Uh huh, all that lead from electronics solder is killing people left and right. They used to drink water from pipes made of it. They cooked things in it and put it in earthenware. Later they disposed of used batteries in landfills and had it in paints. That's when it caused problems. Now they try to make correlations at such sensitive levels that there are more hidden variables than they can possibly control.
It's dangerous. Someone can grab control of the money and the message and make the uncertain seem certain. We've seen it with fat in diet and countless other things. If the powerful had a reason to want people to believe vaccines cause autism then we would be sure vaccines cause autism by now.
Actually lead is of little health risk to people over the age of 25. It is primarily linked to developing brain disorders. Your brain starts to naturally deteriorate once you are in your late 20's. Actually your whole body starts to deteriorate.
So the problem has historically been the sociopaths in charge of regulating hazardous materials and environmental policy don't seem to give a shit about children, just themselves.
No, lead is a serious health risk for people of all ages. Lead impacts more than just the brain (of which it is neurotoxic). Indeed, the brain and body stops significant growth and actually begins to deteriorate during your 20s, but that does not mean the rate at which it deteriorates remains constant regardless of external factors. Lead will simply accelerate the rate of deterioration in many of your bodies systems.
i find it hard to believe your brain is past it's peak at your late 20's.. Einstein made all of his major discoveries at the age of 35. Some of the most creative people in this world do great work in their 30's and 40's.
That isn't true. He continued to make discoveries but I'll let you read it.
In 1905, Einstein was awarded a PhD by the University of Zürich. The same year, his annus mirabilis (miracle year), he published four groundbreaking papers, which were to bring him to the notice of the academic world, at the age of 26.
See fluid vs crystal intelligence. Fluid intelligence is ones ability to learn in new ways (learning to think in abstract ways to eventually reinvent physics), and peaks in your 20s. Crystal intelligence is ones ability to build upon information already in place through learning methods that have already been acquired (mirroring (not reinventing) the abstract thinking processes that previously worked and applying them to further understand physics), this peaks well into your 60s. Some people may do their greatest work into their 40s, but this is not due to some profound structural change in the brain. This could be due to many factors. For example, lets say Bob's brain had the proper facilities to think abstract (or to whatever metric will lead to his success), it is just that he does not have the maturity, skills, knowledge, experience to feed into his brains unique facilities.
The mind does begin to deteriorate in terms of performance. Memory gets weaker, thoughts happen more slowly. Experience/knowledge still builds though. If you are familiar with baseball or soccer, think about the career of a ball player. It is very much the same situation. As far as when top physicists and mathematicians make their most ingenious discoveries, I believe it is generally well before they reach 40 and that most major discoveries happen when the discoverers are in their 20s. That is why the fact that the Fields Medal is meant to recognize the work of young mathematicians (under 40) is mostly superfluous for recognizing the major contributions in mathematics
As far as Einstein, reading through his Wikipedia article, I found evidence contradicting your assertion. Einstein did not make all his major discoveries at 35. Einstein published his general theory of relativity in 1915, the year he turned 36, but he began formulating it eight years earlier in 1907, when he was 27 or 28. Special relativity was published in 1905, the year he turned 26, and of course he had similarly started it earlier. 1905 is what seems to be called Einstein's "miracle year", because he published 4 groundbreaking papers that year.
Einsten was a plagiarist and a chess piece in the political games of scientism. Regardless of what claims the media makes, his work never resulted in the invention of anything practical. General relativity was done in a few months by a guy who wasn't even a physicist, the prominent mathematician David Hilbert, who cracked it in zero time while Einstein did zero progress in like a decade. The reason Hilbert did not push to get recognition is it wasn't really worth the trouble, he already had enough recognition he could have actually lost had he pushed to interfere with the political agenda of scientism.
Basically both had agreed to exchange letters of progress, as both were working on the same problem. When Hilbert cracked it, he sent a letter to Einstein and published a brief. Einstein never really shared any progress with Hilbert, and published a pimped up version of Hilbert's brief some time after that, and he got all the credit, because he was the celebrity made up idol that was to be used to lead a change in the public's understanding of certain important aspects of reality. And sadly, not a chance for the better, but a chance for a more convincing worse.
Also, and actually on topic, what's with those prices? I mean the controller costs the measly 8 bucks, which is actually not that little for what it is, but then again, the price premium of TB devices compared to USB counterparts is often in excess of a 100$.
All heavy metals are detrimental and in high enough doses are lethal. They all have effects even at low doses, lead causes effects to the CNS (central nervous system) that aren't very well understood but the evidence indicates it makes people more violent and stupider. And in high enough doses it can cause severe mental health problems and other CNS related issues along with kidney failure and damage to your bones.
Just because someone in the past didn't understand the risks of lead and used it frequently doesn't mean it's not a hazard. Romans used to eat off lead plates and store wine in Lead, they also had health spans that rarely went past 40.
Heavy metals are bad for you, that is one thing the medical community is in complete agreement. Lead is a heavy metal.
"Heavy metals are bad for you, that is one thing the medical community is in complete agreement. Lead is a heavy metal."
Pretty much everything is bad for you in a large enough dosage. Vitamin A will kill you. Oxygen will kill you. The heavy metals don't have any beneficial dosage, however. But that doesn't mean we have reason to believe we need to spend so much money to get it to minuscule levels. Resources are limited. When we make poor decisions with our resources we lower our quality of life and get people killed. I really doubt that there is sufficient evidence that it is a worthy endeavor to try to eliminate minute amounts of lead in everything we do. It's probably just a past-time that is popular (as in it makes those who do it popular) and obsessive.
