One mobile site that I often visit that doesn't suck is Texas Instruments'. I rely on it heavily for reference materials and stuff. They also have an Android app that covers all the reference stuff, and the component-finding for your particular application, but as of yet you can't order samples from the app like you can from the site.

It's awesome having an idea at 2am, loading up the site on your tablet, tracking down the smallest microcontroller with all the GPIO you need, then the support chips (Motor drivers, LED controllers, battery managers, etc.), and ordering free samples you'll have by week's end...all without leaving the comfort of your bed. :]

When I heard that a "Tokyo-based start-up called SCHAFT Inc." was competing in the DARPA challenge my immediate reaction was "Haha, oh man! Are you kidding me?!" Because I couldn't imagine any other possible explanation for the name except an homage to Patlabor.

It'd be funny if the people working on the live action Patlabor film sent the SCHAFT Inc. team some cool merch as a bit of viral cross-promotion. Hehe.

I always assumed that Enterprise HDDs were the same as consumer ones, they just got binned differently after passing through tighter QC scrutiny or more arduous burn-in testing or something.

Either way, it's not that surprising... I mean, a drive either fails within the first several months, or runs fine until something inside's well past its MTBF. Right?

So within the first three years, we're basically talking about the near end of the curve. It's not until after 3+ years that normal HDDs start to really show their age, in my experience.

Heh. At first, I misinterpreted the headline as meaning that 20% of online Black Friday sales were OF mobile devices...

Last year my younger sister drove out to Best Buy in the dead of night to score a Galaxy S3 for $50, giving me her old Galaxy S, which I now use as a media center remote and miscellaneous android device. :P

Is he really not taking into account the ever-increasing requirements of games? Doesn't matter how fast your GPU *was*, when the next wave of AAA games comes out, you *will* be able to tell the difference, and you'll be hurting for a new one if you want to keep running with maxed out settings. Happens every time.

What about the need to play them on crazy things like 2560x1440 IPS displays? Or other uses like scientific calculations, video compositing, or bitcoin mining? You'll want all the GPU muscle you can get.

I used to love riding my bicycle as a kid. I'd ride everywhere... Sometimes much farther afield than I should have...occasionally requiring my father to drive and pick me up.

When we moved to Vermont, it became a necessity, as I often had to ride to school because the bus schedule conflicted with my other obligations, and the high school was in Middlebury and I lived in East Middlebury, a couple miles away.

Now, I'm from New Jersey, and people here in New England love to complain about Jersey drivers...but a lot of the drivers around here are raging assholes. If you ride a bicycle in the street in town, people practically try to run you over and then yell at you to ride on the sidewalk...which will get you TICKETED.

One day when I was riding home from school, I think it was the second to last day of the year or something, I was about to lean into a turn at the bottom of this hill-- you get going really fast there --when some dipshit in the back of a pickup truck coming the other way yelled "Heads up!" and hit me with a water balloon.

Lost it. Caught a pedal on the road. Flipped. Slid about five yards on my side, tangled up with the bike...which was totaled. I would've been dead if it weren't for my helmet, I know because when my head bounced off the asphalt, the side of my face got close enough that it grabbed my sunglasses and ripped them off as I slid down the road. No broken bones, but my nose was bleeding, and I was scraped up and bruised pretty much everywhere...and I was pissed as hell. I had to limp home like that, rolling my ragged-ass bike along with me.

I'm fairly sure that was one of the catalysts for my developing agoraphobia. Because, fuck people. Can't even ride a bicycle in rural New England without having to worry about some dickless shitbird trying to stupidly murder your ass.

There needs to be regulation, I agree. The problem is that what the FAA is doing currently makes no sense whatsoever.

Lemme just address some of points and concerns you've brought up...

If I'm not mistaken, full-size aircraft (For lack of a better term) are supposed to maintain an altitude higher than 1000' AGL unless on takeoff or approach. And RC craft can't fly higher than 400' AGL or within, I think it's 3 miles, of an airport or its approach corridor. (And general rule of thumb is if you can SEE any air traffic, don't put your model in the air.)

The FCC doesn't really enter into it; as long as you're using your equipment in the manner intended and it's functioning properly, you should be in full compliance. I mean, these things are designed to operate in a specific range of the spectrum dictated by the various regulating bodies to avoid just that kind of overlap in the first place.

The drones we're talking about are electric and about the only 'pollution' they're liable to produce is what'll happen to the battery after some redneck wings the thing with a load of birdshot. As for noise, depending on size, it tends to range from a low droning (Appropriately enough) to a higher-pitched buzzing... If it's a small quadcopter or the like and it's got a cowling around the props, that thing can be damn-near silent because a lot of what you hear is the clashing propwash.

As for intent of use... Well, you could say the same thing about a gun. Or a screwdriver. We hold people responsible for what they do with things, we don't hold things responsible for what people might do with them. If someone does something illegal with an otherwise legal object, it means the person is in violation of the law, it doesn't mean the object needs to be regulated more strictly.

Now, here's the big problems with the FAA regulations as they stand. For starters; There's no real definition for what a drone is. There's no provision for licensing this class of craft (These 'hobby drones'), or RC craft in general. And lastly, the big one... Because they left this big gaping hole in the regs, the second you accept money-- or really any kind of remuneration --for something you do with your RC craft, it's not longer a toy, and instead it falls into the same class as any commercial or military UAV.

