I look at automatic transfer switches from Server Technology, Inc. and TrippLite and describe why you might want one.

This is another backing-up-your-data rant, but even though I’m posting this second it technically comes first in the order of shooting. And I think it’s a bit more informative and organized. So if you only watch one rant about backups this year, make it this one.

Viva 2018.

I converted an older HP DL380 Gen8 (aka a StoreOnce 2900) from using a hard RAID controller to an HBA for software RAID. The conversion is simple, but the video is long af because I spend a lot of time discussing the “why” more than the “how”.

In this excerpt from the below video, I talk about the total cost of ownership of RAID arrays.

This describes why I created the RAID HDD TCO Calculator which helps you figure out the total cost of ownership of a RAID array, inclusive of stuff like electrical and cooling costs.

The reMarkable 2 hardware has a solid and pleasant feel. The software just seems to work as advertised. However, almost every feature of this product relies on a connection to reMarkable’s cloud — the future of which is uncertain, as with any smaller tech company.

OK, So I’m Being a Bit Facetious

Obviously I and most everyone else knows that the vast majority of American household stuff is powered at 120V. Almost all receptacles and (nearly) all lights in a home are indeed supplied at 120V.

But! It’s not as simple as that. So maybe the video title is a tiny bit of clickbait, but it’s also more or less true. Most Americans do indeed have 240V supplied to their home, and that is the line-to-line voltage. The transformer is rated for 240 Volts with a center tap that happens to be referenced to ground/earth, and it just so happens that the potential difference between the center tap (ground) and either of the two lines is 120V RMS.

Full(er) Transcript

What follows is the original script I wrote for the video. Everything you heard in the video is in the script, but I cut some of the more tangential stuff.

So if you’re interested in every last bit of what I could have said, read on…

Hi everybody, I’m Scott and in this video I want to talk about a slight misconception regarding electrical service in the U.S.

I watch a lot of YouTube videos about vintage and modern tech, by people both here in the U.S. and abroad. When talking about powering those devices, the consensus seems to be that in the States we have a 120V electrical system, with 220 to 240 Volts in Europe and 100 Volts in Japan, just to name a few.

So it might surprise you know that standard household electrical service here in the U.S. is 240 Volts, not 120.

Or, rather, not just 120.

(And in actuality it’s more like somewhere between 220 and 250 Volts, and 110 and 125 Volts respectively.)

Though I’m sure many people here already know this, I figured this subject might be of particular interest to people in other parts of the world.

So, let me show you my electrical service.

In my area we obviously have overhead power lines, which I’d say represents the majority of local delivery systems here in America. Many neighborhoods do have underground wiring though, but you’ll usually find those in warmer climates such as in Florida or California.

Underground wiring doesn’t play nicely with the freeze/thaw cycles seen here in New York where temperatures can go anywhere from -10 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (-23 to 43 degrees centigrade).

Yes, there are buried power lines in my area too, but they’re definitely not typical, and generally speaking maintaining them is far more expensive than overhead distribution (and far more disruptive as it would require digging up a street rather than simply bringing a bucket truck.)

Here’s what you’re looking at: At the top is the primary distribution circuit, and those can operate at a wide variety of voltages. I can’t measure mine for obvious reasons, but anywhere from 2KV to 14KV is probable.

As you can see, there’s only one wire supplying us with power. The system voltage is referenced to ground, so the actual Earth is effectively the return conductor on the circuit. That’s a pretty common arrangement the world over.

The primary line connects to this pole mounted transformer, which steps the voltage down to something that’s usable in the home: Namely 240 Volts.

This transformer is shared by various houses in the neighborhood, with the 240V secondary run along here, to the right of the transformer. It’s then tapped anywhere a house needs service.

My house appears to tap power directly adjacent to the transformer, but this cable actually originates a few houses down that way.

My service drop runs from that tap point over my yard and into a weatherhead, then down this conduit to our meter.

The wiring continues on from the meter to what’s commonly called the service panel, breaker box, or circuit breaker panel.

I feel like the breaker panel should be a topic for its own video, and though there are a wide variety of brands and models of panels in the U.S., this is undoubtedly the most common in general appearance, at least for post-1960-ish homes that have a 200 Amp service (which is the common amperage for service to most detached homes).

For this video, the important thing to note is this switch at the top. That’s the main breaker that can cut power to all other circuits in the panel.

And with the cover off, you can see the two connections running into that breaker. Those are the wires coming from the meter outside.

If you didn’t believe me when I said that most homes in the U.S. are fed at 240 Volts (or thereabouts), here’s the proof.

OK, at this point I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the elephant in the room: Messing around in your service panel is dangerous. Especially if the panel is powered. And most especially if you’re shoving metal electrodes into the main terminal lugs, because those are powered directly from the street and have no meaningful overcurrent protection.

In other words, if my test lamps here were faulty or if I simply slipped and managed to create continuity between the two service lugs (or between one of them and ground), I could be electrocuted or start a very problematic house fire. Or both!

So what I’m saying is don’t try this at home, even though I’m being completely hypocritical because I’m quite literally trying this at home. Just be aware that it can kill you and your whole family.

Anywho, getting back to the topic at hand: 240 Volts.

OK, I’m being a bit sneaky by repeatedly mentioning that 240V is our standard household voltage. While that is indeed the voltage being supplied by the transformer, the vast majority of electrical outlets in an American home supply power at 120 Volts, as is well known.

So, what’s going on? Well, I purposely forgot to mention the neutral wire.

Because of the way the transformer behind my house is oriented, you can’t see the connection points for the low voltage side. But this is pretty much the same type of unit, and you’ll see that there are three secondary connections. Those are generally referred to as L1, N, and L2, for Line 1, Neutral, and Line 2.

L1 and L2 are both live (also called “hot”) conductors, while N is a grounded conductor. (Note that it’s not the grounding conductor, which in the house is always separate from the neutral – except in the service panel. Again, I’ll need to do a whole video on the panel at some point.)

L1 and L2 are out of phase with each other by 180 degrees, meaning their waveforms look like this.

The RMS (root-mean-square) difference – the way A/C voltage is typically measured – between these two waveforms is 240 Volts.

However, the difference between L1 and N is 120V RMS, as is the difference between L2 and N.

Let’s take a look at this much smaller AC transformer that’s rated for a 120V primary and a 12V secondary. In other words it’s a step-down transformer for operating 12V equipment such as relays or lights.

On the primary side it has two connections: One for live and one for neutral. This is just like the transformer behind my house, where the live conductor was operating at multiple kilovolts, and the neutral was quite literally the ground beneath it.

On the output side there are three connections, just like it’s bigger brother. We could call them L1, N, and L2.

So, let me connect this to a supply voltage and do some probing.

Again, like a scaled down version of its bigger brother, the two outer terminals measure 12V relative to each other.

If I measure from either of the outer lugs to the center lug, it’s 6V!

The oscilloscope also shows that, just like the 240 volts coming into my house, there are two sine waves that are 180 degrees out of phase with each other when measuring 12 volts on the outer two connections.

From either of those connections to the center tap there’s only a single sine wave.

And also like the primary side of the transformer outside, this transformer only has a single phase at 120V relative to neutral/ground.

As much as I’d love to take that transformer apart, I kinda need it, so let me just show you a diagram of what’s going on here:

A transformer like this consists of two coils of wire wound around a common core. A difference in voltage between one side of the transformer and the other is created by varying the number of times the wire is physically wound around the core on both sides.

