The standard of "wireless USB" was there, but probably as in any standards war, moved too slowly and had less to offer than competing standards. Are we not better off with Wifi and Bluetooth now?
Btw, is there a direct comparison anywhere regarding energy consumption of the competing standards in real situations?
Bluetooth is bad enough that wireless mice/keyboards usually have a USB dongle receiving what I guess is a proprietary RF protocol. Some wireless headphones have that too. And wifi requires too much power.
Bluetooth mice use the HID protocol borrowed from USB, except with Bluetooth as carrier. But HID had not been designed for the possibility that packets could get lost: it sends movements as a relative vector since the previous packet.
I don't know how Logi Bolt works, but Logitech has claimed that it should work better than BLE when the 2.4 GHz band is congested. Also that it would have better security than BLE.
> But HID had not been designed for the possibility that packets could get lost
Doesn't the same problem exist for USB dongles with proprietary RF protocols?
Logi Bolt is a good solution. But ime most other USB dongles are terrible. I have had a lot of bad connection issues with such USB dongles, and never with similar bluetooth devices. USB dongles also use the same 2.4GHz band, and even more they are prone to interference from nearby active USB ports [0]. If you have ever had a "jumping" mouse while transfering big amounts of data through a port neighbouring your mouse's USB dongle, this is likely the reason.
The proprietary protocol can use absolute positions between device/dongle, and then the dongle can translate to relative positions at the edge, by returning the difference since the last poll
Precisely. That is how I would have designed a wireless mouse protocol: using wrapping counters and sending the counter values. The HID protocol does not support an input value that is Absolute/Wrap (although it could be extended to do so, and I think that it should)
I'd think it would also be possible to get around congestion problems by using tricks such as multiple channels and/or interference detection on top of BLE.
But only Logitech knows how Bolt actually works.
They don't mean the absolute real distance between dongle and mouse.
They mean the mouse communicates an absolute position (relative to some arbitrary 0,0 the mouse decides upon) instead of a relative direction.
Dongle can then take latest coord packet and diff it against previous coord packet to get a relative coord to pass via HID to the system.
If the RF packets are lost, some latency occurs but the dongle still has the previous mouse coord and can make a fairly accurate correction once a packet gets thru (get's from A to D, but might skip points B+C).
What happens with that "absolute position relative to some arbitrary 0,0 picked by the mouse" when the user picks the mouse up off the table/pad/etc. and repositions it (i.e., they hit the edge of the pad and now "re-center" to continue moving left (or right) on screen). The mouse loses its 0,0 point reference as soon as it is picked up.
It could send a "reset 0,0" packet of some form in this case, but now reception of that packet becomes critical to continuing to properly communicate motion to the attached computer.
That's not how mouse input works though, right? If I move my mouse cursor to 10,10, and then pick up the mouse and set it down somewhere else, it's still at coordinates 10,10. You don't need the mouse's physical absolute position, but just the cursor position (which is the sum of all the relative movements)
My reply was referring to @tehbeard's suggestion that the mouse could be modified to send absolute coordinates instead, and I was pointing out a reason why that modification would not work out so well.
> It could send a "reset 0,0" packet of some form in this case, but now reception of that packet becomes critical to continuing to properly communicate motion to the attached computer.
And those "how I would have designed a wireless mouse protocol" guys are back at the square one.
That sounds like a software problem to me, not one that requires a hardware solution. There is nothing in what you describe that cannot be performed through bluetooth packets.
I am not sure which dongles make these corrections, but my experience with dongles is worse than bluetooth. Typically, a mouse is very close to the bluetooth antenna of a computer, and I have not really experienced any sort of connection issues due to missing packages etc. In contrast, I have had tons of issues with usb dongles due to usb interference.
No, mice sensors are far from being SoTA linear encoders. They return approximate instantaneous movements somehow when read request is received. Mouse controller chips(USB or RF or Bluetooth) pack and report up the movements, that's it.
(psa: none of Chinese ADNS-2610 clones have the raw pixel output debug command. Maybe security implications or maybe something else, either way, mouse-as-microscope hacks don't work on sensors extracted from e-wastes)
In all the years I've used wireless dongled mice, I've never had an issue. And all my stuff is bottom of the barrel unbranded from eBay or Amazon.
Bluetooth mice and keyboards always have trouble pairing, or there's input lag, or sometimes I can't use them to wake the computer. And if you ever want to hold a startup key...
Nintendo Wii Remote used almost completely bare standard HID over Bluetooth Classic and it just worked flawlessly. It needed Wiimote aware apps and special procedures for use with non-Wii devices but it had none such problems(I've had those too) in gaming. It could wake up consoles too.
The problem is in 5W1Hs between combinations of (Windows, PC, Bluetooth), not the protocol. How should pairing keys be retained, etc.
Yeah the cross-platform situation makes things hard, but in a way it's the protocol's fault if it's hard to agree on things.
Also, I really remember Wiimotes failing to pair a lot of the time, but it was so long ago that I could be wrong. All I know for sure is last time I was at someone's house and they wanted to play Switch, it took like 10 minutes to get the controllers set up, but most of that was bad UI.
