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upstart writes:

"When we don't own what we buy, everything becomes disposable..." :

Makers of smart devices that fail to disclose how long they will support their products with software updates may be breaking the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned this week.

The FTC released its statement after examining 184 smart products across 64 product categories, including soundbars, video doorbells, breast pumps, smartphones, home appliances, and garage door opener controllers. Among devices researched, the majority—or 163 to be precise—"did not disclose the connected device support duration or end date" on their product webpage, per the FTC's report [PDF]. Contrastingly, 11.4 percent of devices examined shared a software support duration or end date on their product page.

In addition to manufacturers often neglecting to commit to software support for a specified amount of time, it seems that even when they share this information, it's elusive.

For example, the FTC reported that some manufacturers made software support dates available but not on the related product's webpage. Instead, this information is sometimes buried in specs, support, FAQ pages, or footnotes.

The FTC report added:

... some used ambiguous language that only imply the level of support provided, including phrases like, "lifetime technical support," "as long as your device is fully operational," and "continuous software updates," for example. Notably, staff also had difficulty finding on the product webpages the device's release date ...

At times, the FTC found glaring inconsistencies. For example, one device's product page said that the device featured "lifetime" support, "but the search result pointing to the manufacturer's support page indicated that, while other updates may still be active, the security updates for the device had stopped in 2021," per the FTC.

Those relying on Google's AI Overviews may also be misled. In one case, AI Overviews pointed to a smart gadget getting "software support and updates for 3–6 months." But through the link that AI Overviews provided, the FTC found that the three to six months figure that Google scraped actually referred to the device's battery life. The next day, AI Overviews said that it couldn't determine the duration of software support or updates for the gadget, the FTC noted.

taylorvich writes:

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v17/168

Observations confirm a theoretical model explaining how—in Earth's magnetosphere—large-scale magnetic waves heat up the magnetosphere's plasma by transferring their energy to smaller-scale acoustic waves.

Ocean currents spin off huge gyres, whose kinetic energy is transferred to ever-smaller turbulent structures until viscosity has erased velocity gradients and water molecules jiggle with thermal randomness. A similar cascade plays out in space when the solar wind slams into the magnetopause, the outer boundary of Earth's magnetic field. The encounter launches large-scale magnetic, or Alfvén, waves whose energy ends up heating the plasma inside the magnetosphere. Here, however, the plasma is too thin for viscosity to mediate the cascade. Since 1971 researchers have progressively developed their understanding of how Alfvén waves in space plasmas generate heat. These studies later culminated in a specific hypothesis: Alfvén waves accelerate ion beams, which create small-scale acoustic waves, which generate heat. Now Xin An of UCLA and his collaborators have found direct evidence of that proposed mechanism [1]. What's more, the mechanism is likely at work in the solar wind and other space plasmas.

Laboratory-scale experiments struggle to capture the dynamics of rotating plasmas, and real-world observations are even more scarce. The observations that An and his collaborators analyzed were made in 2015 by the four-spacecraft Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. Launched that year, the MMS was designed to study magnetic reconnection, a process in which the topology of magnetic-field lines is violently transformed. The field rearrangements wrought by reconnection can be large, on the scale of the huge loops that sprout from the Sun's photosphere. But the events that initiate reconnection take place in a much smaller region where neighboring field lines meet, the X-line. The four spacecraft of MMS can fly in a configuration in which all of them witness the large-scale topological transformation while one of them could happen to fly through the X-line—a place where no spacecraft had deliberately been sent before.

On September 8, 2015, the orbits of the MMS spacecraft took them through the magnetopause on the dusk side of Earth. They were far enough apart that together they could detect the passage of a large-scale Alfvén wave, while each of them could individually detect the motion of ions in the surrounding plasma. An and his collaborators later realized that these observations could be used to test the theory that ion beams and the acoustic waves that they generate mediate the conversion of Alfvén-wave energy to heat.

Data from the various instruments aboard the MMS spacecraft show signatures from all three factors that drive the energy cascade: Alfvén waves and ion beams, both of which have length scales of about 2000 km, and acoustic waves, which have length scales of 50–1500 m. Crucially, the instruments also recorded connections between the processes. The Alfvén waves' magnetic-pressure variations were in sync with fluctuations in ion density and the local electric field, while the ion beams' speeds matched those of either the local Alfvén waves or the acoustic waves.

