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I just signed up for an Alaska Airlines Bank of America credit card. I looked over the literature I got about fees and only after a third look was I able to find the annual fee because of this evil page break:

That is uncool, Bank of America.

You see, about 2 years ago, new consumer protection laws went into effect, making it so that credit card companies were required to inform customers very clearly as to what fees they would be charged. This is the first I’ve seen of credit cards trying to chip away at that law.

Update: After this blog post General Electric removed the video from the web on 3-21-13! see the comments below.

I was browsing the GE LED lighting website and they were talking all about how when you buy GE lighting, you are buying into the GE Six Sigma  methodology and trust and confidence and people in labcoats and testing and history and blah di blah di blah… And then I saw this video (via) and got just a little pissed off. Starting at 1:15, compared compared an old street lamp system to a shiny new GE Evolve LED Roadway Lighting system with photos.

Can you see what’s wrong with this comparison?

Wow, that’s amazing! Look how bright the LEDs are compared to the old lights! You’re so right! I couldn’t see the sign before beca… wait a second. In the “after” picture I can see the tree in the foreground.. and where is the light in the foreground splashing on the road coming from? Wait. They just fixed a light in the foreground and I can’t see the fixture!

And wait a minute more. In the upper right corner of each photo, there’s a light on someone’s property… and in the “before” photo, that light is much dimmer! Are telling me that GE tweaked the brightness and contrast in the photo to fake how their lighting compares?

Let’s see. I did my best at fixing the the brightness, contrast and color temperature of the “before” photo:

Yes, I am calling the people at GE Lighting Solutions who made this video liars.

local archive

I should note that the yellow cast of the “before” image is probably due to high pressure sodium lamps. It is hard to believe that it actually is as yellow as was depicted in the image, nevertheless, it should still be said that LEDs have better color rendition than high pressure sodium lamps.

The new Philips Sonicar AirFloss looks cool and they claim that it “removes up to 99% more plaque compared to regular brushing“, wow! 99%, that’s amazi…. wait a minute!

Let’s give that sentence another go. ”…up to 99% more…”So for instance, if you have 100 “plaques” in your mouth and brushing gets rid of just 20 of them, will AirFloss get rid of 99 of the plaques… leaving just 1 nasty plaque? No it does not. It gets rid of 99% more than brushing. In my example, about 19 more plaques than brushing alone for a total of 39… or in reasonable terms “almost twice as much”. Apparently that fine statistic wasn’t good enough for Phillips America. The fact that they chose to say “99% more” instead of “100% more” or “twice as much” demonstrates that they were trying to deceive. “99% more” is simply an unreasonable claim any way you slice it. I am disappointed in Philips.

Now I’m not calling the Philips marketeers fucking liars, I’m just saying that trying to pull a fast one like that is deceptive, immoral and against the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines. (Amazon.com listing)

According to the CPUC, this SolarWorld billboard, which I saw at Civic Center station BART last night, is a lie created by lying liars.

The historical electric rate chart at the CPUC says that average electric rates have gone from 13.8 cents per kWh to 15.1 cents per kWh, that is a 9% increase. The sign indicates a 21% increase from 2006 to 2011.

Find the CPUC historical rate chart here. Local archive.

Honestly, I don’t have it in for SolarWorld. I just have it in for getting facts right. They could have made a compelling argument with the data at hand, but they chose to lie instead.

Welcome to another edition of Poor Design Workshop!

I saw this poster in the BART yesterday.

It’s kind of a nice poster… until you actually read it.

It’s time to put the sun to work
Power from the sun
400 000 000 000 000 000 000
kilowatts per second
America’s largest solar manufacturer since 1975
SolarWorld

First, “kilowatts per second” is a non sequitur here. (reference) Though granted there is often confusion about terms like this. Try to think of it this way: kilowatts is a rate, like “miles per hour”. You don’t say “He was driving at 55 miles per hour per second“… because, well, that’s stupid. Similarly, a 60 watt light bulb uses 60 watts, not 60 watts per second. With electricity, 1 Watt is equal to 1 Joule per second.It’s kind of OK for a layman to make this mistake, but not so much for America’s largest solar manufacturer since 1975.

Ok, let’s just sweep the “per second” thing under the rug and look at that big number with all the pretty zeros. “400,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilowatts” = 4.0 x 10²³ watts. Let’s assume they meant to say that the earth is being hit by 4.0 x 10²³ watts of energy from the sun. The trouble is, if that were true, our planet would boil off into the vast nothingness of space in minutes. In actuality, the earth catches 1.8 x 10¹⁷ watts (reference) from the sun. Their number is off by 6 orders of magnitude… a million times!!!

Ok, maybe that big number isn’t supposed to represent how much power that hits the earth, maybe they were talking about how much power the sun generates in its totality. Yeah, maybe instead of my small minded approach of erecting earth-bound solar panels, they are talking about enveloping the sun in solar panels or maybe putting it in a big bucket of water to make steam and drive a turbine. Uh huh. Ok, let’s do the numbers… Oop! Wrong again! The sun generates 3.7 x 10²⁶ watts (reference, and), which is only 3 orders of magnitude different from their 4.0 x 10²³ quote, but still waaaay off. Now our planet is cast into an eternally bleak cold night freeze. Did you see the 2007 intense science fiction thriller Sunshine? It was pretty awesome, riveting and haunting; my mind still conjures up images from the movie; it is definitely worth seeing and it is just like the dark world the SolarWorld people apparently live in.

All this goodness from “America’s largest solar manufacturer since 1975″. Nice.

I just got off the phone with Apple support who said, “You installed the 4.0.1 upgrade for your iPhone 3G? Ha! Sucker! You are so screwed and there is no unscrewing that pooch!”

After the upgrade, my iPhone does everything much slower. The rep told me, “yes, it’s much slower… It was an optional update so we’re not responsible… If you try to downgrade, you’ll brick your phone.” I embellished that first quote but the second one is pretty much word for word.

If you have an iPhone 3G like me, DO NOT get the 4.0 update. It offers no improvements, only a huge performance hit. For example, it now take 8-14 seconds to start my calendar app, making it MUCH less useful than the previous 4 second startup time.

I will call Apple a few more times and if it keeps looking like Apple really has pulled the trigger on a planned obsolescence program for this 1.5 year old device, I will dump Apple for another platform. Eff you right back Steve Jobs.