The ratio of turns on one side versus the other is the same as the ratio of the voltage on one side versus the other.

So If both sides have exactly the same number of turns, the input and output voltage will be exactly the same. If one side has twice as many turns as the other, that side will have twice the voltage as the other side.

This transformer, to step down 120V to 12V, would have 10 times as many turns on the 120V side as the 12V side. Just for the sake of example, let’s say there are 1000 turns on the 120V side and 100 on the 12V side. What if we took a wire and soldered it right here, and then measured the voltage between these two points?

Well, in the space between those two connections there are 50 turns. The ratio is then 50 to 1000, and so the voltage here will be 20 times lower than the voltage here. Hence when I supply the transformer with 120V, you can see 6V!

And this is inherently bidirectional in principle: I could feed 12V into this transformer here and measure 120V here.

In other words, a simple transformer like this can be used to either step-up or step-down voltage. In fact, it’s the same for the transformer on the pole.

I should also note that in the real world transformers are not nearly as simple as I’m making them sound, but the general idea is correct.

And that’s how residential electrical supply in the US works.

It’s called a split phase system, because the single phase coming from the distribution grid is effectively split into two by the center tapped transformer.

The upshot of all this is that I have both 120V and 240V outlets in my house, as with most houses.

240V is widely used, but mainly for large permanently installed equipment like hot water heaters, air conditioners, clothes dryers, stoves, ovens, hot tubs, electric car charging and even whole-house heating. Basically in any situation where a lot of power is required.

However, you can call an electrician and have them wire a 240V outlet anywhere you might need it.

The only sticking point is that if you’re looking to run, for example, vintage European 240V computers, they may or may not be compatible with our 60 Hertz system. That being said, for equipment that solely uses DC voltage internally, the capacitors on the low voltage side would probably have an easier job of maintaining charge at the higher frequency. I think it’s potentially more problematic the other way around, using equipment rated for 60Hz on 50Hz systems.

But don’t take my word for it, double check that for your particular device before applying power.

As a side note, it’s pretty common (though far from universal) for US households to have a natural gas connection. I have one, and so therefore my water heater, clothes dryer, stove, oven, and so-called boiler are all gas-fed. That leaves a nearly ridiculous amount of amperage available for things like computers and electric cars.

So I hope you found that interesting. Split phase power has its advantages and disadvantages, and of course there’s a lot more to it than what I’ve outlined in this video. But the main advantage for me personally is that I can operate random 240V electronics at home, as well as all the usual American 120V stuff. In fact, most of the UPSes and servers here in my basement are running at 240V!

I’m getting off on a tangent here, but you may have noticed that this is decidedly NOT a smart meter, and though it’s a pretty old-school design these are still quite common here in the States. It does actually require a person to come and read it manually.

Where I live, we’re billed monthly, but the meter is only read every other month. The power company estimates usage for billing in the intermediate month, though I could manually report my meter reading if I was a stickler for paying the exact amount.

My power company (as many do) offers something called balanced billing, where they charge a fixed amount every month based upon your previous year’s usage patterns. That can be very helpful if, for example, you have a gas heating system and therefore use very little electricity in the winter, but have the air conditioning is running all summer. It wouldn’t be uncommon to have a bill four or five times the cost in the summer versus the winter, so that can help quite a lot when it comes to cash flow.

Well, that’s it for now. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe and do the liking thing and all the regular YouTube outro stuff. You can also examine my website at s.co.tt, which is totally a real URL.

I tried whenever possible to make it clear that I was talking about the most common way in which power is delivered to an American home. There are exceptions, of course.

For example, if you live in an apartment in the US your building may be fed by three-phase power, which is quite standard for commercial and industrial properties. In that case you, as the tenant, will most likely only have access to 120V circuits and there probably won’t be any 240V circuits available anyway.

Even if your building is fed by split-phase power, your landlord might have no need to supply your apartment with any 240V circuits.

Power delivery in rural areas can be a little weird, so for all I know there might be single phase 120V systems out there.

And finally some older homes may still have single-phase 120V distribution panels (which are probably fuse boxes), even in neighborhoods where split-phase power is otherwise in place.

Also this video is intended as a general interest thing, and so don’t take my word as absolute gospel on any of these issues. I don’t have the capacity to bestow any magical powers of electrical licensing on any of you.

Dear “New Media” Companies,

Two years ago I decided to take the plunge and purchase a UHD TV.

But I thought twice about it, deciding that I would hold off until there was adequate 4K content available. At that time the 4K market was weak. UHD Blu-rays had yet to be released, and other than some YouTube content and perhaps a few shows from your companies, there wasn’t much available.

Finally at the cusp of 2018 I decided to make the move. There’s much streaming media currently available in UHD (as you’re obviously aware), as well as a plethora of UHD Blu-rays.

So I now have a very nice Sony OLED hooked up to my HTPC.

But the sad part of the story is that you lost me at “HTPC”.

I’ve used a computer to consume my “TV” media since the heady days of 2003, when I needed component cables to hook it up to a rear-projection 720p monstrosity of a television. It was a more flexible DVR than the TiVo, it was a DVD player, a streaming media player, an MP3 player, a gaming platform, and yet more!

A computer has, is, and will most likely remain the best tool to hook up to one’s television.

So it was that I excitedly loaded up the Netflix website and started watching a video. The contrast and color of the OLED TV made it look fantastic! Only… It wasn’t all that sharp. So I investigated, and I can say without irony that I was shocked to learn that Netflix intentionally doesn’t allow its customers to stream 4K content to their computers. And then my surprise was doubled when I learned that neither does Amazon.

This, despite the web browser being the first (and at the time, only) vehicle on which your content could be viewed. The web browser was your stepping stone into the streaming world, and your raison d’être in that space. (Or more accurately your capacité à être.)

Yet for reasons that seem to have more to do with protecting your intellectual property than providing your loyal customers with cutting-edge content, Ultra HD video is not available in the browser. Hell, Netflix doesn’t even go above 720p (welcome back to 2003) on anything but the dreaded Edge.*

I’ll get to why that’s ridiculous and self-defeatist in a moment.

First I’d like to point out that I am indeed a loyal customer. I’ve been using Netflix since the DVDs-by-mail of the late 90s, I’ve been a regular Amazon customer since around that same time, and a Prime customer since it was first offered. You both have shows that, in my opinion, are some of the best available from old media and new media alike.

Speaking of the 1990s, I was one of the first users of that new-fangled MP3 format. The first album in my collection was Tool’s Undertow, ripped by me from my very own CD sometime in 1995.

I had a portable MP3 player before the iPod even existed, and watched with a heavy heart as Apple and the RIAA tricked millions of consumers into jumping down a deep pit of DRM-protected music. A pit from which some still haven’t clawed their way out.

It’s important for you to know that I’m not a pirate. I believe that people should pay a fair price for the work of others, and in that spirit I don’t participate in peer-to-peer (nor other) file sharing arrangements. I have a large collection of music and videos on my file server, all of which were purchased (or recorded from TV) by myself over many years, solely for my own consumption.

Yet I have a great interest in — and some sympathy for — the people that illegally share and copy media. Whether you like it or not, those pirates have shaped the current media landscape, and I take a great deal of schadenfreude from the consternation they’ve given to media conglomerates. Their actions are, in large part, due to those media companies not giving customers what they want and deserve.

