The museum itself is a hidden gem in central Ohio (USA). There have been so many times where I've visited a city and looked for interesting tech attractions, only to find out about something after I had already left. This is one of those places, not typically found on the tourist maps.
I can confirm this. A Brother HL-L3270CDW color laser worked fine with third-party toner at first, but would not recognize it after a firmware upgrade. I tried three different sets of cartridges, including different brands - none were recognized, and there's no way to revert to a previous firmware version.
That was the last Brother color printer I'll buy, unless they go back to accepting generic toner.
> That was the last Brother color printer I'll buy
What are the alternatives then? Brother is often cited as the brand that is the most tolerant of generic consumables and with the least anti-consumer practices. But now that even Brother plays this game...
I have that printer, and I was about to buy some third party toner for it (first time). What firmware version disabled third-party toner support? Looks like we have 1.35. I just disabled automatic "check for updates" but maybe it's too late.
It's hard to trust Apple to keep their word on privacy when an "accidental" Siri activation potentially results in that recording (or related data) finding its way not just to Apple for, say, speech recognition, but all the way to advertisers.
Transparency would be appreciated here, Apple. Is there any ability for a user to review all recordings made and submitted to Siri? I want to say that Android has this ability via Google Takeout.
“The only clue that users seemingly had of Siri's alleged spying was eerily accurate targeted ads that appeared after they had just been talking about specific items like Air Jordans or brands like Olive Garden, Reuters noted (claims which remain disputed).”
It’s very common for users to associate their conversations with ads and believe that they are being listened to, across many platforms including those without microphones. The article does not appear to provide any non-anecdotal evidence of this.
It seems confirmed correct that yes siri does incorrectly activate, and anyone with an iphone knows this. What is unsubstantiated and denied by apple is that those siri recordings were used for advertising.
I was one of the people claiming this. I’ll tell you why I thought it.
1. I’m seeing ads for trending topics or those tied to things I’ve said or typed (targeted).
2. On one or two platforms, it was usually the same ads. Especially the targeted ones. They didn’t change often.
3. My friend and I discuss a rare topic.
4. Thirty minutes later, my app refreshes to show an ad on the rare topic from No. 3.
5. In each case, the only input for moving that information into a computer was my phone’s microphone.
6. Prior investigations showed some other devices, esp Alexa-style, were transmitting lots of data to their companies even when people weren’t talking to them. Their terms allowed their recordings to be used by the company, too.
So, we believed it was another example of a product listening in on us for money.
Just minutes ago, Siri said she didn’t understand what we were saying. We never said “Hey Siri” or anything remotely like that. It keeps happening at least once a week. It’s clearly listening to some degree when it’s not supposed to. The only question is if there’s a recording of that.
The org I work for recently signed a small (5-user) enterprise agreement with a popular web-based form solution provider for $5k. When I asked them to enable SSO, they asked for an additional $2.5k, which I felt was ridiculous. This is why we didn't do SSO.
Don't count out local hamfests. Yeah, some tiny ones are a little disappointing, but bigger cities usually have respectable events. Even if you're not into ham radio, you'll find plenty of non-radio tech stuff. And there there's the Dayton (OH) Hamvention which is /huge/ - people/groups/vendors drive in from all over the US and setup flea market booths, to sell and buy stuff, but also to just sit around and talk tech with the other attendees.
I remember going to this in the 80's and 90s'. Was astounding what you could find. Is it still going? I moved to Florida in the early 00's but still have family in the Dayton area....
I used to go as a kid in the 80's with my dad every year. The Hara Arena where it was held is no more. It was closed up for years and was finally torn down a couple years ago. But the Hamvention is still going on at a new location.
Filmic was for a while the app for turning your phone into a pseudo-pro video camera. But Blackmagic Camera wasn't the executioner - it was their own doing when they abandoned what had been a pay-once app and suddenly turned to a (quite expensive) subscription model. That didn't sit well with the community - the app's rating tanked by hundreds+ of one-star reviews. At least iOS users have BMD's camera app - Android users don't have anything comparable.
On Android you actually have something better than Filmic Pro, you can use something called MotionCam [Pro], which allows you to record RAW video, or optionally ProRes or HEVC (still in beta/alpha right now) in various log formats. There's also mcpro24fps for a slightly more traditional video app (free in Russian language). Between these, the video recording situation appears to be signficantly ahead of iOS even without Filmic Pro.
The failure was letting encryption into the standard in the first place. This will be a never ending game, with big broadcasters continuously lobbying the FCC and congress for the ability to monetize the broadcast bands. If we allow broadcast television to become a subscription service, then just kill TV broadcasting and repurpose this spectrum for mobile (cellular) use. I'm not endorsing this idea, I'm only saying that by going down the path of encrypted transmissions, broadcasters are no different than any other ISP - except they'll own the pipe AND control the content.
