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In other words, they engineer in planned obsolescence and/or assume price is the only thing important to people. I'd rather pay somewhat more for something I'll know will last a lifetime (or at least be easily repairable) than buy what is essentially a throw-away product. Unfortunately, it seems...

My friend set up my MS account using his cell phone. I'm good now. MS Office is installed and working.

When you type in all the info and click create account it takes you to another page where you hit send code. When I do that, I get the message We cannot send a text message to this number.

I'm not seeing any option for that on the setup page.

This kind of account Yes, I'm aware of Libre Office. My friend has been bugging me to get Office 365 since I started my newest consulting gig last year due to the fact the company deals with tons of Office documents.

I was given Office 365 as a birthday gift by a friend of mine. Unfortunately, when I tried to install it I only got as far as starting to set up a Microsoft account. Microsoft wanted a phone number so they could send a text message to verify my identity. I only have a voice-only VOIP phone...

Assuming you have some way to power this, it could of course be scaled up to 20 modules, 50 modules, etc. For the time being I'm ordering 16 emitters-12 for your light, 4 for mine. We won't hit the price break for 25 pieces this time, but who knows in the future?

Figure about 8 amps per module. In theory that battery might be able to power all 12 modules but you'll get 3 minutes run time if you're lucky. I'd probably recommend getting as many batteries as you can afford to maximize run time. I can connect as many or as few modules per battery as you...

I thought this might be of some general interest. We've all been buying USB drives for a long time. Usually their capacity seems to be exactly as advertised, or sometimes a slight amount less. For example, I have a pair of these I bought last year which are 127,968,411,648 bytes total capacity-a...

We got our first HDTV in 2004. It was a 720P 30" TV. My mom bought her 40" 1080P TV is 2007 I think. Once TWC had enough content available in HD I didn't even want to watch anything in SD any more. Despite their crappy HD encoding it's still a world of difference. At this point I'll venture to...

Quite a collection for 3 days of shopping. I like most of your choices, also.

Would I be able to download it also or just watch it? I definitely would want to see Avatar in real 1080p, as opposed to the compressed stuff TWC transmits.

I'm surprised Avatar isn't there. That might be at the top of my list for movies which would be worthwhile watching in 3D and/or 4K.

I think that's the case. I've seen product listings with far worse descriptions than that.

The adjustable voltage would be the maximum the output reaches under no load conditions, or when the current is less than the constant current setting. Since these emitters are ~35V @ 2.7A, maybe I would adjust the output under no load to slightly more, perhaps 36V. Unless the emitter fails, the...

Regulators and optics ordered, 20 pieces of each.

What about the problem with drives floating away? :D Did they add some ballast to prevent that?

I'm ordering the regulators today since they'll probably take ~10 days to get here from China. I'll order 20 for now. Later this week, or early next, I'll order the emitters and other parts. The number will depend upon how much interest there is in having me build these beyond what me and Dave...

Not sure much can go wrong here. I've already dealt with the power levels these things will use from years of playing with thermoelectrics. Heat output and heat sinking requirements are similar. As for the light output, it's certainly not intense enough to start fires, at least not unless I'm...

For anyone who might be on the fence about having me make one for them, remember the design is modular. We can have as few modules as you want and the cost and size will be proportionately less (maybe ~$100 per module plus batteries). For example, a 1 module light might comfortably fit on a...

I thought that might be in Russia. I don't think there's much snow where Dave lives, much less 34" in late November.

I have no plans to aim it at anything in the sky. In NYC especially that's likely to bring a SWAT team to my door in short order.

From my observation of the light this project was inspired by in this thread: In concept this reminds me of the former Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba. It worked, but in the end it was far too powerful to be of any practical use. Same thing here. As to the purpose, for me anyway it'll be if I need...

My guess is when the prices get close. The only reason CFL still exists at this point is because it costs less than LED. I'd say within 2 or 3 years that advantage will be lost. I've noted now when I buy emitters they're less costly than even 6 months ago. As efficiency continues to rise, the...

My bank gives out the Experian score each month. Mine was 824 last month. Highest I've had since they've been doing this has been 828.

I've always had a bit of trouble understanding people who like to sleep in a cold room. I like cold weather when I'm awake, especially when I'm active. When I sleep however, I like the immediate area around me to be warm. I've been known to keep windows open for fresh air, but at the same time...

Probably about 90%, or 90 watts. Here's a good read on the subject. They give numbers from 2% to 13% efficient, depending upon the type and wattage of the bulb. 100 watt bulbs are about 10% efficient, 40 and 60 watt bulbs closer to 7.5%. Of course, these numbers are miserable compared to any...

Yes, because small differences in efficiency can translate to large differences in heat output. A 100 watt equivalent CFL might use about 24 watts to put out 1600 lumens. 1600 lumens with a CFL spectrum is maybe 5 watts of light energy. Therefore, the CFL puts out about 19 watts of heat. I've...

