Power Suggestion Button 03/13/23 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Do you remember when the power button became a suggestion? My old 8088 had a physical power button. It was spring-loaded, and when you pressed it, you physically disconnected (or connected, it was a toggle) the power from the motherboard. It was a jarring, brutal action that suddenly robbed the computer of its life force, without any warning. No time to save files or spin down disks. No time for anything. It was mankind's ultimate dominance over machine. At some point, the power button became a suggestion (and the flip-switch disappeared). I remember the feeling of, "wait, the power button isn't really a power button any more." But, I don't recall exactly when that feeling started. Was it with the 486? Later 386 machines even? Which brand went first? The rationale made sense back then, and I don't think I was too concerned. After all, who wouldn't want to give the poor machine one last chance to take care of important file-saving business before turning itself off? But even at the beginning, there was this niggling thought that something was amiss. In the back of my brain, I realized that the computer was no longer "off" when the little light turned off. Power was still going to the motherboard, and something in there was still listening, waiting, ready for me to press the fake power suggestion button, and then to act. The machine was conscious, as long as the cord was connected. For a lot of years, I didn't worry about it. Then Mobile came along. And wildly improved battery size and capacity specs. At first it was still OK because mobile data was still slow (too slow and expensive for Them to spy on mass groups or low-value targets), and you could remove the battery. But eventually fashion, and Those People, demanded that battery removal was ugly and perhaps even dangerous. Phones were constructed and sealed in unholy and heinous ways. And the internals got scarier, with multiple microphones, cameras, and GPS tracking, endless data, and more. And here we are now. The reason for this post is mundane, if you ignore the history of the power suggestion button. My wife has a Lenovo tablet controlled by the CCP (I'm having fun here, just let me run wild). The power button will turn off the screen. But if you have the facial recognition feature turned on, the unit can come to life when you pass your face in front of it. It's not "off" by any stretch of the imagination. It can listen to you, too, when the screen is off, if you have those feature enabled. My wife has none of these features enabled. Heck, she even has all of her notifications disabled... Or does she? Recently, her tablet has taken to turning itself on randomly. No big deal, you say, as it will just automatically power itself off after the time period she suggested in the settings (settings are also suggestions, in case you weren't aware.) Wrong! It powers on, and stays on FOREVER. Well, maybe not FOREVER, but I'll come back to that. And why does it power on? Because a secret application, one that doesn't show up anywhere unless you install special software to find it, has notifications that you cannot disable. Something is definitely amiss. Reboot the unit, you say. Well, there's an interesting concept. What does it mean these days? Is it another suggestion? Fine. Power it down, power it back up. All good and fine, but that doesn't help anything. Finally, I found one suggestion on the internet that said the user had to completely drain their battery before this little random-power-on bug would correct itself. Would we be here if there was a real power button, or some easy way to remove the battery? What is the world coming to? Now, draining the battery on this CCP-controlled tablet is another issue. I know, I know, you feel like draining a modern battery to zero is really naughty and bad for the battery. But who cares, if it's the only way to fix the broken device short of tearing it apart? But you know what, this argument doesn't even matter because the software that lives inside, the one that manages your power button suggestions, has its very own special definition of "0%". When Android believes the battery is at 0%, the battery actually has plenty of juice left to keep certain functions going. Android powers the tablet off when it reaches 0%... and yet, I can power it back on many times. Last night, I powered it back on, fully booted, probably 6-12 times with 0% battery. This defies my apparently irrational or immature understanding of 0%. After those 6-12 boots, the unit apparently decided I was a trouble maker, and fell back to booting up a big wordless icon (because I'm too stupid to read words? maybe it's not an insult, but a multi-lingual approach... nah!) indicating that it was time to plug in the charging cable. Fine, I set it down hoping that the endlessly "on" internal brain would drain the remaining secret battery capacity overnight. Guess what: in the morning, the counter that had determined I was a trouble-maker decided it was time to let the system boot up again, with that 0% or less capacity. Or, in a less paranoid world maybe it was a well-known chemistry issue that is generally called "self recharge". Psh, yeah right. After a few more boot-ups, it went back to the "Now, now, it's time to rationally plug in your charger." And that's when I decided it was time to turn to gopher to vent. I'm going to stubbornly wait until pressing the power button does nothing at all. Perhaps there will still be some secret battery capacity, keeping the internal brain alive even then. Maybe I just can't win, unless I tear the beast apart like the elemental meatbag that I am. I picture myself atop a hill in the light of the full moon, my shirt torn and tattered, my back arched and my head raised defiantly to the heavens. My arms are spread wide, creating distance between the contents of one hand and the other: in my right a battery, and in my left a snarled mess of shattered Gorilla Glass, Pb-free PCB, and aluminum. I howl, master once again of the power.