Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
After reading “What is the fastest and safest method for putting out a lithium-ion battery fire?“, frequent correspondent “App” wrote: According to the FAA, water is not a last resort…it’s your first choice, because you don’t only want to put the fire out, you want to cool it, too. So a water fire extinguisher does…
(Answer requested by Richard Janezic) LI-ion batteries are considered Class B (flammable liquids/gases) fire hazards (info). LI-ion fires are ferocious, and the gases are nasty. If there’s a fire, unplug the device (if plugged in), call the fire department, and then use an ABC- or BC-rated fire extinguisher (info) to suppress the fire. In a…
Nothing good. If you’re lucky, the CPU will sense that’s something’s very wrong and slow or shut itself down before permanent damage occurs. But with today’s higher-power chips, the margin for error is very small. More likely, after a few glorious and toasty moments, your CPU would give up the ghost in the form of…
“It was… the first digital flight computer, the most advanced miniature computer to date, the first computer to use silicon chips, and the first onboard computer where the lives of crew depended on it functioning as advertised.” Full text, more pix. Permalink: https://langa.com/?p=2954
(Answer requested by Ellie Williams) Yes, for ordinary use — office tasks, browsing, streaming media, etc. — 8GB is fine for a current-generation 64-bit PC. If you have occasional heavy use that bogs down an 8GB PC, or if you want to build in a little future-proofing, go for 12GB. If you edit hi-res videos, play…
Depending on how you perform the encryption, yes. I don’t recommend whole-drive encryption because the encrypting is effectively part of the operating system. That is convenient, and can work great if the user is careful and knows what they’re doing. But it can lead to lockout issues even if the files themselves would otherwise be…
(Answer requested by Dennis Hayes) I think I can suggest a better approach; but first, to answer your question: You need a hub, not a reader. When you plug in a standard card reader — even one with multiple slots for different types of cards — the reader is assigned one address from the PC;…
In response to “Is there any way to charge a phone faster?,” reader Peter Rothschild sent in the following interesting and very surprising post, based on his real-life measurements of smartphone charging times. Fascinating info about differences in USB charging cables! (Thanks, Peter!): “I have done a bit of experimenting with this on my last…
It’s a quandary. Solid-state/hybrid drives (SSHDs) use a modest amount of high-speed memory as a kind of front end to a large, conventional, spinning-platter drive; software makes the two act as one. The idea is to yield a drive that’s faster than a conventional drive, but less expensive than an all-solid-state drive. But, as you…
I’m glad I don’t have to choose! But if I did: I’d choose a high-end, state-of-the-art smartphone. Why? Because you can turn a high-end smartphone into a pretty capable notebook-equivalent by adding a USB- and Bluetooth-connected monitor, keyboard, and mouse. But while a smartphone can serve as a portable PC, the reverse isn’t true: For…