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And that's exactly why it bothers me personally when companies use my personal info to do "targeted advertising". They may not intentionally want to use my data in a manner which can cause me harm but by the same token their bottom line dictates they're not going to take all measures to keep it...

I still don't care for anything other than 4:3, even with modern PCs. I'm using an LG 20" 1600x1200 for my main monitor and a Viewera 19" 1280x1024 for my secondary monitor. The Viewera is actually 5:4 but that's close enough to 4:3 for me not to care. That said, I'll gladly join the 16:9 crowd...

It sounds like all of these drives stand a good chance of making past the 1 petabyte mark with flying colors. This test puts to rest any lingering worries I might have had about SSDs not being reliable. I already felt they were more reliable than spinning disks, but I had lingering worries about...

6.5°F and steady. Perfect day for the beach! I actually wished it would have dropped a few more degrees just to get below zero. When it's already way too cold to do much outside, a few degrees colder makes no difference.

13°F and windy as hell. That's a 10°F drop in under 2.5 hours. If it keeps falling this fast it'll be below zero by daybreak.

I hope there wasn't snow in New Delhi. That wouldn't be a very good sign. Temps are plummeting like a rock. It was in the mid 50s earlier today. Now it's down to 23°F and still falling fast.

Where I notice pixelation the most is when reading text. I often print out any .pdfs I read or refer to frequently simply because it causes eyestrain trying to read them on my monitor. When monitors get to the point that I can size a page to fit the screen, and read the smallest size text on the...

No thanks. That's even worse to me than the kind of weather Coug is having right now. Whatever minor complaints I may have when it gets colder outside than I find comfortable pale next to my complaints when it gets too hot. I can always add layers, but when it's hot I could run around stark...

So much for 4K not being available in smaller size monitors for a while! To say I'm thrilled is an understatement. It all depends on how close you sit to the monitor. I'm near-sighted and absolutely can't work at a monitor while wearing my glasses. Therefore, I typically sit about 15 or 16...

Same here. As much as I love colder weather, once you start getting into the teens or lower °F it starts to get brutal, especially the extremities. It's easy to keep your core warm, but fingers, toes, and ears are another story. My fingers are numb after riding 30 minutes once temps get into the...

First major winter storm here in the Northeast. Temps are supposed to be in the single digits F later. They're actually closing the Long Island Expressway and parts of the NYS Thruway.

The correct term is self-discharge. In general, li-ion cells don't self-discharge much, perhaps about 5% per month. Note that self-discharge is exponential. That means if a cell loses 5% a month, it will have 95% charge after a month, (0.95)² after two months, and (0.95)^12 = 54% after a year...

That's because 18650s are commonly used in laptops where both size and energy density matter. 26650s and larger cells are often used in applications where weight is the deciding factor (i.e. electric vehicles). A higher energy density 26650 will weigh proportionately more and therefore not...

LiFePO4 123s will work in any flashlight which uses primary 123s. The voltages are more or less the same. You lose about half the capacity compared to primary 123s, but you save a ton of money. Li-ion use a completely different charge algorithm-namely constant current/constant voltage. You...

Flashlights for the most part really aren't a great use of LiFePO4. The exceptions might be lights which use either AAs or 123s. Provided the light is compatible with higher voltage, a LiFePO4 AA (14500 size) usually offers more runtime even if it has less energy than AA cell. The reason is most...

Actually the larger sizes (i.e. 26650) have about 2/3rds the energy of state-of-the art li-ion. I have 26650s which are 3300 mAh @ 3.2V. The best LiCo 26650s I've seen are around 4400 mAh @ 3.7V. Granted, they don't work many standard li-ion chargers but I am seeing more and more chargers with...

You might get more cycles out of the cell but practically speaking most of the time Li-ion cells die from age, not cycling. Most decent li-ion cells are good for at least 500 cycles and/or 5 to 7 years, whichever comes first. Unless you cycle your cells every few days, you won't come anywhere...

Maybe it's just me, but it certainly doesn't seem to be an insurmountable issue to mount a supercap on the SSD controller board to power the SSD for the few seconds it might take to complete write operations after a power loss.

It seems that way with us also. We have Thanksgiving, my birthday (November 30), Christmas, New Year's, mom's birthday (January 20), brother's birthday (January 29), Valentine's Day (for those of us with a SO anyway). When dad was alive his birthday was October 2, which was close to everything...

Happy Holidays everyone! Best of all, now there's not one but two Santa trackers!

I question these numbers because they don't take into account the increased solar radiation pressure which would tend to push the planets away from the sun. The question is whether or not that will happen fast enough to keep the planet from warming appreciably. For what it's worth it wouldn't...

I had Windows '98 SE running on an old Pentium II motherboard upgraded with a 1.4 GHz slotkit and 1 GB of RAM. 1 GB is about the limit of what '98 can handle without issues. If I recall, I didn't need to patch anything to get it to use all that RAM but I may have needed to change some registry...

Actually, remembering things more clearly this was the early or mid 2000s right before he moved to Florida, not the mid 1990s. I already had several much better PCs when I got this museum piece, so it had to have been early to mid 2000s, not mid 1990s.

Buying a PC back in 1995. Yes, a 386 was considered obsolete back then as far as getting a new system, the 486 was the most popular CPU, and the Pentium was latest and greatest. I would imagine in 1998 a 386 might start to be consider somewhat dated, but it was still viable for lots of people...