You see, I have a special hatred for DRM.

Digital rights management has never worked. It has done little to nothing in protecting the rights and revenues of corporations, yet it has done a great deal of damage to the law-abiding consumer.

In an age where almost every person has a smartphone, smart speaker, smart TV, plus a tablet and computer (or tablet computer), it can make for a frustrating and confusing landscape. Yes, one can login to Netflix or Amazon on all of those devices and stream your shows.

But are your apps stable and fully functional on all of those platforms? Do all of those apps and platforms have a unified user experience? Is the media downloadable and portable across all those devices? Do you guarantee that users will be able to go back and watch episodes of their favorite shows ten years from now?

You already know that the answer is “no” to all. Those questions are the height of rhetoric, yet they shouldn’t be! An affirmative answer to each of those questions would benefit the consumer: Your customer, your reason for being, and the source of your revenue.

Yet you confuse and frustrate your customers in the name of “digital rights”.

Are any of you old enough to remember the days of the Betamax/VHS wars? That’s when TV and movie studio executives in starched shirts chomped on cigars and worried over the impending downfall of their industries, wrought by the boogyman of recorded video.

Yet their old-media empires wore on.

I’ve already mentioned the era when the RIAA wrung its hands in disgust at the possibility of people actually bringing their entire collection of music with them wherever they went, and how their gross restrictions wrangled a generation into proprietary and perpetual music licenses. I remember that a certain colossal “new media” company began selling DRM-free MP3s on their website. Do you remember that, Amazon?

Yet the recording industry is alive and well, even without DRM.

The irony is that the internet allows budding artists to bring their music directly to their fans. As of late, I’ve spent more money on Bandcamp than on Amazon for MP3s (well, FLAC, which Amazon fails to provide). Artists can enjoy nearly 100% of the revenues without the spectre of stuffed shirts pilfering “their share”. Artists have done more damage to the recording industry over the past few years than pirates ever have.

It’s been a similar thing lately for the video industry on YouTube. In fact, some weeks I consume more well-produced YouTube shows than content from either of your companies.

And surely you’ve heard the tale of the horrid illegal number. I won’t bore you with that one. Yet DVDs still sold by the millions.

In fact, your companies did more damage to physical media sales than any internet pirate ever could.

And despite your being founded by (and full of) fresh young faces who have Wikipedia at their beck and call to dredge up all this history, you insist on strangling your customers with encryption, proprietary apps, sub-par hardware platforms, and other useless nonsense.

“It’s certainly not useless! It protects muh rights!”

I can hear you right now. And no, it doesn’t.

Every single Netflix and Amazon original show is available right now on The Pirate Bay (and likely elsewhere). Every single one. Your hamstringing of customers and your willful disregard for history (even for your very own histories!) is plain baffling.

It doesn’t matter how clever your teams of DRM engineers might be. They are hapless compared to the thousands upon thousands of worldwide “hackers” that can crack any scheme you might invent. I don’t say that as a pirate. I say it as an observer of history.

I pay for your services. I enjoy your shows and products. I am a loyal customer. Yet I cannot watch the 4K content of which you are so proud.

The built-in software and interface on my high-end, brand-new Sony “smart” TV is feckless, slow, and difficult to navigate. Can you imagine how awful it will be in five years, when the rest of the world has moved on but my TV remains staunchly bolted to my wall? Yet it’s one of the few only devices I own that can play your 4K videos.

Yes, I can buy one of Amazon’s Fire products and watch your shows in UHD. I in fact have a Fire box, and it’s not all that bad! (For Amazon content.)

But Plex runs like shit on it. It can’t stream Netflix UHD content, and the Netflix app isn’t very good. Why would it be? They’re a competitor.

Yes, there are Rokus and a plethora of other streaming devices, many of which may or may not be able to play your content in UHD. Some cannot stream both your companies’ content in UHD, however. It’s a quagmire for the average consumer.

My HTPC is a fairly old HP Z420 workstation. It cost about three-hundred bucks on eBay, has an E5-1620 processor, 16GB of RAM, a Samsung Pro SSD, a GTX1060 video card, optical audio out to a proper surround sound system, and a 10GbE fiber connection to my file server. Overkill? Perhaps. But there’s simply no way a tiny little box with a purposefully low-powered Atom or ARM processor can compete. Oh, and it can play PC games (are there any other kind?) at high resolutions and reasonable framerates.

It’s also the best possible platform on which to consume every provider’s content.

Just not in Ultra HD. (And, again, sometimes not even in plain ol’ FHD.)

Yet some of your shows are available on Torrent sites right now, in 2160p quality. All are available at 1080p.

So I, as one of your loyal customers have no way to legally watch your content in 4K. Yet I could easily watch it, were I to participate in your nemesis, P2P file sharing.

Do you realize how stupid that sounds? That illegal downloads are of a higher quality than what your paying customers can access on your own websites? Do you really think that slightly-lower-resolution torrents are going to cause people to give up on pirating your content?

That’s “old media” thinking.

Don’t punish your fond and loyal customers for the misdeeds of others.

Strip out your DRM and let us breathe.

I’d even pay you a couple of more bucks a month for the privilege.

Sincerely,

Scott

* Netflix does not make it obvious at what resolution a customer’s video is streaming. In fact, the only way to find out is to hit Ctrl+Shift+Alt+D: An intuitive key combination that surely any layperson would know! I’d be willing to wager that you, Netflix, have customers paying for your “4K” plan who aren’t even aware that they’re viewing 720p or 1080p video on their computer (and possibly on other devices). It’s deceitful and it borders on a scam. You need to make it plainly obvious to consumers when they’re not getting what they paid for.

Contrast that to free YouTube, wherein which they put a plainly visible icon in the lower-right corner showing the streaming quality. They also let the viewer explicitly change resolutions. It’s shameful that you don’t give your paying customers the very same.

Amazon’s player does explicitly provide the resolution, but doesn’t allow it to be changed. That’s fine for me, because I have an unmetered internet connection. Others may actually want the option for a lower-quality feed, if not because their connection is metered but because they don’t want to interfere with other network activity. I’d rather explicitly set it to 2160p in perpetuity, which obviously I cannot.

PS (for those pedants out there):

• I understand the difference between DCI spec 4K and UHD. I use the terms interchangeably here for variety, and because they are regularly bunged together in marketing and hence in the mind of the average consumer.
• Before anyone strings me up for mentioning TPB or torrenting in general, I seriously doubt that this is revelatory to Amazon and Netflix. If somehow they didn’t know about it, they really do need to hear it from me so that they can get their heads out of their respective asses.
• All dates are approximate and off the top of my head. My point remains, even if the dates are slightly changed.
• I’m sure XYZ Company makes ABC Box which can be re-imaged with GHI Open-Source-Magic-Software, and it will play everything in perfect UHD from every content provider and also make your shits smell like flowers. The purity of a standard Intel/AMD computer with a decent video card cannot be beaten. I don’t care about small and low power consumption. I want a big fuck-off piece of hardware that’ll last me 8 years and won’t get lost in the couch cushions.
• Netflix will let you stream UHD content on a PC. Providing that you have an i7 Kaby Lake CPU (presumably for DRM-related extensions), Windows 10 with the latest Creator’s Update (whatever the hell that means), and that you use the Edge browser (the most hated browser in the world). While I embarrassingly do use Windows 10 for my HTPC**, I think a bleeding-edge i7 machine is needlessly expensive for the purpose. It’s a ridiculous requirement, and barely worth mentioning.
• **Sigh. If you think I’m complaining now, how about the history of trying to view legal DRM-protected content in Linux? There’s also the gaming market. Those are rants for another day. FWIW I run about 35 Linux machines (many virtualized) plus a couple of FreeBSD boxes in my house. I use Windows for many desktops for mainstream compatibility reasons. The right tool for the right job. E.g. I hate my dishwasher because it’s a poorly-engineered worthless piece of LG trash, but I still use it because at the end of the day it does wash dishes (with some cajoling).
• I was being somewhat facetious about my “PC master race” gaming comment. I don’t care all that much. But my arguments against proprietary gaming consoles are similar to my arguments against proprietary streaming hardware/software.

