Snake oil

[Cyberdragon]

This thread reminds me of a book series I read as a kid where some teenager travels in time through nanite-powered wormholes to try and stop his father from destroying the entire future timeline of Earth simply because he started a cult of new age and got a bunch of sheeple to follow him.

There was a part where the people thought they could cure everything but it ended up turning nearly everone into mindless cyborges. They ended up destroying the world again and sending people back to ancient times with very little tech because they believe technology and numbers were evil. And the kid's girlfriend is a paradox caught between different times as a result if the damaging effects of on the timeline.

So beware... is dangerous to all of reality. (googleing that series now)

EDIT: "The Klaatu Diskos"

[mc172]

PowerPerfector and their "voltage optimisation" wank. They've only gone and installed one where I work, despite me trying to discourage them. Retarded...

http://www.powerperfector.com

They come and install a hideous, useless, bright green box:





(Not my images)

They come to your place, take a few "measurements" and produce a report showing the "amount it will save" with a sufficient amount of zeros on the end. The savings they claim are in the order of 9 to 13% - I reckon this would be around the expected level of fluctuation between any two years of usage on a normal mains supply anyway.

The counter on their website (here, top right: http://www.powerperfector.com/Media.html) just increments once a second at a predetermined rate. The top one (kWh) increments 17 per second. The bottom one (£) increments at £1 per second. That’s about on par with the price of gas per kWh, not electricity. It even resets back to £303,254,134 or if you refresh the page!
This doesn't even tally up with the cost of electricity - 17 kWh would cost more like £2.36 at the average rate of 13.86p per kWh (it's what Google said).

PowerPerfector are currently dissolved with a net worth of £100 on last published accounts, with £0 in the bank.
It appears that “Intelligent Energy Saving Company” now own them. Their registered London office houses 30 companies – of which, five have £0 in their bank account, one has £1 and seven have a net worth of less than £2. Around half of them have no accounts info, including the company in question. So, it's a PO box, which is sufficient for them to say that they have a London office or head office.

PowerPerfector and EEVS (The Energy Efficiency Verification Specialists, who seem to verify the energy efficiency/savings claims made by PowerPerfector) have been colluding together in a sort of back-hand deal: https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2013/1/powerPerfector-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_200249.aspx#.V5de7PkrK70


 

[Kilrah]

Wow 

[salbayeng]

Impressive, wish we could score on these snake oil posts, I'd give yours 100 points on the scam-o-meter!
Looks like some series reactors, might help a bit with lightning protection? not going to save any electricity though!

Reading between the lines it looks like it might be intended to be static compensator of some sort, although there is about 1% fact and 99% hype on the web page.
Regulating the supply voltage to save electricity costs only works on light bulbs and fixed heating.  Computers etc and VFD's on motors will just draw more current. Anything on a thermostat will just run longer.
They claim to be "carbon negative" ?? what is that??

It must be good for the planet, it's in a green box.

Ah there's a schematic: http://www.powerperfector.com/SystemSchematic.html
Based on that, in theory it can do some improvement in power quality, but there's not enough iron or copper in there to have an impact on a megawatt sized installation.

[mc172]

The scary thing is, Ofgem (https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/), the National Grid, the Department of Energy & Climate Change and the Environment Agency condone it! It must be legit if they approve.

[jonovid]

PowerPerfector and their "voltage optimisation" wank. They've only gone and installed one where I work, despite me trying to discourage them. Retarded...

as I remember,    this looks like correction capacitors on AC for fluorescent lighting efficiency?
conclusion on all this optimisation.  al gore an inconvenient snake oil salesman. remember the world ended in 2012 .   more like his world

[dusty594]

Found this little gem while looking for something else and I knew I had to share. Hopefully it's good for a laugh for somebody out there, I sure had a giggle.

http://www.lessemf.com/computer.html

First post to the forum by the way. When I saw this snake oil I thought "who better to share this with?" So, hello!

Shield your wireless router! Shield your keyboard! Just unbelievable 

[djos]

Found this little gem while looking for something else and I knew I had to share. Hopefully it's good for a laugh for somebody out there, I sure had a giggle.

http://www.lessemf.com/computer.html

First post to the forum by the way. When I saw this snake oil I thought "who better to share this with?" So, hello!

Shield your wireless router! Shield your keyboard! Just unbelievable 

OMG   

[Artlav]

Found this little gem while looking for something else and I knew I had to share. Hopefully it's good for a laugh for somebody out there, I sure had a giggle.

Ah. That brings back memories.
The monitor shields used to be essentially standard issue here back in the 90s, with the CRT monitors.
The list of radiations they were supposed to be stopping was huge, but the only thing they were good for is acting as a HV generator for kids to use for all sorts of tricks and shocks - when the monitor is turned on, a charge is generated on it.

Not too surprising - it was "common knowledge" that monitors emit "harmful radiation", so a shield was mandatory.
I've actually tracked that myth down to several early Soviet TVs that used a triode as a linear voltage regulator for the CRT anode supply. At 20+KV these tubes emitted a little of real x-rays, enough to fog a photo film placed near the right spot on the TV box.
That problem was fixed quickly, but the "did you know" survived well into the 21st century...

[helius]

CRTs would emit significant X-rays as well if it weren't for the heavy metals in the glass. And that is what is required to shield from X-rays, heavy metals. Thin steel or aluminum sheet is not going to cut it. Since the glass is thinner in the neck area, some of the X-rays are reflected towards the back and project out backwards. They were also universally labeled (once regulations required it) that changes to the circuit could compromise the X-ray protection and emit harmful amounts of X-rays.
What the thin "shielding" is good for is controlling electromagnetic interference. This is important to avoid erasing magnetic media and causing noise in nearby audio systems.

