Tag Archives: device

Silicon Valley Has a Cold-Pressed Juicing Scandal

by DonetteDaws Posted on April 19, 2017

Mother Jones

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Behold the Juicero. It is sleek, internet-connected, built like a tank, uses custom bags of chopped produce, applies four tons of pressure, and makes the world’s trendiest cold-pressed juice:

But wait. Bloomberg reports that there’s a dark side to the Juicero. Well, another dark side, anyway:

After the product hit the market, some investors were surprised to discover a much cheaper alternative: You can squeeze the Juicero bags with your bare hands. Two backers said the final device was bulkier than what was originally pitched and that they were puzzled to find that customers could achieve similar results without it. Bloomberg performed its own press test, pitting a Juicero machine against a reporter’s grip….In Bloomberg’s squeeze tests, hands did the job quicker, but the device was slightly more thorough. Reporters were able to wring 7.5 ounces of juice in a minute and a half. The machine yielded 8 ounces in about two minutes.

Hmmm. Tell me more about these reporters. Men? Women? Weakling nerds? Folks who hit the gym a lot? How much juice could I get from a Juicero bag? In any case, investors are upset:

After the product’s introduction last year, at least two Juicero investors were taken aback after finding the packs could be squeezed by hand. They also said the machine was much bigger than what Evans had proposed. One of the investors said they were frustrated with how the company didn’t deliver on the original pitch and that their venture firm wouldn’t have met with Evans if he were hawking bags of juice that didn’t require high-priced hardware. Juicero didn’t broadly disclose to investors or employees that packs can be hand squeezed, said four people with knowledge of the matter.

Oh come on. Juicero was recently forced to cut the price of its press from $699 to $399, so it probably isn’t even much of a moneymaker. The bags, on the other hand, are highway robbery at $5-7 each. At a guess, the gross margin on the press is around 50 percent at best, but the gross margin on the juice bags is probably 90 percent or more. If Juicero can sell the bags without the juicer—and maybe tout hand squeezing as a good workout regimen while they’re at it—they probably clear a thousand dollars per year. Maybe more. The press doesn’t add much to that, even if it is 802.11b/g/n compatible and notifies you when your juice packs are about to expire.

The hardware is only necessary for two reasons. First, people are lazy and don’t want to squeeze their own bags. Second, it makes everything high tech and cool. Regardless, differential pricing is a proven moneymaker, and now Juicero can sell its bags to cheapskates. There’s always been more money in the blades than the shaver.

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Silicon Valley Has a Cold-Pressed Juicing Scandal

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Revolutionary New iPhone Set to Debut Someday

by BillyStepp1693 Posted on February 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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Steve Jobs may be dead, but his reality distortion field lives on:

The speculative frenzy that always precedes a new iPhone has been supercharged in anticipation of the 10th-anniversary release expected later this year. Analysts in research reports have predicted the phone will be one of Apple’s most revolutionary, with some suggesting it will come in three sizes instead of the usual two, with a case made almost entirely of glass and possibly wireless-charging capability.

At least one of the anniversary phones is expected to have an OLED screen, technology that would make the device thinner and lighter. The display, on top of its being an anniversary edition, has led to speculation that Apple could charge record prices for it, said Steven Milunovich, an analyst with UBS.

Three sizes! Wireless charging! An OLED screen! All for a mere thousand dollars.

The sleazy marketing part of me admires the hell out of Apple. They have somehow built up a customer base so loyal that they can explicitly follow a strategy of staying two years behind everyone else and then incorporating whatever features turn out to be popular. Their loyal customers are, apparently, OK with paying astronomical prices for the privilege of always lacking the latest and greatest features. Because it’s Apple.

When I switched from an iPhone to an Android phone several years ago, it took me literally no more than a day to get accustomed to the new UI. Phone interfaces, after all, are designed to be super simple, and the iPhone and Android UIs aren’t really all that different to begin with. But iPhone users remain fanatically loyal for reasons that escape me. I wonder if this bubble is ever going to burst?

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Revolutionary New iPhone Set to Debut Someday

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5 Good Ways to Back Up Your Computer

by VelvaTrout Posted on June 27, 2016

When my computer was stolen recently, I breathed a sigh of relief. That’s because all my files were backed up.

