Category: Tech

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I got hit by the mysterious overnight battery drain that’s been affecting G2 owners over the past week or so. Without using it at all, it had dropped to 58% battery. No, I haven’t received the OTA update to Gingerbread yet. Reports have been that it might be related to a Google Maps update that came out last week. Seeing as how I checked the battery usage and it showed 91% was Maps, and I hadn’t used Maps since several hours before I plugged it in last night, that seems highly likely.

I figure there are two reasons it hit now and not earlier.

  1. I usually charge my phone overnight and unplug it in the morning, though the last few days I’ve been charging it in the evening and unplugging it when it’s done. And since I usually use navigation to check traffic on the way to work, I tend to recharge it during the day because actually using navigation is a battery hog. You’d still expect it to have hit yesterday or the day before, except…
  2. I usually turn off GPS when I’m not using it. Last night I forgot.

My guess: Maps isn’t shutting down properly, and if GPS is enabled, it’s calling out and using up power.

The other weird thing: Before I realized I’d left GPS on, I uninstalled updates to Google Maps. Then I went back to the battery usage report, and instead of 91% Maps and tiny percentages of others, it showed the more typical 30% Cell standby, 30% Wi-Fi, etc. I suspect uninstalling the updates may have removed it from the battery usage report, and I was seeing the remaining 9% blown up to 100%.

Update (Wed): I reinstalled the Maps update and made a point of turning off both GPS and Wi-Fi when I charged the phone that evening. No battery drain during the 8 hours between the time I unplugged it last night and the time I picked it up this morning. Tonight I’m going to try it with just Wi-Fi and no GPS and see what happens.

Update (Fri): Well, that was unexpected. I turned GPS off and left Wi-Fi on last night, and the phone was down to 55% battery when I woke up this morning. Even though I know it had a stable signal since it was sitting 4 feet away from the access point. I would have thought GPS was a more likely culprit, but this suggests otherwise. Tonight I’ll have to try it the other way around.

Update (Sat): Last night I turned off Wi-Fi and turned on GPS before unplugging it from the charger. This morning I forgot to check the battery level, but I looked at it just after noon — and it’s still at 90% after at least 12 hours.

To make matters more interesting, Katie has long had problems with her Vibrant losing battery quickly, but since she turned off Wi-Fi, she’s been able to go several days between charges.

I think we’ve found the culprit. The question remains, though: why now? What is the phone doing over wifi that it wasn’t before?

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Small view of the space shuttle against a blue sky.

When I was twelve, my family went to see the Space Shuttle land at Edwards Air Force Base. It was the first mission after the Challenger disaster, and the orbiter was Discovery.

I took a roll of slides using a manual SLR camera and (for the landing itself) a telephoto lens. With the last shuttle mission ending tomorrow, I decided to track down the slides and scan them. Continue reading →

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A few months ago, Amazon opened a section of their online store where they sell apps for Android devices. Following the same boring-but-descriptive naming scheme that Microsoft pioneered with such products as a word processor called Microsoft Word, a flight simulator called Microsoft Flight Simulator, an windowed desktop called Microsoft Windows, and so forth, they call it the Amazon Appstore. (Edit: I’d forgotten that Microsoft themselves filed a complaint over Apple’s “App Store” trademark in January, which was rather amusing.)

Apple, of course, is suing them for trademark infringement. Amazon’s stance: “App store” is a generic, descriptive term for a store that sells apps. Apple counters: “Is not!”

It’s a bit more eloquent than that, but look at this:

“Apple admits that the current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘app’ as, in part, ‘[a]n application, esp. an application program,” Apple said in the court filing. “Apple further admits that the current edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary defines ‘store’ as, in part, ‘a retail establishment selling items to the public: a health-food store.'”

And the best part:

“Apple denies that, based on their common meaning, the words ‘app store’ together denote a store for apps,” the document said. [emphasis added]

Really? Funny, I thought that was how the English language worked.

(In the interest of full disclosure: I own an Apple laptop, and Android phone, and use Amazon’s affiliate program…but not their app store.)

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  • Familiar yet alien ancient views of Earth – photorealistic simulations of the world as seen from space, millions of years ago.
  • Back in 2006, Qualcomm effectively discontinued Eudora, though they sponsored a project to extend Mozilla Thunderbird with the look, feel, and some features of Eudora. I lost track of it over the years, but it turns out they finally released Eudora OSE last September…four years later.
  • Revealed: How Area 51 Hid Secret Craft. Advanced designs by humans, of course, not alien ships.

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I’ve dealt with a couple of companies that try to plug the general lack of security in email by using a “secure email” service. The way this works is:

  1. The company sends you an email with a link to a third-party or co-branded website, asking you to click on it in order to read important information about your financial/insurance/whatever account. (Or better yet, the third party site sends you the mail on the company’s behalf.)
  2. You click on the link and open the site in your web browser.
  3. You register for the site (which usually involves entering your name, choosing a password, and possibly entering other personal detail like a reminder question.)
  4. You log into the site and actually read the message.

Can you see what the problem is?

That’s right: Steps 1-3 are exactly what you see in a phishing attack. Only in a phishing attack, the third-party site is a fake that’s trying to collect account information (like your login and password) or personal information (like your SSN).

So while they may be solving the immediate problem of “someone might intercept this message,” they’re perpetuating a broader problem by training people to fall for phishing attacks.

Sadly, this is not new.

Update 2022: A decade later, they’re still doing it.

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