"And people also used to die at a much younger age. Certainly thats not leads fault alone, but all sorts of factors contribute."
We increased lead and people lived longer. Not much of an argument.
"Actually lead is of little health risk to people over the age of 25. It is primarily linked to developing brain disorders. Your brain starts to naturally deteriorate once you are in your late 20's. Actually your whole body starts to deteriorate."
Sure it is. Significant levels of lead. But they try to resolve further than their methods have the ability to resolve. They are like children playing with cannons. And don't think people don't get killed by it. Think of all the people who have been killed or otherwise harmed by the resulting explosion of simple carbohydrate ingestion because of the attack on fats? Not to mention the billions and billions, probably hundreds of billions or more, of dollars it has cost.
The interesting thing is that it's a self-reinforcing cycle caused by government intervention. The government is alerted to a problem or possible problem. The government looks for a policy to adopt. It prematurely selects what seems most likely to be the case at the time, heavily swayed by irrational management of risk, because this is people's lives we are talking about here; surely we need to take an action. The government also controls the money for further research into the situation. It is politically inconvenient for the government's policies to be undermined. Somewhere along the line things go from "well, some policy is better than no policy" to "we wouldn't have a policy if it weren't settled". It becomes hard to get funding for any research that questions the government's policies, depending on the social, economic, and geo-political implications. For instance, they've recently managed to internationally get more objective marijuana research done despite the U.S. federal government listing it as a schedule 1 drug for 40 years or whatever. International treaties, however, will tend to cement the situation internationally. Policy moves harder and harder in the direction of the created bias. Eventually it can take decades for opposition research to trickle through and break the cycle. It's an uphill battle against the quantity of government-funded and "popular" research publications. Meanwhile, besides the delay to the science, there is the damage caused by the policy. And don't underestimate authoritarian creep. A government entity will in general want to increase it's power and dominion in order to try to more effectively fulfill its function. A simple example of that is a law being passed to deal with organized gangs empowered by Prohibition later being used far outside the scope it was conceived to confiscate people's electronics devices. It also happens with regulatory bodies, not just investigatory or law enforcement bodies.
"The government also controls the money for further research into the situation" "It becomes hard to get funding for any research that questions the government's policies"
I have a difficult time believing this is the case. In situations where a government policy will force change upon a private sector industry the industry players typically devote more money to fighting change than the sum total of the government's research budget. Think about the money that has been spent by auto makers to fight CARB policies. Or Big Tobacco's spending on fighting the notion that smoking causes cancer. In most cases I would say that the private sector significantly outspends government sponsored research.
The person you're responding to is wrong and liar. Anyone can do research, anyone can apply for grants to do research and there is nothing stopping anyone from funding their own research. Once that research is published if it shows something new other researchers will generally try to duplicate or advance the study. Or if the researcher screwed up consensus among fellow researchers will bear that out.
The GP is just anti-science and doesn't understand it so is attacking it. As they don't understand science or trust it I'd urge them to eat some lead and conduct their own research on the effects of lead on the human body.
"The person you're responding to is wrong and liar. Anyone can do research, anyone can apply for grants to do research and there is nothing stopping anyone from funding their own research."
Rahvin, why don't you go do some research yourself and find out how much research costs and how one goes about getting funding before you make a response.
"Or if the researcher screwed up consensus among fellow researchers will bear that out."
Science is not about consensus. It's about demonstrable fact. Consensus does get formed, but it should get formed through proper method. The goal is to discover and demonstrate the fact not to reach consensus.
"The GP is just anti-science and doesn't understand it so is attacking it. As they don't understand science or trust it I'd urge them to eat some lead and conduct their own research on the effects of lead on the human body."
I am not anti-science at all. I am very much pro-science. Perhaps you didn't understand what I typed. What you are obviously interested in is not science, but rather trust in authority. If someone says to you that government can be corrupted would you assume that that person is an anarchist? So if I say to you that "science" (as in the institution) can be corrupted, why, please tell me, do you assume that I am anti-science? You probably do believe that politics and government can be corrupted. And of course you know that politics and government intersect with the institution of science. So why do you find it so hard to believe that the institution of science can be corrupted? I have even cited to you an example and given a mechanism for it that you have completely ignored in your response to me, instead simply insisting "it isn't so" and that "money grows on trees".
Sorten, a great number of researchers are dependent on federal grants. University administrators are also interested in public opinion and afraid of being shamed. They pass down pressure applied to them to their faculty. Grants can and will be denied if they are not politically favorable, and researchers soon find out where to go to find the money.
As far as what you said about corporations putting up a defense (and I use that term because to them that's what it is. In the situations you describe, they are generally not interested in science. They probably view the situation no differently from fighting a court case. But in the end it's their arguments that must be considered, not their motives), I think you are overestimating the amount of research that is funded that way. A respected academic generally does not get mixed up in such things, and such research usually has a cloud of doubt hanging over it. Well, how it is perceieved depends on how it lines up with what is socially acceptable, I think.
In any case, you are casting your net too narrowly. Corrupt research of the sort you mention does exist, but I think people are well aware of it. In fact I'm guessing there's an over-estimation of its prevalence and effectiveness in a good portion of the population. The scope of what I am talking about is much more pernicious. For it concerns the research everyone trusts, not the research everyone loves to hate.
