In the past I have used the Chinese e-Scooters and found them great fun, and at about USD $400 very practical in China. Unfortunately the performance and quality wouldn't cut it in most first world cities.
A few minutes ago the guys from Gogoro turned up here (a major Tawian factory) showing off their SmartScooter. The guy's English wasn't great but I gather it is about a 6KW motor with a top speed of 95kph. I rode up the street, the performance feels like somewhere between a 125 and 250cc motorcycle. At about USD $3K it looks like a very practical and affordable city vehicle. At that price I think I would buy one tomorrow for my city commute if they sold them back home.
Looking at the shape of that hydrogen car I suspect the SmartScooter has more carrying capacity too. Sorry hydrogen, you are too late to the party, your not fooling anyone around here with your vaporware.
For buses where all the operational parameters are known I can see CNG working. Here in New Zealand in the 1980s there was a huge push for CNG with government support and subsidies. The average New Zealand car was, and still is, around 1600 to 2000cc. Not much power and CNG made that worse. I used a company L300 van running CNG. It took longer to fuel, ran a shorter distance on a tank, handled worst due to the extra tank. The L300 was not powerful to start with and there is a lot of hills in Wellington, so you often had to switch to petrol at bottom of a hill or risk stopping halfway up. About 20% of gas stations sold CNG which sounds like a lot until that limited range kicked in and you couldn't find one near by. This was the 80's, no 'app for that'.
Not surprisingly after about 5 years the public had had enough of all the hassles and limitations and stopped installing CNG in vehicles and the 20% of stations selling it rapidly fell to zero again.
Back to hydrogen. Look at the performance and cost curves of batteries, extrapolate over the next 10 year and it is clear EV will out perform IC vehicles in more and more cases. I have used an EV when I was living in China, I loved plugging in at work and never having to visit a gas station. I have electricity at home so I am EV ready, when I can afford one. Where is that hydrogen I would need going to come from if I went down that path? EVs are so simple, is a hydrogen solution going to be able to match that over the long term?
Hydrogen cars are joke. Anyone around long enough will remember how stupid the CNG trend was. Putting on my tin foil hat it always seemed to me that hydrogen powered car were quietly promoted by big oil as they knew they would never be adopted but did help shift the focus and money away from EVs.
Jump forward to today and we have practical EVs that make that hydrogen car look like a poor joke. Really the only issue now with EVs is the cost/performance ratio and as that continues to improve so will the uptake. You only need to see the dive that big oil is taking in share value to see the trend already unrolling. So why are wasting time on reporting on hydrogen cars? They are DOA.
Yes, this would have been the correct and ethical way to deal with the issue. Refuse to talk the counterfeit chip and provide a clear pop up message to the user.
That then allows the user to complain to the equipment supplier with meaningful information, passing the issue back up the supply chain but also allows the end user to start the process of sourcing and installing working drivers.
The equipment supplier now alerted to the problem can now pay extra to use proper parts in future if they were knowingly using counterfeits, or if they thought they were using the real parts they can chase the supplier.
I guess they just wanted to be a bunch of dicks instead of addressing the issue in an end user responsible way. The safe option, learn last time they acted like dicks is to not take supply chain risks and design your products not using FTDI parts.
You saved me posting the same thing. I worked in China and know first hand that you can pay premium prices from an authorised dealer and still be supplied counterfeit parts. It only take one corrupt person in the supply chain and you are stuffed. The good news is everyone learnt their lesson last time not to use FTDI parts and is now manufacturing with alternative parts. A decision that has now been proven to be the wise choice.
I guess my run of always buying the latest Nexus phones is over. Wireless charging is just to damn convenient to give up. I just can't go back to plugging in every time I return to my desk/couch, or risking a flat battery. If it hasn't got wireless charging it isn't a premium phone, it is just another compromise product.
In the early days of Chrome one of the reasons I stayed with Mozilla was ad blockers. When Adblock Pro tried that trick on Mozilla I switched to Adblock Edge. I assume Chrome users will do the same or if they can't find a proper ad blocker will then switch browser.