Reference:

Xin An, Anton Artemyev, Vassilis Angelopoulos, Terry Z. Liu, Ivan Vasko, and David Malaspina, Cross-Scale Energy Transfer from Fluid-Scale Alfvén Waves to Kinetic-Scale Ion Acoustic Waves in the Earth's Magnetopause Boundary Layer,Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 225201, (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.225201)

Original Submission

quietus and Mykl write:

"This bill seeks to set a new normative value in society that accessing social media is not the defining feature of growing up in Australia. There is wide acknowledgement that something must be done in the immediate term to help prevent young teens and children from being exposed to streams of content unfiltered and infinite.

(Michelle Rowland, Minister for Communications, Australian Parliament, Nov 21)

Australia's House of Representatives has passed a bill that would ban access to social media platforms TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram for youngsters under 16. The bill passed by 102 against 13.

Once the bill gets through the Senate -- expected this week -- the platforms would have a year to work out how to implement the age restriction, without using government-issued identity documents (passport, driving licenses), and without digital identification through a government system.

The leaders of all eight Australian states and mainland territories have unanimously backed the plan, although Tasmania, the smallest state, would have preferred the threshold was set at 14.

There are some counter-noises though (no, not you, Elon). More than 140 academics signed an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemning the 16-year age limit as "too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively."

The writers of that open letter fear that the responsibility of giving access to social media will fall on the parents, and "not all parents will be able to manage the responsibility of protection in the digital world".

Further, " Some social media 'type' services appear too integral to childhood to be banned, for example short form video streamers. But these too have safety risks like risks of dangerous algorithms promoting risky content. A ban does not function to improve the products children will be allowed to use."

The open letter pleads instead for systemic regulation, which "has the capacity to drive up safety and privacy standards on platforms for all children and eschews the issues described above. Digital platforms are just like other products, and can have safety standards imposed."

Australia's ban on social media will be a world-first, with fines of up to 50 million Australian Dollars for each failure to prevent them youngsters of having a social media account.

Under the laws, which won't come into force for another 12 months, social media companies could be fined up to $50 million for failing to take "reasonable steps" to keep under 16s off their platforms. There are no penalties for young people or parents who flout the rules. Social media companies also won't be able to force users to provide government identification, including the Digital ID, to assess their age.

AnonTechie writes:

Tracking Indoor Location, Movement and Desk Occupancy in the Workplace: A case study on technologies for behavioral monitoring and profiling using motion sensors and wireless networking infrastructure inside offices and other facilities

As offices, buildings and other corporate facilities become networked environments, there is a growing desire among employers to exploit data gathered from their existing digital infrastructure or additional sensors for various purposes. Whether intentionally or as a byproduct, this includes personal data about employees, their movements and behaviors.

Technology vendors are promoting solutions that repurpose an organization's wireless networking infrastructure as a means to monitor and analyze the indoor movements of employees and others within buildings. While GPS technology is too imprecise to track indoor location, Wi-Fi access points that provide internet connectivity for laptops, smartphones, tables and other networked devices can be used to track the location of these devices. Bluetooth, another wireless technology, can also be used to monitor indoor location. This can involve Wi-Fi access points that track Bluetooth-enabled devices, so-called "beacons" that are installed throughout buildings and Bluetooth-enabled badges carried by employees. In addition, employers can utilize badging systems, security cameras and video conferencing technology installed in meeting rooms for behavioral monitoring, or even environmental sensors that record room temperature, humidity and light intensity. Several technology vendors provide systems that use motion sensors installed under desks or in the ceilings of rooms to track room and desk attendance.

[Source]: Cracked Labs

[Case Study]: https://crackedlabs.org/dl/CrackedLabs_Christl_IndoorTracking.pdf [PDF]

[Also Covered By]: The Register

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Intel has a serious problem with Arrow Lake and memory compatibility:

We've had Intel's Arrow Lake chips on the test benches lately, and the performance we were expecting wasn't quite there. Even on some of the best LGA1851 motherboards, we've noticed various performance quirks that need more than just a quick fix. One of those odd behaviors is DDR5 RAM sticks that refuse to boot at XMP settings, regardless of what speed they are rated for.