PPS (for every company that makes a remote-controlled “smart” device):

Look up the Gyration Air Music Remote.

They don’t make it any more, and you can get one on eBay but not the necessary USB receiver dongle. Aside from a touchscreen and/or full keyboard and mouse, it’s hands-down the best way to navigate “smart TV”-style platforms. It’s also the best way to navigate around an HTPC from the couch. It basically lets you wave your remote around, and a mouse cursor follows your hand movements on screen. It uses a simple accelerometer (AFAIK).

Someone needs to rip off their design. Simplify it. Take off 80% of the buttons. Leave the volume buttons, a few programmable keys, a home button and probably a couple of others. Needless to say also leave the accelerometer-driven pointing capability and the right- and left-click “mouse” buttons. Make it interface via Bluetooth rather than some proprietary crap.

It takes a little while to get accustomed to using it, but it’s fantastic once you do.

Make that the interface device for a Fire TV, Roku, smart TV, or whatever-the-fuck and I might actually consider using one.

Arrow keys are a bullshit way to navigate any menu system and voice commands make you look like a fool in your own home.

Another sh*tty power strip

Welp, they’ve done it again. Any by “they”, I mean people that make poor quality electrical devices. Specifically Yellow Jacket, which is a Woods brand, which is a Coleman Cable brand, which is probably somehow owned by either Warren Buffet or the Koch Brothers.

I got this for $16.22 during an Amazon lighting deal, and even though that’s not a terrible price, the poor quality construction and the basic lie about the materials is what really angers me.

Join me as I disassemble and then curse at this poor excuse for a power strip, in my newest installment of first world problems.

The HP Procurve 5406ZL and…

…a whole lot of other crap, vis a vis my opinions on used enterprise-grade networking hardware for the home (or small-ish business).

I purchased an HP Procurve 5406ZL on eBay mainly because I “need” 10GbE on my home network, which is almost recursive because it’s for editing 4K video, which I need for editing this video.

The bottom line for me is that you can’t beat the feature/price ratio when it comes to equipment like this. That is, if you can afford the resultant power bill.

Oshkoshbegosh!? Another long ramble about power distribution thingies for the home and/or office?!

Well it’s true. Hopefully my next video will not be about this subject.

This compares the relatively-generically-branded Belkin Advanced Surge Protector (which actually bears the handy model number of BE112230-08, like it came out of some kind of dystopian nightmare) to the easily-spoken Furman SS-6B (which itself sounds shockingly dystopian anyway).

ISPs can, do, and will collect information on the web browsing habits (& etc.) of their users. They may package and sell this data, at best in an anonymized state, and ostensibly for the “benign” purpose of marketing and advertising to targeted demographics.

Such data may, of course, be used for nefarious purposes.

The law almost always fails to keep pace with technological advancement, and even more rarely serves the public interest when dealing with issues surrounding the internet and telecommunications. Politicians, regardless of nationality, are beholden to the interests of the state, secret corruption, or public corruption in the form of lobbies and campaign contributions.

As such, we, the internet community, cannot rely on political protection for our private data, nor data generated from our personal usage habits. We also cannot rely on the laughable concept of “good corporate citizenship” when it comes to these matters.

While VPNs, secure proxies, and other methods can be used to circumvent the legally sanctioned spying on users by their ISPs, related corporations, and governments, the bottom line for all of them is monetary gain. This article proposes to deprive them of that, at least when it comes to selling [out] the browsing habits of users.

The Goal

To devalue the product that ISPs are selling. To bury users’ actual habits and preferences in a morass of irrelevant and misleading data. To obfuscate and therefore render unreadable the true browsing habits of end users.

The Method

Botnets have a bad name in the IT community. They are traditionally used to overload servers (DDOS), probe services for vulnerabilities, send spam, and break cryptographic algorithms. It is time to make botnets work for the internet community.

The following proposal of a botnet in no way involves malware.

To be clear: In this context the installation of a “bot” on an end user’s computer would be completely voluntary of and transparent to the user. The bot software should be open source and therefore peer reviewed. It should include a user interface for control of activities and granular alteration of settings. It should include a clear and readable presentation of status, as well as past, current, and future (as fa as known) activities. The end user should have full control over and understanding of the bot that resides on their host.

These bot nodes would have the primary function of generating interactions with arbitrary servers on the internet (primarily with web servers via HTTP[S] thereby generating DNS queries) with those interactions simulating the habits and workflow of a “normal” user.

All such interactions should be benign in nature, in that they should not post or otherwise alter content on the remote hosts involved. They should also — by default and at the end user’s option — avoid adult content and other contentious material.

Further, requests made by these bots should be distributed, in the exact opposite context of the first D in DDOS. Their actions should be coordinated so as to purposefully avoid overloading any particular service or servers.

Command and Control

This proposition is for a botnet with a unified command and control scheme — as opposed to software agents acting independently — for the following reasons:

• Agility. The bots should be able to change tactics rapidly in order to combat detection by the ISPs that they are attempting to fool with false data.
• Good “netizens”. To dredge up an old term, the botnet should be a good netizen in order to avoid being a nuisance (as previously discussed). This requires coordination of all nodes.
• Blacklisting. Web site (& etc.) operators should be able to opt-out of inclusion in botnet traffic. Additionally, services dealing with unacceptable or illegal subjects such as white supremacy, organization of terrorism and child pornography should be globally avoided. (Or perhaps DDOSed into oblivion. :> )
• Request leveling. The botnet should avoid, whenever possible, skewing the statistics and related data of websites. By way of example, the botnet should be coordinated so as to avoid increasing the apparent popularity of a particular product on Amazon or a particular article on Reddit. Such behavior would be a disservice to users of those sites.

The control structure of the botnet should itself be distributed, utilizing multiple servers at multiple service providers. IP addresses of command and control (C&C) nodes should change regularly to avoid detection.

Note that this proposal purposefully avoids the use of a peer-to-peer architecture for C&C. It’s my personal opinion that this would leave it open to corruption by unscrupulous operators. It may be possible to design a scheme that would ensure the integrity of the system as a whole in a P2P architecture, but that’s beyond the scope of this article. I am open to the idea, though!