I started blocking ads because animated GIFs were too distracting to my thought processes. Now blocking ads is simple Internet security 101, just way too dangerous not to, and despite 'acceptable ad' programs is still an attack vector with no benefits if left open.
That confused me the first time at a restaurant in the USA, a long list of entrees and no main courses. The confusion is amplified when you receive a meal that is twice the size you would normally expect. At one hotel I was stay I ended up ordering kids meals just to get a meal a normal size for a non-American adult. Don't get start me on drink sizes (having it explained in 'ounces' does not help or make the it less crazy).
It seems simple to me, just get a refund and use the money to purchase one that actually works. The refund is a legal right in most countries if the product does not work as claimed. Here in NZ consumer protection laws would see the refund being a simple process in this case, an ad blocker must block ads or your money back.
Disclaimer: I use Firefox/Adblock Edge so have never paid for an ad blocker.
I guess tourism not big money in New Jersey or else he wouldn’t say something so stupid. I know people who bypass the USA now because the airport experience is so bad compared with the rest of the world, this would step that whole avoidance of the USA another magnitude.
Have you not seen Windows 8? My parents needed to replace a dyeing XP laptop. They looked at the Windows 8 machines in the stores and had no idea how to use one so contacted me. I set them up a on new laptop running Mint Linux. They are old and struggle with computers but the move from XP to Mint was easy for them, took only an evening of introduction. They have been using that Linux laptop for about 2 years now and my support requirements are almost zero, much less than XP needed.
I recently moved to new job that required me to use a Windows 7 desktop after a couple of years using a Linux desktop at work and it did find it a hassle. To quote Anonymous Coward's flame bait "it's 10x more difficult to do even the simplest task, and most people just don't have that kind of time to spare.", Linux is so much simpler to use as Windows takes so long to wade though endless GUI screens and menus to make simple changes on Windows. Yes that is flame bait too but for me it is true.
Given media companies chasing people for illegal sharing on the basis the very lists that this exploit is manipulating I guess this could lead to false allegations of file sharing? I guess it could be used in countries like New Zealand to have victims force disconnected by their ISP for multiple instances of file sharing when they had in fact never shared anything?
I worked with Cheryl briefly about 10 years ago relating embedded Linux work and her low level Linux knowledge back then was impressive. I would say it was Google's loss not employing her.
Your points are valid but I assume they don't apply, yet... I'm basing that on the fact that companies like The Warehouse are curreently doing grey market imports and they are too high profile not to have checked where they stand legally.
I don't know about the license on the DVD or the related legality under US law to export them but I do know that to bring in 10,000 to NZ would be perfectly legal as long was they were not pirated copies. Of course TPPA will like force a law change to ensure Kiwis pay way more than they do now.
It is a pity this didn't reach court and had a judgement made. I think NZ law is pretty clear and the media companies would have lost. That would have been good as it would have put them on notice to shut up and rethink their business model in view of global communications. As it is they will take this as a victory and will now act as if it was actually illegal to bypass geo-locks, using this result to hassle the next company to offer such a service.
If I travel to the USA, buy a legal DVD, fly back to NZ and watch it here it is all legal. So how is that different from having my Internet connect travel to the USA, purchasing a media file and bringing it back to NZ to watch. Both cost time and money but offer more choice. Morally and/or legally is there any difference?
I'm a Kiwi who has travel to the USA a few times and has a few US friends. I have learnt that they have a fundamentally different view to guns than people from every other country I have meet. From the outside looking in the USA is hard to believe. Talking with people from the USA it is clear they are passionate about their rights to bear arms and I have accepted they are different from the rest of the world and they think the price they pay for that freedom is acceptable.
However the quote from the article ""I should be able to have a howitzer or a bazooka if I want one." has me wondering. From US TV shows it would appear that individuals are not permitted to own nuclear bombs. First correct me if I am wrong, the right to bear arms does not extend to nuclear weapons? If not then where is the limit? Are you permitted a howitzer or bazooka? What limits do people consider ok?