This is separate from the latency issue caused by the slower bus speed and the shifting of the memory controller to the SoC tile instead of on the compute tile, and it seems Arrow Lake is pickier with memory than any Intel platform I can think of since forever. I mean, Intel has always been the processor to get for using fast, low-latency RAM, and that long streak has now ended.

RAM compatibility for Arrow Lake is abysmal, Intel used to be the gold standard for fast RAM support but no longer

I've been around computing a long time, long enough that dual-data rate RAM wasn't even a thing at the time. Every new DDR revision has come with teething issues, as have most major CPU architecture changes. DDR5 still isn't a mature technology, but it's getting close as faster speeds combined with low timings are becoming more common. Arrow Lake is the first major architecture change from Intel since 2023's Alder Lake, when both DDR4 and DDR5 were supported.

Both of these new technologies seem to have caused more issues when combined, and this is one of the worst launches I've had hands-on experience with for memory compatibility. Arrow Lake feels pickier than even first-gen Ryzen was, back when Samsung B-die was the king for DDR4 RAM, spending hours looking over spec sheets and forums to find the memory kits using the vaunted DRAM modules.

But Ryzen at least had a common fix, as every Samsung B-die memory stick worked fine once the DDR and SoC voltages were increased slightly. When the Core Ultra 9 285 K was on the test bench, I tried nearly a dozen different DDR5 kits, and not one would boot with XMP enabled. Those kits ranged between 5,600MT/s and 8,800MT/s and between 16GB and 32GB per DIMM. Some of those kits were early DDR5 with XMP support, some were recent, and two kits were of the new CUDIMM variety that have an onboard clock driver to enable faster RAM speeds on Arrow Lake specifically. Some even had trouble booting at JEDEC speeds, which I've never experienced on any platform.

The only kit that did boot at higher speeds was from Kingston, and they were 8,800MT/s CUDIMMs. But it wasn't any of the BIOS settings I set from the years of RAM overclocking experience that I have on multiple platforms that worked. I had to boot into Windows and use Gigabyte's AI Snatch program, which tested the RAM and used algorithms to decide what speed and timings the kit should be using. After a reboot into BIOS to enable those AI generated settings and ensuring the DDR voltage was set to 1.45V, it booted into Windows at 8,933MT/s.

There was one last issue, however, in that the RAM would only run in Gear 4. Most low-latency memory DDR4 runs in Gear 1; using Gear 2 is a way to get higher speeds but at a slight penalty to latency, as it runs the memory at a 2:1 ratio compared to the memory controller. Most DDR5 uses Gear 2 to begin with, and to get higher speeds on Arrow Lake, drops to a 4:1 ratio, aka Gear 4. That's a huge performance hit in latency, on top of the considerable latency that Arrow Lake has by design. And remember, this is one kit out of nearly a dozen that could run at or above its rated speed.

XMP speeds will get fixed for the most part, as we've seen with AMD's Ryzen and how much better it handles RAM compatibility since its initial release. Arrow Lake is Intel's Ryzen moment, with the potential to do much more and build better CPUs in the future. It just has to get there, and the ring bus that shuttles data between the CPU and L3 cache and the hop to the memory controller are two things that need improving for the next silicon release. Intel can mitigate some of the aspects of the memory hit, but it can't do much about the inherent latency of the trip between the SoC tile and the compute tile.

It will likely involve a combination of silicon fixes, Windows, and driver improvements, as AMD did with Ryzen. If the computer's software is aware of the latency, it can be rewritten to account for it somewhat and make the system snappier as a result.

owl writes:

http://www.righto.com/2024/11/antenna-diodes-in-pentium-processor.html

I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures where signal lines were connected to the silicon substrate for no apparent reason. Two examples are in the photo below, where the metal wiring (orange) connects to small square regions of doped silicon (gray), isolated from the rest of the circuitry. I did some investigation and learned that these structures are "antenna diodes," special diodes that protect the circuitry from damage during manufacturing. In this blog post, I discuss the construction of the Pentium and explain how these antenna diodes work.

