved a lot as with the cheaper chargers and a thick phone case you do need to put the phone down in the right spot +/- ~5mm. They really need an improved standard that is backwards compatible with the existing standard but is less critical to alignment and spacing. If Apple do go their own way it would be nice if they support such backwards compatibility with existing QI devices ,
My wife and I currently have the Nexus 6. Before that it was the Nexus 5 and before that the Nexus 4, my first QI device. What is wrong with having charging pads everywhere? They are cheap and almost every place I work/relax has one. Why not?
You are right about the placement. I have couple of nicer chargers that have multi coil designs and are angled so the phone naturally falls to good position. This works well, even thru a thick leather cover. Charging is slow but as I have charging pads scattered everywhere I never have a flat battery.
That said the Type-C USB is a huge improvement. I have it on my laptop and think it is great step up from all other USB connectors.
The Nexus 4 had QI wireless charging a few years ago but the Nexus 6 was the last Google phone to have it. I have refused to buy a Nexus 6P or Pixel due to the lack of wireless charging. If Apple introduces wireless charging they will, for the first time, be making a phone that I consider technically better than Google's offering. It would not be enough to get me to change to closed Apple eco system but may sway others.
I note the linked articles make no indication of what wireless standard they will use. Given that QI is used by almost everyone I would hope that is the standard they will follow, but Apple, being Apple, will probably see the need to introduce a new incompatible standard. I hope I am wrong about that,
I was in the USA once when one of these Superbowl things was on so can tell you a wee bit about it. I think it is meant to be the top level of the sport but appears to be only USA based teams. They call the sport football but it is not in any way related to actual football. It appears to be safety focused version of rugby where they are wearing full body armor making the players look more like some mini-mecha from an anime. Not as entertaining as my description might lead you to believe, but this is compensated for by a live concert in the middle of the game and some quite watchable commercials.
Self certification does not mean you can do what you like it just means you have taken reasonable steps to verify compliance in house. We have test cambers of the same quality as a formal test houses so why should we waste time and money testing with an external test house? The key here is we are accountable for doing the tests and meeting the standard. If we certify as meeting CE and we don't then we need to be held accountable and put it right. In the case of LG they need to fix their product at their expense, not tell customer to move devices around. Self certification does not give LG a way out of their legal and moral obligations.
It's great software but I do wonder when they will fix the spell checker so you can change the language from US English to the local language without the need to read help pages every time.
The FCC doesn't care.
True, but they should.
CE doesn't matter to me in the US.
True as a consumer. As a manufacture you make for world markets and if you pass CE then FCC is usually easier to pass.
It is unfit for the purpose, I think, but that is a matter for consumer protection laws - not bodies that govern RF emissions.
Also true, but EMC compliance gives you a tool to argue your case under consumer protection laws.
That is true for Part 15 but there are other regs, certainly in CE, that specifically spell out that products must operate normally in the presence of defined emissions. Even without EMC reg most countries have fit for purpose consumer laws and any home or office equipment that is not immune to the low power transmitters used by WiFi transmitters would not be considered fit for purpose.
Yep, you are right. I have only ever had one product fail immunity testing during product development and it was trivial to fix. Emissions is always the harder one with the standards becoming tougher over the years and the number of fast signals increasing in designs. A significant number of our designs need design changes to address emissions before reaching the market.
I suspect you are right in this case but it is still inexcusable. I work so a similar size company and if we self certify we still test internally and have records to back up our test. To be fair I suspect it the emissions testing we focus on but I know we specifically test against frequencies know to be used near our gear. For example our marine products are tested near a 25W VHF transmitter etc. Secondly we have reputation to up hold, if customers reported such a thing we would test to reproduce and modify our product for future production, then supply a free modified version to anyone who reported the issue on original product.
As someone who has produced a few products sold around the world I can't see how this monitor reached the retail selves. To sell you generally need to pass immunity and emissions compliance test to FCC or CE standards depending on the market. Emissions means you don't transmit signals above a specified levels and immunity requires your products are not affected below a specified level. The levels vary with frequency and standards but generally the immunity threshold is several magnitudes higher than the emissions thresholds for non-transmitting devices. The WiFi device is an intentional radiator so is allowed higher emissions levels, at it operating band, but immunity levels for the monitor should be able to handle it easily.
It sounds like a clear failure of the LG monitor and if the nature of the failure reported is correct it sounds like it is not up to standard for immunity. Assuming the problem reported is in the USA then it will be the FCC standards that apply. If I was an owner of an affected LG monitor I would be demanding a copy of the immunity compliance test report. The test report will document what power level was used for the WiFi frequencies and these can be compared with the legal limit for WiFi devices.