I have been using Amlogic based players recently as they run Kodi directly on Linux builds and seem to have good codec support. I was looking other options to ensure I was keeping up with the state of the art features and the Fire TV was one I looked at. I put it on my B list since they currently don't ship outside the USA, which find weird given they will export books to me. While I could get around the shipping restriction, it makes it less price competitive. With this negative Kodi attitude they are now dropped from my list completely. Yes I could sideload Kodi, but this could be sign of more aggressive restrictions to come, why take the risk?
Sounds similar to the situation here. While legally I think NZ HF and UHF CB service should on be on type approved (RTA) devices I doubt many of the Chinese imports have been through this process. I have dealt with local governement body and they seem to have adopted a fairly pragmatic approach, focusing mainly on stopping the sales of devices on commerical frequencies and addressing interference issues as they arise. I doubt they are worried about hams also operating on other public bands, such as CB and marine, provided you are using the correct modes, appropriate power levels and following the correct etiquite for that service.
It was intersting to read that part of the design will be locked down, to meet FCC requirements. The celluar band lock out has never been a requirement in many countries, such as here in New Zealand. While I dont care about those bands I do wonder if it will lock out out other non-amature band uses in the name of FCC compliance, that we don't need?
For example us hams who are also like 4WD outings find that some UHF ham rigs can serve a dual role as a UHF CB, saving one extra transciever in the vehicle. In that case we are transmitting at 477MHz with a 5W limit, which while legal here would be illegal in the USA. Actully we have the reverse problem, imports from China on the USA FRS/GMRS channel being offered localy dispite being commerical frequencies here. Also it's nice to be abe to listern to commerical channels. The cheap Boefeng is great in a vehicle as it can replace 5 other radios (2M, 70cm, UHF CB, Marine and a scanner). That may not be a big deal if you have a huge Jeep but we typically use smaller 4WD such as the Suzuki Jinmy were 2 transceivers as about all you can fit.
I think an SDR such as this would be great in such an enviroment, if it could get down to 26MHz it could replace the NZ and USA HF CB rig as well allowing one box to do everything, feed it to the car stereo aux input and control it with the same Android tablet used for naviagation. It would make the ultimate communictions solution for a smaller vehicle. I really like the possiblities it opens for new modes or just embeddeding a bit of digital data in the current modes, such as the location of the transmitting station and a call sign etc.
Even as currently defined it seems like a great peice of gear, hope it goes well for Bruce.
To get a feel for what it would be like try living in a major Chinese city. I did for 2 years, most nights you would only see 2 or 3 stars. I was a bit depressing to look up at night and I wonder if it was a factor in my having "had enough of it" and coming home to New Zealand. First night home and I could not get over how beautiful a night sky full of stars is.
The plan sounds like a bad idea on too many levels...
For me one of the most effective things was to let them know that was monitoring what sites they were visiting. When you first let them online you need to supervise them closely and explain what they should avoid and why. Once they understand what is expected/allowed then give then free access but let then know you are monitoring what sites they are visiting. Knowing that they will self censor.
From a technical point of view I put their machines on a separate subnet with a transparent proxy to monitor access and cron jobs/iptables to block any access when it was time for them to be sleeping.
It is also worth remembering they don't magically change from children to adults on a particular birthday, as they mature yet then know they are allow a wider range of access. For example as young children I did not allow them to play violent games but as preteens I allowed moderately violent games and as teens I didn't really limit games because they had demonstrated they had maturity separate to rules of real life from games. Likewise trying to stop teen boys from view porn is a waste of time, best to let them know that what they see on the Internet should generally not be consider real in terms dealing with the opposite sex.
If want real geek points make one. Take a conventional wireless wheel mouse, remove the wheel, and print a new 3D case what has the shape and button layout you want.
Looking at those traits I can help but think the system would class your typical programmer as a large security risk and lock the system down so tight that writing code was not an option...