Then I got really upset, because my external hard drive with my backed up files turned out to have been stolen, too. Fortunately, everything was also backed up to a cloud account. But that turned out not to be ideal, because it meant that while I could still get access to my files, I wouldn’t have them downloaded in a “mirror image” of what was on my computer the way the hard drive would have. Plus, it tookthree days and a lot of customer support to recover them my files in a way that I could use them. My cloud back-up didn’t include any of the software I’d installed on my computer, like Microsoft Office, so that was another complication.

In the course of filing police reports, buying a new computer, recovering my data and reinstalling my software, I learned a lot about how to protect the contents of my computer in the event it is stolen again (or gets destroyed in a fire or tornado, accidentally dropped on cement, flooded with coffee, theinternal hard drive fails…). Chief among them is this list of the best ways to back up my computer.

1) Back up in two different ways and in two different places.

My computer was backed up to bothanexternal hard drive as well as over the Internet. Though recovering my files from the Internet servicewas inconvenient, at least they were there. If I’d only relied on the external hard drive, I’d have been sunk. On the other hand, if I lose Internet connectivity, it’s reassuring to have an external hard drive back up. The fees to back up over the Internetare pretty minimal (mine is only about $60 a year), and an external hard drive is pretty cheap. Pay the money and get those systems in place. You won’t regret it.

2) Use an external hard drive. But hide it.

There are lots of benefits to an external hard drive. It can create a mirror image of your computer, so that, if you need to reinstall your entire computer on a new machine, it’s easy to do so. It’s portable and is available in the event your connection to the Internet goes down. But the big lesson I learned is, don’t keep it in plain sight next to your computer if there’s a chance you think your computer could be stolen. And even if theft is not involved, your computer could be subject to other factors that could also destroy your external hard drive if it’s right nearby. By the way, rather than a larger external hard drive, you can use USB drives. However, you might find yourself using several drives that don’t have the storage capacity of one large one. I’ve found that using a smaller USB drive works fine for individual files, but not for my entire computer.

3) Online backup over the Internet.

With online backup using something like Carbonite, BackBlaze or CrashPlan, you’ll install software on your computer that will regularly scan your files, encrypt them and send them to a high-storage server that you can access electronically. The advantage of such a systemis that your data in all likelihood will remain protected regardless of theft, natural disaster or breakage. The disadvantage is that it can take a few days to upload all of your data to your accountand then to download it again if you need it. That said, in many cases you can download specific files to get access to them immediately while all of your data is being downloaded.

LifeHacker reviewed many online back-up plans and rates these five as the best. Whatever plan you choose, make sure that their customer service is adequate. When I had to download my files to my new computer recently, I probably required about 10 hours of customer service to deal with various problems that cropped up.

4) Use a Cloud Storage Device.

Some cloud storage devices you may have heard of include Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Some advantages are that these systems are cheap and protect against most data loss. The downside may be that they offer limited storage space for free, so you’ll have to pay to upgrade for more storage.Here’s more info on how to use Google Drive as a backup tool. BackBlaze offers a good overview of how to integrate online backup and online storage here.

5) Use Flickr or Google for Photos.

Though all my pictures from my computer were saved and then re-downloaded, having my computer stolen made me realize that I could use an external back-up just for my photos. Flickr could be pretty good for this. It’s free, you can get a mobile app to make it easy to upload your photos to your account, and there’s lots of storageabout 500,000 full-resolution pictures’ worth! The pictures I take on my phone automatically get saved to my Google account, which is very convenient. However, that’s not true of the pictures I save to my computer. Putting those pics on Flickr could make them more accessible in the event all my other systems fail.

As you contemplate what kind of back-up systems to put in place, take stock of how much storage you actually need, and for what. Do you mostly have word-based files to protect or do you have a huge data base of pictures, videoand music? Don’t automatically buy a 4 terrabyte drive when a 750 gigabyte model would do just as well. If you’re not sure what you need, contact customer support for your computer and ask their advice. Also, if you are running several computers on a home network, consider a network drive you can share.

Mac/Apple users have different considerations than do PC users. Here is an excellent overview of back-up options specific to a Mac.Keep in mind that Time Machine is a backup utility. It doesn’t archive your information like an offline storage system does. So while it’s good for capturing the most recent data on your disk, it won’t have everything you’ve ever worked on.