Just because we did it for a while (and a short while in the scope of all human history) before we realised it was a Bad Idea doesn't mean it's foolish to stop doing it now. If it was up to people like you we'd still be covering our crops and towns with DDT, insulating our houses with asbestos, putting mercury in makeup, filling the air with lead from petrol, and burning witches. Hurrah for the age of reason, I'm glad I caught at least the tail end of it.
Like me? No, you're making incorrect assumptions. I'm about applying what we know. About following facts. About resisting groupthink and simple "good" and "bad" narratives. I'm for independent science and looking at true risks and benefits.
An argument against RoHS due to longevity issues (mitigation of 'tin whiskers' in lead-free solder) I can get. Arguing against is as "but industrial use of Lead is totally not all that bad" is into clean-coal bonkers land.
The early problems of whiskers have long been mitigated by much more precise control of the reflow process and the addition of other materials like Indium to the alloy. The only reason not to use a lead-free process is because the process is slower (due to the higher temperatures) and more expensive (due to the more precise equipment required) but those concerns are really only applicable to Chinese garage shops...
It totally beats me why on earth Intel even produces non-RoHS-compliant components nowadays, that's utterly ridiculous...
This seems like a bullshit story that marketing made up as they were brooming away the first stepping of Alpine Ridge, which was rumored to have some problems. Considering Apple never used those controllers, yet other PC OEMs shipped systems that incorporated them but with only the USB 3.1 xHCI and possibly DP PHY features enabled, perhaps they were just garbage anyway.
RoHS compliance dictates that Lead (Pb): < 1000 ppm. I have a hard time believing that they removed these because of lead in the solder. For reference, lead based solders are typically tin-lead alloy at a ratio of 60:40 or 63:37. Tin levels can vary between 5% and 70%, but even in the worst case, that leaves the alloy at 300000 ppm of lead by design.
I think it is easier to believe that Intel is giving a "PR modified" excuse than that they are legitimately deprecating an RoHS compliant part for non-RoHS compliance reasons. (Unless of course the ARK page is wrong about RoHS, but they could get some pretty deep government fines for claiming RoHS compliance for non-compliant parts from more than a couple governments of the world.)
"An argument against RoHS due to longevity issues (mitigation of 'tin whiskers' in lead-free solder) I can get. Arguing against is as "but industrial use of Lead is totally not all that bad" is into clean-coal bonkers land. "
I'm guessing hold opinions like these because you are not a numbers man.
See, the problem with lead, much like asbestos, is not that it's hazardous to consumers. It's sealed inside the computer, and pretty much inert. The problem is that it's a big problem for production people-- huffing leaded solder for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week will screw you up pretty good. And while the tiny amounts in the solder aren't really that much of a problem, its use encourages lead mining, which can result in the release of huge amount of lead into the environment if they screw up.
Exactly. There is also the problem of disposing of these materials. All the lead taken out of a stable location in the ground will not eventually find its way back. And how all of this is not required since there are safer alternatives. In my opinion, the less lead in circulation the better.
benzosaurus, a reasonable assumption but I think you are giving the regulatory bodies too much credit. They often don't deal in reason, they deal in perception. The perception is lead is bad and they look good for passing restrictions on it. I'd like to see data that supports that the automated factories where electronics are soldered become a health hazard for workers if lead solder is used.
And your evidence they don't deal with science and reason?
Oh that's right, you have none! You're just making grand pronouncements based on nothing. You also ignore all the times the government says "X is safe." But facts aren't your strong suite, obviously.
You can pretend to like science all you want. But in reality you just like science that you aren't ideologically opposed to. Lame.
As far as lead mining, that doesn't seem like a good argument. There's nothing wrong with encouraging lead mining. Lots of things can cause problems "if they screw up."
"Someone can grab control of the money and the message and make the uncertain seem certain."
While true, you have to understand that you stating this will make no difference. There will always be stupid people in the world to deceive as it has been in the past and will be in the future.
TLDR: if you reduce the demand for lead, you reduce the amount of lead that has to be mined and that humans are eventually exposed to.
Dear Yojimbo and others, while I agree that lead in electronics may not be immediately harmful I believe you are missing some important points. The mining and transportation of toxic materials (like lead) can be very harmful to humans. Likewise, the eventual disposal of electronics with toxic materials is also a serious issue.
I grew up in an area where lead mining killed and harmed thousands of residents. It is very sad to see children and adults affected by toxic materials and the legacy of that harm lives on today. It did not matter whether the victims were conservative or liberal, democrats or republicans, they were all affected.
Lead mining is dangerous industry that has resulted in economic ruin for the communities that were polluted by lead. It has also incurred immense costs (both in money and health) for those directly involved as well as those who merely unfortunate enough to live in the vicinity. I am very glad that other less toxic materials are being used in place of lead and I applaud efforts to replace toxic materials with safer options when possible.
Please do not equate the desire to reduce toxic material usage as an overreaction. Thank you for your consideration.
PS for those interested in the danger of lead, Wikipedia is a decent place to start: "Lead is a highly poisonous metal (whether inhaled* or swallowed), affecting almost every organ and system in the human body. At airborne levels of 100 mg/m3, it is immediately dangerous to life and health." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead#Toxicity
*People in my area were severely affected by the dust coming off of lead transportation trucks.... they certainly didn't have to touch it or handle it.
This is pretty boring news - the more interesting news is DisplayPort 1.4 support the next generation of Thunderbolt controllers that Intel is releasing with Coffee Lake CPU generation, which will allows higher resolution/higher framerate displays.