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In the past I have used the Chinese e-Scooters and found them great fun, and at about USD $400 very practical in China. Unfortunately the performance and quality wouldn't cut it in most first world cities.
A few minutes ago the guys from Gogoro turned up here (a major Tawian factory) showing off their SmartScooter. The guy's English wasn't great but I gather it is about a 6KW motor with a top speed of 95kph. I rode up the street, the performance feels like somewhere between a 125 and 250cc motorcycle. At about USD $3K it looks like a very practical and affordable city vehicle. At that price I think I would buy one tomorrow for my city commute if they sold them back home.
Looking at the shape of that hydrogen car I suspect the SmartScooter has more carrying capacity too. Sorry hydrogen, you are too late to the party, your not fooling anyone around here with your vaporware.
For buses where all the operational parameters are known I can see CNG working. Here in New Zealand in the 1980s there was a huge push for CNG with government support and subsidies. The average New Zealand car was, and still is, around 1600 to 2000cc. Not much power and CNG made that worse. I used a company L300 van running CNG. It took longer to fuel, ran a shorter distance on a tank, handled worst due to the extra tank. The L300 was not powerful to start with and there is a lot of hills in Wellington, so you often had to switch to petrol at bottom of a hill or risk stopping halfway up. About 20% of gas stations sold CNG which sounds like a lot until that limited range kicked in and you couldn't find one near by. This was the 80's, no 'app for that'.
Not surprisingly after about 5 years the public had had enough of all the hassles and limitations and stopped installing CNG in vehicles and the 20% of stations selling it rapidly fell to zero again.
Back to hydrogen. Look at the performance and cost curves of batteries, extrapolate over the next 10 year and it is clear EV will out perform IC vehicles in more and more cases. I have used an EV when I was living in China, I loved plugging in at work and never having to visit a gas station. I have electricity at home so I am EV ready, when I can afford one. Where is that hydrogen I would need going to come from if I went down that path? EVs are so simple, is a hydrogen solution going to be able to match that over the long term?
Hydrogen cars are joke. Anyone around long enough will remember how stupid the CNG trend was. Putting on my tin foil hat it always seemed to me that hydrogen powered car were quietly promoted by big oil as they knew they would never be adopted but did help shift the focus and money away from EVs.
Jump forward to today and we have practical EVs that make that hydrogen car look like a poor joke. Really the only issue now with EVs is the cost/performance ratio and as that continues to improve so will the uptake. You only need to see the dive that big oil is taking in share value to see the trend already unrolling. So why are wasting time on reporting on hydrogen cars? They are DOA.
Yes, this would have been the correct and ethical way to deal with the issue. Refuse to talk the counterfeit chip and provide a clear pop up message to the user.
That then allows the user to complain to the equipment supplier with meaningful information, passing the issue back up the supply chain but also allows the end user to start the process of sourcing and installing working drivers.
The equipment supplier now alerted to the problem can now pay extra to use proper parts in future if they were knowingly using counterfeits, or if they thought they were using the real parts they can chase the supplier.
I guess they just wanted to be a bunch of dicks instead of addressing the issue in an end user responsible way. The safe option, learn last time they acted like dicks is to not take supply chain risks and design your products not using FTDI parts.
You saved me posting the same thing. I worked in China and know first hand that you can pay premium prices from an authorised dealer and still be supplied counterfeit parts. It only take one corrupt person in the supply chain and you are stuffed. The good news is everyone learnt their lesson last time not to use FTDI parts and is now manufacturing with alternative parts. A decision that has now been proven to be the wise choice.
I guess my run of always buying the latest Nexus phones is over. Wireless charging is just to damn convenient to give up. I just can't go back to plugging in every time I return to my desk/couch, or risking a flat battery. If it hasn't got wireless charging it isn't a premium phone, it is just another compromise product.
In the early days of Chrome one of the reasons I stayed with Mozilla was ad blockers. When Adblock Pro tried that trick on Mozilla I switched to Adblock Edge. I assume Chrome users will do the same or if they can't find a proper ad blocker will then switch browser.
