PETA's position is that we ought not kill any animals any where. But they kill 95% of the pets entrusted to their care.

Sure, they say that killing is bad, but they also -- openly -- say that domestication and keeping animals as pets is also wrong (and go so far as to say that animals are better off dead than kept as pets.) So I don't think there is any inconsistency of actions with statements, though obviously the actions here aren't ones they want publicized, given that they do depend on financial support from people who don't pay attention to much more than the surface image of PETA of being vaguely "for animal rights" without paying attention to any of the details of what they state about their values.

They want few people who paid ~3x as much as an existing competing android product (that is really cool and works) to void their warrantee to make new stuff for them.

I think they want people to build stuff to the stock Glass APIs. They are willing to allow users who want to do additional experimentation to do so freely (as long as those users, not Google, are responsible if they make the device unusable in the process). There is a crucial distinction there.

Very likely, they're talking about the CPU using 50% less power.

Very likely, they aren't, since they make specific claims about CPU power under different regimes and all of them are much more significant than that, and then go on to say that the CPUs will enable laptops using them to have 50% greater battery life.

With as much hype as Google is trying to create for an existing product by another manufacturer, you'd think they'd give a little more leeway for innovation.

More than giving you complete freedom to mess with it, but saying that, if you break it in the process, they aren't going to assume responsibility?

I was born and raised in metric land. I am now doing everything in "imperial" measurements

Imperial or US Customary? The two systems are not identical, though they share many units (and slightly more names of units than actual units.)

Putting up a wall? We're gonna need some 2x4s and 4x8s

Which, incidentally, don't seem use American Customary units of length for those dimensions, but whacky industry units where 1" (board measure other than length) is approximately equal to 7/8" (US customary).

I still don't think your an example of the problem they are claiming to address, which is of people not having practical access to the internet. Which is, while not completely unheard of, fairly rare in the US and fairly common in the developing world.

Depending on _how_ deep they go into these countries, I think the larger issue will be simply getting backhaul into these areas, and working through the bureaucracy to get it done.

Near as I can tell, some of these countries regulations are on the level of "I thought it up when you asked the question".

Well, Google is sitting on a pretty fat pile of cash, which usually is exactly the kind of thing you need to have handy to "comply" with "regulations" on the level of "I thought it up when you asked the question". So that may not exactly be a barrier.

Haswell is a laptop/desktop/server microarchitecture, but Intel doesn't care very much about the desktop anymore, so expect little press coverage of that angle.

Yeah, its not like most of the stories on this announcement have covered Intel's claim of tripling the integrated graphics performance on desktop systems (and doubling it on laptop systems.)

Well, except that that is exactly the case.

here is an imaginary i5-3439Y laptop power budget

I've highlighted the problem with this refutation.

Maybe in time, they'll come back to the US and play against the big boys.

Google is already building out WiFi in the US (NYC, accompanying Fiber at least in Austin, some others), and playing against the telecom big boys in rolling out Fiber in the first place.

Their plans to expand to the developing world are following, rather than leading, their role in becoming an access provider in the US.

You think the very poor have no interest in buying goods and services that could make their lives better?

To be fair, I think the objection was more that the very poor lack money to buy goods and services that could make their lives better rather than that they lack interest.

A particular subset of this problem would be that the very poor may also lack the money to purchase devices to access the network Google is deploying. OTOH, an effort to provide developing-world internet access and devices in the short term could spur development that alleviates this situation in the long term, and leave Google with a pretty big incumbency advantage as the market becomes more valuable. So, while it may be high-risk, there's potentially a big payoff from a purely capitalistic standpoint. (Spurring development could also be a big payoff from a humanitarian standpoint, as well.)

My laptop consumes most of its power via the discrete GPU, display and other peripherals. I know, since if I switch from the good GPU to the crappy one, and dim the screen, my battery life goes from 2.5 to 5 hours. Thus, with everything on, at least half the power draw can't be CPU, so there is no way this could double my battery life.

Math tip: A 50% increase in battery life (what they actually claimed) isn't the same as doubling it.

Also, since a big selling point for Haswell (aside from power efficiencies) is the claimed greatly improved (~2x for laptop-oriented models, ~3x for desktop-oriented models) improvement in graphics performance, I'd be very surprised if their claims for about battery life were focussed on systems using discrete GPUs rather than relying on the integrated graphics on Haswell.

But, when idle, with a dimmed or off screen, yes, it could help a lot. Apparently Haswell has some major improvements to handling network (including wifi) packets when in low power modes, and this should be a big win. I assume this kind of situation is where they got the 2x number

Well, except that they explicitly claimed that was overall battery life, and it was a 50% increase not 2x, and they actually cited numbers for improvement in idle life and it was much higher than the +50% claimed overall (or even the 2x you pulled out of who-knows-where), since their claimed idle-mode improvement was twenty times (TFA is less clear on this, but Computerworld covers the same event with more specificity: "And in idle or standby mode the chips will do even better, extending battery life by up to 20 times, [Rani Borkar, Intel's Architecture Group VP] said." [emphasis added])

> Is this seriously 50% increase in battery life? Or just 50% reduction in power usage by CPU?

Assuming the CPU was the only element consuming power, a 50% reduction in power usage by the CPU would equate to a 100% increase in battery life. But, yes, what they are claiming is that the net effect of the various improvements is that it should enable a 50% increase in battery life, not that it will merely reduce power consumption on the CPU by the amount that would do that if the CPU was the only power draw.

The real question is whether the Judge presiding over a trial is allowed to make that kind of comment *before* the trial has started.

And the real answer is "yes". In certain circumstances, they are even required to (e.g., the standard for granting preliminary injunctions, often sought before trial, is explicitly call for a determination of the likelihood of success on the merits.)