[AlxDroidDev]

Found this little gem while looking for something else and I knew I had to share. Hopefully it's good for a laugh for somebody out there, I sure had a giggle.

http://www.lessemf.com/computer.html

First post to the forum by the way. When I saw this snake oil I thought "who better to share this with?" So, hello!

Shield your wireless router! Shield your keyboard! Just unbelievable 

This reminds me of the Netflix series "Better Call Saul" (a spin off from "Breaking Bad"). Charles "Chuck" McGill, Saul Goodman's brother, has a paranoia where he thinks he's allergic to EM radiation. It's pretty clear in the series that Chuck is dellusional and paranoid, and such allergy is all a truckload of BS.

[Canis Dirus Leidy]

The list of radiations they were supposed to be stopping was huge, but the only thing they were good for is acting as a HV generator for kids to use for all sorts of tricks and shocks - when the monitor is turned on, a charge is generated on it.

In theory, those screens were to be grounded (they had a wire with U-lug for connection to PC case). In practice, nobody cares (especially with the common for that time ungrounded wiring).

P.S. And don't forget about cacti Because everybody knows™ that cacti sucks out those harmful radiation!

[Bud]

Wikipedia, "History of geomagnetism"
"One belief, dating back to Pliny, was that fumes from eating garlic and onions could destroy the magnetism in a compass, rendering it useless."

[Inflex]

Found this little gem while looking for something else and I knew I had to share. Hopefully it's good for a laugh for somebody out there, I sure had a giggle.

http://www.lessemf.com/computer.html

What I love is how they're almost all working with the same look/feel in  their web design.  Probably don't want to utilise css,  js, or anything post HTML 3.0  (maybe a little HTML4).  Must keep everything strongly bound & shielded by the Jacob's Tables!

[Howardlong]

This IoT hairbrush product came up on The Register today, possibly up there with Juicero and Juno.

http://www.withings.com/us/en/products/hair-coach#/

https://www.juicero.com/how-it-works/

https://juneoven.com/

[slicendice]

Found this little gem while looking for something else and I knew I had to share. Hopefully it's good for a laugh for somebody out there, I sure had a giggle.

http://www.lessemf.com/computer.html

First post to the forum by the way. When I saw this snake oil I thought "who better to share this with?" So, hello!

Shield your wireless router! Shield your keyboard! Just unbelievable 

 

OMG   

[Inflex]

https://juneoven.com/

A pet peeve of mine is, in this world of trying to conserve energy / minimise etc, these compact ovens are a great idea however, they seem to never insulate the damned things, zippity zilch nada none, likewise stove pots, the walls should be insulated, but nope, let's just pump a few more kW in to the room  (fine if you're living in the cold, but up here in North QLD it's a bloomen hellish nightmare!).

I suppose I've somewhat created my own future line of kitchenware there...anyone want to pony me a few tens of thousand?

[Don Hills]

...
Shield your wireless router! Shield your keyboard! Just unbelievable 

I could have used a keyboard shield, back in the 80s. I was living in a house directly under the antenna of a 2 KW AM broadcast transmitter. If I hovered my hands just above my PC's keyboard, it would type random characters. I had to keep my leg pressed against the metal table support to prevent it.

[Dan Moos]

Enjoy!

http://perkune.com/how-to-burn-in-new-cable

[Inflex]

Enjoy!

http://perkune.com/how-to-burn-in-new-cable

I loved this bit...

"“When cables are new, they have no directionality, as this directionality has not been established. But when you start to pass a current through the cables, then things like trapped gases are dissipated and small impurities in the conductor’s metal begin to act like a diode. A diode prefers the current to pass in one direction and this is what is meant when we ask how to burn in a cable” "

Looks like my AC/DC music is going to be all DC now and no more "Thunderstruck" for me; wonder what they have to say about DC offset in cables?  They'll likely sell me a small $5k gold vessel to put under my speakers to drain all the excess trapped electrons that can't make their way back past the diode'ified-cable.

Amazing what they invent to sell stuff.

[Dan Moos]

I'd love to hear the reason they give that an a.c. signal has direction.

[amspire]

The semiconductor effects we normally deal with involve voltage drops in the hundred of mV, but lets be generous and say there are effects at 10mV. Say a defect in copper is 10 micrometers in size. For the semiconductor nature of the defect to conduct, it needs a 10mV drop in 10 micrometers of cable, so for a 10 meter cable, that would be a 10KV drop along the cable.

These speaker cables must be made from an invisibly thin copper wire. To feed 100W into your 8 ohm speakers, you will need a 40kW per channel power amplifier.

[helius]

Nowhere do they claim that the "defects" are uniform. Actually "audiophile" cables usually are made from OFC which has deliberately introduced impurities, and is non-uniform.

[mc172]

The wank is strong on this one.

In order to achieve exact impedance matching, Nordost’s Valhalla 2 Digital leads offer a double layer of silver shielding.

 

Edit: holy shit they've got a burn-in CD:

http://www.analogueseduction.net/burn-in-devices/ayre-acoustics-system-burn-in-cd.html

 

[Canis Dirus Leidy]

Edit: holy shit they've got a burn-in CD:
http://www.analogueseduction.net/burn-in-devices/ayre-acoustics-system-burn-in-cd.html
 

I hope they don't forget to demagnetize it.