I started blocking ads because animated GIFs were too distracting to my thought processes. Now blocking ads is simple Internet security 101, just way too dangerous not to, and despite 'acceptable ad' programs is still an attack vector with no benefits if left open.
That confused me the first time at a restaurant in the USA, a long list of entrees and no main courses. The confusion is amplified when you receive a meal that is twice the size you would normally expect. At one hotel I was stay I ended up ordering kids meals just to get a meal a normal size for a non-American adult. Don't get start me on drink sizes (having it explained in 'ounces' does not help or make the it less crazy).
It seems simple to me, just get a refund and use the money to purchase one that actually works. The refund is a legal right in most countries if the product does not work as claimed. Here in NZ consumer protection laws would see the refund being a simple process in this case, an ad blocker must block ads or your money back.
Disclaimer: I use Firefox/Adblock Edge so have never paid for an ad blocker.
I guess tourism not big money in New Jersey or else he wouldn’t say something so stupid. I know people who bypass the USA now because the airport experience is so bad compared with the rest of the world, this would step that whole avoidance of the USA another magnitude.
I guess it is a country thing but where I come from 50 employees is moderate size, 200 is big.
Have you not seen Windows 8? My parents needed to replace a dyeing XP laptop. They looked at the Windows 8 machines in the stores and had no idea how to use one so contacted me. I set them up a on new laptop running Mint Linux. They are old and struggle with computers but the move from XP to Mint was easy for them, took only an evening of introduction. They have been using that Linux laptop for about 2 years now and my support requirements are almost zero, much less than XP needed.
I recently moved to new job that required me to use a Windows 7 desktop after a couple of years using a Linux desktop at work and it did find it a hassle. To quote Anonymous Coward's flame bait "it's 10x more difficult to do even the simplest task, and most people just don't have that kind of time to spare.", Linux is so much simpler to use as Windows takes so long to wade though endless GUI screens and menus to make simple changes on Windows. Yes that is flame bait too but for me it is true.
Given media companies chasing people for illegal sharing on the basis the very lists that this exploit is manipulating I guess this could lead to false allegations of file sharing? I guess it could be used in countries like New Zealand to have victims force disconnected by their ISP for multiple instances of file sharing when they had in fact never shared anything?
I worked with Cheryl briefly about 10 years ago relating embedded Linux work and her low level Linux knowledge back then was impressive. I would say it was Google's loss not employing her.
Your points are valid but I assume they don't apply, yet... I'm basing that on the fact that companies like The Warehouse are curreently doing grey market imports and they are too high profile not to have checked where they stand legally.
I don't know about the license on the DVD or the related legality under US law to export them but I do know that to bring in 10,000 to NZ would be perfectly legal as long was they were not pirated copies. Of course TPPA will like force a law change to ensure Kiwis pay way more than they do now.
It is a pity this didn't reach court and had a judgement made. I think NZ law is pretty clear and the media companies would have lost. That would have been good as it would have put them on notice to shut up and rethink their business model in view of global communications. As it is they will take this as a victory and will now act as if it was actually illegal to bypass geo-locks, using this result to hassle the next company to offer such a service.
If I travel to the USA, buy a legal DVD, fly back to NZ and watch it here it is all legal. So how is that different from having my Internet connect travel to the USA, purchasing a media file and bringing it back to NZ to watch. Both cost time and money but offer more choice. Morally and/or legally is there any difference?
I'm a Kiwi who has travel to the USA a few times and has a few US friends. I have learnt that they have a fundamentally different view to guns than people from every other country I have meet. From the outside looking in the USA is hard to believe. Talking with people from the USA it is clear they are passionate about their rights to bear arms and I have accepted they are different from the rest of the world and they think the price they pay for that freedom is acceptable. However the quote from the article ""I should be able to have a howitzer or a bazooka if I want one." has me wondering. From US TV shows it would appear that individuals are not permitted to own nuclear bombs. First correct me if I am wrong, the right to bear arms does not extend to nuclear weapons? If not then where is the limit? Are you permitted a howitzer or bazooka? What limits do people consider ok?