Yes, that certainly will be interesting next year when there are CFL-S (that will still only support DP 1.2 because the graphics are the same gen as KBL) systems available with CNL PCHs (instead of the KBL-R PCHs that will ship later this year) paired with DP 1.4 capable Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controllers that need to be connected to discrete GPUs so they can actually output a DP 1.4 signal. Then all we'll have to do is wait for the eDP 1.5 spec to be released, DP 1.4 / eDP 1.5 scalers / Tcons / panels to make it into production, and finally DP 1.4 displays to become available.
These are way too power hungry for widespread use. 1.7 W for single port. That is a significant portion of a TDP of a laptop. Intel can produce entire processors with graphics with a 4.5W TDP (Core M).
Thunderbolt is trying to do far too much by combining PCIe and DisplayPort. These should be separate.
Thunderbolt is miraculous on power. That being said, an external I/O interface that is expected to provide two 20.625 Gbit/s full-duplex serial channels and 15 W of bus power per port is not exactly targeting the same platforms as a 4.5 W SoC. Compare the Thunderbolt 3 TDP to any other USB 3.1 xHCI (since it contains one of those) or 40 GbE controller. But if your definition of widespread use is more than hundreds of millions of devices, then yes.
Why do you think the power required to maintain a 40 Gbit/s serial link would be any less if Thunderbolt only included PCIe protocol adapters and omitted the DisplayPort ones? This is like arguing that Ethernet is trying to do far too much by combining TCP and UDP. Packets are packets, and the DisplayPort silicon is completely shut down if you don't have a DP device connected. PCIe and DisplayPort are the fundamental protocols used by CPUs and GPUs, have similar lane rates, and are the two highest bandwidth I/O interfaces in common use on consumer PCs. It makes all the sense in the world to combine them to create a single external port solution. There is zero benefit in keeping them separate.
Actually external pcie is most needed for mobile devices, rather than workstations which can use internal pcie. Yes I would expect that the complexity of multiplexing two different systems will increase power consumption. I cannot immediately find figures but would be surprised if a displayport connection to close to 1/10 of this power. Yes I would expect pcie to take more power than displayport at max throughput.
Displayport is a standard that works very well. Hacking it together with pcie in a single connector imposes costs on users through hardware costs, cable confusion, power consumption, and greater room for unreliability. The problem that it solves for Apple (making devices with only one port) is Apple-specific and shouldn't be forced on PC users. External pcie should be additional to a couple of displayport ports, and so does not need to multiplex displayport.
Thunderbolt muxes PCIe and DisplayPort at the packet level, not the signal level. While the PCIe and DP connections from the Thunderbolt controller to the CPU / GPU / PCH inside the host might register on the power budget, they've got nothing on the PHYs for the external ports. Because it takes way more power to push 20 Gbit/s across a friction-fit connector and down a couple meters of cable than it does to move 8 Gbit/s along 10 cm of precisely laid out copper traces on a PCB. Whenever a Thunderbolt port is using the Thunderbolt signaling mode, the power required to maintain the link remains relatively constant, and it makes zero difference whether the packets being transported across that link are PCIe or DisplayPort.
And don't worry, Thunderbolt is in no way being forced upon PC users. It will continue to be ignored by most OEMs as it is today because it costs too much and really was engineered primarily to meet Apple's design goals. Even if / when Intel integrates Thunderbolt into their chipsets, the PHY will still be a separate adder that will probably limit support to 2% of non-Apple devices. So you can rest easy knowing that proprietary dock connectors and dedicated HDMI ports will remain a feature of PCs for years to come.
repoman27, do you know if the laptop's dual-port Thunderbolt 3 controller can process 32gbps, or just 22gbps, of sum aggregate PCIe data to&from the two TB3 ports at the same time?
respond to roger1- in the forum PM
also, do you know if Akitio Node Pro (which has a daisy chain port and is not eGFX certified) and Razer Core Pro should have similar performance?
It's good there is less lead used in things around, but out of those replacement materials tin isn't exactly the best thing under the sun either. I hope it isn't just hair of the dog because of contemporary popular green fashion.
"The European Union restricts the use of lead (as well as many other hazardous materials) because its fumes increase risk of lung and stomach cancer, along with the other known risks of lead exposure and heavy metals in general."
What fumes? What exposure? The tiny little bit of lead is inside a chip, nobody is eating or huffing it, and each chip is soldered by machines. EU bureaucracy is unbelievable...
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Yojimbo - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
Uh huh, all that lead from electronics solder is killing people left and right. They used to drink water from pipes made of it. They cooked things in it and put it in earthenware. Later they disposed of used batteries in landfills and had it in paints. That's when it caused problems. Now they try to make correlations at such sensitive levels that there are more hidden variables than they can possibly control.It's dangerous. Someone can grab control of the money and the message and make the uncertain seem certain. We've seen it with fat in diet and countless other things. If the powerful had a reason to want people to believe vaccines cause autism then we would be sure vaccines cause autism by now.
Samus - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
Actually lead is of little health risk to people over the age of 25. It is primarily linked to developing brain disorders. Your brain starts to naturally deteriorate once you are in your late 20's. Actually your whole body starts to deteriorate.So the problem has historically been the sociopaths in charge of regulating hazardous materials and environmental policy don't seem to give a shit about children, just themselves.
