Power Suggestion Button 03/13/23
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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.
