Posted by planetbeing on under iphe, realiti, comex, obama, oses, worst case, sdk, voodoo, kernel, presidency, sectors, samsung, linux, map | 
So the big news yesterday (other than Obama winning the presidency!) is that we have enough of a low-level NAND driver now that we're able to read from NAND! It was epic win. There turns out to be not as much hardware voodoo as, say, Merlot, so that's pretty good news. It seems to work (albeit slowly) and I even wrote the ECC routines today (and those seem to work as well).
Unfortunately, in the course of this, we discovered several unfortunate things. First, I can't seem to find anything that might write to NAND. It's probably not much more complicated and probably reuses a lot of the stuff we've been doing, but it means that we might have to look in the kernel for that code, which sort of bites (a lot of the kernel is in C++ and not as friendly to reverse).
The second thing is the realization that all of Samsung's proprietary FTL code is in this thing. Without being able to understand it, we can't actually map sectors to data and we can't make sense of the NAND data or write new data to it in a useful way. Unfortunately, this code is liable to be ridiculously complex, since it's basically their SDK they ship to everyone. Without it, we can still proceed, but the iPhone can't read Linux's data and Linux can't read iPhone's data. In the worst case, we can't even have both OSes on the NAND at once.
Still, being able to dump NAND through USB is a substantial accomplishment, and we're well on our way.
Tagi: iphe, realiti, comex, obama, oses, worst case, sdk, voodoo, kernel, presidency, sectors, samsung, linux, map
Posted by Maggie Koerth-Baker on under hair driers, kilowatt hour, architecture 2030, greenhouse gas, coffee machines, realiti, advocacy group, coue, sustainable buildings, heating refrigerating, space heater, building energy, galls, energy efficiency, power sources, energy use, new energy, en |
I did a couple of great interviews yesterday about sustainable buildings with Ed Mazria, the founder of advocacy group Architecture 2030, and Kent Peterson, past president of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. One big takeaway: Building energy use isn't just about the building itself: What it took to build, what it takes to light and heat. Plug load—all the gadgets and appliances we stick in our outlets—accounts for a big chunk and, more importantly, a chunk that's currently a lot harder to control. After all, we have building regulations that mandate energy efficiency, but plug load (in the United States, anyway) is all voluntary.
What's more, it's not always easy for the people doing the plugging in get the big picture linking the cost, electricity use and fuel consumption of all their electronic stuff. GE is trying to help clear that up, infographic style. Their new, interactive chart allows you to pick the common electronics you own and see the impacts of each appliance in watts, dollars, gallons of gas or what they can do with 1 kilowatt hour of electricity. You can add up the totals by month, day or year, and some starred appliances have payback calculators, so you can see how fast a new Energy-Star rated replacement would pay for itself.
I love the watt and kilowatt hour views, especially. I find it's a standard unit most people can't connect to anything meaningful, turning discussions of sustainability into a lot of gibberish. Understanding that 1 kWh of electricity will run your dishwasher for 1 hour, or an oven for less than half an hour, makes a big difference there. As does the realization that hair driers and coffee machines use electricity at about the same rate as a space heater .
That said, I wish there was a toggle on this for greenhouse gas emissions, but I suppose that gets complicated, given that most people in the US don't get their electricity from just coal and it would be hard to figure out each, individual mix of power sources.
(Via Treehugger)
Image courtesy Flickr user tnarik, via cc
Tagi: hair driers, kilowatt hour, architecture 2030, greenhouse gas, coffee machines, realiti, advocacy group, coue, sustainable buildings, heating refrigerating, space heater, building energy, galls, energy efficiency, power sources, energy use, new energy, en
