I recall news stories about legal pot businesses in Washington not being able to keep their money in banks because of federal regulations, so I'm curious how they're able to take credit card payments. Is it different for medical marijuana? (I wouldn't think so, as that is still illegal federally).
Hey, good question! Austin here, one of the co-founders of Potbox..
It really is a state-by-state and bank-by-bank (or credit union) issue. Same with the credit card gateways -- some are completely fine with it and others freak out right away.
When I spoke with SVB they told me their view on it was similar to Bitcoin. Oddly enough, SVB will no longer open accounts for Bitcoin startups. :-p
They'd have to use a high-risk credit card processor, which probably charges higher fees to offset the risk. Such processors exist, for other businesses with a higher incidence of fraud.
They claim that their 50 Whr battery can power a MacBook Pro for 6 hours, a MacBook Air for 12 hrs. By my math, that would mean that the MacBook Pro would only be consuming an average of around 8.3 watts an hour, the air only around 4.2 watts an hour.
That seems absurd to me, considering the power supplies that ship with the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air are 85-watt and 45-watt respectively. They are assuming that each only draws about 10% of the power that the official power supplies are rated at. Anyone have a Kill-A-Watt to see the actual draw of their device?
The difference in power draw between idle and 100% utilization on a modern computer is enormous.
The power adapter needs to be able to handle 100%, but the sort of usage where you get 6-12 hours of use while on battery is very much near idle almost all the time.
I have a 15" MacBook Pro, which has a 95Wh battery. Apple claims 8 hours of battery life on it, and in my experience that's an understatement. It also ships with an 85W power adapter.
> The power adapter needs to be able to handle 100%
Actually it can't; there used to be a support article on Apple's site named HT2332 that details how Macbooks will underclock with the battery removed, because the adapter cannot supply enough power with the system at full load. Other manufacturer's laptops have also been doing this, so Apple is not alone.
That's true, I'm able to drain my MacBook's battery while plugged in if I stress it enough. It's pretty close, though!
I don't suppose you have any idea exactly how they arrive at the power adapter size for these things? It seems to be almost but not quite 100%, but they still try to optimize it where they ship 45W, 65W, or 85W depending on what computer you have.
At least for the Macs I think it's more to do with how fast it can charge the battery while the system is (mostly) idle or off. A larger adapter is inconvenient, but so is a slow-charging battery.
The 13" MBA has a 54Wh battery, and Apple claims it get 12 hours of "wireless web" use. The 13" MBP has a 72Wh battery and claims 9 hours of "wireless web" or "iTunes movie playback". In practice, people find the Apple claims fairly reasonable.
While that does not prove how precise or accurate their projections are, I don't think they are absurd. Software-based monitors of power consumption on MacBooks show variation between low single digits and low teens under light use, and shoot up dramatically if you are doing something intensive.
It's entirely true, and means I could run my MacBook Air off of USB power at 5 volts and one amp (5 watts), but zero battery charging. Unfortunately Apple doesn't allow this scenario, but the math works out...
The Air has I think a 50 WHr battery and will last 11-12 hours for Wi-Fi surfing. I think the idle load is just a couple of watts. Peak load is of course higher.
The thing that always annoyed me about Aereo is how they restrict who can "rent an antenna". If they are to stick to their legal argument that they're just renting an antenna, then why can I not rent an antenna based in New York City, even though I live in Wisconsin?
Who decides who gets to be a CA for SSL certs? Similar process. Somehow my browser doesn't recognize a CA that would allow any random person to pretend to be Facebook.
Google controls the entire browser, meaning they are in absolute control, ultimately. They could inject code into your banking web sites, they could block all the porn, whatever they want.
The idea isn't that the certificates would wrest control away from Google, it's that they wouldn't be able to use "omg the malwares" as a shield for their intentions. If there's a root CA that's handing out certs for malware extensions then sure, pull the plug, but if the root CA is handing out certs for ad blockers and Google pulls the plug then it'll be plain as day what they're doing.
Heck, all the browsers nowadays use extensions of some sort, maybe they could form a consortium for extension certifications so no one company would be in complete control. You could bet Mozilla would keep that sort of behavior in check, at least.
> If there's a root CA that's handing out certs for malware extensions then sure, pull the plug, but if the root CA is handing out certs for ad blockers and Google pulls the plug then it'll be plain as day what they're doing.
Pulling a root CA is no more public than blocking an extension from the Chrome Web Store. In both cases it is clear that Google has taken the action, and whoever has gotten blocked can protest it publicly (just like people do now for Apple App Store rejections). The Chrome Web Store doesn't give Google any kind of "cover" or "shield."
Additionally, revoking an entire root CA that was letting malware through (intentionally or unintentionally) would be far more intrusive than pulling a single extension from the Web Store, because every extension that the CA had approved would be affected, even if they were not malware.
What annoys me about this entire thread is that the OP (which was voted to the top of the story's comments) presumes that you can sprinkle some crypto fairy dust and get just as much security against malware without having to give up any control. And it goes so far as to assume bad intentions on Google's part for not doing it. But it's not that easy; crypto isn't a magic wand that lets you have your cake and eat it too.
> (OP:) if security is all they cared about, a signed certificate is all that's necessary.
Yes... swap the two drives. The optical bay cannot properly put the HDD to sleep. I am running a similar setup, but with the HDD in the original bay, and the SSD in the optical bay and have no issues.
Ah, yes. I think with my machine being a very old model (MBP 4,1) there was some issue for why I didn't do this. Perhaps the maximum speed of the optical bay? I'll have to look up the specs again to see if it wouldn't be worth the trade off, as it would be great to make the old goat more portable. Thanks for the tip!
My original SSD setup didn't actually have any problems in the 2007 model MacBook Pro, so I can't imagine you would either. The speedup is absolutely incredible, even with a cheap Chinese SSD.
I'm successfully pushing local content to my Chromecast. The developer in question was using an undocumented API. If you use the documented APIs, things work just fine.
Thanks for that feedback - we wanted to get Picture Messaging out of the door as soon as we had it before attacking the wealth of other features MMS has to offer.
Really hope you enjoy it and check in often as we support more stuff.
I've been using my Chromecast to play local content since day one. Then again, I have a whitelisted application that I'm using and I'm not distributing it. There is nothing really stopping developers from developing such services... local content plays fine. Google just doesn't want you distributing them until the dust settles and they lock down their API. If it takes them more than a month or so to do so, or if they then prohibit such uses of the Chromecast, then maybe you have a story, but until then -- geez.
Feel free to use / copy / fork, whatever. Basically, you can send any URL to the receiver, and the receiver then loads that URL in its video element.... that URL can be local, remote, whatever... requires that you have a webserver to serve your local content.
The University of Wisconsin Madison is referred to as UW, "Wisconsin", or The University of Wisconsin -- but not UWM.