I mean, you can't type in BitLocker password wirelessly without a dongle. Optical mice sensors aren't so repeatable anyway, so missing a packet or two probably aren't so critical.
I don't know why USB dongles are popular for manufacturers (I assume to make their product more plug-and-play friendly), but I don't think they are a better solution than bluetooth. For example, it is common that if another USB device is plugged close to a USB dongle, it can cause interference to it, which results to unstable connection and eg makes a mouse "jump", keystrokes not register etc. Finding the right place for a USB dongle can be a pain. USB dongles with proprietary RF protocols are usually a terrible solution imo. I have never had any similar kind of connectivity issues with a bluetooth mouse or keyboard.
Some things are difficult to do with a Bluetooth keyboard: you cannot do anything before the OS is booted, such as changing BIOS settings, installing an OS, or choosing a GRUB boot entry. There are workarounds (buying a Bluetooth adapter that can act as a HID proxy) but for me this is enough of a reason to not want to rely on Bluetooth.
It’s fine for any use of a keyboard or mouse besides a niche in gaming. It also uses less energy than most RF dongles, which results in better battery life (something I could check using a couple of mice that could do both).
The fact that Logitech’s current dongles are just BLE with a fancy encryption scheme tends to indicate that they really want their proprietary hardware, and bandwidth is not the reason.
USB dongles are popular because the mouse is paired with the dongle. This comes handy in a number of use-cases (servicing a different computer, hot-desk office, non tech-inclined people).
It is true though that USB interference for wireless dongles is an annoying reality. My Logitech Unifying dongle has issues whenever I copy files over USB. I'm not sure if later revisions or their Bolt dongles have improved on that.
Neither Wifi nor Bluetooth are a 1:1 replacement for wireless USB, in that neither allow you to use a standard USB device without a wired path between the device and host.
In theory, Bluetooth ought to be the replacement for most use cases, and would simply require replacing your USB devices with Bluetooth devices. In practice, Bluetooth is still kind of terrible, so I'm tempted to say any alternative timeline where something else won the personal area network war would probably be better.
We still kind of do wireless USB, in that the standard for wireless mouse and keyboards is still not Bluetooth, but a dedicated USB dongle that ships with the device. Such options are available for wireless headsets as well, although Bluetooth seems to winning in that niche.
It used to be the case that BT was terrible, but in the last few years I have increasingly stable device connections. Could it be they simply ironed out the bugs over the years, the standard matured, and also the manufacturers are more compliant? It just works for me, no horror stories. And BT LE is indeed low energy.
Btw, do you have any other suspected reason (politics aside) that wireless USB did not catch on?
The real change is that BT LE isn't just about low energy. That might have actually been the original intention, but in practice it is so good beyond that core area of competence that it has also displaced classic Bluetooth in fields like audio streaming, connections beyond strictly PAN distance and so on. And it will only get better as more remnants of Old Bluetooth are disappearing from devices, that have been retained for backwards compatibility.
> Are we not better off with Wifi and Bluetooth now?
Bluetooth is a nightmare of a standard. Up until very recently even pairing two devices was a non-deterministic operation. Apple went as far as creating their own chip with their own protocol for their headphones just not to have to deal with bluetooth.
Although it is painted relatively negative in the article, I feel it's a good thing. Of course, EU is known for its overregulation, but consumer rights are not to be neglected.
GMOs in and of themselves are fine. It's just a technology. Banning something just because it's a GMO is stupid policy, and definitely over regulation. GMOs are a technology. One can modify a plant or other organism for many purposes. Furthermore, concerns over intellectual property rights over GMOs are a question for how to regulate this technology, not a reason to ban it.
This appears to be the main difference between the EU and the US.
In the EU you need to prove your thing won't be harmful before you launch it. In the US you launch it, but then if it's proven to be harmful it might get banned.
I refer to that form of regulation as "closing the door after the horse has already bolted regulation".
This is the American position. “If you can’t prove it’s bad now, it should be legal immediately”.
Europe food regulation runs on the precautionary principle. You have to prove it’s safe first.
Turns out most GMOs were fine but they actually allowed for a huge increase in the use of Roundup.
Roundup is wildly aggressive pesticide and a lot of GMOs were called “Roundup ready” crops, so they could absorb (in theory!) huge amounts of Roundup without being affected.
But the huge increase in the use of Roundup in America might be behind (according to some) the increase in neurocognitive disease.
Like how "piracy" in the context of software licence violations is equated with raping and pillaging on the high seas, and the phrase "drugs and alcohol" appeals to those who might feel uncomfortable with alcohol being a (first class, world's most popular after sugar) drug.
Leaving aside the weird categorization of sugar as a drug - yes, I know it's addictive, but not all addictive things are drugs - caffeine is considerably more popular than alcohol.
If I told you a consumable substance is mind-altering, habit-forming, pleasurable and difficult to quit, very bad for your health in the quantities most abusers take it, but they continue to do so anyway- what would you call it?