Intervenator - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
No, lead is a serious health risk for people of all ages. Lead impacts more than just the brain (of which it is neurotoxic). Indeed, the brain and body stops significant growth and actually begins to deteriorate during your 20s, but that does not mean the rate at which it deteriorates remains constant regardless of external factors. Lead will simply accelerate the rate of deterioration in many of your bodies systems.Morawka - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
i find it hard to believe your brain is past it's peak at your late 20's.. Einstein made all of his major discoveries at the age of 35. Some of the most creative people in this world do great work in their 30's and 40's.bobj3832 - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
That isn't true. He continued to make discoveries but I'll let you read it.In 1905, Einstein was awarded a PhD by the University of Zürich. The same year, his annus mirabilis (miracle year), he published four groundbreaking papers, which were to bring him to the notice of the academic world, at the age of 26.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_pape...
Intervenator - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
See fluid vs crystal intelligence. Fluid intelligence is ones ability to learn in new ways (learning to think in abstract ways to eventually reinvent physics), and peaks in your 20s. Crystal intelligence is ones ability to build upon information already in place through learning methods that have already been acquired (mirroring (not reinventing) the abstract thinking processes that previously worked and applying them to further understand physics), this peaks well into your 60s. Some people may do their greatest work into their 40s, but this is not due to some profound structural change in the brain. This could be due to many factors. For example, lets say Bob's brain had the proper facilities to think abstract (or to whatever metric will lead to his success), it is just that he does not have the maturity, skills, knowledge, experience to feed into his brains unique facilities.Yojimbo - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
The mind does begin to deteriorate in terms of performance. Memory gets weaker, thoughts happen more slowly. Experience/knowledge still builds though. If you are familiar with baseball or soccer, think about the career of a ball player. It is very much the same situation. As far as when top physicists and mathematicians make their most ingenious discoveries, I believe it is generally well before they reach 40 and that most major discoveries happen when the discoverers are in their 20s. That is why the fact that the Fields Medal is meant to recognize the work of young mathematicians (under 40) is mostly superfluous for recognizing the major contributions in mathematicsAs far as Einstein, reading through his Wikipedia article, I found evidence contradicting your assertion. Einstein did not make all his major discoveries at 35. Einstein published his general theory of relativity in 1915, the year he turned 36, but he began formulating it eight years earlier in 1907, when he was 27 or 28. Special relativity was published in 1905, the year he turned 26, and of course he had similarly started it earlier. 1905 is what seems to be called Einstein's "miracle year", because he published 4 groundbreaking papers that year.
ddriver - Monday, August 7, 2017 - link
Einsten was a plagiarist and a chess piece in the political games of scientism. Regardless of what claims the media makes, his work never resulted in the invention of anything practical. General relativity was done in a few months by a guy who wasn't even a physicist, the prominent mathematician David Hilbert, who cracked it in zero time while Einstein did zero progress in like a decade. The reason Hilbert did not push to get recognition is it wasn't really worth the trouble, he already had enough recognition he could have actually lost had he pushed to interfere with the political agenda of scientism.Basically both had agreed to exchange letters of progress, as both were working on the same problem. When Hilbert cracked it, he sent a letter to Einstein and published a brief. Einstein never really shared any progress with Hilbert, and published a pimped up version of Hilbert's brief some time after that, and he got all the credit, because he was the celebrity made up idol that was to be used to lead a change in the public's understanding of certain important aspects of reality. And sadly, not a chance for the better, but a chance for a more convincing worse.
ddriver - Monday, August 7, 2017 - link
Also, and actually on topic, what's with those prices? I mean the controller costs the measly 8 bucks, which is actually not that little for what it is, but then again, the price premium of TB devices compared to USB counterparts is often in excess of a 100$.melgross - Monday, August 7, 2017 - link
Oh, for crying out loud, there’s always one nut in a crowd.ddriver - Monday, August 7, 2017 - link
What a persuasive argument you make. Such intellect...rahvin - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
All heavy metals are detrimental and in high enough doses are lethal. They all have effects even at low doses, lead causes effects to the CNS (central nervous system) that aren't very well understood but the evidence indicates it makes people more violent and stupider. And in high enough doses it can cause severe mental health problems and other CNS related issues along with kidney failure and damage to your bones.Just because someone in the past didn't understand the risks of lead and used it frequently doesn't mean it's not a hazard. Romans used to eat off lead plates and store wine in Lead, they also had health spans that rarely went past 40.
Heavy metals are bad for you, that is one thing the medical community is in complete agreement. Lead is a heavy metal.
Yojimbo - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
"Heavy metals are bad for you, that is one thing the medical community is in complete agreement. Lead is a heavy metal."Pretty much everything is bad for you in a large enough dosage. Vitamin A will kill you. Oxygen will kill you. The heavy metals don't have any beneficial dosage, however. But that doesn't mean we have reason to believe we need to spend so much money to get it to minuscule levels. Resources are limited. When we make poor decisions with our resources we lower our quality of life and get people killed. I really doubt that there is sufficient evidence that it is a worthy endeavor to try to eliminate minute amounts of lead in everything we do. It's probably just a past-time that is popular (as in it makes those who do it popular) and obsessive.
MamiyaOtaru - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
the word you are looking for is "passtime". Something to pass time, not something that was in the past or whatevernot mocking, just informing :)
kidsafe - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
Lead-poisoning deniers... Clair Cameron Patterson is rolling in his grave.mga318 - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
Go read Wikipedia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning
Yojimbo - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
"Go read Wikipedia."Funny.
"And people also used to die at a much younger age. Certainly thats not leads fault alone, but all sorts of factors contribute."
We increased lead and people lived longer. Not much of an argument.
"Actually lead is of little health risk to people over the age of 25. It is primarily linked to developing brain disorders. Your brain starts to naturally deteriorate once you are in your late 20's. Actually your whole body starts to deteriorate."
