lylebarrere

I still wish they would clarify the language in their ads. When they say 'everything attached to your computer, all your external and internal drives completely unlimited for $5/month" they really should clarify they have no way to back up a NAS device.

They've been including the hardware in the cars since about 3 weeks before they first announced these features earlier this year.

I've been on it for years as well as the DNC database for caregivers of elderly patients with diminished capacity and I receive more than 5 calls per day.

The Do Not Call database in the US has never been effective because the type of company making these spammy calls doesn't care if they are breaking the law. There is no enforcement effort to track them down.

What is the power limit of POE? I don't see a reason to try to dim LEDs on AC or a reason to keep converting DC/AC/DC/AC so often. Wouldn't POE or a similar standard be better?

The response from Kristin Paget at Tesla:

"So there’s a few things at play here. For context, I run the Product Security team at Tesla and I’m safety-trained on the HV systems - I’m also working hands-on with a small drive inverter on a hobby project right now.

First and foremost, our large drive unit pulls about 1000A at full load, and switching that with silicon is tough. We use a bank of custom IGBTs on each of the high/low sides of each of the 3 rotor phases in order to handle the power, and that’s with active fluid cooling. You can switch that much current with silicon but it ain’t cheap, and you’ll need either active cooling or a bunch of thermal mass if you want the thing to switch more than once. http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/attachment.php... is a decent pic, the object on the left is a single-phase switch, you can see 6x transistors laying flat at the front for one side of the phase (the other bank is behind).

Secondly, Model S is an AC induction motor so the current through the winding ramps up more-or-less linearly over time until the phase switches off (or changes direction). You’re at high power but you’re not switching the load at zero-crossing as you would in a resonant load such as a Tesla coil, instead you have to switch at an increasing current depending on how much power you want to the wheels. You now don’t just have to switch a lot of power, you have to switch it FAST so that the resistive losses in the FETs don’t blow out the power channel due to ohmic losses. Your switch is now not just big and bulky, it’s complicated (since you need an additional HV supply) and pretty sensitive to things like stray capacitances. On the previous pic the big black brick on top of the PCB is the capacitor that dumps into the IGBT gates to make them switch fast enough.

Finally, I believe there’s a regulatory issue. I think I’m right in saying that automotive standards around the world require that all electrical systems are fused, and considering that there’s multiple separate power rails it’s not inconceivable that an event could take place that leaves the HV drive rail powered on but kills the 12V accessory rail that powers a lot of the CAN systems. You could end up disabling your active fuse while the HV system is still energized, and considering the amperage our lithium packs can deliver (P85D draws up to 1.5kA) that’s not going to end well.

Woz: I would LOVE to put you under a Tesla NDA and then give you a _real_ tour of the vehicle - ping me at kpaget@teslamotors.com if you’re interested. I’m curious, do you still have one of my RFID cloners on your shelf somewhere?"

I love freesound; been using it for years. Hopefully more people using it = more great sounds.

I do wish they'd have an easier way to credit people who request CC Attribution.

Do you have a source for that? I read the actual FCC announcement from FCC.gov and it says:

"Marriott employees had used containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system at the Gaylord Opryland to prevent individuals from connecting to the Internet via their own personal Wi-Fi networks, while at the same time charging consumers, small businesses and exhibitors as much as $1,000 per device to access Marriott's Wi-Fi network."

In your room or in the conference center you should be able to use your own Wi-Fi without interference.

Source: http://www.fcc.gov/document/marriott-pay-600k-resolve-wifi-b...

That's a half a billion dollars more transactions that will be on stripe instead of Amazon payments next year.

I wish the FCC could subpoena financial records and to see the price consumers pay for Wi-Fi and the total revenue Wi-Fi sales made for Marriott. I would be willing to bet those numbers would make it harder for Marriott to argue this is anything other than an attempt to gouge captive consumers.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has filed a criminal complaint against U.S. torture program architects and members of the Bush Administration. The organization has accused CIA director George Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of war crimes and they’ve called for a German prosecutor to conduct an immediate investigation.

Has there been a ruling on if the scanning creates a derivative work in New Zealand? The crazy argument in the US has been that the digital scanned copy is a new derivative work that gets copyright based on the scan date.

Frequently when I open a new app I need to do something with it immediately, but would like a chance to watch the on boarding information later. This is almost as useful as being able to access it inapp.

Yes and?

This only shows that Snowden was correct that internal channels were not effective at providing real oversight.

I'd be interested to see if the tech companies could push out something to their users to help educate them. Something similar to the news feed notification Facebook pushed out asking for donations to fight Ebola.

The real resource these companies have to use is the attention of their users, not money.

Thanks for the link. I checked the front page of their website, their blog and the Vimeo channel their new car walkthroughs and the model X announcement were on, I thought I checked the youtube page.

My point is more general, they are missing an opportunity to turn these product announcements into as much of a event as they possibly can and vastly increase their visibility.

Update: I show the video having been posted on October 10th. The event and my comment were on October 9th. Their blog post is also on the 10th and starts with "Yesterday we...".

They are missing an opportunity making the resources available the following day, a Friday (take out the trash day) when news viewership numbers are way down.

I am surprised that they did not stream the announcement or immediately put it up for viewing. I think they have the opportunity to turn their announcements into as much of an event as Apple does.

Certainly the amount of hype they got from Elon's tweet shows that people are paying attention, I bet there are people clamoring for Tesla news in the same way people are clamoring for Apple news.

There is more data, thought and science in this than in many journal articles I've read.

Is this the same DRM over HTML5 that was discussed a few months ago or is this another fragmented DRM?

I found the points about Robert Oppenheimer and Nelson Mandela being on terrorism watch lists to make a particularly good argument for their potential flaws.

It makes the need for good Judicial Oversight readily apparent.

That's a great idea. Thanks for the suggestion.

I wish the monochrome icon for Dropbox would do a better job showing me when the app is syncing or in sync. That's the only reason I still have the color icon.

This is much better than the other FDA story today where the FDA declared walnuts a medicine because a manufacture made the factual statement "Omega-3 Fatty Acids found in walnuts have been shown to have health benefits."

http://www.fda.gov/iceci/enforcementactions/warningletters/u...

Most of the US position has been set by large lobby groups. They're the only one who have been allowed access to the negotiations or draft text until this leek.

This is probably more high level academic analysis than the TPP has had in the previous two years of negotiations, and it shows why open access to the treaty can provide great benefit to both the people negotiating it and the people who will be governed by it.

Another example of why all previous versions of software should be made available to customers.

T-mobile has been doing a lot of interesting things. They don't default to 2 year contracts anymore, they offer 200 mb free data per month for tablets, and their phones are SIM unlocked.

It appears that most of these things aren't actually necessary and T-mobile is pulling back the curtain to show what ATT/Verizon are doing.

Because locking the phone to their SIM card means that the carriers can charge international travelers enormous rates for minutes and data rather than just putting a local sim card into the phone in each country.

Using potential energy to store electricity is nothing new. Many hydroelectric damns pump water to a high reservoir when there is excess electricity generated to store it, and let it fall to a low reservoir when more is needed.

EDIT: See wikipedia link explaining it, with examples. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectric_energy_storage