I believe that you're off by a factor of a thousand. A liter is a kilogram of water, so a nanogram per liter is one part per trillion, or million million as the Brits like to say.
One hundred parts per trillion is rather difficult to measure, but these folks have found a way to do it.
The question is: will a concentration that low have any effect on sea life?
Any company can poll people to find out what they think of Apple products. It's not like Apple is the only company capable of finding Apple customers - call 100 people at random, and 30 of them will be Apple customers.
I found myself reaching into my pocket for my Swiss Army knife while watching all those non-engineers struggle with the tape on the sides of the box. Geez! don't they ever open boxes?
I then found myself walking to the shelf where all our family's iPhone boxes sit, lovingly displayed, to get one down. I dusted it off and opened it a few times to enjoy just how precisely made it is, and how it opens with a just-ever-so amount of friction caused by the air escaping past the sides of the box.
Every time I do that, I can feel Steve Jobs' presence.
I would not be surprised if it's a factory backdoor that's included in all their products, but is not documented and is assumed to not be a problem because it's not documented.
With regard to reprogramming the chip remotely or by the FPGA itself via the JTAG port: A secure system is one that can't reprogram itself. When I was designing VMEbus computer boards for a military subcontractor many years ago, every board had a JTAG connector that required the use of another computer with a special cable plugged into the board to perform reprogramming of the FPGAs. None of this update-by-remote-control crap.
I was in high school working in a retail computer store in 1978 when the Apple ][ and its competitors were taking hold in the market. The Apple was the only computer with high-resolution color graphics for under $5000. I could tell just by looking at its motherboard that its design was something special - having built a video display board from scratch with my brother, I knew how much circuitry is usually required.
I mail Nixie watches out of the United States by USPS Priority mail, and I ship a lithium primary cell with each one. I guess I won't be doing that any more.
I sent the following letter to Bruce Schneier last year...
Back in the July 2011, I built a device called the
Video Coat.
I then went on a family vacation, which culminated in displaying the coat at the Maker Faire in Detroit. The coat traveled to Detroit packed into a suitcase, and I spent an hour assembling it in the hotel room.
I had to catch a plane just as the Faire was ending, so we quickly piled the family into the car and drove to the airport. I didn't have time to pack the coat back into its suitcase, so I carried it on my lap.
I wore the coat into the airport. Everything was fine until I arrived at the luggage check-in counter and was getting my boarding passes. Then, a Detroit cop walked up and told me that he'd had about 50 phone calls about my coat.
They asked me to please pack it into my checked luggage. I had my boarding passes at this time, so I took the time to sit down and disassemble the coat and pack it into its suitcase.
Then, the TSA had decided that my family (wife and two teenage sons) was special, so they wrote SSSS on all of our boarding passes. They nicely let us cut ahead of all the other passengers so that we could get fully scanned, groped, fondled and molested in time to catch our flight. I was enjoying this whole situation very much, since it was so surreal.
The most surreal part was when they inspected the eight big LiPo batteries that are used to provide power to the video coat. They decided that the batteries were small enough to be allowed on the flight, and they handed all eight of them to me for me to repack into my son's backpack.
The way more ultimately surreal part was a month later, when I was at Burning Man, recharging the batteries one morning. I wasn't paying attention, and I accidentally plugged one battery into another battery instead of plugging it into the charger. There was a brilliant white light as the contacts started arcing against each other. I quickly unplugged the batteries and regained my composure.
Since this battery is designed to provide 100 Amperes continuous current in normal use, one can only imagine what the short-circuit current capability is. The manufacturer doesn't provide any safety fuses or shutoff circuits in the packs. It's safe to assume that two of these batteries plugged into each other would catch fire in about 10 seconds.
Imagine if I had plugged two batteries into each other on an airplane! I had enough incendiary material on hand to start four fine lithium fires on that aircraft, not that I would want to do anything remotely like that. I really don't know what the flight crew would have done about that situation. It definitely would make headlines.
So can you please tell me why you think that the TSA allows incendiary devices to be carried on board, but not bottled water?
Bruce's reply? "Because there was an uncovered liquid plot, but no documented battery plot."
The TSA won't do that. The TSA won't do anything to prevent business travelers from bringing their phones or laptops on board, since they would soon go out of business if they had to.
The fact that they allow lithium-ion batteries on board at all is rather startling from a safety perspective, considering how easy it is to make them emit smoke. In fact, you are only allowed to bring these batteries into the passenger compartment, NOT the cargo compartment, so that a flight attendant may extinguish the fire.