I've always maintained that most "drugs" are just drugs other people dislike, and everyone is apparently happy to go along with this cognitive dissonance; hence the common phrase "drugs and alcohol", "drunk driving" vs "drug driving" etc etc.
> If I told you a consumable substance is mind-altering, habit-forming, pleasurable and difficult to quit, very bad for your health in the quantities most abusers take it, but they continue to do so anyway- what would you call it?
Turns out most GMOs were fine but they actually allowed for a huge increase in the use of Roundup.
Roundup is wildly aggressive pesticide and a lot of GMOs were called “Roundup ready” crops, so they could absorb (in theory!) huge amounts of Roundup without being affected.
But the huge increase in the use of Roundup in America might be behind (according to some) the increase in neurocognitive disease.
Turns out most GMOs were fine but they actually allowed for a huge increase in the use of Roundup.
Roundup is wildly aggressive pesticide and a lot of GMOs were called “Roundup ready” crops, so they could absorb (in theory!) huge amounts of Roundup without being affected.
But the huge increase in the use of Roundup in America might be behind (according to some) the increase in neurocognitive disease.
In the US this was never a thought.
Nobody’s perfect, but not allowing GMOs without long term impact assessments was seems like the right decision.
It might have the saved the EU tens to hundreds of billions in fixing the after effects of glyphosate on human food, which the US is now dealing with.
It’s quite simple - protect your food source, protect it from any change whatsoever that’s not 100% necessary, and you are likely protecting the health of hundreds of millions.
I'm in the hard-wired camp, but the people that defend the 'blank slate' idea, say it's just a good place for language skills to develop during the normal learning process. Both theories have holes.
> Voodoo Graphics technology is also the graphics architecture for the 3D media processor chipset that the Company is developing for license to Sega Enterprises, Ltd. ("Sega") for use in Sega's next generation consumer home game console.
Love how there are 605 instances of the word “Sega” in this. Related:
"Two main results emerge. First, average skills increase strongly into the forties before decreasing slightly in literacy and more strongly in numeracy. Second, skills decline at older ages only for those with below-average skill usage. White-collar and higher-educated workers with above-average usage show increasing skills even beyond their forties. Women have larger skill losses at older age, particularly in numeracy."
I guess NYSE feels operating 2 exchanges in the same region (Midwest) is unnecessary expense.
There’s plenty of confusion on my part as to the exact purpose of a NYSE branch.
I thought it was to pre-empt the effort by some shady TX folks from setting up their own exchange (TSE). But, I don’t think that’s the case.
It doesn’t seem to matter if you “list” at NYSE Chicago or NYSE. It will still be available for sell/buy in NYSE. Thus these companies still under regulatory oversight and mandatory reporting of NYSE.
The NYSE Chicago branch, to me, is just a convenient place to buy/sell securities listed on NYSE. In the pre-digital age, this makes sense. No need to go to NYC or establish relationships in NY, but can deal locally at the NYSE branch and get the same rates. But in this modern age, the exact purpose eludes me.
I did find this on the Wiki page:
> In 2016, CHX rolled out its on-demand auction product, CHX SNAP[20] (Sub-second Non-displayed Auction Process), which received regulatory approval[21] from the Securities and Exchange Commission in October 2015 and a thorough review from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. CHX SNAP is designed to facilitate bulk trading of securities on a lit market and to minimize speed and information advantages enjoyed by only a few market participants.
Perhaps plan is to rollback some protections and give more advantage to the much more wealthier market participants?
Chx/nyse chicago has never really caught on as a venue as it didn’t have much to distinguish it from the pack of second tier exchanges. Especially given cboe local dominance.
It’s mostly a marketing move to take advantage of the pro-Texas stuff that has been swirling lately.
That is patently false and nothing but rhetoric. Chicago has been consistently number 1 or top 5 for corporate (inbound) relocations over the past decade. Doesn’t fit the narrative so you might doubt me, google it. NYSE bought the CHX in 2018 which was nearly defunct in terms of volume even then for access to its SEC license. They are posturing to ensure if Texas based exchanges take hold they are a part of the story vs letting the incumbent Texas Stock Exchange win that market uncontested. Time will tell if either exchange gets traction toward relevance or if this fizzles out entirely as the Chicago based exchange was doing.
That’s not why this exchange is getting moved but nice hot take.
The exchange struggled with the transition to electronic trading 20+ years ago and never recovered. My firm stopped tracking volume from CHX over a decade ago because it’s essentially irrelevant.
The current owners, ICE, have been sitting on it since they purchased it and this is an easy way to open an exchange to rival the Texas Stock Exchange without applying for a brand new license.
The problem with NYSE Chicago, formerly the Chicago Stock Exchange, was not that it was in Chicago, but that it was not liquid. CBOE operates four equity exchanges, formerly operated by BATS, which was based in Lenexa, Kansas of all places. From what I've read, the value of NYSE Chicago is simply in the exchange license. NYSE bought it when it was the Chicago Stock Exchange in 2018, when it was already an illiquid skeleton of an exchange.
Btw, is there a direct comparison anywhere regarding energy consumption of the competing standards in real situations?