Sure it is. Significant levels of lead. But they try to resolve further than their methods have the ability to resolve. They are like children playing with cannons. And don't think people don't get killed by it. Think of all the people who have been killed or otherwise harmed by the resulting explosion of simple carbohydrate ingestion because of the attack on fats? Not to mention the billions and billions, probably hundreds of billions or more, of dollars it has cost.
The interesting thing is that it's a self-reinforcing cycle caused by government intervention. The government is alerted to a problem or possible problem. The government looks for a policy to adopt. It prematurely selects what seems most likely to be the case at the time, heavily swayed by irrational management of risk, because this is people's lives we are talking about here; surely we need to take an action. The government also controls the money for further research into the situation. It is politically inconvenient for the government's policies to be undermined. Somewhere along the line things go from "well, some policy is better than no policy" to "we wouldn't have a policy if it weren't settled". It becomes hard to get funding for any research that questions the government's policies, depending on the social, economic, and geo-political implications. For instance, they've recently managed to internationally get more objective marijuana research done despite the U.S. federal government listing it as a schedule 1 drug for 40 years or whatever. International treaties, however, will tend to cement the situation internationally. Policy moves harder and harder in the direction of the created bias. Eventually it can take decades for opposition research to trickle through and break the cycle. It's an uphill battle against the quantity of government-funded and "popular" research publications. Meanwhile, besides the delay to the science, there is the damage caused by the policy. And don't underestimate authoritarian creep. A government entity will in general want to increase it's power and dominion in order to try to more effectively fulfill its function. A simple example of that is a law being passed to deal with organized gangs empowered by Prohibition later being used far outside the scope it was conceived to confiscate people's electronics devices. It also happens with regulatory bodies, not just investigatory or law enforcement bodies.
davidedney123 - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
I think there may have been lead in the tin foil you've been using for your hat...Hurr Durr - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
You love the goobermint boot stepping on your face, we get it.sorten - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
"The government also controls the money for further research into the situation""It becomes hard to get funding for any research that questions the government's policies"
I have a difficult time believing this is the case. In situations where a government policy will force change upon a private sector industry the industry players typically devote more money to fighting change than the sum total of the government's research budget. Think about the money that has been spent by auto makers to fight CARB policies. Or Big Tobacco's spending on fighting the notion that smoking causes cancer. In most cases I would say that the private sector significantly outspends government sponsored research.
rahvin - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
The person you're responding to is wrong and liar. Anyone can do research, anyone can apply for grants to do research and there is nothing stopping anyone from funding their own research. Once that research is published if it shows something new other researchers will generally try to duplicate or advance the study. Or if the researcher screwed up consensus among fellow researchers will bear that out.The GP is just anti-science and doesn't understand it so is attacking it. As they don't understand science or trust it I'd urge them to eat some lead and conduct their own research on the effects of lead on the human body.
Yojimbo - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
"The person you're responding to is wrong and liar. Anyone can do research, anyone can apply for grants to do research and there is nothing stopping anyone from funding their own research."Rahvin, why don't you go do some research yourself and find out how much research costs and how one goes about getting funding before you make a response.
"Or if the researcher screwed up consensus among fellow researchers will bear that out."
Science is not about consensus. It's about demonstrable fact. Consensus does get formed, but it should get formed through proper method. The goal is to discover and demonstrate the fact not to reach consensus.
"The GP is just anti-science and doesn't understand it so is attacking it. As they don't understand science or trust it I'd urge them to eat some lead and conduct their own research on the effects of lead on the human body."
I am not anti-science at all. I am very much pro-science. Perhaps you didn't understand what I typed. What you are obviously interested in is not science, but rather trust in authority. If someone says to you that government can be corrupted would you assume that that person is an anarchist? So if I say to you that "science" (as in the institution) can be corrupted, why, please tell me, do you assume that I am anti-science? You probably do believe that politics and government can be corrupted. And of course you know that politics and government intersect with the institution of science. So why do you find it so hard to believe that the institution of science can be corrupted? I have even cited to you an example and given a mechanism for it that you have completely ignored in your response to me, instead simply insisting "it isn't so" and that "money grows on trees".
Yojimbo - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
Sorten, a great number of researchers are dependent on federal grants. University administrators are also interested in public opinion and afraid of being shamed. They pass down pressure applied to them to their faculty. Grants can and will be denied if they are not politically favorable, and researchers soon find out where to go to find the money.As far as what you said about corporations putting up a defense (and I use that term because to them that's what it is. In the situations you describe, they are generally not interested in science. They probably view the situation no differently from fighting a court case. But in the end it's their arguments that must be considered, not their motives), I think you are overestimating the amount of research that is funded that way. A respected academic generally does not get mixed up in such things, and such research usually has a cloud of doubt hanging over it. Well, how it is perceieved depends on how it lines up with what is socially acceptable, I think.