Of course, all traffic between nodes in the botnet would be encrypted. The method of encapsulation should be implemented in various ways and then rotated to avoid detection by users’ ISPs. For example:

• HTTPS, encapsulating a further-encrypted and signed payload. This secondary level of encryption would avoid the need for the C&C infrastructure to use consistent and/or authoritative web server certificates. It would implement it’s own keysets and internal “certification authorities” for the secondary encryption (or something similar, at any rate).
• Plain ol’ HTTP, with a steganographically-embedded encrypted payload. In other words, C&C messaging could be hidden in apparently banal image or video requests/responses (GET/POST, respectively).
• Apparent SMTP sessions, ostensibly sending and receiving mail which would actually contain encrypted C&C messaging. (This would require a custom implementation; I am not suggesting using Postfix or somesuch for this.)
• Apparent FTP sessions, etcetera as above.

The structure of the C&C request/response data should avoid consistency whenever possible. For example:

• Payload size should vary in requests and responses. This could be accomplished by simply padding payloads with a “random” amount of data.
• Frequency of requests should be varied. C&C nodes should give directives to bot nodes as to when and how to make their next request. As an added benefit, this would allow specific C&C nodes to avoid congestion.
• C&C nodes should be contacted by bot nodes in a randomized fashion. As discussed above, but including the specification of a hostname or IP address in the next-request directive. This would provide the added benefit of balancing traffic across C&C nodes.

Obviously there are many more potential strategies to obscure the operation of the botnet. Critically, and regardless of final design, the software for the nodes should be extensible such that new approaches could be implemented and disseminated rapidly and with minimal end-user impact.

Organizational Structure

Software, development, and C&C facilities of this “guerrilla botnet” should be managed by a central organization, in order to meet its goals in a unified and holistic fashion.

However, the managing organization should, with a clear mandate, be a non-profit entity which is beholden primarily to the needs of the community of internet users for whom the botnet would provide benefit. The structure of the organization need not be formalized by law (in other words, it would not have to be a duly incorporated company), but should be formalized by a community-policed set of rules.

Won’t it be Obvious?

By publishing this information and developing such software in public light, ISPs would of course be aware of the operation and methods of this botnet. They would be likely to ban its use.

Even if that were to come to pass, it would be a victory (of sorts).

ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon move slowly and with great inertia. It’s likely that the guerrilla botnet would have to gain quite a bit of traction before garnering their attention. Even after their interest in piqued, it would take significant resources and time to track and disable bot nodes, if that is even possible. The bots, after all, would just appear to be “normal” internet users.

And they will be loathe, were the botnet sufficiently large, to outright rescind subscriptions. It will force a choice, either which hurts their bottom line: Kill the botnet by kicking paying customers off their network, or cease selling users’ data.

All the while they are playing catch up, the botnet will be working to corrupt the usability of the data. The consumers of this data (marketing and advertising entities, for example) will ultimately come to the conclusion that the product is worthless, or at the very least worth less. The hope is that this will have the effect of either hurting the ISPs’ bottom lines, or cause them to scrap the idea of user-data collection entirely.

Even if the guerrilla botnet were not to succeed outright in those goals, its very existence may be enough to taint the product that the ISPs are pushing. It will call into question the validity of the data.

That perception in of itself may render the data worthless.

3D Version

What??

I had the idea that my videos would be better in 3D. Well, maybe not better. More involved to produce, anyhow. And since I make videos mostly for the love of the process than because I like being on camera (I hate it), more complexity equals more fun! Well, maybe fun is the wrong word. But, you know… something.

There are other reasons, too. I cover all that in the video. :)

I also get into the reasons for choosing Blackmagic Micro Studio Cameras (small, light, 4K, genlock) and why I’m using both a Video Assist 4K and an Atomos Shogun. Which isn’t due to a very good reason at all.

Importantly, the 3D version of this video is purely experimental. This is the first 3D video I’ve ever made (aside from some test shots), so please have pity on me if it gives you a head ache or makes you vomit in a combination of rage and illness. I’m just getting started, so besides the pity I’m open to any and all suggestions to improve things going forward!

Check out the video for a more in-depth description of the problem, but the short of it is that most smart thermostats (and a lot of smarthome devices) rely on someone else’s servers in order for them to be accessed remotely. And because of this, “remotely” doesn’t just mean when you’re out of the house, but inside the house as well. If the “smart” device company ever goes out of business or decides to stop supporting whatever you own, then you effectively will no longer have an internet-enabled thing.

This isn’t true for all devices. Some do not require servers-that-are-elsewhere (or “the cloud” as it’s known) so that they can operate. But a surprising amount do, and that’s something to consider when buying an appliance, thermostat, Echo, or full home automation system. Will the company running those servers still be around in 5 years? In 10 or 20 years? And even if they’re in business, will they support it? With something like the Amazon Echo, that’s not much of a concern. But with a $250 thermostat from a “new” company it could be a factor.

I decided to start another YouTube channel. Not because my main channel was getting out of hand, but because I want to bang out a bunch of quick videos just to get practice. And also there’s stuff that I cut out of some of my main videos that I wanted to share.

Annywhoo.. This video is about an Anker Powerline+ USB cable that came in a needlessly elaborate package.

Here’s the thing: I don’t need to contact Amazon’s customer service often, but when I do they’ve always been responsive and extremely helpful. So I’m not going to lambaste Amazon in this post, but I do want to tell a story of a horrible customer service experience that’s not just a result of a bad rep but is indicative of a deeper problem.

The Toilet

In an incident that was far less dramatic than you’d hope, my toilet tank cracked and was leaking slowly onto the floor.

Obviously the ideal solution would be a new tank, but I had an Eljer triangle toilet that’s discontinued, and there aren’t a ton of options for a triangular corner toilet.

Needing to have a working crapper, I ran out to Home Depot and bought a relatively cheap standard toilet as a temporary solution. It works fine, but the placement isn’t quite as nice as that of a corner toilet. Hence I went to my favorite online retailer and found an American Standard Cadet 3 Triangle Toilet that looked like it would fit the bill.

Amazon’s product photo of the toilet. Looks like an elongated bowl, right?

It turned out to be the wrong toilet for me. I’m not exactly a small guy at 6’4″ and 220lbs. I constantly have problems at hotels where my .. carriage .. doesn’t fit inside a toilet without .. dipping and/or touching the front. (I’m trying to be polite, which is hard to do when talking about why a toilet doesn’t suit my needs. Not that you really needed to know, but whatever.)

The point is that I hate round bowl toilets because there’s not enough space front-to-back for my taste.

The full name of the toilet on Amazon is American Standard 270BD001.020 Cadet 3 Right Height Round Front Two-Piece Triangle Toilet with 12-Inch Rough-In, White. When I read “round front”, I thought that meant the front was rounded for aesthetic reasons as opposed to another hypothetical model which might have a more squared-off front. I’m no expert on toilet styles. Besides, “round front” sounds different than “round bowl”.

And to be fair it’s also the wrong picture of the toilet on Amazon’s product page. But to be super duper fair to Amazon, it’s probably American Standard’s fault because they have the wrong photo on their website. Check out this side-by-side of the “Round” version versus the “Elongated” version:

It’s rather hard to read, but you can click on the image for the full-size version.

Both of these pictures look the freaking same, and both look like elongated bowls. The point of my telling you all of this is that I don’t think it was 100% my fault that I ordered the wrong thing. But because I felt somewhat foolish at misunderstanding the “round” terminology, when it came to giving a reason for the return I put something like “I no longer need this item”. At any rate, I indicated that the return was my fault and so I was charged around $40 for shipping (which is pretty reasonable for a heavy, bulky, two-package order).

