My Appearance on WGST's "The Sully Show" 7/10/14 Talking Tech

Current tech topics

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listen to ‘The Sully Show July 11, 2014’ on Audioboo

TSA Prohibits Taking Discharged Electronic Devices Onto Planes

(Right now international flights to U.S.)

The US Transport Security Administration revealed on Sunday that enhanced security procedures on flights coming to the US now include not allowing uncharged cell phones and other devices onto planes.

“During the security examination, officers may also ask that owners power up some devices, including cell phones. Powerless devices will not be permitted on board the aircraft. The traveler may also undergo additional screening,” TSA said in a statement.

Don't bring dead phones or laptops to those overseas airports for flights heading to the USA.
Department of Homeland Security officials warned last week that security would tighten at airports where flights head directly to the USA but without providing much detail about how the scrutiny would change.

But security officials said Sunday that the attention is focused on explosives that could be disguised as electronic devices.

4 in 10 US homes are cellphone only, skip landline

More American households are ditching their old telephones: 4 out of 10 only use cellphones, a government survey shows.

That's twice the rate from just five years ago, although the pace of dumping landlines seems to have slowed down in recent years.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been tracking phone use for a decade, and the number of households only using cellphones had been rising by about 5 percentage points each year. Lately, the increases have been smaller and last year it only went up 3 percentage points to 41 percent of U.S. homes.

Why the slight leveling off? Experts could only speculate. The lead researcher on the CDC report,

Stephen Blumberg, said it could be people are holding onto their landlines because it is part of their Internet and cable TV package.
— Not all homes have phones: About 3 percent have no landline or cellphone.

— About 9 percent have only landlines, and about 48 percent have both. Five years ago, 17 percent had only landlines, and about 60 percent had landlines and cellphones.

— Younger people rely more on cellphones: Nearly two-thirds of people in their late 20s live in households with only cellphones. Only 14 percent of people 65 and older use only cellphones.

— Men are a bit more likely to shun landlines than women.

Airbus Patents Windowless Cockpit That Would Increase Pilots' Field of View

Imagine showing up at the airport to catch your flight, looking at your plane, and noticing that instead of windows, the cockpit is now a smooth cone of aluminum. It may seem like the worst case of quality control in history, but Airbus argues that this could be the airliner of the future. In a new US patent application, the EU aircraft consortium outlines a new cockpit design that replaces the traditional cockpit with one that uses 3D view screens instead of conventional windows.

There’s a reason why cockpits are traditionally in the nose of a plane – not the least of which is the pilot being able to see where they're going. In addition to flying, being up front provides a clear view forward and downward for landing and taxiing. That’s all very useful, but it does tend to ruin the aerodynamics of the aircraft’s nose, which would ideally be lancet shaped. As aircraft have grown larger and more complicated, the nose has come to also include the radome, crew rest area and the front landing gear, and the current cockpit design reflects this.

Another problem is that aerospace engineers hate windows. They may be popular with passengers who like to see outside, and pilots, who like to not bang into things, but engineers see them as nothing but points of weakness in what should, ideally, be a solid cylinder. If nothing else, they’ll point to the alarming Comet airliner crashes of the 1950s, which were traced back to poor window design fatally weakening the fuselage. Windows mean heavy reinforcements and multiple layers of glass and plastic to strengthen hull integrity. In addition, placing the cockpit in the nose reduces the cabin size, where every inch is measured in thousands of dollars lost per flight.
 

Tesla Aims For $30,000 Price, 2017 Launch For Model E

The biggest complaint about Tesla Motors' electric vehicles is that they're far too expensive for the average motorist. The Roadster sold for $109,000, and the Model S for $70,000. Chris Porritt, the company's VP of engineering, says their next model will aim for much broader availability. The compact Model E aims to be competitive with the Audi A4 and BMW 3-series, which both start in the low $30,000 range. To reduce cost, the Model E won't be built mostly with aluminum, like the Model S, and it will be roughly 20% smaller as well. The construction of the "Gigafactory" for battery production will also go a long way toward reducing the price. Their goal for launch is sometime around late 2016 or early 2017.

Radar Changing the Face of Cycling and how drivers see bicyclists and how bikers see cars

MAKE Magazine has a great review of a bicycle radar product — showing off some of the early prototype innards: "The latest version features a 24 GHz radar antenna — high enough to resolve more targets and small enough to fit on a bike — an ARM processor, and Bluetooth LE to communicate with the front unit. The radar creates a doppler map, and recognizes not only the vehicle, but how far away it is and how quickly it’s approaching. It communicates this to the cyclist by a system of LEDs, and to the car by increasing the rate at which the tail light blinks as the car gets closer.