In any case, you are casting your net too narrowly. Corrupt research of the sort you mention does exist, but I think people are well aware of it. In fact I'm guessing there's an over-estimation of its prevalence and effectiveness in a good portion of the population. The scope of what I am talking about is much more pernicious. For it concerns the research everyone trusts, not the research everyone loves to hate.
nevcairiel - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
And people also used to die at a much younger age. Certainly thats not leads fault alone, but all sorts of factors contribute.davidedney123 - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
Just because we did it for a while (and a short while in the scope of all human history) before we realised it was a Bad Idea doesn't mean it's foolish to stop doing it now. If it was up to people like you we'd still be covering our crops and towns with DDT, insulating our houses with asbestos, putting mercury in makeup, filling the air with lead from petrol, and burning witches. Hurrah for the age of reason, I'm glad I caught at least the tail end of it.Hurr Durr - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
You certainly sound like a DDT victim.Yojimbo - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
Like me? No, you're making incorrect assumptions. I'm about applying what we know. About following facts. About resisting groupthink and simple "good" and "bad" narratives. I'm for independent science and looking at true risks and benefits.edzieba - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
An argument against RoHS due to longevity issues (mitigation of 'tin whiskers' in lead-free solder) I can get. Arguing against is as "but industrial use of Lead is totally not all that bad" is into clean-coal bonkers land.Daniel Egger - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
The early problems of whiskers have long been mitigated by much more precise control of the reflow process and the addition of other materials like Indium to the alloy. The only reason not to use a lead-free process is because the process is slower (due to the higher temperatures) and more expensive (due to the more precise equipment required) but those concerns are really only applicable to Chinese garage shops...It totally beats me why on earth Intel even produces non-RoHS-compliant components nowadays, that's utterly ridiculous...
repoman27 - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
What's even more ridiculous is according to ARK, the DSL series controllers *are* RoHS compliant. https://qdms.intel.com/MDDS/MDDSView.aspx?mm=94469...This seems like a bullshit story that marketing made up as they were brooming away the first stepping of Alpine Ridge, which was rumored to have some problems. Considering Apple never used those controllers, yet other PC OEMs shipped systems that incorporated them but with only the USB 3.1 xHCI and possibly DP PHY features enabled, perhaps they were just garbage anyway.
BurntMyBacon - Monday, August 7, 2017 - link
RoHS compliance dictates that Lead (Pb): < 1000 ppm. I have a hard time believing that they removed these because of lead in the solder. For reference, lead based solders are typically tin-lead alloy at a ratio of 60:40 or 63:37. Tin levels can vary between 5% and 70%, but even in the worst case, that leaves the alloy at 300000 ppm of lead by design.I think it is easier to believe that Intel is giving a "PR modified" excuse than that they are legitimately deprecating an RoHS compliant part for non-RoHS compliance reasons. (Unless of course the ARK page is wrong about RoHS, but they could get some pretty deep government fines for claiming RoHS compliance for non-compliant parts from more than a couple governments of the world.)
Yojimbo - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
"An argument against RoHS due to longevity issues (mitigation of 'tin whiskers' in lead-free solder) I can get. Arguing against is as "but industrial use of Lead is totally not all that bad" is into clean-coal bonkers land. "I'm guessing hold opinions like these because you are not a numbers man.
DominionSeraph - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
You don't even have corporate propaganda on your side, fool.benzosaurus - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
See, the problem with lead, much like asbestos, is not that it's hazardous to consumers. It's sealed inside the computer, and pretty much inert. The problem is that it's a big problem for production people-- huffing leaded solder for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week will screw you up pretty good. And while the tiny amounts in the solder aren't really that much of a problem, its use encourages lead mining, which can result in the release of huge amount of lead into the environment if they screw up.Intervenator - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
Exactly. There is also the problem of disposing of these materials. All the lead taken out of a stable location in the ground will not eventually find its way back. And how all of this is not required since there are safer alternatives. In my opinion, the less lead in circulation the better.Yojimbo - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
benzosaurus, a reasonable assumption but I think you are giving the regulatory bodies too much credit. They often don't deal in reason, they deal in perception. The perception is lead is bad and they look good for passing restrictions on it. I'd like to see data that supports that the automated factories where electronics are soldered become a health hazard for workers if lead solder is used.Drachasor - Monday, August 7, 2017 - link
And your evidence they don't deal with science and reason?Oh that's right, you have none! You're just making grand pronouncements based on nothing. You also ignore all the times the government says "X is safe." But facts aren't your strong suite, obviously.
You can pretend to like science all you want. But in reality you just like science that you aren't ideologically opposed to. Lame.
Yojimbo - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
As far as lead mining, that doesn't seem like a good argument. There's nothing wrong with encouraging lead mining. Lots of things can cause problems "if they screw up."alphasquadron - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
"Someone can grab control of the money and the message and make the uncertain seem certain."While true, you have to understand that you stating this will make no difference. There will always be stupid people in the world to deceive as it has been in the past and will be in the future.
coolhardware - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
TLDR: if you reduce the demand for lead, you reduce the amount of lead that has to be mined and that humans are eventually exposed to.Dear Yojimbo and others, while I agree that lead in electronics may not be immediately harmful I believe you are missing some important points. The mining and transportation of toxic materials (like lead) can be very harmful to humans. Likewise, the eventual disposal of electronics with toxic materials is also a serious issue.
I grew up in an area where lead mining killed and harmed thousands of residents. It is very sad to see children and adults affected by toxic materials and the legacy of that harm lives on today. It did not matter whether the victims were conservative or liberal, democrats or republicans, they were all affected.
Lead mining is dangerous industry that has resulted in economic ruin for the communities that were polluted by lead. It has also incurred immense costs (both in money and health) for those directly involved as well as those who merely unfortunate enough to live in the vicinity. I am very glad that other less toxic materials are being used in place of lead and I applaud efforts to replace toxic materials with safer options when possible.
Please do not equate the desire to reduce toxic material usage as an overreaction. Thank you for your consideration.