Lord of the Toilets: The Two Packages

I was issued a pre-paid UPS label for return because I’d opted to drop the toilet off at my local UPS Store. Pickup was quite a bit more expensive, even though I thought that it would be way easier.

But there’s the crux of the problem: I was issued one label for two packages. That didn’t seem right to me, so some communication ensued:

July 30

Hi,

I’m trying to return order [order number redacted], and the return was approved and a UPS label issued. However, the item (toilet) is split into 2 packages, so I need two return labels. (Unless I can use the same one twice, but I don’t believe UPS allows that.)

Thanks & regards,

Scott

Amazon replied promptly with the following:

July 30

Hello,

Thanks for contacting us.

I understand that you want to return the item and the item was split in to two packages.

In this case, you can use the same return mailing label twice on the both packages and you can return the item. There is no need to concern. UPS will accept the package.

If you want free UPS pick up to return the item, please let us know using the below link. We’ll create free UPS pick to return the item. So that UPS will pick up the item from your shipping address.

Please visit the following link to provide the information we requested:

http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-mi?c=[redacted]&q=o2r

We look forward to seeing you again.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the links below to tell us about your experience today.

Best regards,
Reshmi [redacted].

The link provided in that last message was some kind of generic feedback form. It’s not valid anymore and so I can’t get a screenshot, but it basically asked for information that was redundant to what Amazon should already have in relation to this return. It had a comments field where I explained that I’d like to change from a drop-off to a pick-up on that order.

Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. After 10 days with no response, I contacted Amazon customer service again:

August 9, 2016

Hi,

I used the link provided in your email, filled out the form, and requested a UPS pickup. But I haven’t heard anything back yet. This item is pretty bulky, so I’d much prefer a pick-up rather than having to drop it off at a UPS Store. If it’s not going to happen, please let me know before the return window is over.

Thanks & regards,
Scott

Amazon responded to that message right away with the following: (You don’t have to read the whole thing, just look at the bold bits.)

August 9

Hello,

Thank you for taking out time and writing back to us.

To make this right for you, I have arranged a UPS Pick-up for the item “American Standard 270BD001.020 Cadet 3 Right Height Round Front Two-Piece Triangle Toilet with 12-Inch Rough-In, White”.

UPS’s first attempt is typically made the first business day after a request is made, but it can take up to three business days for them to receive the pickup request. UPS will attempt the pickup at the address where the items were shipped. They’ll make three attempts to pick up your return if you aren’t available when they arrive.

When you request a UPS pickup for your return, the UPS driver will bring a pre-addressed, authorized return label. If the package has been opened, please repack it in a way similar to when it arrived.

Don’t worry; packing slips aren’t required to make a return.

UPS does not provide unattended pickup. You can contact UPS to see if they can give you more specific information about the timing of the pickup; their phone number is 1-800-PICK-UPS (1-800-742-5877).

Please reference this tracking number if you call them: [redacted]

We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding.

We look forward to seeing you again soon.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the links below to tell us about your experience today.

Best regards,
Divya K

I was quite grateful that they finally arranged the pick-up, but was still a bit concerned that they were still talking about “a” return label. I figured that wasn’t really my problem (yet). I was a bit bummed that I’d have to be home, but fortunately my UPS driver usually comes between 6PM and 8PM.

But my next message to Amazon 6 days later sorta summarizes what happened in the meantime:

August 15

Hi,

This has turned into quite a problematic return process. I really do appreciate you arranging the UPS pick-up, because this is a bulky item and it saves me the hassle of bringing it to a UPS Store.

However, a couple of things: The instructions from Amazon said that I’d have to be home for the pickup. Unfortunately my UPS driver came at 5PM one day, 2PM the next, didn’t come at all the following day, and came today around 7PM. So it was difficult to coordinate. I contacted UPS on Twitter, and they said that I would NOT have to be home, and that I could leave the packages on my porch for pickup.

Today the UPS driver happened to come when I was just getting home from work, and he told me that he was only issued one return label — but this order came in 2 packages. If you look back in the history of this inquiry, you’ll see that I started off by asking if I could use the same UPS label for both packages. You guys said “yes”. The UPS driver says that cannot be done, and two separate labels with different tracking numbers would have to be issued.

He cancelled the pick-up in the meantime.

I really want to get this returned, so whatever help you can give me would be appreciated. Either I or the UPS driver would need to have 2 return labels issued.

Regards,
Scott

In my irritation, I also took to Facebook. I tagged UPS and Amazon, but they couldn’t be bothered:

But in the end Amazon really came through, offering to let me keep the toilet and the refund! It’s really generous, though I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with the toilet. Also that’s not the end of the f$(*!ng story.

August 16

Hello Scott,

I am sorry to hear about the problem you had in returning the item “American Standard 270BD001.020 Cadet 3 Right Height Round Front Two-Piece Triangle Toilet with 12-Inch Rough-In, White “.

As you are our valuable customer I request you not to return the item back now as we do not want to cause you more trouble in returning this item to us. You’re welcome to keep donate dispose the item according to your choice.

Also you can see that already a refund is issued to you for this item.

Rest assured that you will not be charged for the same. Please do not sorry about the same.Your issue will be taken care of.

It is our privilege to have you as our valued customer and we want to make sure you are always taken care of.

If there is anything else you need help with, please feel free to contact us at any point of time. We are here 24 hours a day and 7 days a week for your assistance. Here’s a link to our Contact Us page:http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html

Thank you for choosing Amazon. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you again in the near future.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the links below to tell us about your experience today.

Best regards,
aditi

Of course I responded with a very kind thank you note! I felt like that went above and beyond what I expected, and was a ridiculously good example of Amazon’s customer service.

But I don’t think it’ll take much imagination for you to guess what happened next, though it moves our story forward by almost a month:

September 16

Hi,

Again, I really appreciate the sentiment. But I was just re-charged for the purchase.

If you want me to send the toilet back, I’m still OK with that, but please let me know.

Regards,
Scott

The Refunded Refund

That’s right, Amazon unceremoniously pulled $270.74 out of my checking account a month after saying that the matter was settled.

The transactions related to all this nonsense.

Look, I’m not trying get one over on Amazon. I wanted to return the toilet. I really did. It’s been sitting in my living room for over 2 months, having not been pooped in at all.

But they offered to let me keep the it. That was their choice. But notice they kept the $39.04 for the return shipping. I mean, fair enough, because 40 bucks is a cheap price for a toilet. But for a toilet that I don’t want and will probably just donate to Habitat? Meh.

But they’ve now charged me $309.78 for an order that was originally $270.74. (Two $270.74 charges minus just $231.70 in the refund.)

The worst part is that their customer service has responded to my other emails in a matter of hours, yet it’s now been 4 days, and I’m starting to get worried.

I’ll update this saga when there’s some kind of resolution. I’m happy to return the toilet. I’m happy to donate the toilet. Whatever you want, Amazon. Just please let me know so I can put this to rest.

Here’s A Bullet List of Issues for People That Like Lists

• The photo on the Amazon product page was incorrect.
• Amazon only issued one shipping label for a two-package return.
• Amazon never responded to the feedback form that I was superfluously asked to fill out.
• Amazon insists that one shipping label can be duplicated onto many packages. UPS strongly disagrees.
• UPS says that I can leave return packages on my porch for unattended pickup. Amazon strongly disagrees.
• Amazon was quick to promise that I wouldn’t be charged for the toilet, but I was. A month later.
• Amazon still charged me the return fee of $40, even though I never returned it.
• This whole thing started with an order on July 4, and it’s now September 20.