You want to stop this in its tracks? Convince Amazon to start buying some TV stations. Congress would be livid.
It's not about turning OTA into a subscription service. It's about taking control of which devices are allowed to view OTA channels. It's about taking control away from the end-user in terms of what they can do with the signal that they record with their equipment. Privately sending that video to wherever I am physically located? Not if they don't say you can.
It's disgusting, and the FCC should be ashamed for not flatly rejecting encryption on OTA channels in all its forms.
> then just kill TV broadcasting and repurpose this spectrum for mobile (cellular) use
I would much rather prefer it become an unlicensed spectrum.
I absolutely abhor the idea that spectrum goes to the highest bidder
in our current regulatory environment that greatly favors incumbents.
Would the TV bands actually be useful for that? Wi-Fi has actually been going up the frequency bands looking for spectrum, from 2.4GHz to 5GHz and now 6GHz. Each one adds significantly more bandwidth (but worse propagation for a given transmitter power). If we were to make a "Wi-Fi 7R"[0] with 900MHz support, which is right next to some of the upper UHF TV stations in the US, wouldn't that be terribly slow and have lots of interference from overlapping base stations? I mean, 2.4GHz is already crowded to the point of unusability in a lot of dense areas.
> Each one adds significantly more bandwidth (but worse propagation for a given transmitter power).
As far as I know, that's mostly due to these bands simply having more spectrum available, in addition to actual physical propagation characteristics (lower frequencies indeed propagate a bit better across obstacles like walls or floors, and slightly better through air, but not at all through free space).
In addition to that, unlicensed bands arguably work precisely because they are (by regulation) limited mostly to short-range applications, using maximum transmission power as a proxy for range. One person's signal is another person's noise, after all.
There's other unlicensed bands available that are more suitable for long-range communication, but these usually come with duty cycle restrictions for the same reason.
I think this is one of those things where we should open it up (with limits, I’m not saying we should allow 10kW base stations or something obscene like that) and see what innovation we usher in?
I’m guessing it will be good enough out in the middle of nowhere or something that needs just reliable low speeds?
If someone is already in the middle of no where, 2.4 GHz congestion isn’t a problem for them.
I’m always for more unlicensed spectrum.
But I strongly disagree with your distaste for the FCC’s reverse auctions of spectrum. Wireless Spectrum is a limited public resource and an auction is a much better way to allocate it than to have those same companies instead hire lobbyists to try to convince the FCC to allocate that spectrum to them.
> But I strongly disagree with your distaste for the FCC’s reverse auctions of spectrum. Wireless Spectrum is a limited public resource and an auction is a much better way to allocate it than to have those same companies instead hire lobbyists to try to convince the FCC to allocate that spectrum to them.
There has to be a better way than to allocate spectrum to any one company and give them the rights to buy and sell this spectrum for ninety nine years.
If the government needs money, raise taxes!
I am not saying big telco should get wireless spectrum allocation for free.
I am saying nobody should get wireless spectrum allocation at all.
At least not in the way we currently do things.
If we really need money so much, why not put billboards left, right, and center all over our interstate highways?
Why not let companies sponsor the Washington Monument, the White House, and the US Capitol?
Lets have an auction and let the highest bidder paint these buildings with whatever they see fit.
Why not give all our federal land to Monsanto for a ninety nine years lease?
/s
Sorry for yelling.
I feel very strongly about this.
I don't have a solution to how we can allocate spectrum better than an auction.
The best I can think of is reduce the number and amount of licensed spectrum.
I want there to be something left in the wireless spectrum when in maybe a few decades hopefully future humans will have a little bit more brains than us come up with a better way to allocate spectrum.
Just to be clear, I am not arguing for repealing Highway Beautification.
> Convince Amazon to start buying some TV stations.
Heh. Along those lines... When I was an Amazon Product Manager back in 2020, I was tasked to work on a plan for ATSC 3.0 support in Fire TV. I actually suggested that one of the opportunities was to buy/invest in digital broadcast towers as a way of multicasting large amounts of data wirelessly. Some people in AWS were interested in the idea as well. Note - I'm talking about using the towers for one-way digital data transfer, not owning stations.
Everything about my proposal - even the basic support stuff for Fire TV - was rejected wholesale and I left soon after. (In case you're wondering why Sony, Samsung, HiSense, LG and other TVs you can buy today have ATSC 3.0 support and Fire TVs don't.) The lack of forward thinking at Amazon has become endemic.
