Planned Obsolescence

How long does a battery last?

Inside each beacon is a non-rechargeable lithium battery that should last up to 2 years. Yes, the Bluetooth is really low energy. If the battery is running out of power, you’ll be notified. You don’t have to worry about changing it, because in two years time you’ll probably get your hands on our new much more advanced Beacons.

Seen at estimote FAQ.

So apparently now it’s cool to announce that you are expected to replace a product before its battery runs out. At least the other guys are subtler about it.

Pairing wireless keyboards

I won’t bore you with the details, but if you’re having trouble pairing an Apple Wireless Keyboard and you might have paired it in the past to more than one computer/tablet/phone try pressing the “play/pause” or volume keys. If something starts playing music, unpair that first.

It might save you embarrassment after half an hour of doing the power button pairing dance.

Battlefield loading times

I think this is one of the main reasons why I stopped playing Battlefield 3 and why I won’t be playing much Battelfield 4

That’s quite usual for loading time, although I’ve seen longer. If you play on settings with longer round durations it might be tolerable, but if you like shorter and faster game types you round time will be around 5-15 minutes

Spending 10-30% of my gaming time staring at a loading screen is no fun.

On top of that, I’m getting a bit tired of shooting and looking into games with a little more story. If you’re looking for a nice new game where the main goal is not killing people and blowing up stuff, check out Papo & Yo.

The Internet Archive scanning center on fire

I got the news a bit late, but one of the buildings of the Internet Archive caught fire last week.

An early estimate shows we may have lost about $600,000 worth of high end digitization equipment, and we will need to repair or rebuild the scanning building. It is in difficult times like these that we turn to our community.

You might know the Internet Archive from their Wayback Machine, a service that keeps snapshots of many websites back to 1996

I’m really only familiar with that tool, but they do so much more. From their about page:

The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format.

If you want to help rebuild, you can donate.

Reverse Identity Theft

Glad to see I’m not the only one. I get so much email that’s not for me