I'll be happy to share my lithium-ion battery/TSA story with you upon request.
Tee hee. I'm one of those mentors who was lucky enough to get to stand behind the students on my team this year and coach them on the field. I didn't do any shouting, but I did a lot of micromanaging. That's the job of a coach on the field - you have to see the bigger picture and provide low-level guidance to the driver and operator since they are completely absorbed just in driving the robot to do the little task you've given them.
I do agree that a few of the coaches are a bit too competitive, but I would say that's only a couple percent of them. The overwhelming majority were amazingly pleasant and helpful. They are the sort of person who'd give you the shirt off their back.
Finally, someone who understands what this is actually about. As you say, "free" broadcast signals aren't really free, they're encumbered by all sorts of restrictions such as private viewing only.
You forgot the most obvious question: who created the Creator?
Since science seems to be demonstrating that the universe runs itself, and the existence of a creator implies the above paradox, why not just declare the beginning of time and stuff to be an unknown/unknowable thing and move on?
The correct answer is, "Shut up and start praying for your salvation." Of course it doesn't make sense. That's the beauty of it. If it made sense, it wouldn't be so compelling. There's a great book about this subject called Religion Explained that lays out the brain's tendency to believe such a particular type of nonsense.
Better yet, they could change the background to be white instead of black by changing the reflective properties of the material behind the person, thereby allowing metal strapped to one's sides to stand out.
But I work on millimeter waves in my day job, so don't believe a word I say.
The price of data service is what I'm talking about. Right now, the providers can upgrade old-phone customers to pay $30 more per month for a data plan, and this boosts their revenue year over year. Eventually they'll run out of upgraders. That's when the pricing fun begins.
At some point, this market will reach saturation. Then the service providers will have to compete on something like price or service to keep market share up. Hopefully, this will be good for the users of these fine machines.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that you're off by a factor of a thousand. A liter is a kilogram of water, so a nanogram per liter is one part per trillion, or million million as the Brits like to say.
One hundred parts per trillion is rather difficult to measure, but these folks have found a way to do it.
The question is: will a concentration that low have any effect on sea life?
I know all about who's what, since we see dozens of petitions a year.
Any company can poll people to find out what they think of Apple products. It's not like Apple is the only company capable of finding Apple customers - call 100 people at random, and 30 of them will be Apple customers.
I am an engineer who works on the 10-meter Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope. It's a wonderful instrument. You got a problem with that?
sup, dawg?
I look forward to the folks in my radio astronomy group asking me to make a 10,000 Tesla magnetic field for their molecular spectroscopy rig.
I found myself reaching into my pocket for my Swiss Army knife while watching all those non-engineers struggle with the tape on the sides of the box. Geez! don't they ever open boxes?
I then found myself walking to the shelf where all our family's iPhone boxes sit, lovingly displayed, to get one down. I dusted it off and opened it a few times to enjoy just how precisely made it is, and how it opens with a just-ever-so amount of friction caused by the air escaping past the sides of the box.
Every time I do that, I can feel Steve Jobs' presence.
Perhaps most of those limitations aren't really important to most people.
I would not be surprised if it's a factory backdoor that's included in all their products, but is not documented and is assumed to not be a problem because it's not documented.
With regard to reprogramming the chip remotely or by the FPGA itself via the JTAG port: A secure system is one that can't reprogram itself. When I was designing VMEbus computer boards for a military subcontractor many years ago, every board had a JTAG connector that required the use of another computer with a special cable plugged into the board to perform reprogramming of the FPGAs. None of this update-by-remote-control crap.
The original article is here.
It refers to an Actel ProAsic3 chip, which is an FPGA with internal EEPROM to store the configuration.
I was in high school working in a retail computer store in 1978 when the Apple ][ and its competitors were taking hold in the market. The Apple was the only computer with high-resolution color graphics for under $5000. I could tell just by looking at its motherboard that its design was something special - having built a video display board from scratch with my brother, I knew how much circuitry is usually required.
The best part is that I have built about 600 of them myself. The bad part is that I just spent 4 months of Nixie watch profits on more Nixie tubes.
Easy to read, lots of interest.
I mail Nixie watches out of the United States by USPS Priority mail, and I ship a lithium primary cell with each one.
I guess I won't be doing that any more.
When Heathkit was big, radios were hand-assembled by middle-aged women in Chicago. Now, they're hand-assembled by underpaid Chinese workers.
I get mine done at Costco. Cheaper and better than any printer you can buy.
43kWh? I think you've got a few extra orders of magnitude in there. That is enough energy to run a car for a hundred miles.