Bottom line is this should never happen on modern products. I know my teams have spent many hours modifying product designs to ensure compliance before we release to market. If LG have not done this then they need to step up and fix the problem at their expense, before the FCC demand a product recall.
I have only been using Linux at home for many years now and in my last job I was only using Linux too, so had not really used a Windows system for a few years when I started using it again for my current job. My first impression was that it was much more stable and usable than in the past, but still inferior to Linux in usability for my type of usage. The stand out exception where Windows has got worse was forced updates. Such a huge distraction and nuisance and feels so primitive compare to Linux. Maybe they will sort it one day, but I suspect I will move on to job that does not force me to use Windows before they fix it.
Agreed, I brought every Nexus phone offered up to the Nexus 6. I refused to downgrade to Nexus 6P or Pixel. If the Pixel 2 is also missing wireless charging the its a deal breaker, no sale. I have yet to see a single new feature on recent phones that would make abandon my wireless device that never needs plugged in for one that needs plugged often.
I am running 100Mbps up and 100Mbps down with a static IP address and unlimited data for NZD$99 a month (~ US $72). I'm told I can now have a 1Gbps service which is tempting but I have yet to max out my current connection.
More roll out is good news, I know a couple of people who are a few meters short of the current service areas. Yes, like me, they are in Auckland but I know fibre is already available in smaller centers like Levin, where my family is. For farmers it would be great news as DSL services typically don't work on the long copper runs they have, whereas fibre should work fine. I suspect it will be a long time before someone comes up with a cost effective way run fibre out to them so I guess they will remain an unserved 15% for a long time.
BTW I had a real battle to get connected as I am multi-unit dwelling (4 joined town houses) and Chorus (the cable installer/wholesale provider) will only connect multi-unit dwelling if all properties agree to be connected and only two of us want the service. I wrote to my local MP, the Minister of Commerce and the Commerce Commission. To her credit the local MP contacted Chorus, who had be refusing to connect me for about a year, and they had a change of heart. The installers still tried to connect all four units but only got as far as my unit when they realised the last two units did not sign up for a connection. As a result I actually have 3 fibre connection on my property!
When I brought my MBA 13" back in 2013 I was happy to have a quality device that was portable but ran Linux ok (except the camera). The screen was low res but there was nothing on the market that looked close and was known to run Linux ok. Fast forward a few years and the screen was getting really annoying and I came to realise that fancy aluminum case was probably the reason for poor WiFi performance.
Last year I notice the Dell XPS13 DE and it made my MBA look crap. There was no sign of a better Mac on the horizon. The Dell was physically smaller than the MBA but had a physically bigger display and higher res. Add full support for Linux out of the box and it was a no brainer. As much as I like my MBA the Dell is a far better machine.
Apple really need to take the laptop feature update cycles seriously of they want to retain market share, but it is going to be a few years before I look at them again.
If I had mod points I would mod this as it exactly what I think happen. Sony was always the company to buy electronic devices from if you could afford it, until they became a media company. Then they stopped caring what the customers actually wanted and later became downright hostile to their customers.
Dumping the media section would free the electronics division to refocus on making stuff consumers really want, but I think they will never be able to recovery their lost reputation. The damage done by the media execs is repairable and should be a lesson for all hardware companies.
Interestingly Apple are different. People brought Sony hardware because it was technically advanced. Some people like me by some Apple products for the same reason but most Apple buyer buy Apple for trendy reasons. I will buy a Mac Book because it is still open but the iPhone is locked down by their media/apps divisions and I will not buy one as technically it is inferior to the Nexus device I use. However the bulk of iPhone buyers don't care about the lagging and locked iPhones, they are a status symbol for them. By marketing that way the Apple hardware has not been killed the same way the Sony hardware was.
When I lived on China I occasionally looked at installing Chinese apps, via Play Store, when mandatory for things such as banking. They typically demand app permissions for everything, including stuff that had no relevance to the purported application. I know from working with my team of developers in China they don't dig into options, if a solution works they move on to the next thing. If ticking 'All permissions' make the app work my team would chose that unless I told them to spend more time and work out what is really needed. Therefore when presented with a Chinese app that wants all permissions I was never sure if it was a lazy app developer or overreach of the company developing the app. I refused to install these apps unless it was absolutely critical to my needs, such as getting paid.
I'm going to wait unit they release the 36:18 aspect ratio version...
My argument is simple. A meter measures, nothing else (ignoring quantum physics). A device that controls the power in a house is not a meter. If such a device is called a meter is is incorrectly named, probably the handy work of a marketing department. Yes, I am being pedantic, but where I come from (New Zealand), smart meters are immune to the risk of property damage because they are meters and only meters.