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Hey!
Less of the "old!" 
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Users of Google search on desktops may have noticed a slight change over the last week and that change is affecting what they perceive as an ad. This represents a further blurring of the lines between ads and organic sources in search. All of them?
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DigiDay said: after Google made its mobile search changes, mobile click-through rates increased 17% to 18% for two companies
They probably see this as a great triumph, but it's still a scum-sucking scam, and pure misrepresentation.
This is something where the Advertising Standards Authority should get involved.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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The authors present a coating for electronics that releases water vapor to dissipate heat from running devices -- a new thermal management method that could prevent electronics from overheating and keep them cooler compared to existing strategies. Smells like high performance computing
I'm sure that extra water around the devices will have no bad effects.
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Jeeze, I thought the article would be about water-cooling for power tools, heavy stuff in well-ventilated environments, or something, but it starts right in talking about phones!
Great, yeah, I really want a sweaty phone in my pocket.
Besides, mammals don't only sweat, to regulate body temperature; the vast majority of them express excess heat by changing their breathing patterns -- so why not use something that gets rid of excess heat by increasing air convection, like, I dunno, a fan, or something?
Creating conduction patterns, so that heat could be "guided" out through earphone sockets, or other highly conductive elements on a phone's exterior, would be a trivial design matter -- if phones still had earphone sockets, that is. Guiding heat out through a charging port would be as ill-advised as letting the phone sweat all over the charging port.
But the best way to keep your phone cool is by not playing games on it for five minutes, ya lazy buggers! Put the damned things down and get some work done!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Other animals, like iguanas, regular their heat with fins. Little razor blades that spring out of the side of the phone would help restrict usage to a reasonable length of time.
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That would also make a good spectator sport.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Modern 'smart' hardware now comes with hidden expiration dates that encourage waste, piss off consumers, and put the entire internet at risk. This blurb will no longer be available after June 6, 2079
Unless Chris renews his subscription to the blurbbot 3000.
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MB wrote: for a program Sonos claims was designed to minimize environmental impact.
Actively bricking a working (and paid for) product does not yell "minimizing environmental impact"; it will mean more dumping of e-waste in Africa.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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It also looks like a lawsuit waiting begging to happen.
Any lawyers out there? 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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There are two odd things here
If an update is sent to enter recycle mode, then they sent will be sending updates.
But if the code already exists in the software, then that is planned obsolescence, which is kinda illegal is a bunch of places.
Either way, the email should not have included "This will affect your listening experience".
How exactly will not getting updates affect listening experience? Sure if I get a new phone and is not compatable. Gosh, here i was wonder why analogue audio jack lasted so long when we have had optical audio for decades? 
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If I, as the manufacturer, say that "You can have 30% discount on the new stuff if you let me wipe out the flash memory holding all the software in your old stuff, making it ready for recycling", is that "planned obsolence" as well - the ability to wipe out your flash? If any device allowing the flash to be wiped out is "illegal", then the great majority of all modern devices are illegal.
When you connect to the internet (or the mobile network, or whatever) to have your smartphone updated, or your camera lens, or your TV set, that is a flash update. (Strictly speaking it may be another technology that behaves similar to flash.) The updated code may very well be that which disables your device, by wiping out all or parts of the flash, or disabling some functions. No earlier preparations for is is required, beyond providing the ability to accept software updates.
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Disclaimer: I never owned any Sonos product, so my understanding of how they operate is based on what I have heard from others.
If I got it right:
There is nothing whatsoever that forces you to "brick" your Sonos gear. You may continue to use it for as long as you like; it will continue to operate as it does today. Certainly, it won't have regular upgrades forever - nor does my lawn mower, my hammer or my bathroom mirror. I am not ditching those.
If what you want is to get yourself a new and exiting this year's model with all the new bells and whistles, there is nothing whatsoever forbidding you to do that. You can put your old Sonos into a box in the attic, or maybe continue using it in the den in your basement.
If you want to cover part of the cost of a new system by selling you old Sonos to someone else, you can do that, too. The new owner can continue using it just the way you would have done if you hadn't been insisting on new bells & whistles.
At least here in Norway, all of that was fully accepted. The problem is that Sonos said: We will give you a 30% discount on the new system if you send your old one to a recycling center. But the customers screamed out: We want those 30% discount without having to recycle anything! If we want to sell the old stuff at 20% of the cost of the new one, so that we get the new stuff at half price, all in all! If we want to stuff it away without recycling it, we still want that 30% discount! (Well, Sonos are not demanding that we recycle, but we want that stuff in our attic to be fully usable at any time, and Sonos won't let us.)
For the envionmental impact: I believe that Norway is in the forefront with regard to recycling. For at least 25 years, any store selling electric and electronic products are by law required to accept the return, at no cost to the customer, of the same group of product as they sell. If you sell radios and TVs, anyone may leave their old TV set at your store. The amount of electric/electronic waste recycled is on the average around 30 kg (60 ponds) per person per year. (For the USA, that would be ten million tons of electric/electronic waste a year).