I sent the following letter to Bruce Schneier last year...
Back in the July 2011, I built a device called the Video Coat.
I then went on a family vacation, which culminated in displaying the coat at the Maker Faire in Detroit. The coat traveled to Detroit packed into a suitcase, and I spent an hour assembling it in the hotel room.
I had to catch a plane just as the Faire was ending, so we quickly piled the family into the car and drove to the airport. I didn't have time to pack the coat back into its suitcase, so I carried it on my lap.
I wore the coat into the airport. Everything was fine until I arrived at the luggage check-in counter and was getting my boarding passes. Then, a Detroit cop walked up and told me that he'd had about 50 phone calls about my coat.
They asked me to please pack it into my checked luggage. I had my boarding passes at this time, so I took the time to sit down and disassemble the coat and pack it into its suitcase.
Then, the TSA had decided that my family (wife and two teenage sons) was special, so they wrote SSSS on all of our boarding passes. They nicely let us cut ahead of all the other passengers so that we could get fully scanned, groped, fondled and molested in time to catch our flight. I was enjoying this whole situation very much, since it was so surreal.
The most surreal part was when they inspected the eight big LiPo batteries that are used to provide power to the video coat. They decided that the batteries were small enough to be allowed on the flight, and they handed all eight of them to me for me to repack into my son's backpack.
The way more ultimately surreal part was a month later, when I was at Burning Man, recharging the batteries one morning. I wasn't paying attention, and I accidentally plugged one battery into another battery instead of plugging it into the charger. There was a brilliant white light as the contacts started arcing against each other. I quickly unplugged the batteries and regained my composure.
Since this battery is designed to provide 100 Amperes continuous current in normal use, one can only imagine what the short-circuit current capability is. The manufacturer doesn't provide any safety fuses or shutoff circuits in the packs. It's safe to assume that two of these batteries plugged into each other would catch fire in about 10 seconds.
Imagine if I had plugged two batteries into each other on an airplane! I had enough incendiary material on hand to start four fine lithium fires on that aircraft, not that I would want to do anything remotely like that. I really don't know what the flight crew would have done about that situation. It definitely would make headlines.
So can you please tell me why you think that the TSA allows incendiary devices to be carried on board, but not bottled water?
Bruce's reply? "Because there was an uncovered liquid plot, but no documented battery plot."
The TSA won't do that. The TSA won't do anything to prevent business travelers from bringing their phones or laptops on board, since they would soon go out of business if they had to.
The fact that they allow lithium-ion batteries on board at all is rather startling from a safety perspective, considering how easy it is to make them emit smoke. In fact, you are only allowed to bring these batteries into the passenger compartment, NOT the cargo compartment, so that a flight attendant may extinguish the fire.
I'll be happy to share my lithium-ion battery/TSA story with you upon request.
Tee hee. I'm one of those mentors who was lucky enough to get to stand behind the students on my team this year and coach them on the field. I didn't do any shouting, but I did a lot of micromanaging. That's the job of a coach on the field - you have to see the bigger picture and provide low-level guidance to the driver and operator since they are completely absorbed just in driving the robot to do the little task you've given them.
I do agree that a few of the coaches are a bit too competitive, but I would say that's only a couple percent of them. The overwhelming majority were amazingly pleasant and helpful. They are the sort of person who'd give you the shirt off their back.
Finally, someone who understands what this is actually about. As you say, "free" broadcast signals aren't really free, they're encumbered by all sorts of restrictions such as private viewing only.
You forgot the most obvious question: who created the Creator?
Since science seems to be demonstrating that the universe runs itself, and the existence of a creator implies the above paradox, why not just declare the beginning of time and stuff to be an unknown/unknowable thing and move on?
The correct answer is, "Shut up and start praying for your salvation." Of course it doesn't make sense. That's the beauty of it. If it made sense, it wouldn't be so compelling. There's a great book about this subject called Religion Explained that lays out the brain's tendency to believe such a particular type of nonsense.
Better yet, they could change the background to be white instead of black by changing the reflective properties of the material behind the person, thereby allowing metal strapped to one's sides to stand out.
But I work on millimeter waves in my day job, so don't believe a word I say.
The price of data service is what I'm talking about. Right now, the providers can upgrade old-phone customers to pay $30 more per month for a data plan, and this boosts their revenue year over year. Eventually they'll run out of upgraders. That's when the pricing fun begins.
At some point, this market will reach saturation. Then the service providers will have to compete on something like price or service to keep market share up. Hopefully, this will be good for the users of these fine machines.