The dates are accurate because the computers were all obtained second hand. I recall not having a whole lot of interest getting a PC back in the late 1980s when they were going for well over $3000 (that's probably well over $6000 in today's dollars). Just the RAM I put in the 386 would have cost...

I should also add that I have about a dozen other boxes ranging from 286s all the way up to circa 2006 stuff which I found dumpster diving. I don't use any of these boxes regularly, but I made some of them into working systems. I also have a complete "museum piece" 8086 PC with 640 KB of RAM and...

That's the kind of stuff I saw on Star Trek but never dreamed I would live long enough to see it actually happen. On the main topic, my first computer was an Amstrad something or other with a Z80 microprocessor and monochrome monitor running CP/M. It was basically a word processor which could...

Yep. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe. We'll certainly have more of it than we know what to do with once we start helium-3 mining on the moon and later in Jupiter's upper atmosphere.

A third alternative which may well be feasible by the time you might be in a position to build this would be a vacuum. For now, no materials strong enough exist to build a lightweight structure of that size capable of containing a vacuum without imploding but in a few decades who knows...

Join the club. Quite a few of the regulars here were born after or during the time I was in high school. Damn, I feel old...

I second staying with XP. Lack of OS support really doesn't matter once an OS becomes less popular. Most of the MS updates for XP are security updates. Now that Windows 7 and 8 are more popular hackers will focus on them, not XP. As for RAM, probably not much point going past 3 GB. XP and any...

I met Howell in 2004 IIRC. I've known apairofpcs since then also, and we've met in person many times. No snow last night but many potholes as usual. The good news is NYC is installing LED street lights everywhere by the end of 2017 so they'll be much easier to see.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone! :D

Here's a nice primer of the different types of lithium-ion chemistries: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/types_of_lithium_ion I'm personally a AA/AAA person myself. This is not only because these batteries are safe, but also because they are readily available. I only resort to...

I love this kind of out of the box thinking. If I ever hit it big financially I'll join you planning such a thing. Mine might be even more "out there" because I want to be able to reach very high altitudes. That might require a HUGE gas bag the size of a supertanker. Or perhaps a hybrid design...

I only have a few lights which use li-ion, and only one which takes 18650s. I use the "safer" IMR LiMn2O4 in that light. It's unprotected, but since this is a single cell direct drive light it's physically impossible to either overdischarge the cell or drive it into reverse polarity. For my...

My screen size ( 1600x1200 ) isn't there, either.

Either that, or Dave hates phone calls as much as I do. I'm fine giving my email as contact info since I can respond more or less on my own schedule. The "I want attention now" aspect of phone contact is one reason I avoid giving out my phone number except to people I know won't call me often...

Yes. You need to measure the DC current going to the LED string with a multimeter. In order to do that you need to open the wire going to the LEDs somewhere. You can also measure the voltage of the power supply, although this isn't that critical. The main thing is the current. Most LED ballasts...

The specs for those LED tapes say they use 12 volts and 2 amps. As you probably know, LEDs are constant current devices so we should focus on the current draw at 12 volts (it may well be 2 amps but I would measure it to be sure). Once you establish the drive current, there are LED ballasts which...

Maybe Merc could send him some Western Digital hard drives.

It's good to see some data on this, especially the part about wear-out failures. Now I wonder how many hours of running starting and stopping a drive is equivalent to? I tend to let my main desktop run 24/7, mostly on the theory that repeatedly turning it on and off is bad for the electronics...

I use a different methodology. If it's heavily advertised it may or may not be crap but it's probably grossly overpriced (i.e. most Apple products). If it's stupidly cheap it's almost certainly crap but very occasionally you'll get great products at bargain basement prices. If you want quality...

Same here. 4500K to 5000K is a good neutral tint for me. I really don't want anything warmer than that in a flashlight (or any other type of light for that matter). I love the high-CRI Nichia 219s in 4500K (5000K would be better but it doesn't seem to be available).

My 240GB Intel 330 has only 2.05 TB of writes of it after a bit over a year in service. It's looking like it'll last at least 100 years at that rate. I wonder if flash memory cells also degrade with time?

I actually like the singing suggestion but I hope nobody is within hearing distance. :oops: I already sometimes run my cadence up, and I'm on the tops 95% of the time because riding on the drops kills my hands and my back. I'll try your idea of upping the effort past my norms the next few rides...

It's normal for BP to increase slightly as you get older, and it shouldn't affect your health. Too many doctors go by readings and want 70 year olds to have the same BP as 20 year olds, then put them on pills if their BP is only a little high. And don't feel bad. I just took mine about 15...

Same situation here. $42 quadrillion in cash, and the reserves just started going down. From what I can determine, one star has enough production for roughly 2.88 billion dealers. At the rate my dealers are going up, I'll need to add one star every 30 minutes or so. And yes, these numbers are...

Actually, I was only able to hire about 10,000 master dealers before my hands hurt. And then I installed an autoclicker. Now I'm up to 4.2 billion dealers and hiring about 1.5 million per second. Yeah, there's no way you can physically play this game well without an autoclicker, even if you...

Just got the second page of upgrades and increased the maximum number of dealers to 999.9 trillion. YES! I should have have stupidly large amount of cash soon.