At that point, you're basically fucked because it's not actually possible to get 'legal'. It's not! I mean, for starters, you can't even get the craft legally licensed as a UAV if you wanted to, because unless you're accepting money to do a job with it, so they can bust your balls for operating an unlicensed UAV, they class it as a fucking toy!

Head hurt? Blood starting to trickle from your ears and nose? That means you're paying attention.

I have a quadcopter with a wingspan of about 8 inches. I have fitted it with a camera that shoots 720p video to a microSD card, as well as outputting 480p to a transmitter so I can get a first-person view. Fully loaded, I'd be flat-out astonished if it weighed a pound...even with all the velcro. Yet, if someone slipped me a tenner to do a 360 fly-around of their house for a real estate listing, the FAA would consider it as being a craft in the same class as a Predator-B or a Global Hawk.

Regulation is good, but what we have right now isn't regulation... It's fucking madness. There's a gaping hole in the FAA regulations and it's being filled with rampant idiocy.

Anyway, ranting aside... The obvious solution is simple: Either create a definition for these 'hobby drones' or 'micro drones' in the regulations so people can 'get legal'. (But that takes effort.) or simply stick with the current quasi-official guidelines (Under 5 pounds, fly under 400' AGL, etc.) class those craft as 'radio-controlled toys', and abolish the restriction on commercial use of them.

The current 'hobby drone' guidelines give them enough cover with the weight restriction that they don't have to worry about some assholes trying to pass off something that just rolled out of a hangar at Raytheon as a 'toy craft' for unlicensed commercial use, and other shenanigans.

I figure that anyone who's invested has probably got at least some idea how the battery tech works... And anyone who does, knows that compromising one or more cells with something conductive (I read something about metal road debris piercing the battery?) is literally one of the surest ways to cause a catastrophic failure of a lithium chemistry battery pack.

So yeah, if I were in his shoes, I'd be keeping things in perspective, too.

Man, I've seen photos of R/C car and plane batteries having done absolutely unreal amounts of damage, I can't begin to imagine what one of these suckers could do, worst case.

But that's just how it goes if you wanna store an assload of clean energy in a small enough space to power a vehicle. Just gotta work out ways to design them so they're self-extinguishing, or otherwise self-neutralizing.

Even from the grave he's his own worst enemy...

High-functioning autism as a career path? Heh.

Now if only we could get the NIMBY idiots to stop screaming bloody murder about how ugly wind turbines are. Because I mean, really. That's just stupid. I think they add to the scenery!

Still, It's hilarious that they finally won this protracted legal battle to keep operating and are like "Okay! We're shutting down the plant!" I was like "Wait, what?!" when I heard that on VPR, lol.

These are the devices I bought:

http://dx.com/p/187854 (This is my favorite, Center-Top in the picture I linked before. Larger, 4:3 screen.)
http://dx.com/p/178118 (Left.)
http://dx.com/p/166593 (Center-Bottom.)
http://dx.com/p/183756 (Right.)
http://dx.com/p/160535 (Top-right corner.)

Unfortunately, it was during this crazy 50% off sale back on May 15th, but in my opinion, they're still totally worth it at full price. They're ridiculously capable little devices.

They're great readers, they run apps perfectly, and they even play 1080p video files over my network flawlessly. (With the correct combination of player/codec) And I'm talking like 18gb .MKV files; the stuff I watch on my desktop.

The 'Android TV' stick turns any TV or monitor with HDMI (Or DVI with an adapter) into an Android device. Just add USB or wireless keyboard and mouse. Instant media center! Has OTG for external storage, and has GPS for some reason, lol. Really an awesome idea.

I... I think you just got added to the 'Do Not Fly' list.

A while back, my little sister picked up a Nook Tablet for, what was it? Like $170? Back in May I picked up a 7" Android 4.0 tablet from China that kicks its ass for $30. (In fact, I bought four different ones, and one of those 'Android TV stick' devices, for a total of $145, god bless DealExtreme.)

Just pull the plug, B&N. Concentrate on content distribution, and maintaining the reader app. I think in the long run, the Nook is nothing more than an unnecessary expenditure that exposes them to equally unnecessary financial risks. Hell, if they really want a branded tablet to sell in their stores, they should just re-brand one of those Chinese ones, and cut it out with the custom OS crap that makes it 'not quite an Android device'.

I wonder what the TSA would think if someone had prepared a list of substances they've come in contact with, in advance? In this insane-ass world, I bet that'd be more likely to be seen as suspicious than helpful...

I have absolutely no doubt I would set off the detectors, with all the chemicals and materials I come in contact with. I mean, I chemically etch my own circuit boards using either photo-resist or direct screen-printed resist... I machine stuff from aluminium, brass, oil-bronze, steel, etc. and that involves cutting lubricants, as well as the various lubricants involved in keeping the machines working. There's probably little bits of swarf in my shoe soles... Moldmaking and resin-casting materials... Paints and model supplies... And of course all manner of solvents from the mundane to the industrial.

And this is stuff I do at HOME, so there will be traces of something if any of that is enough for a positive.

THREAT LEVEL: *Rubber glove snapping sound*