Yes but not all LEDs are made equal. A high bin Cree running at 350 mA will probably put out 60% light, and only 40% heat. The LEDs used in this project were only about 90 lm/W at the current he was driving them at. A rough rule of thumb I use is efficiency = lumens per watt / 300. You might use...

You could probably make it a lot more compact with a fan-forced heat sink. In fact, if you do the math you have 1000 watts input, about 700 watts waste heat. If you want to keep the temperature under maybe 60°C and the ambient is 25°C, you need a heat sink with a thermal impedance of...

I've heard of hub motors for EVs. I know they already exist for electric bicycles. Technically speaking, such cars wouldn't have either a transmission or gearing.

I didn't even know 200GB microSD cards existed until I read this thread.

Same here. Between my latest consulting gig, plus having to do most of the chores associated with running the house since my mom can't, I'm not left with a whole lot of free time. I did get these on eBay recently, and spent a few hours playing with them. Might be useful for making a small...

Here's a copy and paste of the entire post. The pictures are from 2004. I've since added white LED interior lighting (which is made with early 2000s LEDs which I will eventually update). Overview of the entire chamber: Here's the chamber part in case anyone is curious (inside measures...

Unless you want to tinker just for the sake of tinkering, it's probably more cost effective to just buy a Peltier fridge. Maybe about 20 years ago I spent a serious amount of time building a Peltier-based temperature chamber for electronic testing. Now of course I could downsize the electronics...

I was thinking the same thing. $10 or less about the most I would spend on an LED bulb. I will however spend a lot more than that if the situation calls for something besides a standard screw-base bulb. I spent ~$150 for 6 high-CRI LED tubes in my workroom. I've also made a number of custom jobs.

I'm sure they will for quite some time. It's not like SATA is going anywhere anytime soon. The funny thing years ago on storagereview I predicted once non-volatile RAM became cheap enough to make solid state drives, storage would end up taking the same route as RAM, where you basically have...

My understanding is quite a few LED bulbs work well with old-style dimmers. You just need to get something which says on the package it will work with a triac dimmer.

I read all the posts here but I'm still trying to square away what you're seeing with my experience, namely that the LED bulbs I've tried don't seem much brighter than an equivalent CFL. Anyway, some of my theories: 1) An LED spectrum is far less spiky than a CFL spectrum, even if the CRI...

Probably already tried the finger in the fan thing. It hurt, so she won't be trying it again any time soon.

Same here. Only job where I had insurance was as a taximeter technician for 2 years. What was offered was next to worthless. Basically, it was catastrophic coverage. If you landed in a hospital you had decent coverage. Otherwise, it was pretty much out of pocket. Since then I've been an...

Most insurance plans don't give you much money for teeth. At best they cover annual cleanings and maybe a few cavities. Anything more extensive than that, you're on your own. The good thing is dental work is still relatively affordable. Even a lot of dental work still only costs single digit...

Well, at least one automaker besides Tesla realizes this. However reprehensible VW's conduct here is, the fact remains emissions standards will be increasingly hard to meet. At some point it makes more sense to just say, screw it, we're done with internal combustion engines, than to spend...

Mom had the treatment. It didn't last. My sister had it, too. The verdict is still out there but the doctors billed the insurance company for something like $50K. I pretty much know what I need to do to keep it from getting worse. So far I'm still functional. Thankfully most of my work these...

You're right about catastrophic coverage. The thought of getting hit by a car while walking or biking has crossed my mind. I'll have to look into it. On the subsidized health insurance, I'm aware of that, and may apply once my present consulting gig ends. Right now I'm making six figures and...

I appreciate the concern here but my rationale is most of the things a physical might catch are either untreatable and/or too costly to treat. Cancer comes to mind. Yes, you can catch some types of cancer early, but the treatments these days are mostly still hit or miss, the cancer usually comes...

Haven't been to one in about four years but I'm not feeling any problems in my mouth like chipped teeth or pain. I should probably go soon, if for no other reason than to get a cleaning. The doctor is another story. Last time I had a checkup was when DD was born. I don't trust that doctors will...

I think the issue is advocating driving your car to its physical limits on public roads, as opposed to just appreciating the extra margin of safety having more cornering ability allows in case of an emergency. Or to make a good analogy, what you do is more like carrying a gun for protection. You...

I want to say for me personally I can't see pixelation above around 300 dpi. Perfect 8K monitor for me then might be about 25" to 27" (also the size which would physically fit on my desk). That said, I can easily live with the same size 4K monitor. I barely notice any pixelation.

I'm pretty sure remote reading won't work in a car despite the glass. Five people (with 5 licenses?) would make reading even more difficult. There are uses for RFID but I don't think a driver's license is a good application.