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Comment by thot_experiment | Hacker News Reader

I have a crazy idea that would vastly improve modern laptop design. You would build in some sort of a reversible conduit interrupt device (may be lost tech but I hear rumors that it's possible) that would allow the end user to disconnect the battery. This would solve the #1 problem with laptops which is that sometimes I need to use the laptop and it's out of battery because it decided to turn itself on in my bag.

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One thing that would go a long way would be the return of S3.

This. It seems to me that nowadays, you can either have a well-behaved older machine or a Ryzen-equipped mobile powerhorse that will glitch every now and then.

Unfortunately for me, recent AMD's offerings have greatly decreased the attractiveness of older laptops. But be warned, you gotta take the good with the bad and accept that a modern laptop might wake up at any time (even when stored in your bag).

I could perhaps tolerate the wakeup, but it should notice it's in the backpack with a lid closed sensor and a thermometer and maybe go to sleep again instead of trying to melt itself and set the car or house on fire? Just throwing out this million-dollar idea for free here.

Microsoft and Intel are telling us we're holding it wrong. Laptops and PCs should behave like smartphones.

The irony is that an Android tablet---about as smartphone-like as you can get with a laptop-sized display---never has heating problems while sleeping.

I've had bouts of battling hot laptop bags. It's almost always been software other than Microsoft or Intel causing the device to wake and start chugging away heavily. Usually some misconfigured security tool or bad drivers constantly sending wake events.

Personally I really like having my device automatically connect to the Wi-Fi when I get to the office, reconnect VPN, get chat and email synced, get ssh sessions reconnected, etc all before I even unlock the machine. It's a great feature IMO, just every now and then there's some boneheaded app that decides 9am is the time to wake the machine and scan every file modified in the last several weeks regardless of the current power state.

IMHO if Microsoft wanted this it is clearly them to blame. It is a bit like going back to the MS-DOS era where applications should behave as there was no memory protection.

The simple/partial solution is: if the system is in S0ix (modern standby) state then under no circumstances it is allowed to get warmer than some reasonable temperature (i.e. 36°C / 97°F) - a fan should absolutely never spin up.

That is clearly on Microsoft and Intel to omit such an obvious limitation.

The problem usually isn't that its heating up while in that sleep state, the problem is applications then request to change the current state to a higher power state.

Sure, keep S0ix in a low enough power state that it can easily be passively cooled and not allow it to get high enough. What's to stop that av software to once again decide "S0ix? Nah, need to scan NOW, WAKE UP!!!". If there's any way to change these states in software, the apps causing hot bags today will just move to call that instead.

I would argue it is still a problem with the sleep state if it is allowed to be changed by software without restrictions. If the user decided to put his machine in the S0ix state there should be no way other than opening the lid or pushing a button to change it. Maybe there could be a hatch to allow the user to select what has higher privileges. I would worry that the corporate mandate would make all kinds of things in there, so I would vote against that. In general either you fit inside the state or you do not get a ride.

Ok, we limit it to only lid open events. So I'll just register my app as a laptop lid driver and emit a lid open event.

AFAIU not every app can be a driver and most probably no app you installed without administrator rights. There could also be an easy restriction that there can be only one lid open driver or limited to the manufacturer. There are lots of things that could be tried and I will not excuse a billion dollar company that mandates S0ix in the first place.

I guess also that most things that do wake the computer up aren't really doing anything fancy, but Windows just is too nice for them.

Are there any current laptop models with S3? Desktop?

That’s only started to happening in the last few years. Before 2015 laptops had good manners - when they were told to shut down, they kept being shut down.

I thought I was alone with that problem. Do you know what the culprit is? What keeps randomly waking up modern laptops?

It's so stupid, too. There is exactly one single case when I want my laptop to wake up with the lid closed: when I plug in the dock. Every single other case where it wakes up with the lid closed is a bug in my eyes.

Its the removal of S3 sleep states from the BIOS/ACPI tables.

Now the processor is kept powered on (in a low power state) but any poorly written driver or software can jolt the machine back into a higher power state and superheat your backpack.

Intel's rationale is that PC's should function like smartphones and you should be able to stay connected and receive notifications while asleep. I'm not convinced.

I think that's actually MS who wants that. I'm not sure there's anyone other than them who's convinced.

Fortunately I moved fully remote when COVID started so this hasn't been a problem and also switched to a mac last year - macs seem to be well behaved in this matter.

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