Tag: Technology

Random Thought

Drive Time, Technology

I know, I know… everyone’s going crazy about Elon’s Flyeeen Car and how cool it is, and people are already lining up to buy second-floor parking spaces in downtown Manhattan etc. etc. etc.

And let’s be honest, this is pretty cool:

I do, however, have one thought that nobody seems to have addressed yet.  And that is:

Let’s assume that before the Flying Tesla took off on its groundbreaking run, before it got to 60mph in under a second — before all that, its little Duracell battery was at 100% charge.

Now after zooming up that ramp, performing a slow roll and slowly descending back to Earth, landing back on its wheels…

…how much charge was left in its battery?

I think we should be told.

One Small Step

Surveillance Society

…and about time, too:

A federal judge in Oklahoma has ruled that a law enforcement officer violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by searching her vehicle’s history through Flock Safety’s license-plate reader network without obtaining a warrant first.

The decision, which was issued by U.S. District Judge Sara Hill, marks one of the most significant legal challenges to Flock’s expanding surveillance system. 

The ruling does not establish a nationwide legal precedent, but it could give momentum to growing concerns over how police departments use automated license-plate databases to track people’s movements.

The case began when a Tulsa County sheriff’s deputy searched Flock’s database for a California-registered vehicle. 

According to the court, the deputy had no clear investigative justification for running the plate other than the fact that the vehicle was from California.

Yeah, let’s just sniff around under any number of rocks to see what we can find.  Asshole.

You know, when a cop whacks a choirboy / Commie or arrests a pedophile, I’m almost always on the side of the police.  But when they start snooping around in a person’s private life, my position changes 180 degrees, also almost every time.

I’m just glad this little anti-Flock step has been taken.  Let’s hope there are more, much more until the whole fucking shitshow crumbles into dust.

Simple Stuff

Old Fartism, Technology

Earlier on, I discussed technology and how it’s turned “nice to have” into “unless you have it, the thing won’t work”, such as the episode where Samsung fridges bricked because of a crappy “update”.

[brief 250,000-word rant deleted]

Now we’re always talking about appliances like fridges that last for yonks without breaking down, but I am reminded of one old stalwart that I used for (rough guess) about ten years before I got talked into something more “advanced” (to my everlasting regret).

Well, it wasn’t a fairy tale.

Take a bow, the venerable HP500 Deskjet:

I have no idea how many thousands of pages I printed using this old dot-matrix warhorse — remember, back then we couldn’t send any document of size through Teh Emailz, so we had to print stuff out and mail it (or hand-carry it) to the intended recipient’s office.

My memory is hazy after all these years — was it 2001 when I finally stopped using it?  I know it was post Y2K, because I was assured that it would not be affected by Teh Y2K Disaster!!! and carried on relying on it until the panic passed).  But honestly, I could probably count the number of printer jams on the fingers of two hands, no more.

Yeah, the quality wasn’t up to much.  But let’s face it:  how many times do you actually need photographic quality on your printer’s output anyway?  (In my case, it would be “hardly ever”.)

I’m telling you, right now I would be perfectly content with that HP500, even though it has no BlooToof™ connection and I’d have to plug it into my laptop every time I wanted to print something… which would be about twice a month, tops.

Of course, it would need a different cable connector because there’s no room for a 36-pin plug on the Lenovo, but I’m sure some geek could slap one together for me in about half an hour.  And I’m not sure that HP (or anyone else) even makes the ink cartridges anymore, either.

Whenever I think about the HP500, by the way, I’m reminded of this example of simple, rugged utility:

1969 VW Beetle

I’d probably be quite contented with this old thing too, even though like the HP500 it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Cursed Modernity™ either.  OMG!!!  No electric windows, no automatic transmission, no ECM, no power steering, no anti-lock brakes, no remote disabling, no spy system (ADR), no “lane assist” and no “parking camera” (okay, I wouldn’t mind the last one too much, but it would be a simple aftermarket addition).

What it does come with:  simple and inexpensive maintenance, low fuel consumption and a full-size spare tire.

Translate the above into printer-speak:  hardly any maintenance, low ink usage, plentiful and cheap cartridge supply and an as-needed cable plug.  VW Beetle, meet HP500 Deskjet printer.

Go on, mock me I dare you.

Upgrades

Technology

Via Insty, this little gem:

Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update
bricks Samsung smart fridges

Affected fridges “suddenly lost power and stopped functioning immediately after” trying to issue a firmware update through SmartThings, Samsung’s smart home platform, per Star News Korea. The SmartThings app then showed the devices as offline. Some users said that their fridge’s internal display was stuck showing the message “Checking SmartThings app during update.”

There are numerous reports on Samsung’s Korean community forum detailing the problem. Some users claim that they have owned their affected fridge for just a year or less.

“[T]he refrigeration and refrigeration functions themselves did not work normally, so all the food in the refrigerator had to be disposed of,” one user wrote.

Of course, Samsung says that this only affected Korea — like it could never happen anywhere else.  Uh huh.

Here’s where all this technology — in appliances, cars, whatever — cocks things up.  What has happened is that “must-have” has been largely replaced by “nice to have”, and in the nature of the human condition, a lot of “nice to have” things have become “must-have”.  Let’s use fridges as an example.

Must have:  maintain a constant temperature that cools or freezes foods.  This is the sine qua non of any refrigerator.

Nice to have:  a means whereby one may control the temperature (initially, by a manual dial inside / outside the refrigerator), and by extension, a means of notifying the customer when the fridge stops working — e.g. the little light inside doesn’t turn on when the door is opened.

So when the above “nice to have” slowly transforms away from the manual / visual of the fridge itself into “you can now check your fridge’s condition on your phone” (to give but one example), all sorts of failure points are introduced into the process.  And that’s the simplest one I can think of;  but of course it doesn’t stop there, does it?

Anyway, I can see that at some point you will no longer be able to get a simple fridge like the one your Mom had in her kitchen.  Oh no:  you’ll only be able to get one that tells you the time, sets variable temperatures inside the fridge by drawer, tells you when the icemaker level drops below a certain point, and so on and so on.  All very nice to know, but nowhere close to being “must-have”.  (It will also cost three times the amount that a basic fridge used to, and will yield five times the profit to the manufacturer, which is your answer right there.)

And when the upgrades come along (why?), and the whole thing falls over, you’ll be left in the same predicament as the hapless Korean restaurateurs.

I can dream, can’t I?

Flock News Update

Asshole Cops, Surveillance Society

Here we go again:

Columbus police have paused their use of Flock automatic license plate readers after an officer was accused of searching the same plate more than 270 times over roughly 14 months.

The Columbus Dispatch reports that Mayor Andrew Ginther called the allegations against the officer “deeply troubling” in comments made this week as the city moved to immediately halt use of the cameras and cover them with bags to prevent further data collection. The city will also audit all Flock searches conducted by Columbus police, and City Council is drafting legislation to govern how the cameras can be used going forward.

Considering that these godless fucking snooping devices seem to be all over the United States, I think it’s time for federal legislation — it’s too big an issue to be left to municipalities and even states to address.

And I absolutely hate the feds to get involved in anything, except where Constitutional principles are involved — like here.