I have been using Amlogic based players recently as they run Kodi directly on Linux builds and seem to have good codec support. I was looking other options to ensure I was keeping up with the state of the art features and the Fire TV was one I looked at. I put it on my B list since they currently don't ship outside the USA, which find weird given they will export books to me. While I could get around the shipping restriction, it makes it less price competitive. With this negative Kodi attitude they are now dropped from my list completely. Yes I could sideload Kodi, but this could be sign of more aggressive restrictions to come, why take the risk?
Sounds similar to the situation here. While legally I think NZ HF and UHF CB service should on be on type approved (RTA) devices I doubt many of the Chinese imports have been through this process. I have dealt with local governement body and they seem to have adopted a fairly pragmatic approach, focusing mainly on stopping the sales of devices on commerical frequencies and addressing interference issues as they arise. I doubt they are worried about hams also operating on other public bands, such as CB and marine, provided you are using the correct modes, appropriate power levels and following the correct etiquite for that service.
It was intersting to read that part of the design will be locked down, to meet FCC requirements. The celluar band lock out has never been a requirement in many countries, such as here in New Zealand. While I dont care about those bands I do wonder if it will lock out out other non-amature band uses in the name of FCC compliance, that we don't need?
For example us hams who are also like 4WD outings find that some UHF ham rigs can serve a dual role as a UHF CB, saving one extra transciever in the vehicle. In that case we are transmitting at 477MHz with a 5W limit, which while legal here would be illegal in the USA. Actully we have the reverse problem, imports from China on the USA FRS/GMRS channel being offered localy dispite being commerical frequencies here. Also it's nice to be abe to listern to commerical channels. The cheap Boefeng is great in a vehicle as it can replace 5 other radios (2M, 70cm, UHF CB, Marine and a scanner). That may not be a big deal if you have a huge Jeep but we typically use smaller 4WD such as the Suzuki Jinmy were 2 transceivers as about all you can fit.
I think an SDR such as this would be great in such an enviroment, if it could get down to 26MHz it could replace the NZ and USA HF CB rig as well allowing one box to do everything, feed it to the car stereo aux input and control it with the same Android tablet used for naviagation. It would make the ultimate communictions solution for a smaller vehicle. I really like the possiblities it opens for new modes or just embeddeding a bit of digital data in the current modes, such as the location of the transmitting station and a call sign etc.
Even as currently defined it seems like a great peice of gear, hope it goes well for Bruce.
To get a feel for what it would be like try living in a major Chinese city. I did for 2 years, most nights you would only see 2 or 3 stars. I was a bit depressing to look up at night and I wonder if it was a factor in my having "had enough of it" and coming home to New Zealand. First night home and I could not get over how beautiful a night sky full of stars is.
The plan sounds like a bad idea on too many levels...
For me one of the most effective things was to let them know that was monitoring what sites they were visiting. When you first let them online you need to supervise them closely and explain what they should avoid and why. Once they understand what is expected/allowed then give then free access but let then know you are monitoring what sites they are visiting. Knowing that they will self censor.
From a technical point of view I put their machines on a separate subnet with a transparent proxy to monitor access and cron jobs/iptables to block any access when it was time for them to be sleeping.
It is also worth remembering they don't magically change from children to adults on a particular birthday, as they mature yet then know they are allow a wider range of access. For example as young children I did not allow them to play violent games but as preteens I allowed moderately violent games and as teens I didn't really limit games because they had demonstrated they had maturity separate to rules of real life from games. Likewise trying to stop teen boys from view porn is a waste of time, best to let them know that what they see on the Internet should generally not be consider real in terms dealing with the opposite sex.
If want real geek points make one. Take a conventional wireless wheel mouse, remove the wheel, and print a new 3D case what has the shape and button layout you want.
Bonus points, put a howto up on Hackaday.
Looking at those traits I can help but think the system would class your typical programmer as a large security risk and lock the system down so tight that writing code was not an option...