Original Submission

Snotnose writes:

Before reading the article ask yourself "What percentage of Americans do you think are [fill in the blank]?"

• Transgender
• Muslim
• Jewish
• Black
• Live in New York City
• Gay or Lesbian

Now go see how you did.

Yesterday Jemele Hill recirculated a study YouGov did in 2022 about the gaps between people's perceptions and reality.

YouGov asked a series of questions on "What percentage of Americans do you think are [fill in the blank]?" with the [blank] being all sorts of qualities: black, gay, Christian, left-handed, own a passport, etc.

TLDR: there are a lot of stupid people out there.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2024/11/the-capacitor-that-apple-soldered-incorrectly-at-the-factory/

There have been some past rumblings on the internet about a capacitor being installed backwards in Apple's Macintosh LC III. The LC III was a "pizza box" Mac model produced from early 1993 to early 1994, mainly targeted at the education market. It also manifested as various consumer Performa models: the 450, 460, 466, and 467. Clearly, Apple never initiated a huge recall of the LC III, so I think there is some skepticism in the community about this whole issue. Let's look at the situation in more detail and understand the circuit. Did Apple actually make a mistake?

I participated in the discussion thread at the first link over a decade ago, but I never had a machine to look at with my own eyes until now. I recently bought a Performa 450 complete with its original leaky capacitors, and I have several other machines in the same form factor. Let's check everything out!

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

(livescience) Key Atlantic current could collapse soon, 'impacting the entire world for centuries to come,' leading climate scientists warn

Forty-four of the world's leading climate scientists have called on Nordic policymakers to address the potentially imminent and "devastating" collapse of key Atlantic Ocean currents.

In an open letter published online Monday (Oct. 21), University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann and other eminent scientists say the risks of weakening ocean circulation in the Atlantic have been greatly underestimated and warrant urgent action.

The currents in question are those forming the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a giant ocean conveyor belt that includes the Gulf Stream and transports vital heat to the Northern Hemisphere. Research shows the AMOC is slowing down and could soon reach a tipping point due to global warming, throwing Earth's climate into chaos.

(BBC) The Atlantic Ocean's currents are on the verge of collapse. This is what it means for the planet

Icy winds howl across a frozen Thames, ice floes block shipping in the Mersey docks, and crops fail across the UK. Meanwhile, the US east coast has been inundated by rising seas and there's ecological chaos in the Amazon as the wet and dry season have switched around... The world has been upended. What's going on?

While these scenes sound like something from a Hollywood disaster movie, a new scientific study investigating a key element of Earth's climate system – the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – says this could occur for real as soon as 2050.

(arxiv) Probability Estimates of a 21st Century AMOC Collapse

Abstract

There is increasing concern that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may collapse this century with a disrupting societal impact on large parts of the world. Preliminary estimates of the probability of such an AMOC collapse have so far been based on conceptual models and statistical analyses of proxy data. Here, we provide observationally based estimates of such probabilities from reanalysis data. We first identify optimal observation regions of an AMOC collapse from a recent global climate model simulation. Salinity data near the southern boundary of the Atlantic turn out to be optimal to provide estimates of the time of the AMOC collapse in this model. Based on the reanalysis products, we next determine probability density functions of the AMOC collapse time. The collapse time is estimated between 2037-2064 (10-90% CI) with a mean of 2050 and the probability of an AMOC collapse before the year 2050 is estimated to be 59±17%.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Here's what I'll miss about Chrome OS once it turns into Android

[...] Chrome OS has an expiration date. It's not right around the corner — it'll probably take a couple of years, but one day, all Chromebooks will run Android over Chrome OS so that Google can better compete with Apple.

While I can understand why Google streamlining its operating systems is probably a good thing in the long run, losing Chrome OS will come with some growing, or rather, shrinking pains. It will force Google to choose between Android and Chrome OS for the future of several useful features, and I'm nervous that some of my favorites will disappear.

[....] Right now, regular updates are one of my favorite reasons to recommend Chromebooks. You don't usually have to worry about how many years of support your light, fast laptop is promised because it will get a brand-new version of Chrome OS every four weeks.