I started off this post by saying that this indicates a deeper problem than just a bad rep or a one-off experience. Amazon really needs to get on the same page as UPS. I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong, but I’m thinking that Amazon is wrong. If they’d issued two labels and let me leave the packages unattended for pick-up, this would have been resolved over a month ago with minimal fuss.

Then again, since I’m dealing in hypothetical “what if” scenarios: If they’d simply shipped the toilet pictured in the listing, I’d probably be pooping in the corner of the room like god intended instead of jammed up against the wall like an animal.

There’s a fundamental accounting problem if their system can bill me an extra $40 in this way. If this was my credit card and not my debit card, I might not have noticed the discrepancy because the transaction volume is higher and it would’ve spanned two statements.

And finally, I don’t think that the feedback form in question actually does anything. To this day I’ve received no acknowledgement of having sent a message, aside from the confirmation page on Amazon.com after I submitted it.

Some of This is My Fault

In fairness to Amazon, I did slow down this process a bit on my own. I didn’t unpack the toilet until a couple of weeks after delivery — I’d been waiting for a spare weekend to install it. In retrospect I should have taken it out to inspect it right away, but I didn’t.

I also took a while to get around to actually trying to bring the thing to the UPS Store. My car isn’t big enough for both packages, so it was going to take me two trips and over an hour. I procrastinated out of laziness, and I was really grateful for their offer of a free pick-up.

(Incidentally, I would have made the cutoff dates for the return despite my delay.)

My UPS guy also came at weird times when I was trying to give him the package. I couldn’t take a full day off of work just to facilitate this return, and though I did leave work early on those days, he came even earlier. It’s not his fault, of course, but it’s just one of those flukes of bad timing. I’ve seen him in my neighborhood after 7 PM quite a few times afterwards.

Also, I take some of the responsibility for ordering the wrong item. However, even though it said “round front”, the picture clearly shows an elongated bowl. It looks nothing like the actual item. American Standard’s site seemed to back up the fact that I was ordering an elongated bowl.

Your Feedback is Important to Us…

…and will be answered in the order received.

Seriously though, if you think I’m being an ass about this, let me know in the comments. And regardless of the long rant, I’m not all that worked up about it. I have confidence that Amazon will come through in the end.

Just for reference, here’s a screenshot of the Amazon listing with the incorrect picture. Looks like I bought at a good time, because it’s now $100 more expensive!

This video covers almost everything you need to know about HDDs and SSDs to make an educated choice before pulling the trigger on a purchase.

Well, almost everything. This video is primarily directed at the home user trying to get some additional storage, whether that be an extra drive in their workstation, a NAS, or a full file server. If you’re trying to choose between SAS drives for a large-scale datacenter installation, then you probably know this stuff already.

As I promised in the video, here’s some links to my HDD TCO worksheet from 2013 (though I may have updated it in the interim with a couple of “new” drives). Please download the Excel version and use this for any drive that you want. If you make any interesting changes or large scale updates, I’d love to see it, so please let me know!

I also added a bunch of notes so you know what I meant with all the field names.

HDD Total Cost of Ownership Worksheet (Google Sheets – View only)

HDD Total Cost of Ownership Worksheet (Excel – View and edit)

The Background

The Missus and I flew to Florida a couple of days ago, and as usual we took JetBlue. The only eventful part of the flight was a pleasant arrival 30 minutes ahead of schedule. The flight crew had mentioned that the satellite TV was out of commission, and that all in-flight movies would be free for the duration.

I thought that was a good way of handling the issue, and figured that was the end of that.

However, the next day we both received emails from JetBlue stating that we’d been signed up for their Travel Bank, and that a $15 credit had been applied to both of our Banks in exchange for the inconvenience of the malfunctioning TV service! That kind of proactive customer service is fantastic, and one of the main reasons that we fly JetBlue.

Hello SCOTT

Thank you for choosing JetBlue.

The following credit has been applied to your Travel Bank account number: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ^{(Ed. Note: Account # redacted)}

Service Credit: InFlight Entertainment 15.00

We‘re sorry that DIRECTV® service didn’t work during your flight—we know this is one of the many reasons our customers choose to fly with JetBlue. Please accept our sincere apologies and this flight credit for the inconvenience you recently experienced with us.

This credit, which expires 365 days from the date it is issued, is available for use on future travel with JetBlue and is non-transferable.

To book a flight using your Travel Bank credit, visit jetblue.com and choose Travel Bank as your form of payment.

You can check the balance and transactions of your Travel Bank account by clicking here. For more information about Travel Bank and your credits, please visit jetblue.com/help/travelbank. We thank you for your understanding and look forward to a future opportunity to welcome you onboard.

Sincerely,

JetBlue Airways

Plain-Text Passwords

Here’s where the story turns dark, at least from a security perspective: Because this Travel Bank was a new service for both of us, and because JetBlue likewise had to create accounts for us, they sent us a password to get started.

Unlike — oh, I don’t know — every other website in the world, they didn’t send us randomly generated passwords. No.

THEY RE-USED OUR OUR TRUE BLUE ACCOUNT PASSWORDS, AND SENT THEM TO US IN PLAIN TEXT.

Click on this image for the full-size version.

This is a big deal for three reasons, the last of which is maybe a little less than obvious to most:

When emails are transmitted across the internet they are generally not encrypted. This means that your password would be visible to any server or router between JetBlue and your email service. It might be stored, intercepted, or otherwise snooped at any point along the journey.

Perhaps more importantly, anyone that gained access to your email account would know your password. That may seem unlikely (after all, you probably don’t have a crack team of international hackers trailing your every move), but anyone that happened across your phone could see the password.

If that doesn’t sound important, then in my opinion this last point is the worst faux pas of all. Wait, it’s not a faux pas. It’s more an act of pure ignorance and/or negligence: It’s obvious that JetBlue is storing your password in plain text, or at the very least with reversible encryption.

This means that, were hackers to get access to JetBlue’s user account database (unlike you, JetBlue may indeed be targeted by their friendly neighborhood team of international hackers), they could see your password.

And you may store your credit card info in your True Blue account. If so, anyone with access to your account could book flights to your card. Moreover, how secure is your card number if your password isn’t properly secured? That’s the kind of question I shouldn’t have to ask of “New York’s favorite airline”.

And I’m betting that you use that same True Blue password for at least one of your other accounts, perhaps even something critical like your banking or credit card accounts.

Change your Password

The moral of this story is that you should change your password. Not just with JetBlue, but make sure you use a different password for JetBlue than any of your other accounts.

Actually, it’s a best practice to use different passwords for each of your online accounts. Realistically that can be a huge pain in the ass, so even I don’t do it 100% of the time.

The moral of the story for JetBlue: For the love of internet security, use non-reversible encryption to protect our account information! You should never be able to know my password. That principle comes straight out of a community college Web Design 101 course, and you’re an international airline!

Air in a Can

This is a follow-up of sorts to my Bullsh*t Product: Boost Oxygen video. If you don’t know what that is and you’re too lazy to click the link (is that click-baiting or just click-dicking?), Boost O2 sells oxygen in a can for various phony baloney health benefits.

