A new REPLACEABLE memory design for laptops!

Way back on April 29th, I was bitching about why laptops were having their memory soldered in. There's another reason: the further away from the CPU, the more likely the signal will degrade. Makes for tricky motherboard design.

There is new hope, and it is now on the market!

Micron and Lenovo have released a laptop with a new memory design called LPCAMM2. Below is a link to a YouTube vid from iFixit, who is partnered with both companies, who were given a laptop that is now using this tech. The memory module is very interesting, sort of a soft triangle design - unlike any memory that I've ever seen before. It uses built-in compression, which reduces its power requirement, and has all sorts of other advances.

But the net result is that as this standard is adopted by other makers - ARE YOU LISTENING, APPLE?! - we can once again have upgradeable laptops!

The video page has a link to an iFixit blog entry that explains LPCAMM2 in a more detailed fashion, which I have not looked at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3zB9EFntmA

RIP: Dick Rutan

You may be thinking, what, the famous aircraft designer? Nope, his older brother. Burt is the plane designer.

Dick's biggest claim to fame took place in 1986 when he and his copilot, Jeana Yeager (no relation to Chuck) flew around the world, NON-STOP and WITHOUT REFUELING, in an aircraft designed by his famous brother Burt. That plane, the Voyager, was a heck of a craft. It experienced an engine failure eight hours from completing its historic journey but they were able to get it restarted and land safely. For this trip, Dick, Jeana, and Burt were awarded the Presidential Citizen's Medal by Ronald Reagan.

The takeoff weight of the Voyager was more than ten times the structural weight of the aircraft! And it took 14,000 feet of runway before Dick rotated and got the plane into the air!

Burt always wanted to fly and was not only a certified pilot in high school, he was a certified flight INSTRUCTOR in high school! He joined the Air Force during the war in Vietnam and flew 350 combat missions, being shot down once and having to eject a second time over England. He was awarded a Purple Heart, twice the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Silver Star, among other citations.

In a 1985 interview with the Washington Post, Rutan said "All I’ve ever wanted to do is fly, and there are only two types of flying worth a damn: test pilots and combat, the rest is repetitive and boring and should be left to bus drivers.” What a fitting statement from an aviation great.

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2024/may/06/legendary-aviator-dick-rutan-mourned

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dick-rutan-whose-round-the-world-flight-made-history-dies-at-85/ar-BB1lVEyl

It's time to play - WHAT TESLA DIVISION GETS AXED THIS WEEK! (and more Tesla stupidity)

Everybody's favorite game show!

In previous weeks we've seen the Supercharger division shown the door, the new car design group booted, lots of people pink-slipped.

And now?

HUMAN RESOURCES!

EVEN MORE ENGINEERS!

And.... drum roll please....

SERVICE ADVISORS!

So let's see. There have already been reports of service appointments being cancelled for CyberTrucks, and this is BEFORE the number of service advisors were reduced. And now everyone who really knew the Supercharger network is gone, but that's last weeks news, that's going to start crumbling as the techs who service that start getting overstretched and quit. Oh, wait. What techs? Engineers are going away, which probably includes some of those techs. And since we've sacked the HR department, apparently there's absolutely no plans to replenish any of these slots being eliminated. The PR department went away ages ago because there wasn't much of a need to promote Tesla cars, reporters have frequently groused that there was no way to get additional information from the company when 'events' happen. Well, this is one heck of a series of events!

When you lay off X% of people, there are Federal labor laws that come into effect. They're probably well over that number. Things like 60 days notice. Unemployment compensation. Insurance bridges. Trivial things that the super rich don't really bother with.

Lawsuits are going to be piled pretty deep and pretty soon. You can't go around slashing people from a big company like this. When the Big Three automakers announce layoffs, they announce them and then begin working with the unions to comply with the law to do them properly. I guess a certain person thinks that since he hasn't let his workforce unionize that he doesn't have to do anything regarding government law.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/tesla-announces-fourth-round-of-layoffs-in-four-weeks/


So, the additional stupidity.

I'm not going to link the article, but the stupidity is truly monumental. It's on the Gizmodo site if you want to look for it. And it involves a CyberTruck.

This idiot - and the idiocy is on both sides, the truck owner and on Tesla - films a video of the frunk (front trunk) closing on a stick and breaking it. Commenters on the video say he did it wrong and it wouldn't break a finger.

So he redoes the video.

And it breaks his finger.

Now here's Tesla's idiocy, aside from it not having safety features to prevent a broken appendage.

If the frunk lid is closing and encounters resistance, most people would think that the sensible programming choice would be that the sensor and computer would say 'I have encountered unexpected resistance and something is preventing me from closing properly! I should reverse and open the frunk lid!'. Nope. It thinks there is a big bag/piece of luggage, and it INCREASES FORCE.

I have no words.

Let's get a drunk person half-in there and see if it'll cut them in half. That'll get some clicks.

Yay social media wannabe influencers!

Panera pulls their Charged caffeinated drinks from their stores

This is after two people have died and they have two wrongful death lawsuits they are defending against.

The Charged Lemonade, in the 30 ounce size, contains 389 mg of caffeine. Initially the drinks were offered as self-serve with unlimited refills.

To compare against other sources of caffeine, "A standard 8-ounce cup of coffee generally contains between 80 to 100 mg of caffeine, while a Red Bull energy drink also contains 80 mg." The FDA recommends no more than 400 mg of caffeine a day.

Interestingly, just a week or so ago, I picked up a Starbucks bottled Frappuccino to see how much caffeine was in it. The label doesn't say....

From the article: "In September 2022, Sarah Katz, a 21-year-old with a heart condition, died after allegedly drinking one of the highly caffeinated lemonades from a restaurant in Philadelphia. In a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Panera in October 2023, Katz's parents alleged that she didn't know the drink contained potentially dangerous amounts of caffeine. Rather, she was "reasonably confident it was a traditional lemonade and/or electrolyte sports drink containing a reasonable amount of caffeine safe for her to drink," the lawsuit stated.

Also in October, Dennis Brown, a 46-year-old man in Florida, went into cardiac arrest while walking home from a Panera, where he allegedly drank a charged lemonade and then had two refills. His family filed a lawsuit against Panera in December.

According to CNN, a third lawsuit was filed in January by a woman who claims she developed an irregularly fast heartbeat and palpitations after drinking the two-and-a-half caffeinated lemonades in April 2023. "The primary reason she ordered this drink was because it was advertised as ‘plant-based’ and ‘clean,’" the complaint states."

I remember the death of Sarah Katz, I didn't hear about the other two incidents. And there may have been others.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/amid-two-wrongful-death-lawsuits-panera-to-pull-the-plug-on-charged-drinks/

Boeing says workers skipped an important test on 787s yet signed off on it as complete

*sigh*

The test on the Dreamliner was to "confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes". A Boeing employee witnessed some shenanigans, apparently saw the inspections not being performed or being done in a half-assed fashion and being logged as complete, and reported it to his supervisor. His supervisor reported it to executive leadership, and executive leadership reported it to the FAA who are investigating.

Boeing says that this will not affect the safety of planes in service, which I find a little dubious - seems to me that every plane in service will need an inspection. They also say that it will affect "customers and employees "because the test now needs to be conducted out of sequence on airplanes in the build process" i.e. they have to go back and redo those inspections, probably with additional supervision to make sure they're done properly and logged, which is going to disrupt production and slow down delivery for a little while.

Once again, corporate culture of 'gotta get them planes out the door to meet deliverables and quarterly profit expectations!' and not enforcing safety standards rears its ugly head.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/boeing-says-workers-skipped-required-tests-on-787-but-recorded-work-as-completed/