PC Magazine reviews the “10 Best External Hard Drives of 2016″ here.

What systems do you use to protect your computer? Please share!

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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TV coverage of climate change fell last year — but climate denial coverage increased

by DemetriGjs Posted on March 8, 2016

TV coverage of climate change fell last year — but climate denial coverage increased

By on 8 Mar 2016commentsShare

The medium by which most Americans get their news is sorely failing them in one very important category: climate news.

According to a report released Monday, big-name television networks — namely, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox — decreased the amount of airtime they devote to climate change by five percent from 2014 to 2015, despite public promises to cover the issue more. In 2015, climate-related issues took up just 146 minutes total of the network’s evening and Sunday news shows.

The problem isn’t just the lack of climate segments on television, either. It’s that what coverage there is is misleading. In 2015, the major networks aired a total of nine segments on Sunday and nightly shows that included climate science denial.

On the Sunday shows in particular, the number of segments featuring climate science denial increased from the previous year, from four segments in 2014 to six in 2015.

The numbers are especially significant when you consider the fact that television is the staple of the U.S. news diet — according to the American Press Institute, the TV is the device Americans use most frequently to get their news. Survey respondents preferred TV news over other sources, like smartphones or tablets.

But these days TV audiences are skewing older and older. In 2014, the median age of a broadcast or cable television viewer was 44.4 years old — a 6 percent increase from four years previous.

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And TV viewers tend to be more conservative — 2013 Gallup poll found that Republicans are more likely than Democrats or independents to report that TV is their main source of news. Republicans most often chose Fox News when describing their main news source — the same network that, according to the Media Matters report, included climate denial or criticism of climate actions in nearly every segment it ran related to climate change.

Luckily, the younger generation may not actually be the audience for these segments. More and more, millennials are cutting the cord, leaving cable for streaming services instead. A 2015 survey found that one-fourth of respondents ages 18 to 29 have never had a broadcast TV subscription.

In other words, millennials may soon be too busy binging House of Cards to catch the latest idiocy on Fox news.

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Apple-FBI Spat Enters the Twilight Zone

by Flor6095ede Posted on February 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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What in God’s name is this all about? In its motion filed Friday to force Apple to create a special version of iOS that would allow the FBI to crack the San Bernardino attacker’s iPhone, a footnote revealed that Apple and the FBI had discussed several options for obtaining information on the phone:

The four suggestions that Apple and the FBI discussed (and their deficiencies) were….(3) to attempt an auto-backup of the SUBJECT DEVICE with the related iCloud account (which would not work in this case because neither the owner nor the government knew the password to the iCloud account, and the owner, in an attempt to gain access to some information in the hours after the attack, was able to reset the password remotely, but that had the effect of eliminating the possibility of an auto-backup).

With the iCloud password changed, the iPhone can’t connect to the iCloud account and do a backup. But Apple says it wasn’t Syed Farook who changed the password:

Apple executives said the company had been in regular discussions with the government since early January, and that it proposed four different ways to recover the information the government is interested in without building a backdoor. One of those methods would have involved connecting the iPhone to a known Wi-Fi network and triggering an iCloud backup that might provide the FBI with information stored to the device between the October 19th and the date of the incident.

Apple sent trusted engineers to try that method, the executives said, but they were unable to do it. It was then that they discovered that the Apple ID password associated with the iPhone had been changed. (The FBI claimed earlier Friday that this was done by someone at the San Bernardino Health Department.)

Friday night, however, things took a further turn when the San Bernardino County’s official Twitter account stated, “The County was working cooperatively with the FBI when it reset the iCloud password at the FBI’s request.”

This is pretty bizarre. Why did the FBI say it was Farook in their court filing if they knew it wasn’t? And how did the San Berdoo Health Department change the iCloud password, anyway? You need the old password to do that. But if they know the old password, why can’t they change it back? Very mysterious.

UPDATE: Apparently there are a couple of ways this could have happened. If the Health Department knew Farook’s email account, they might have been able to use the “Forgot my password” option to reset it. Alternately, if the phone was MDM managed, they might have been able to reset the passcode remotely. However, that seems unlikely since they would have had other, better options if they had been using MDM.

Why did the Health Department have the phone, anyway? I’m surprised the police or the FBI didn’t snatch it instantly.

