Logitech K310 Keyboard - 100 Percent Washable, 98 Percent Amazing

This is one hundred percent insane. Red Dot design award went to Samsonite for Inova suitcases which are... well, plain boring suitcases with plain boring zip locks and... WOW!!! hard and durable plastic body.

Curious to see how they look like after several dozen trips and how using such suitcase changes its owner's life for the better and especially whether the change is worth the overwhelming sticker price of the suitcase. Seriously, does anyone have any case studies or success stories about that?

Meanwhile on the bright side of the planet... Why didn't Logitech nominate its K310 keyboard which is just two steps from being absolutely amazing?

K310 is neat, thin, lightweight, strong, durable (as any other Logitech keyboard for the record) and you can wash it under water tap.

Dust between keys? Tiny food particles between keys? Fibers from office paper towels between keys? You don't have to clean this keyboard with compressed air or the like - you just unplug it and wash it under the water tap. Then you let it dry for several hours and your keyboard is almost new.

It's "almost" because water leaves occasional light gray stains on the dark gray plastic when it dries - same as stains from raindrops on a dark car body. This is what happens when dark colored stuff gets wet and then dries. Too bad dark gray is the only choice of color with this keyboard.

There's just one thing which is really uncool with this keyboard - the space between the groups of keys (between the letters and the up-down-left-right block and between the latter block and the numbers block) is just a bit narrower than it was on Deluxe 360 model. Why would this design change be necessary? Saving a gram of plastic at the expense of user frustration? Was the focus group formed of typists who never use a computer or what? The bright side is that a human can adapt to almost any piece of design crap and especially so when the piece is not very large.

So after a week or so of frustration and hitting the wrong keys you have good chances to either violently break it into pieces or accept it and enjoy the fact that you can wash it as easily as you wash your jeans and cookware.

It is a much larger improvement than it looks like. Totally should have been nominated for Red Dot Award. Perhaps Logitech will do this once it masters a more practical color for the keyboard body and stops saving plastic where a tiny saving notably worsens user experience.

The Most Useless Microsoft Initiative EVER

The following message appeared in Windows Azure OS Updates RSS on November 13, 2013:

We are responding to customer feedback and now adding information to this page on the next upcoming Guest OS release. We hear that you want to know when your roles will reboot. Guest OS releases can move around by days or even a week. The announcements will give projected and approximate dates for the upcoming releases. Updates to the Guest OS Matrix are in process, but not completed yet.

What? Microsoft suddenly cares about Azure Cloud Services users?

Surely not. Not a chance. Here's why.

Those users who have guest OS automatic updates switched on (that's the default osVersion="*" in the service configuration) will be updated withing a rather long timeframe - typically several days - and this will happen before that new guest OS version can be explicitly selected in the Management Portal.

So those announcements will basically mean: oh, dudes, we gonna roll out something which you can't try yourself yet and your service can break in an unexpected way withing the following several days. WTF should the user do? Should he pray or should he pray harder? Should he go to his psychoanalyst and talk about the problem?

WHAT ON EARTH SHOULD USERS DO WHEN THEY SEE THAT NOTICE?

Anyone who cares about their service being broken by a guest OS update (you should too if you claim your service is a Serious Business) have switched guest OS automatic updates off long ago. They manually change the OS version in a testing environment first, ensure that it still works, then do they same in production. These users control their update process and don't care of those announcement just as well.

These announcements are the most useless Microsoft initiative EVER. Just extra noise in the RSS.

And once again - if you have a service hosted as Azure Cloud Service and you want your service to run in stable manner then you should have switched guest OS automatic updates off long ago.

How Power Tools Manufacturers Could Get Their Logo Everywhere (Without Looking Dumb)

This day most power tool brands have a wide range of really impressive cordless tools. Most tools have removable batteries. More and more tools get equipped with lithium-ion batteries that have very good energy density and very low self-discharge. What's more important, the battery is the heart of every cordless tool and so all top brands put a lot of effort into equipping their tools with the best batteries possible - with as many charge cycles as possible, with the highest cell capacity, with the best overheating protection so that the battery can output very high power without risk of overheating and exploding.

So you're a cordless tools manufacturer and you've designed a very nice battery pack and you ship several drills, an impact driver, a saber saw, a pneumatic hammer, a flashlight, a disk saw, an oscillating tool, a radio and you can't imagine what else could run of the same battery for your benefits.

Have you ever heard of so-called portable chargers for mobile devices? That's a box with a battery inside that you first charge from mains or from USB and then you can use it to charge or power you cell phone, smartphone or even laptop when far from an outlet. People buy such things from some companies they never heard before.

Since you're a cordless tool manufacturer and you've crafted a very good battery pack for your tools. Why not let people use that battery pack for powering their electronics? All you need is a rather simple converter (yes, it will contain a fair share of electronic components, but this isn't that uncommon these days) that is snapped onto a power tool removable battery pack.

