We're on the home stretch, boys!

This will also be the year of Linux on the desktop!

Aftermarket ECUs don't control body stuff. They control engine stuff.

In this instance, the stock ECU would be retained for controlling body stuff (and disconnected from the engine stuff).

That doesn't feel right (I want muh NATIVE ELF BINARIES!), but it makes perfect sense: If Wine is a supported platform then there's nothing really to worry about.

Under the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act, they can only void specific parts of the warranty -- and even then, the impetus is on the manufacturer to prove that the alteration caused the defect being claimed under warranty.

The narrative that goes "If you touch it, your warranty is gone" is simply a falsehood and has been for quite a long time. This way of thinking needs to stop.

Your Haltech/Motec/Fueltec might be blamed for burnt exhaust valves, and GM/whoever would probably have an easy time denying a claim for replacement of those valves under warranty by proving it was the modification that caused the defect.

But your third-party ECU has nothing to do with the sunroof's warranted operation. Your big brake upgrade has nothing to do with your engine's warranty. Your upgraded radiator has nothing to do with the stock water pump shitting the bed -- they owe you a water pump unless they can prove that your improved radiator (and whatever other changes) somehow managed to nuke a simple water pump.

That's not how this works.

In the US (in all states I'm aware of), a doctor can write a script for Celexa and the pharmacist can fill it with generic citalopram, *unless* the doctor specifies that the name-brand product be used.

Normally, on hand-written scripts, this is signified by the notation DAW, which means "Dispense As Written."

That's not how any of this works.

After a patent expires, the specific things covered by that patent become free to use. That's the whole point of the system.

There's no law requiring one to patent all methods used in a device all at once: You can't *force* someone to patent something.

There's also no law preventing one from patenting methods later down the road: The invention doesn't have to be new or previously-unseen to be patentable. It just has to pass the usual muster for a patentable thing. If that newly-patented, old thing is an important component that has been used and marketed for decades already, so be it.

It's shitty and divisive to spread patents out like this.

But the timer isn't reset: All of the patents for the Epipen that are 20 or more years old (such as the 5 that date back to 1987) are expired, and those inventions are free for everyone to use.

Every time I look, and it is a thing I look at with some regularity, it's a thing that doesn't work yet... so yes. If it dates back to ICS, then I should have seen it somewhere along I, J, K, L, M, N or O.

Besides, folks are re-implementing NTP in Android userspace on a per-application basis because the clock sucks on Android smartphones -- a thing that wouldn't ever happen if it didn't have to happen.

There are other hacks that work system-wide, but they require root since Android doesn't let usermode apps play with the system clock despite its extensive permissions system. (Because FUCK YOU, I think.)

I don't have root. (Wouldn't need it anyway if NTP was actually supported in the wild...)

But if I install the package at that last link, I can see that the offset is 1.4 seconds off from whatever instance of pool.ntp.org it found -- which is way, way outside the normal margins for modern networks and common NTP servers.

So no, Android doesn't use NTP.

That's fairly awesome, and is something I never thought of.

It makes perfect fucking sense, too.

Thanks!

Well, I mean: Lots of them have battery/capacitor backup to keep a local oscillator going, but revert to mains timing whenever possible. (Appliances are the worst at this: You'd think that a tiny supercap or a lithium coin cell wouldn't break the bank on expensive stuff, but you'd be wrong.)

(Sorry about your house, dude. I lost one over a decade ago in a flood. It sucks. )

But why does it cost $6M?

It's just a few transmitters and some awesome clocks, very carefully intertwined.

I know that engineers aren't cheap and power isn't free, but $6M buys a lot of transmitter/clock/tower maintenance and electricity every year.

The first GPS receiver I ever had was a Garmin Nuvi. It took a long time for it to cold start in my living room when I first got it, but it *did* work.

My current cell phone, an S7, gets GPS coverage inside most buildings with windows, with large positional errors -- but good enough for (most) time stuff. It does this far better than the OG Motorola Droid did, but even that would find a fix on at least one bird indoors.

The $6 clone GPS receiver I have on my RPi works a treat indoors, too: All kinds of channels light up on it with an indoor antenna, though it obvious does do better in a window.

Just about all plug-in clocks that do not have a wall-wart, like the cheap LED bedside alarm clocks or the clock on your stove, still are timed from the utility. The chips that do this are wickedly inexpensive and *just work*.

My grandfather worked in rural electrification back in the day. He told me that they tracked variations in frequency during the day and intentionally caught up on any errors at night when load was (relatively) low, just to keep the clocks accurate.

That'd be as easy as hanging a cheap pre-paid Android phone on the wall...if Android supported NTP.

(Sadly, it does not.)

My RPi is connected to an atomic clock. It's a Stratum-1 NTP server. It keeps excellent time.

Parts: RPi Zero + cheap-shit direct-from-China Ebay 3.3v GPS receiver board + decent active GPS antenna + gpsd + ntpd + some wire.

The hardest part is that Raspbian ships with a neutered ntpd and an ancient gpsd, both of which need upgraded. Other than that it's really a very simple project.