[....] The problem with Google shifting from Chrome OS to Android is that, well, Android updates don't work in quite the same way. Rather than pushing one update to every device, each OEM has to take the time to optimize Google's latest product to work with its own Android skin. That optimization delays the update schedule, sometimes to the point where a phone will fall behind by a version or two. And, when that happens, it almost never really catches up.

[....] Right now, organizing files on a Chromebook feels like it should — it's very desktop-coded. Everything lives inside a folder like you'd find on a Windows or Mac laptop, and you can quickly sort by everything from title to file type for easy access. When you find what you need, you can then pin it to your Chromebook's taskbar, keeping it just a tap away. Want to do that on an Android phone? There's no space for more icons at the bottom of your display.

One useful feature of Chrome OS is that you can run a Linux VM within it if you have decent Chomebook hardware.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-11-engraved-trees-smi-culture.html

Archaeologists analyzed trees engraved by the Indigenous Sámi of Arctic Europe, revealing the significance of these rare remnants of Sámi culture and the importance of preserving them from ongoing deforestation.

The Sámi are the Indigenous people of Sápmi, a region in northern Europe that encompasses northern Fennoscandia and north-west Russia.

They followed an animistic religion, but a concentrated effort by the Scandinavian Church in the 17th century AD led to the destruction of religious artifacts and a decline in the Sámi oral tradition, meaning their culture and history is under threat.

However, one important aspect of the Sámi culture managed to survive this repression. Some trees throughout Sápmi were incised with markings holding social and religious significance.

"Unlike most other sacred objects, standing trees are not easy to collect and they have generally eluded the ambitions of the Church to erase the traces of the Indigenous religion," states co-author of the research, Dr. Ingela Bergman from INSARC/Silvermuseet.
...
They identified hundreds of Scots pine trees in the northern boreal forests of Fennoscandia, predominantly in national parks, engraved with X-marks and geometric patterns.

According to the ethnographic research, trees were seen by the Sámi as mediators between people and deities. They also had pragmatic uses, acting as boundary markers and navigational aids in the harsh, seasonal landscape of the northern boreal forests.

Journal Reference: Ingela Bergman et al, X-marked trees: carriers of Indigenous Sámi traditions, Antiquity (2024). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2024.184

Original Submission

upstart writes:

In a first, Russia's APT28 hacking group appears to have remotely breached the Wi-Fi of an espionage target by hijacking a laptop in another building across the street:

For determined hackers, sitting in a car outside a target's building and using radio equipment to breach its Wi-Fi network has long been an effective but risky technique. These risks became all too clear when spies working for Russia's GRU military intelligence agency were caught red-handed on a city street in the Netherlands in 2018 using an antenna hidden in their car's trunk to try to hack into the Wi-Fi of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Since that incident, however, that same unit of Russian military hackers appears to have developed a new and far safer Wi-Fi hacking technique: Instead of venturing into radio range of their target, they found another vulnerable network in a building across the street, remotely hacked into a laptop in that neighboring building, and used that computer's antenna to break into the Wi-Fi network of their intended victim—a radio-hacking trick that never even required leaving Russian soil.

At the Cyberwarcon security conference in Arlington, Virginia, today, cybersecurity researcher Steven Adair will reveal how his firm, Volexity, discovered that unprecedented Wi-Fi hacking technique—what the firm is calling a "nearest neighbor attack"—while investigating a network breach targeting a customer in Washington, DC, in 2022. Volexity, which declined to name its DC customer, has since tied the breach to the Russian hacker group known as Fancy Bear, APT28, or Unit 26165. Part of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, the group has been involved in notorious cases ranging from the breach of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to the botched Wi-Fi hacking operation in which four of its members were arrested in the Netherlands in 2018.

In this newly revealed case from early 2022, Volexity ultimately discovered not only that the Russian hackers had jumped to the target network via Wi-Fi from a different compromised network across the street, but also that this prior breach had also potentially been carried out over Wi-Fi from yet another network in the same building—a kind of "daisy-chaining" of network breaches via Wi-Fi, as Adair describes it.

