Indeed. We should be targetting microwatts or at most tens of milliwatts not tens of watts. We're talking lazy engineering and insufficiently discerning end-users here.
(I'd like to chat about your stuff off-line, BTW. as part of our public IoT Launchpad project, see sig!)
I think that there is a chance of justice being served in spite of the law here, since it seems fairly clear from the little that I have read that some deceit was going on.
IIRC units are shipped in the EU with the 'instant-on' mode disabled by default, which would meet regs.
So it's superficially a software issue pandering to a chunk of their consumers being by default happy to waste lots of energy all the time (or never realising what's going on) rather than press a button. And we wonder why some places have an obesity and a power-consumption problem!
2) I think that if the manufacturers don't call the mode 'standby' then they may be able to draw what power they like: cue unholy mix of engineers and marketing bods gaming the regs with euphemisms...
Note: skylights are poor thermally and let a lot of heat out. Also I had one in a previous house in the bathroom where the seal was so bad (thus clearly leaking air too) that I had the surreal experience of being hailed on in the bath.
Also, have skylights ways from south (if you're in the northern hemisphere) to avoid excessive glare and overheating.
BTW, I have triple glazing now! Overall heat consumption from natural gas was 3000kWh last year and electricity 1700kWh.
EU regulations require appliances in actual standby to use no more than 0.1W, which is less than a neon indicator bulb, and *is* good.
My cable TV box uses 15W and consequently I make sure that it is turned off completely, along with TV and DVD else it would be responsible for ~10W of our entire electricity bill.
I have prototype voice detection circuit sitting on my bend that is using tens of microwatts to detect occupancy, so milliwatts should be plenty to do the instant-on job for those too damn idle to press a button.
tl;dr: 10W is *crap* for an always-on device doing nothing.
One that saves more than that in electricity within a year or two, and avoids high replacement maintenance costs on top in commercial settings.
What crazy world has people continuing to complain about the cost of petrol relative to hay while whining that the motorways seem so unfriendly for their horse and cart?
I'm certainly NOT in the "government is always worse that private corporations" camp, but it is indeed perfectly possible to create replacements worse than the original, and governments of all colours and countries remind us of this from time to time, even when all their intentions are good.
The UK and Germany, as relatively solvent and sane parts of the EU are both well to the left of US politics, and various aspects of US outlook from religion to guns to science denial are inexplicable from over here. Not strictly left/right but probably as much to do with the general level of education.
For example, Vodafone's "Mobile Broadband" dongles have apparently failed to work with OS X Yosemite (ie the current version) for a similar length of time for me and many others (the software crashes immediately) and Vodafone's 3rd-line tech support admits there is no fix (the person I spoke to is a Mac user himself and was rather embarrassed), but apparently Vodafone is happy to go on charging for the service and deflecting efforts to get a resolution.
So, although I have been a generally happy customer for most of Vodafone's existence I think, in this aspect they share all the aspects of incompetence that certain people assume to be the sole preserve of government.
I cancelled service and a refund is very very slowly happening. (Vodafone gives you a credit but somehow fails to apply it to the account, as a matter of routine, so goes on taking new money.)
Because it is *new* and promising and interesting. No one claimed *perfect*.
It's a common lament on/. but if you don't want to hear about stuff until it's on the shelves in your local store stop wasting time reading/. and other information outlets, else stop whining when you get an early heads up.
Really.
Tell me what potential life-saving breakthrough *you* made today, please.
Put this way your point sounds more reasonable I think, though I still believe that the "praise in public, censure in private" rule of thumb is key, so I'd be less keen on making the whole thing public.
Few of us are that driven by rules to the exclusion of social mores. And attempting to run a group that way will exclude those who aren't, I suggest, which may be a useful set of people for all sorts of contingent and correlated reasons (eg people with especially good empathy and outreach and comms skills).
And changing our entire frame of reference twice a year in some places at vaguely similar but not the same dates, to me does not meet that test.
We have things called computers and calendars these days with which we could adjust the running hours of our businesses, schools, etc, *if necessary* to the seasons.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly my point. The law and justice are not to be confused, but I have reasonable hopes for the latter being served here.
Rgds
Damon
Indeed. We should be targetting microwatts or at most tens of milliwatts not tens of watts. We're talking lazy engineering and insufficiently discerning end-users here.
(I'd like to chat about your stuff off-line, BTW. as part of our public IoT Launchpad project, see sig!)
Rgds
Damon
I think that there is a chance of justice being served in spite of the law here, since it seems fairly clear from the little that I have read that some deceit was going on.
Rgds
Damon
Sorry, the input parser appears to have eaten the post.
My MBA uses much less than 2W with maxed-out RAM in sleep mode.
So 10W is tragic.
Rgds
Damon
I totally agree that life is not that simple, but it seems to be a useful starting point.
Until the real nutcases wrap round the back... %-P
Rgds
Damon
Is there a significant antigen left in this foam?
I know people can be allergic to almost anything, but this looks to me like only relatively simple innocuous compounds remain in the foam.
The point being on the battlefield, what proportion of people would be killed by this from anaphylaxis (say) rather than saved by it?
Rgds
Damon
IIRC units are shipped in the EU with the 'instant-on' mode disabled by default, which would meet regs.
So it's superficially a software issue pandering to a chunk of their consumers being by default happy to waste lots of energy all the time (or never realising what's going on) rather than press a button. And we wonder why some places have an obesity and a power-consumption problem!