PS for those interested in the danger of lead, Wikipedia is a decent place to start:
"Lead is a highly poisonous metal (whether inhaled* or swallowed), affecting almost every organ and system in the human body. At airborne levels of 100 mg/m3, it is immediately dangerous to life and health."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead#Toxicity
*People in my area were severely affected by the dust coming off of lead transportation trucks.... they certainly didn't have to touch it or handle it.
zdw - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
This is pretty boring news - the more interesting news is DisplayPort 1.4 support the next generation of Thunderbolt controllers that Intel is releasing with Coffee Lake CPU generation, which will allows higher resolution/higher framerate displays.repoman27 - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
Yes, that certainly will be interesting next year when there are CFL-S (that will still only support DP 1.2 because the graphics are the same gen as KBL) systems available with CNL PCHs (instead of the KBL-R PCHs that will ship later this year) paired with DP 1.4 capable Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controllers that need to be connected to discrete GPUs so they can actually output a DP 1.4 signal. Then all we'll have to do is wait for the eDP 1.5 spec to be released, DP 1.4 / eDP 1.5 scalers / Tcons / panels to make it into production, and finally DP 1.4 displays to become available.CSMR - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
These are way too power hungry for widespread use. 1.7 W for single port. That is a significant portion of a TDP of a laptop. Intel can produce entire processors with graphics with a 4.5W TDP (Core M).Thunderbolt is trying to do far too much by combining PCIe and DisplayPort. These should be separate.
repoman27 - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
Thunderbolt is miraculous on power. That being said, an external I/O interface that is expected to provide two 20.625 Gbit/s full-duplex serial channels and 15 W of bus power per port is not exactly targeting the same platforms as a 4.5 W SoC. Compare the Thunderbolt 3 TDP to any other USB 3.1 xHCI (since it contains one of those) or 40 GbE controller. But if your definition of widespread use is more than hundreds of millions of devices, then yes.Why do you think the power required to maintain a 40 Gbit/s serial link would be any less if Thunderbolt only included PCIe protocol adapters and omitted the DisplayPort ones? This is like arguing that Ethernet is trying to do far too much by combining TCP and UDP. Packets are packets, and the DisplayPort silicon is completely shut down if you don't have a DP device connected. PCIe and DisplayPort are the fundamental protocols used by CPUs and GPUs, have similar lane rates, and are the two highest bandwidth I/O interfaces in common use on consumer PCs. It makes all the sense in the world to combine them to create a single external port solution. There is zero benefit in keeping them separate.
CSMR - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
Actually external pcie is most needed for mobile devices, rather than workstations which can use internal pcie. Yes I would expect that the complexity of multiplexing two different systems will increase power consumption. I cannot immediately find figures but would be surprised if a displayport connection to close to 1/10 of this power. Yes I would expect pcie to take more power than displayport at max throughput.Displayport is a standard that works very well. Hacking it together with pcie in a single connector imposes costs on users through hardware costs, cable confusion, power consumption, and greater room for unreliability. The problem that it solves for Apple (making devices with only one port) is Apple-specific and shouldn't be forced on PC users. External pcie should be additional to a couple of displayport ports, and so does not need to multiplex displayport.
repoman27 - Sunday, August 6, 2017 - link
Thunderbolt muxes PCIe and DisplayPort at the packet level, not the signal level. While the PCIe and DP connections from the Thunderbolt controller to the CPU / GPU / PCH inside the host might register on the power budget, they've got nothing on the PHYs for the external ports. Because it takes way more power to push 20 Gbit/s across a friction-fit connector and down a couple meters of cable than it does to move 8 Gbit/s along 10 cm of precisely laid out copper traces on a PCB. Whenever a Thunderbolt port is using the Thunderbolt signaling mode, the power required to maintain the link remains relatively constant, and it makes zero difference whether the packets being transported across that link are PCIe or DisplayPort.And don't worry, Thunderbolt is in no way being forced upon PC users. It will continue to be ignored by most OEMs as it is today because it costs too much and really was engineered primarily to meet Apple's design goals. Even if / when Intel integrates Thunderbolt into their chipsets, the PHY will still be a separate adder that will probably limit support to 2% of non-Apple devices. So you can rest easy knowing that proprietary dock connectors and dedicated HDMI ports will remain a feature of PCs for years to come.
mois - Saturday, July 28, 2018 - link
repoman27, do you know if the laptop's dual-port Thunderbolt 3 controller can process 32gbps, or just 22gbps, of sum aggregate PCIe data to&from the two TB3 ports at the same time?respond to roger1- in the forum PM
also, do you know if Akitio Node Pro (which has a daisy chain port and is not eGFX certified) and Razer Core Pro should have similar performance?
The Node Pro reviewer here
https://egpu.io/forums/thunderbolt-enclosures/unbo... https://egpu.io/forums/thunderbolt-enclosures/akit... insists that there should be some firmware difference that makes the Node Pro slower, however, I'd love the Node Pro for the practicality of having an extra TB3 port.
Please let me know what you think :)
HollyDOL - Monday, August 7, 2017 - link
It's good there is less lead used in things around, but out of those replacement materials tin isn't exactly the best thing under the sun either. I hope it isn't just hair of the dog because of contemporary popular green fashion.Wolfpup - Monday, August 7, 2017 - link
It's 2017 and we're only doing this NOW?!?Ugh, well, better late than never...
peevee - Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - link
"The European Union restricts the use of lead (as well as many other hazardous materials) because its fumes increase risk of lung and stomach cancer, along with the other known risks of lead exposure and heavy metals in general."What fumes? What exposure? The tiny little bit of lead is inside a chip, nobody is eating or huffing it, and each chip is soldered by machines.
EU bureaucracy is unbelievable...