BTW, it's surreal to spend nearly 6 months deep diving into a technology from hardware to software, tower to TV, then hearing absolutely nothing about it for 3 years, then suddenly seeing two front page links about it in a span of days. Truly surreal.
> If we allow broadcast television to become a subscription service, then just kill TV broadcasting and repurpose this spectrum for mobile (cellular) use.
We should definitely do this, at least. Maybe keep educational stuff like PBS going, but no need to waste bandwidth on soap operas or sports.
In the US, this has happened three times already: in the 80s, channels 70-83 were reallocated to cell phones; in 2008, channels 52-69 were reallocated to cell phones; in 2016, channels 38-51 were reallocated to cell phones. So cell phones have already taken half the spectrum originally allocated to OTA tv.
Seems like it's in the wrong part of the spectrum to be very useful for wifi. IMHO, it would propagate too easily for dense residential (or dense office), which is where congestion is most apparent.
For short-range communications such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, the existing higher frequencies will do just fine.
But getting more low-frequency spectrum would be great for longer-range mesh based use cases. For example, I find it quite absurd that I can't message friends a few hundred meters away (e.g. on an airplane sitting in a different row, a few aisles over in a supermarket in a basement etc.) without the both of us having an internet connection via Wi-Fi or cell signal.
If there's someone with at least a little tech/mech inclination available to supervise, perhaps a 3D printer might be considered? There are sub US$200 printers available (e.g. Creality Ender 3) which are a good starting point (though you can spend more to get something more plug-and-play) and it presents so many avenues of exploration. There's the mechanical aspect of the printer itself, but also designing things to print (e.g. tinkercad.com) and then getting to hold them is a blast. Even finding pre-designed objects online to download and print is rewarding (see printables.com for inspiration).
Admittedly 8yo is a little young to start. There are challenges, and patience is a must. But the family can find a local makerspace (or library, or school) to get a better idea of what's involved.
If you want to get a feel in real-time, visit a site offering WebSDR[1]. Look for a receiver in the US and tune between 530-1700KHz in AM mode. Note that reception will vary based on time of day [2].
It's hard for me to take this data seriously when I enter an address that I know to be problematic for cellular coverage and receive "100% coverage" on the mobile broadband tab, and listed with carriers I know to have zero outdoor coverage at the location.
That's the whole point of the map. It's using data reported by telcos.
They opened up the map so that individuals could challenge the coverage they're reportedly getting. My data was largely accurate other than SpaceX reporting coverage for addresses that are still waitlisted, so I challenged those.
Same. This map isn’t accurate. Areas I know have no cell phone coverage are marked as 100% covered. Areas I know that don’t have cable broadband show 100% covered. It’s complete BS.
This is correct. They use census blocks for reporting. So all of these claims are widely over-represented. In theory if an ISP has "Broadband" to one household in a census block, the entire block then is considered to have "Broadband" access even if that is not the case.
Wrote my thesis on US broadband the whole thing made my blood pressure go up.
Report it up the chain. This is a map based on ISP-reported data. If there data is bad, the FCC can investigate. But the FCC isn't going to prove the reported data.
I successfully used this map to report my local ISP informally to the FCC to have them run service to my home - which they said they could not locate on this map.
If you have no luck with wired internet give this a shot and try an antenna and cooling upgrade if it works at all to get really good speeds and low latency: https://www.t-mobile.com/home-internet/eligibility
Prior to that I rolled my own unlimited data AT&T 4G LTE router while I tried to keep getting my local cable ISP to come to my house or simply acknowledge that they provided service to my address, according to the FCC.
I did the pre-paid centurylink deal for one month, paid all fees up front, and returned everything to them on day 29. Centurylink .5 mbit DSL is absolutely useless.
The AT&T 4G LTE I averaged 30mbit symetrical, maybe a 3/4 of one United States imperial mile to my nearest tower.
After filing the complaint, I had them trenching my back yard in two weeks running 360 feet (sorry I can't metric) of coax.
I had the same issue many years ago. Local ISP said fiber was available at my house. It was not. I reported it. A few months later I noticed they basically carved out my house even though I was quite sure my entire neighborhood was not served.
Same. For my home address it shows I'm "covered" because I have access to satellite internet, including Starlink, which is not actually available to me (I've been on the waitlist for going on two years).
For what it's worth, that's configurable under the gear icon. I changed it from "25/3 any technology" to "1000/100 fiber" and most of the green dots on the map area I was zoomed into changed to red.
Agreed. For one, the map has my zip code wrong. And two, I get very spotty reception at my house and get no reception at the local strip mall but both say I get 100% coverage.