Technology Review is running this story:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/11/20/1107002/clear-airport-identity-management-biometrics-facial-recognition/ about Clear, a company that is trying to expand from airport expedited-security, to security and ID for many other transactions. (Alt link at https://archive.ph/2hbgC)

If you've ever been through a large US airport, you're probably at least vaguely aware of Clear. Maybe your interest (or irritation) has been piqued by the pods before the security checkpoints, the attendants in navy blue vests who usher clients to the front of the security line (perhaps just ahead of you), and the sometimes pushy sales pitches to sign up and skip ahead yourself.
[...]
Its position in airports has made Clear Secure, with its roughly $3.75 billion market capitalization, the most visible biometric identity company in the United States. Over the past two decades, Clear has put more than 100 lanes in 58 airports across the US, and in the past decade it has entered 17 sports arenas and stadiums, from San Jose to Denver to Atlanta. Now you can also use its identity verification platform to rent tools at Home Depot, put your profile in front of recruiters on LinkedIn, and, as of this month, verify your identity as a rider on Uber.
[...]
The company that has helped millions of vetted members skip airport security lines is now working to expand its "frictionless," "face-first" line-cutting service from the airport to just about everywhere, online and off, by promising to verify that you are who you say you are and you are where you are supposed to be. In doing so, CEO Caryn Seidman Becker told investors in an earnings call earlier this year, it has designs on being no less than the "identity layer of the internet," as well as the "universal identity platform" of the physical world.

All you have to do is show up—and show your face.

It goes on to explain the origins of Clear, rising out of the bankruptcy of earlier biometrics company VIP. Then it finally gets to the major problems of using biometrics for security, and also having one company handle security for many aspects of life.

Well worth a read if you are interested in the future of proving who you are.

P.S. Dept. line references this: https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/soul-theft-through-photography/

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Odd smell coming from Russian spacecraft docked at space station

A Russian Progress spacecraft delivering nearly three tons of supplies to the International Space Station also brought an unwanted smell when cosmonauts opened the hatch.

[....] "After opening the Progress spacecraft's hatch, the Roscosmos cosmonauts noticed an unexpected odor and observed small droplets, prompting the crew to close the Poisk hatch to the rest of the Russian segment," NASA said Sunday.

NASA did not describe the odor. Russian space news outlet Russianspaceweb.com reports that the cosmonaut crew described it as "toxic" and closed the hatch immediately.

The space agency said the space station's air scrubbers and contaminant sensors monitored the ISS atmosphere for about 24 hours before flight controllers reported normal air quality on Sunday.

Hopefully an air freshener was included for hanging in zero gee.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://practical.engineering/blog/2024/11/14/which-power-plant-does-my-electricity-come-from

In June of 2000, the power shut off across much of the San Francisco Bay area. There simply wasn't enough electricity to meet demands, so more than a million customers were disconnected in California's largest load shed event since World War II. It was just one of the many rolling blackouts that hit the state in the early 2000s. Known as the Western Energy Crisis, the shortages resulted in blackouts, soaring electricity prices, and ultimately around 40 billion dollars in economic losses. But this time, the major cause of the issues had nothing to do with engineering. There were some outages and a lack of capacity from hydroelectric plants due to drought, but the primary cause of the disaster was economic. Power brokers (mainly Enron) were manipulating the newly de-regulated market for bulk electricity, forcing prices to skyrocket. Utilities were having to buy electricity at crazy prices, but there was a cap on how much they could charge their customers for the power. One utility, PG&E, lost so much money, it had to file for bankruptcy. And Southern California Edison almost met the same fate.

Most of us pay an electric bill every month. It's usually full of cryptic line items that have no meaning to us. The grid is not only mechanically and electrically complicated; it's financially complicated, too. We don't really participate in all that complexity - we just pay our bill at the end of every month. But it does affect us in big ways, so I think it's important at least to understand the basics, especially because, if you're like me, it's really interesting stuff. I'm an engineer, I'm not an economist or finance expert. But, at least in the US, if you really want to understand how the power grid works, you can't just focus on the volts and watts. You have to look at the dollars too. I'm Grady, and this is Practical Engineering.

Original Submission