Rgds
Damon
1) I thought that the EU limit was now 0.1W.
2) I think that if the manufacturers don't call the mode 'standby' then they may be able to draw what power they like: cue unholy mix of engineers and marketing bods gaming the regs with euphemisms...
Rgds
Damon
And electric resistance heating is usually *terrible* compared to any number of available alternatives.
It represents a *huge* waste of exergy, when a heat pump (as you allude to) can produce several units of heat for one unit of electricity.
So, in summer it's all bad and in winter it;'s at least 75% bad. And that's ignoring (eg) CO2 and other emissions from the generation mix.
Can we stop with this "waste is good" meme?
Rgds
Damon
My MacBook Air draws http://www.earth.org.uk/saving...
Rgds
Damon
It's still not a good reason to waste something that is trivially easy to avoid wasting.
So, 0.26W would be somewhat over 0.1% of my house's mean grid consumption (1700kWh gross ignoring my solar PV). I have a family of four.
I still make an effort to charge devices off grid because it helps me think about my energy use for the bigger items too.
tl;dr: an efficient charger not doing anything isn't a killer, but 900kWh/month is a travesty.
Rgds
Damon
My old microwave oven uses enough power for its clock that if left on 24x7 would use more for the clock than for all the cooking I do.
Newer devices (especially those for sale in the EU) should be better behaved.
Rgds
Damon
Note: skylights are poor thermally and let a lot of heat out. Also I had one in a previous house in the bathroom where the seal was so bad (thus clearly leaking air too) that I had the surreal experience of being hailed on in the bath.
Also, have skylights ways from south (if you're in the northern hemisphere) to avoid excessive glare and overheating.
BTW, I have triple glazing now! Overall heat consumption from natural gas was 3000kWh last year and electricity 1700kWh.
http://www.earth.org.uk/saving...
Rgds
Damon
EU regulations require appliances in actual standby to use no more than 0.1W, which is less than a neon indicator bulb, and *is* good.
My cable TV box uses 15W and consequently I make sure that it is turned off completely, along with TV and DVD else it would be responsible for ~10W of our entire electricity bill.
http://www.earth.org.uk/saving...
I have prototype voice detection circuit sitting on my bend that is using tens of microwatts to detect occupancy, so milliwatts should be plenty to do the instant-on job for those too damn idle to press a button.
tl;dr: 10W is *crap* for an always-on device doing nothing.
Rgds
Damon
One that saves more than that in electricity within a year or two, and avoids high replacement maintenance costs on top in commercial settings.
What crazy world has people continuing to complain about the cost of petrol relative to hay while whining that the motorways seem so unfriendly for their horse and cart?
Rgds
Damon
...but I wish it wasn't news!
Rgds
Damon
Hi,
I'm certainly NOT in the "government is always worse that private corporations" camp, but it is indeed perfectly possible to create replacements worse than the original, and governments of all colours and countries remind us of this from time to time, even when all their intentions are good.
Rgds
Damon
The UK and Germany, as relatively solvent and sane parts of the EU are both well to the left of US politics, and various aspects of US outlook from religion to guns to science denial are inexplicable from over here. Not strictly left/right but probably as much to do with the general level of education.
Rgds
Damon
Uh no, sadly.
For example, Vodafone's "Mobile Broadband" dongles have apparently failed to work with OS X Yosemite (ie the current version) for a similar length of time for me and many others (the software crashes immediately) and Vodafone's 3rd-line tech support admits there is no fix (the person I spoke to is a Mac user himself and was rather embarrassed), but apparently Vodafone is happy to go on charging for the service and deflecting efforts to get a resolution.
eg http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5...
So, although I have been a generally happy customer for most of Vodafone's existence I think, in this aspect they share all the aspects of incompetence that certain people assume to be the sole preserve of government.
I cancelled service and a refund is very very slowly happening. (Vodafone gives you a credit but somehow fails to apply it to the account, as a matter of routine, so goes on taking new money.)
Rgds
Damon
Have you noticed the small place called Europe over the other side of the Atlantic?
Almost all of it bar the openly racist parties is to the left of almost all of the US politically.
Rgds
Damon
I suspect you've not been there.
It's amazing how much can be accomplished putting one foot in front of the other.
Rgds
Damon
Because it is *new* and promising and interesting. No one claimed *perfect*.
It's a common lament on /. but if you don't want to hear about stuff until it's on the shelves in your local store stop wasting time reading /. and other information outlets, else stop whining when you get an early heads up.
Really.
Tell me what potential life-saving breakthrough *you* made today, please.
Put this way your point sounds more reasonable I think, though I still believe that the "praise in public, censure in private" rule of thumb is key, so I'd be less keen on making the whole thing public.
Anyway, I agree that this stuff is hard.
Rgds
Damon
Few of us are that driven by rules to the exclusion of social mores. And attempting to run a group that way will exclude those who aren't, I suggest, which may be a useful set of people for all sorts of contingent and correlated reasons (eg people with especially good empathy and outreach and comms skills).
Rgds
Damon
And changing our entire frame of reference twice a year in some places at vaguely similar but not the same dates, to me does not meet that test.
We have things called computers and calendars these days with which we could adjust the running hours of our businesses, schools, etc, *if necessary* to the seasons.
My local graveyard manages it.
I run as much as possible on UTC.
Rgds
Damon