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Apple-FBI Spat Enters the Twilight Zone

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Fracking sites might be leakier than we thought

by EldonChauvin Posted on August 4, 2015

Fracking sites might be leakier than we thought

By on 4 Aug 2015commentsShare

I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, this story is about a man named Touché. The bad news is, Touché thinks we could be drastically underestimating the amount of methane that leaks out of industrial fracking operations.

Of course, a lot of people think a lot of things. But Touché Howard is different. He’s a semiretired gas industry consultant who also happens to be the patent holder on the very measuring device that he thinks could be malfunctioning. Here’s the gist from The New York Times:

The problem, according to the author of the paper, Touché Howard, is that the backpack-size tool uses two sensors: one for low levels of methane emissions and one for higher levels. As methane levels rise beyond the capacity of the first sensor, the device hands off to the second, high-level sensor.

Mr. Howard found that under some conditions, unless the sampler is carefully and frequently recalibrated, the switchover from the first sampler to the second can fail. When that occurs, the device does not measure the amount of methane that the second sensor would capture, and so it underrecords methane leakage rates.

Howard published his concerns in the journal Energy Science & Engineering. He wrote that unless there’s a backup device operating at the same time, there’s no way to account for the missed methane, which, for especially big leaks, could be ten or a hundred times the amount that gets reported.

If Howard’s claim holds true, it calls into question a major study on methane leakage funded by the Environmental Defense Fund back in 2013. David T. Allen, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Texas and lead author on that study, told The New York Times that he thinks their results are still valid:

“There may be issues with some of these instruments, but we tested our instruments pretty thoroughly and when we went out into the field we had multiple instruments, all of which gave us information,” he said. Alternate measurement methods were used at some sites, he said, and “we didn’t see any evidence that we were missing any large numbers.”

Meanwhile, the company that makes the instrument has already said it will update its user manual to recommend frequent recalibration, The New York Times reports.

Methane is a nasty greenhouse gas. It doesn’t stick around in the atmosphere as long as CO2 does, which is good, but it’s 72 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year time period, which is bad. So if the fracking industry doesn’t clean up all these leaks, it’s going to stop looking like such a nice little bridge to the clean energy future.

Source:
Methane Leaks May Greatly Exceed Estimates, Report Says

, The New York Times.

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Robot-Building 6-Year-Old Girls Talking Tech With Obama Is the Best Thing You’ll See All Week

by JacquesBroome Posted on March 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday, President Obama made his annual rounds at the White House Science Fair. The event is a breeding ground for adorable interactions with kid-nerds (See 2012’s marshmallow-shooting air cannon), but his chat yesterday with five cape-wearing Girl Scouts from Oklahoma was especially magical.

The 6-year-olds from Tulsa’s Girl Scout Troup 411 were the youngest inventors selected to present at this year’s fair. Inspired by conversations with a librarian and one of the girls’ grandmas, they built a mechanical Lego contraption that can turn pages, to help patients with mobility issues read books.

The group of first graders and kindergartners explain to Obama that the device is a “prototype” that they came up with in a “brainstorming session.” One of the girls asks Obama if he’s ever had his own brainstorming session.

“I have had a couple brainstorming sessions,” replies an amused Obama. “But I didn’t come up with anything this good!”

Another girls asks what he came up with:

“I mean, I came up with things like, you know, health care. It turned out ok, but it started off with some prototypes,” the president says.

And then they all go in for a group hug. GOLD.

Suzanne Dodson, the coach of the Lego team and the mom of one of the scouts, told Tulsa World that she’s glad the girls are getting such positive attention for their project: “It really is a problem with girls, when they get to middle school, they lose confidence in their own ability to succeed in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math)” she said. “Having this experience at young age really gives them a confidence boost.”

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Robot-Building 6-Year-Old Girls Talking Tech With Obama Is the Best Thing You’ll See All Week

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These wearable air monitors fight pollution from the streets

by KristyEZTL Posted on October 31, 2014

These wearable air monitors fight pollution from the streets

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31 Oct 2014 5:21 PM

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Here’s a Kickstarter that got our attention this month: The AirBeam, a wearable air monitor designed by Brooklyn-based environmental justice nonprofit HabitatMaps. The device costs $200 to produce, fits in your palm (if you’re Sasquatch), and is designed to measure particulate pollution on city streets, as well as temperature and humidity. It’s also kinda adorable — which is good, considering that the group is counting on hundreds of people wearing them around NYC in the near future.