I mentioned in the video that Boost wasn’t the only company shilling this sort of thing, and indeed I was right: News stories about Vitality Air have been making the rounds on social media in the last few days. And the stories are on relatively legitimate websites like CNBC, Fortune, and CNN.

Fortunately the stories have primarily been about how clever a business model it is to sell cans of air to dying Chinese people, and have not been about the “health benefits” of sucking down air or O2 from a can.

Are they Serious?

According to the story in Fortune, Vitality Air got its start selling Ziploc bags of air on eBay for 99 cents as a novelty.

A space emperor inhales from his can of Perri-air, circa long ago.

Eventually the founders of the company moved up to compressed air in cans (along with compressed O2) with a direct-to-customer sales strategy. They changed from a “novelty” company to a “kinda sort health” company, business has picked up, and Vitality Air can’t ship this stuff out fast enough. And it’s becoming popular in the Chinese market.

As I long belabored in my Boost Oxygen video, cans of Oxygen (let alone regular air) like the ones sold by Vitality Air, Boost Oxygen, Oxygen4Energy, and Oxygen Plus are completely useless. They won’t help a beleaguered middle class Chinese guy as he hacks his way towards an agonizing and cancerous death.

Their Pitch

Vitality Air looks like they cribbed their pitch directly from Boost Oxygen. Or maybe it was the other way around; I really have no idea, but I’m pretty sure that Boost came first. Either it’s a case of the one ripping off the other, or (more likely) there’s only so much to say about supplemental oxygen that a lawyer will let you put on a website.

Here’s what they have to say for themselves, taken right from their homepage:

The human body, and all living organisms alike cannot function at its best without a regular supply of high quality air/oxygen. The human body can easily live without food and water for weeks, and without sleep for around 7 days, however the effects of lack of oxygen can happen within minutes!

That’s almost an exact quote from Boost. And so I’ll inexactly repeat myself, too: We’re not living in an Oxygen-deficient environment. Neither are people in Beijing. So while you’re not wrong in those claims, they are completely irrelevant.

Our bodies require a regular supply of premium oxygen in order to function at its peak performance. By supplying our customers with fresh clean air as well as oxygen, we allow them to boost energy levels in a natural way, helps with hangovers, alertness, and working out!

“Premium oxygen”? What the shit is “premium oxygen”? Oxygen gas is specifically something that cannot come in varieties of “premiumness”. It’s either O2 or it ain’t.

And once again: For a healthy individual, supplemental oxygen does not provide any additional energy. A normal, healthy individual in a non-oxygen-deficient environment will have all 100% of their hemoglobin bound to oxygen. The best thing that they will accomplish by using supplemental O2 is to significantly increase the dollar (or yuan) cost of their exhalations.

Inhaling “fresh clean air” likewise will do absolutely nothing to increase energy.

And no, hangovers are not an illness that can be cured or improved by supplemental oxygen. (The placebo effect? That works wonders!)

As we continue to live in highly polluted areas, we are your solution to pollution!

YOU ARE NOT THE SOLUTION TO POLLUTION. If you want to argue this point, then answer these two questions: What is “tidal volume”, and how many liters of oxygen (or air) are in your cans?

For those of you that don’t know, tidal volume is the quantity of air that you inhale (and exhale) with each breath. Your own tidal volume will mostly depend upon your lung capacity and your level of activity. For example, a person with a lung capacity of 4 liters can inhale 4 liters of air (or oxygen) on each breath: That’s if they breathe in fully and deeply. At rest they will inhale and exhale a lower quantity of oxygen. Let’s say 1 liter.

If these cans of bullsh*t oxygen had a flow rate that matched the rate of a user’s inhalation (they don’t), and if their delivery mechanism allowed for a tight seal to the user’s face (they don’t), the user would get about 8 inhalations from one of their large 7.7 liter cans, at rest. At a cost of ten, twenty, or thirty dollars for each can, that’s a hell of a way to waste your money. A few extra lung-fulls of oxygen or clean air isn’t going to help you out in a toxic environment.

The reason that Vitality, Boost and all the others make grand claims such as “lasts up to 150 one second inhalations” is because the nozzles on the cans put out gas at such a low rate that barely any gas is emitted. So even if you believe the hype that oxygen or fresh mountain air is good for you, remember that you’re hardly getting any of it into your lungs on each breath.

Meaning that if you’re in a polluted environment and you’re sucking on one of these cans, you’ll be breathing something like 95% polluted air and 5% clean air (or oxygen) each time you inhale.

Oh, and that’s to say nothing for the oh-so-ironic environmental damage that results from shipping cans of air all around the globe.

Speaking of Irony…

I myself have been obsessively critical of FedEx on this very site. But S.co.tt is branded as some random jerk on the internet, not a snake-oil salesman trying to appear legit.

And so that’s why I don’t think it’s too hypocritical to share one of Vitality Air’s Twitter rants:

I’ll just leave that there. Take it for what you will.

If you have any experiences with Vitality Air’s products, good or bad, I’ve love to know about it in the comments!

I get it. At this point you’re probably thinking “What the hell is this guy’s problem? Two videos??“

It’s not like I’m obsessed with Boost Oxygen. In fact, I’ve already moved on to my next fecal-laden product. But when I was shooting the Boost video I decided to go over some of the incoherent ramblings of idiots reviews on Amazon and Sports Authority that I found while doing research on this product. (Yes, I did a modicum of actual research believe it or not.)

What is This Thing?

Hopefully you haven’t heard of Boost Oxygen. Hopefully you haven’t been tempted to plunk down your hard-earned cash on a useless tin can containing 95% pure nonsense.

Did I say “nonsense”? Sorry, I meant that’s it’s full of 95% pure oxygen. According to the manufacturer it’s the “source of life”, so you better go out and buy it now!

The manufacturer also loosely implies benefits to sports performance, general health and wellness, hangover recovery, and altitude sickness. That’s all bullsh*t, of course. Watch the video to find out why.

And Another Thing…

The video discusses two main reasons why this product is unadulterated B.S., but one thing I didn’t mention was the Food and Drug Administration.

You see, supplemental oxygen is used in medicine for all sorts of valid and useful reasons. In fact, it can save the life of someone if they’re ill. But medical oxygen requires a prescription, and Boost Oxygen, LLC is more than happy to point out that they can now sell oxygen in a convenient and practical manner — over the counter.

Yet they fail to mention that oxygen can be used to help you if you’re sick.

If they made a claim like that, then they would be selling a medical product and the FDA would be entirely up their ass about it. Instead, they can only make vague and unsubstantiated claims about the product’s benefits. The FDA exists for a good reason, and although they might be poorly funded and their enforcement powers may have been robustly castrated, they prevent companies like Boost Oxygen, LLC from promising life-saving effects that they can’t deliver. And that avoids killing the suckers that might buy it instead of their prescribed O2.

The bottom line here is this: Do your own research into any “health and wellness” product before you buy it. Hopefully that’s why you’re here, reading this post.

Don’t Forget the Links

I referenced some research papers, reviews, and websites in my video. You can find all of them here, which I’ll try to keep up to date when I get more information.

http://plr.io/1rb

And last of all, please let me know if I’ve made any mistakes or left anything out either in the comments below or on my YouTube video.

Apparently I was so distressed by the non-metal “metal” Defiant power strip from Home Depot that I made a video about it.

If you hate videos but love text, then mosey on over to my previous post about this travesty of a product, and follow my adventures getting pissed off about their HDX Whatever Something Light.