21–30 of 210 posts
And that's nothing. Wait for AI in power sockets! For now, they only have simple processors in USB-C charger, but soon there will be more intelligence in there, than you can imagine! :-)
I find it a bit a bit scary that a microcontroller controls charger voltage. There might be a risk of power glitches or bugs causing output voltages which destroy devices.
Author here. Thankfully device-side microchips that interface with USB chargers come with overvoltage protection. For example: http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tps65983b.pdf Devices which charge from wall chargers have to undergo testing for power glitches to obtain FCC certification. I forget the name of the test. Somebody else will know what I'm talking about!
They are usually sporadic and no surge protection test will provide a guarantee against them.
And despite the fact that a wall charger has more compute power than the Saturn V, we can't actually go to the moon today. We've actually lost the ability to go. No one understands how the engines on the Saturn V work anymore. It would take years to tear them apart and analyze them, and most of the original engineers are dead. And the guidance systems would have to be built back up from scratch. Kind of sad if you th…
And despite the fact that a wall charger has more compute power than the Saturn V, we can't actually go to the moon today. We've actually lost the ability to go. No one understands how the engines on the Saturn V work anymore. It would take years to tear them apart and analyze them, and most of the original engineers are dead. And the guidance systems would have to be built back up from scratch. Kind of sad if you th…
Interestingly, China germinated plants on the moon this year, but that news seems to have been buried in the UK. So getting a payload to the moon, guidance systems and such, isn't the problem.
I admit I didn't understand much of that but enjoyed reading it none the less. I wonder about the hardware selected for say a charger, is it maybe just that the power (CPU, memory) are just a factor of that being the most cost effective choice and the power (cpu, memory) are far more than a USB charger needs?
I'd guess at one point you simply can't buy anything cheaper than 10MHz? I'm updating my laptop; it'd probably be fully sufficient to have just 16GB DDR4 (I have just 4GB right now, and it ain't that bad), but I can get a 32GB stick for only like 110 USD, so, I might as well go for 32GB to max out the slot and not have to worry about it later on. If the price for 32GB sticks was more like $500, I'd probably not bothe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neither do pacemakers. God forbid RMS ever needs an arrhythmia corrected...
But is updating the firmware a normal function of pacemakers? He makes a distinction on the update-firmware level — if the microwave has no such functionality, then he does not consider it a computer. Look for "microwave" at http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html : > As for microwave ovens and other appliances, if updating software is not a normal part of use of the device, then it is not a computer. In that cas…
Yeah modern microcontrollers are probably less efficiently used than they could be, but the AGC essentially crashed twice during the lunar landing because it didn't have enough compute available.
This is awesome! The media loves to say your pocketwatch is more powerful than X form $date. This is a fun technical rundown. I think at some point we have to start talking about how far from optimized we are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS comes to mind when talking about what can be done in fasm. Are we ever going to get compilers to the point where we can squash things down to that size and efficiency? Is t…
And that's nothing. Wait for AI in power sockets! For now, they only have simple processors in USB-C charger, but soon there will be more intelligence in there, than you can imagine! :-)
When your charger becomes self-aware because someone put a TPU in it by accident...