In our homes, we have a separate box for used batteries, lightbulbs and other kinds of "special handling" waste. We have three garbage bins: For plastics, for paper and "the rest". The return percentage of (all!) plastic bottles are in the mid nineties, and the same for aluminum cans. You can fill up your car with all sorts of waste and drive it to the dump: There, experts will help you find the right on of the 12-15 bins for your waste: Metals, glass, pure wood, paper, organic garden waste, ... For a few things requiring special manual handling, there is a small fee (like chemicals, plastic wrapped(!) asbestos etc.), but we are talking about maybe ten USD, maybe twenty. You won't be ruined by it.
And we do not ship e-waste to Africa. Statistics show that 62% of it was processed here in Norway, another 32% in our neighbour country Sweden, 4% in Germany.
The "e-waste problem" is found in the basements and attics of people. In one survey, about 70% of those asked confirm that they have non-functioning electronics (phones, PCs, ...) laying around that they just haven't gotten around to return for recycling. (And I suspect that 30% are in the same situation without knowing/admitting it...)
So if you just get your old Sonos to a recycling station, and get the new stuff at 30% discount, I don't think the situation is that bad, neither for your bank account nor for the environment.
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Member 7989122 wrote: For at least 25 years, any store selling electric and electronic products are by law required to accept the return, at no cost to the customer, of the same group of product as they sell
That has been normal here for a few years too; complemented by a EU-law that states that for each product a producer would need to be able to supply spare-parts for at least 10 years after they stop selling it.
Member 7989122 wrote: We will give you a 30% discount on the new system if you send your old one to a recycling center. But the customers screamed out: We want those 30% discount without having to recycle anything!
That wasn't very obvious from the first part of the article; it reeked of planned obsolesence. Something that wouldn't be surprising, since Apple does the same.
Member 7989122 wrote: And we do not ship e-waste to Africa. Statistics show that 62% of it was processed here in Norway, another 32% in our neighbour country Sweden, 4% in Germany.
It's not like the Netherlands is shouting that we ship our waste to Africa; there's noble recycling-companies doing the work here.
Member 7989122 wrote: The "e-waste problem" is found in the basements and attics of people.
For Norway, perhaps. Aw, and;
Norwegians 'worst' for dumping electrical waste[^]
Plus;
What is my phone doing in Africa? | Oslo European Green Capital 2019[^]
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Plus; What is my phone doing in Africa?
I guess that seminar was, at least in part, spurred by the large number of waste thefts the last couple of years. Last year, a large band of waste thiefs was arrested; they had been hauling e-waste and other metals to African countries (mostly). This is strictly forbidden by Norwegian laws, but acts of criminals. When caught, they are imprisoned (or in smaller cases, fined).
All of the European Union has similar laws. You are not allowed to export any waste to any country that cannot prove that they do proper recycling of it, according to fairly strict rules. Thievery of waste is a well known problem in many countries, but that does not make it legal. It most certainly is not a part of the "official" recycling system; authorities fight against it.
Yes, we do produce a lot of e-waste in Norway. Far too much. But we do have an "official" recycling system that is working quite well. And once it is into the recycling mill, the fraction of materials actually recycled is surprisingly high. I don't have the figures at hand, but for electronics, the percentage is well into the 80s; the residue is also used, but generally as a filling material, not reused in its original function (the way you can do with e.g. metals).
Norwegians 'worst' for dumping electrical waste[^]: "Less than one-sixth of all e-waste was properly recycled, the report said."
- that must refer to worldwide figures (as suggested by the paragraph that follows), not to Norway. The figures quoted for Norwegian e-waste matches quite well what is being recycled; there is not five times as much not being recycled. Also, there is a continous pressure for increasing both the percentage recycled and improving the technologies for extracting usable materials from the collected waste. About two years ago, they doubled the deposit you make when buying anything in an aluminum can or a bottle, to make more people return them to reclaim their deposit: A return percentage 87,3% of all cans and 88,6% of bottles was considered not good enough. E-waste is, of course, a different matter, but you see the same trend there as well: The return percentage is rising, and the utilization of the waste is improving.
Bottom line: If you return your 10-15 year old Sonos unit to a proper recycling point, environmental concers are not a valid argument for going to war against Sonos.
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Member 7989122 wrote: I guess that seminar was, at least in part, spurred by the large number of waste thefts the last couple of years. Last year, a large band of waste thiefs was arrested; they had been hauling e-waste and other metals to African countries (mostly). This is strictly forbidden by Norwegian laws, but acts of criminals. When caught, they are imprisoned (or in smaller cases, fined).
That's a nice way of saying that those aren't companies, but criminals 
Member 7989122 wrote: All of the European Union has similar laws. You are not allowed to export any waste to any country that cannot prove that they do proper recycling of it, according to fairly strict rules.
I've been to Norway, and I was amazed at the amount of respect for the law there. Some places don't lock their letterbox, police not carrying guns.