This way you can have your logo just about everywhere and more people know that your cordless tools come with really nice battery packs. Most people only use power tools occasionally or on their workplace or in their backyard but they use electronics everywhere. Letting them use your batteries in everyday life greatly increases exposure to your logo.

Last, but not least, using batteries more frequently will wear them out faster and you'll be able to sell more of them.

What Intel Corporation Really Does

You thought Intel only produces processors and hardcore software like compilers and profilers? Think again.

A small ISV recently made a post about moving to their new office with plenty of photos. Among others are this photo of a shaman's tambourine with the repeating inscription "FIX THE BUG" and this photo of a horseshoe amulet with the inscription "A horseshoe nailed to the computer protects code from bugs (the ancient programmers' popular belief)". Both items proudly bear Intel logo on them.

Surely, Intel being a Serious Company™ has to provide a variety of tools for developing and maintaining software. Hence they can't go without shipping debugging aid tools like a shaman's tambourine and bug repelling items like a horseshoe amulet.

Dear Intel, I'm sure you'll be reading this at some point. Could you please not use screws for attaching the horseshoe to the base? In this case screws look as weird as your Atom CPU would look in Ancient Rome. Thank you.

In the Aftermath of Unexpected Worldwide Windows Azure Storage SSL Certificate Expiration

Somewhere between Feb 22, 2013 and Feb 23, 2013 Windows Azure Storage service had its SSL certificate unexpectedly expired. Proofs: one and two. A lot of software is configured in such way that once an SSL certificate expires the software no longer trusts the service and refuses to connect to it. That happened to all geographical regions, so no amount of data replication would help (except replicating to some other provider of course).

A fair portion of chaos followed. Microsoft replaced the certificate in several hours and the life goes on.

Now it's time to analyze this situation. Here we have a third party service a lot of other services depend upon and it turns out the service provider let the certificate expire.

Suppose your service uses Windows Azure Storage for storing data and you find yourself in the situation described above. What lessons will you learn from it?

The standard way to handle this situation is the following. It was Microsoft who was responsible for the certificate and so it's Microsoft's fault. Let's get some Jack Daniel's and have a good time.

This approach no longer works. At least not with the cloud services responsibility model.

If you read Windows Azure Storage SLA (highly recommended) you'll see that in no event you're eligible for a refund greater than the sum you paid for the service. This means that if you were affected by that incident you likely can get a refund of several USD, not much more. With that refund you then have to go to your service customers and explain why your service has got affected.

Note that Microsoft is not scamming you – you've been showed that SLA upfront and your lawyers have likely read it.

Now follow any of the two links above and look carefully at that picture with the certificate information. Where's that picture from? When you open any HTTPS-enabled site like https://twitter.com your browser shows a visual indication of an encrypted connection. If you click there you can read who owns the site and who issued the certificate and there's a kind of "more info" button that brings you to that certificate information dialog. Using this way you can see that https://twitter.com SSL certificate expires (as of the date of this writing) at May 11, 2014 which is quite far from now.

So it turns out you can look at any HTTPS-enables site SSL certificate at any time and see its expiration date.

Soooo… Unlike any other kind of unexpected event – like a lightning, a storm, an earthquake, an intern spilling coffee onto critical equipment – this time anyone could have seen the disaster was coming. The information was publicly available weeks in advance and noone noticed the upcoming problem.

Soooo… If your service uses a third-party service via SSL you have only two options. Either you monitor that service certificate or you risk that certificate unexpectedly expiring and sending you into chaos.

It doesn't matter that it's Microsoft (or Twitter) certificate. If your service depends on that certificate you have to monitor it. That's how clouds work. If you don't comply with this model all you have is a crowd of upset customers, a ton of upset blog posts and a refund worth no more than several USD.

Don't Do Stupid Things When Trying to Help Protect the Environment

Everyone is trying so hard to help the environment. Energy saving there, recycling here. Soooo green...

...and sometimes so stupid. Look at Nokia chargers initiative. Newer chargers will consume less than 30 milliwatts in standby mode which is excellent. And each time a phone finishes charging there's a message saying that charging is complete and you'd better unplug the charger to help protect environment.

This message is brought up as a very clever step that makes every Nokia phone user responsible for the green future....

Well, no. The message about charging completion was always there, just the part about the environment was added at some point.

There's something weird in here, isn't it? It's Nokia charger consuming power in standby but the user has to make extra effort. Why?

The real reason is that those chargers are damn efficient already. Making them more efficient would require better electronic components that are more expensive and that would drive the chargers price up and guess who would have to pay for that? No, people don't like to pay more for greener chargers.

So the pseudosolution is to change the "charging complete" message to contain the word "environment" in it. Does nothing, still puts extra burden on the user but now allows him feel better because of "doing something green". Plus Nokia can now run a PR company full of impressive numbers on energy saving and reducing the environmental effect.