But don’t let those cute blue Mickey ears fool you — the AirBeam is a response to a very real problem: Air pollution costs the U.S. $78 billion a year, HabitatMaps claim on their Kickstarter page:

The negative impacts of air pollution rank it among the most serious and widespread human health hazards in the world. Breathing dirty air causes chronic illnesses such as asthma and bronchitis and contributes to terminal illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. Unfortunately, despite the very real impacts air pollution has on our every day lives, it often goes unnoticed because it is largely invisible. In addition, because government-run air quality monitoring networks are sparse, publicly available air quality measurements don’t translate into an accurate assessment of personal exposure. The answer? Low-cost, portable air quality instruments.

Most official air monitoring occurs well above street level, where the air tends to be cleaner. The AirBeam monitors — once fully deployed by a team of citizen scientists — will measure pollution where it counts: where you actually breathe it. From GigaOm:

Michael Heimbinder, executive director at HabitatMaps, said that the nonprofit had developed the cheapest, portable air quality monitoring sensor it could in hopes of gathering data that it can then use to make policy arguments in the city. It’s also helpful for individuals who may want to change their own habits.

That is, if you know that levels of air pollution are pretty bad at a certain time and place on your commute, you might be able to tinker with your habits to limit your own exposure. But the real solutions will come from the sum total of all the data — cities will be able to identify hot spots for pollution, and then (er, hopefully) be better equipped to address them.

If you pledge $200, you’ll get an AirBeam of your own come launch — and a healthy dose of civic engagement to boot.

Source:
See how a Brooklyn nonprofit is using the internet of things for environmental justice

, GigaOm.

AirBeam: Share & Improve Your Air

, Kickstarter.

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Yes, You Can Now Call Your Crock Pot on Your iPhone

by EdisonWJOkpkr Posted on June 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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From the annals of stories I’m afraid to read:

The age of cooking by smartphone is here. We test a Robo-Crock in the connected kitchen.

But I’m a professional, so I clicked the link:

For my first test, I made chili….But instead of reaching for any knobs or buttons on the front of the device, I launched an app on my phone to set temperature and time.

The machine fired up, eventually reaching a simmer. The app kept track of time and alerted me with a pop-up message when my three-hour stew was ready for mass consumption. If I had wanted to bump the temperature from High to Low or adjust the cook time, I could easily do that whether I was down the street or half a world away.

I am happy to report that the $130 Smart Crock-Pot works as billed….The chili came out great. It was at that point that the greater existential questions surrounding a Smart Crock-Pot began surfacing: When would I really need this? Is it worth the extra $50? And is it smart enough?

Indeed. Is it smart enough? I’d say no, because it still forces me to cut up all the meat and vegetables and then manually toss them in the crock pot. That doesn’t sound nearly smart enough to me. Call me back when a robot version of Wolfgang Puck is available for $130.

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Yes, You Can Now Call Your Crock Pot on Your iPhone

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Save Energy, Boil Water with a SunRocket Solar Kettle

by 9ji7g4x Posted on October 8, 2013

We recently featured the SunRocket, a solar-powered kettle, in our guide to eco-friendly camping gear. The SunRocket, made by Australia-based company Sun Cooking, can boil water using energy from the sun, allowing users to have hot water — and also save energy — while on the go. Earth911 contributing writer Kathryn Sukalich recently had the opportunity to test out the SunRocket.

The SunRocket solar kettle allows users to have hot water anywhere. Photo: SunRocket

When I first learned about the SunRocket, I was impressed by the clever use of technology. A solar-powered method for boiling water requires no gas or electricity, meaning it’s free to use wherever you have access to the sun. Plus, it seems like a unique way to harness the power of the sun for a simple yet necessary task.

Upon receiving the SunRocket, I was surprised by its size. At about 18 inches long, the device is larger than I expected it to be, and just by looking at it someone might not infer its purpose. Despite its unusual appearance, which does in fact make it look like a rocket, I was excited to test out the SunRocket for myself.

Next page: How it works

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Save Energy, Boil Water with a SunRocket Solar Kettle

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