Of course the Netherlands has strict laws. And of course, the laws are "gamed". A few fines aren't going to change that.
Member 7989122 wrote: About two years ago, they doubled the deposit you make when buying anything in an aluminum can or a bottle, to make more people return them to reclaim their deposit
Yes, we should have that too; here they can be found along the roads and even in the little forest we have.
Member 7989122 wrote: Bottom line: If you return your 10-15 year old Sonos unit to a proper recycling point, environmental concers are not a valid argument for going to war against Sonos.
I'm not advocating a war against Sonos 
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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now we know where not to buy speakers from...
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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Well, I never would have expected a US corporation to be a greedy, amoral f***er!
It beggars belief!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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The title is patently false.
As for obsoleting tech, how is this different than VCRs and DVDs and 8-track tapes becoming obsolete? And no, I don't agree with so-called "planned obsolescence" either (it's not clear that is what Sonos is doing).
And I guess it's immoral then to give a 30% discount on new tech if you recycle your old tech? Gee, I wish I'd been able to do that with my VCRs and DVDs when I upgraded to DVDs and Blue-Ray.
And how 'bout them TVs, eh? Why wasn't I able to "upgrade" my tube-TV and get a discount on my LED digitial TV?
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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The tech isn't outdated; their bloatware just got too bloated for it.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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LOL. Still not "evil".
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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The evil is that they hire "new programmers" rather than "older" ones*.
* Looking up the reference would be much too much like hard work, so I'll just hope you get it.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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It doesn't come as a surprise to anyone that it's hard to get parts for your Model T Ford these days, the thing came out in 1908 and nobody would really expect a car to last for over a century. Nobody is really blaming Ford for no longer producing replacement parts.
The Model T was produced for the best part of 20 years and presumably parts were freely available for a good while after the last one rolled off the production line in 1927, so it isn't hard to imagine early adopters running their cars from 1908 through to the 1930's and beyond.
A few decades on, cars just don't last that long. Not necessarily because they're less well made but because new features (whether they be for safety, comfort, performance, emissions or whatever else) come along with increasing rapidity and often become expected and/or legally required. Yesterday's bonus features become today's "must-haves".
Now if someone tried to fit 40 years worth of motoring innovations into an old Ford Cortina, they'd pretty soon realise that it would be a bit of a struggle to integrate anything more advanced than a seat-belt because the framework simply wasn't built to anticipate the "mod cons" of the future.
Is that Ford's fault? No. You can't really blame people for a lack of precognition.
So what have Ford done about it? Well, they'll take your old car and recycle it in exchange for a discount on a contemporary model. They've been doing it for years. Does anyone complain about this? Does anybody say "You should be giving me a 100% discount as I bought this thing in perfectly good faith in 1972?" It seems a pretty reasonable thing to do and no-one has been making a fuss about it.
Then someone in the electronics business does something similar - "keep using the old one of you like or chop it in for a discount on the new state-of-the-art model if you'd prefer that" - and they're public enemy number 1. Go figure ...
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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Exactly the sort of thing I was thinking. Same goes for cassette tapes, 8-track tapes, VCRs and DVDs.
Plus the title is absolutely false and the author must have known it.
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Not to speak of video from the moon landing...
Brief summary for those who don't know the story: When the last-of-a-kind video tape player capable of playing the video tapes from the Apollo 11 moon landing was to be ditched, someone in NASA came to think of those original tapes: We never digitized them properly. Maybe we should do that. But where did we put them? ... As far as I know, the tapes were never found. And the last tape player for that format was ditched.
When you today see the "high quality" Apollo 11 videos on YouTube, they are much better quality than what we could see in 1969, but that's because we today have quite fancy restoration techniques for sharpening up the blur that was received over the radio link. Everyone knows that the video tapes recorded onboard the space ship, and physically brought down to earth, would have been razor sharp, compared to the restored images.
I am afraid that lots of users of the first and second (and maybe third) generation of digital cameras will discover that they have lost piles of images, the day they bring down that box from the attic to show their grandchildren. I, too, have got a handful of 2" Sony floppy disks, but without the camera (which I borrowed for a single weekend) I have no way to view or print the images. I have transferred all the photos I once stored on 5.25" floppies to my harddisk - but kept that Win98 machine, in case others need help. Same with photo archives on 3.5" floppies. Some people were going "professional", using tape for archival storage: You may have to search far and wide to find someone who can read those tapes. Some units used the LPT interface, but you shouldn't be too certain that the drivers will work in a Win10 DOS window! Others had dedicated interface cards - but when did you last see a PC with an ISA bus? Lots of my friends can't even read their CD-ROM photo archives any more.
The only "comforting" side of it is that noone cares anyway... Once you have shown the photos from the past weekend to your friends, once you have posted your vacation photos on Facebook and received a dozen likes, noone cares about those pictures anymore. Maybe they still exist, but who cares to look at pictures from yesteryear? Or even from last month? It really doesn't matter to us that our personal history is lost.
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