Yes, impressive numbers. To actually estimate anything you have to run the numbers.

Numbers don't lie.

Suppose we have a Nokia charger in standby plugged in for a full year and consuming 30 milliwatts. Just the worst case waste scenario.

Every day the charger will consume 0,03 watts by 86400 seconds (number of seconds in a day) which totals 2592 joules.

Now when you multiply that by the number of days in a year and then by the estimated number of chargers out there the result is very impressive.

Except that the number alone is meaningless. You have to compare it with something and see if it makes any sense.

Let's pretend that each day you will take the stairs instead of using an elevator. Let's assume your weight is 60 kilograms and you go three meters up. This makes you spend at least 3 meters by 60 kilograms by 9,8 meters per second ² (gravitational acceleration) which totals 1764 joules.

You see, the elevator will not need to use that energy because you took the stairs.

Climb up two floors up and you totally offset the energy saving of the unplugged charger. Plus now you've got some physical exercise and you have better chances of not needing a heart surgery and a ton of drugs which are not that environmentally friendly.

Which will you choose – to do something stupid and protect the environment or to do something useful and protect the environment?

Safety Device Useless Because of Poorly Worded Manual

Teh battery terminal covers... Tiny pieces of plastic that could prevent shorting the mobile device battery when the battery is being stored or transported much better than the stupid "don't store the battery in a pocket next to a paper clip" warning.

Now turns out there is one company that ships mobile devices with battery terminal covers. Let's look at Nikon Coolpix AW 100 camera manual. Confirming the Package Contents section clearly shows that the camera battery is shipped with a terminal cover.

One small step for a company, a giant leap for mankind. Sort of.

The problem is that shipping the battery with the cover IS NOT FUKKEN ENOUGH because users are not familiar with what to do with that. Scary paperclip warnings have been there for ages, but users have never seen a terminal cover before. With such background they can only fear a paperclip, not do anything constructive with a terminal cover.

Camera Reference Manual to the rescue? Okay... section For Your Safety says observe the following precautions when handling the battery for use in this product and then there's a bullet list that among other stuff includes this:

[B1] Do not short or disassemble the battery or attempt to remove or break the battery insulation or casing.

Okay, then two bullets later (both completely unrelated to shorting the battery) it says this:

[B2] Replace the terminal cover when transporting the battery. Do not transport or store with metal objects such as necklaces or hairpins.

This is not how the manual should handle this. Here's what's wrong.

First of all, look at [B1] wording. You see, shorting the battery and disassembling the battery are listed as if they are similar actions. They are only similar because they are both Bad Idea™. Other than that they are very different. Disassembling the battery is usually a deliberate action but shorting the battery can be either deliberate or accidental (like accidentally connecting the terminals with a paper clip in a pocket).

These two things should be worded separately. Disassembling or otherwise hacking the battery with a pickaxe should be a separate bullet point.

Next, [B1] that mentions that shorting the battery is Bad Idea™ and [B2] mentioning the terminal cover and the metal objects are separated with two completely unrelated bullets.

This makes [B1] and [B2] unrelated in the reader's mind although they both talk about shorting the battery and how to avoid it.

Finally look at [B2] wording. This on its own deserves careful analysis.

It says the user should put the cover onto the battery while transporting it but doesn't mention battery storage although storing and transporting the battery are totally equivalent in terms of shorting and risks thereof.

Next, [B2] says the user should not transport or store the battery with metal objects. Why the F should he not?

Remember, there's a terminal cover that he should have put onto the battery and that cover should prevent shorting. When the cover is on it's okay to store the battery in a bag full of tiny metal objects – no shorting will happen.

Do you see what's going on? According to the manual the terminal cover is just needed but it doesn't protect against shorting the battery. According to the manual it's just useless or maybe protects from dirt.

So, Dear Nikon, you've implemented the terminal cover, you've produced and shipped it and then you wrote in your reference manual that the said cover is a useless piece of plastic that just needs to be there. Every box with Nikon Coolpix AW 100 now contains a terminal cover and a manual implicitly declaring that the cover is useless.

EPIC FAIL

Here's how you fix it.

1. Remove do not short wording from [B1]. Only leave the wording about disassembling and otherwise deliberately (most of time) messing with the battery in [B1].

2. Move do not short wording into [B2]. Shorting the battery (either deliberately or accidentally) is a separate problem and it should be addressed separately. The terminal cover is implemented to avoid accidentally shorting the battery when the battery is being stored or transported. Remove do not transport or store with metal objects wording, replace it with a phrase saying that a metal object (such as whatever examples you want) can accidentally make a connection between the uncovered terminals and short the battery and to avoid that the user should only store or transport the battery with the terminal cover on.

This makes the terminal cover ACTUALLY USEFUL and saves a billion of cute kittens.