Link. Ancient Roman protection against undead since removed.
Remembering the “trim” command: “Spaceman scans for free blocks and trims APFS containers when they’re mounted.”
Link. I wouldn’t touch it. Modern Thunderbolt APFS SSDs are very complex.
Photos Data Loss With macOS 13.3 Beta: backup is still a problem.
Link. Try backing up your macOS Notes. Apple’s Cloud-sync tech reduces data loss for many but makes true backup harder.
LucidLink: cloud file system for commercial AV work.
Link. MacFUSE based cloud file system.
FTC proposes ‘Click to Cancel’ requirements for managing subscriptions
Link. They know vendors will invent new dark patterns and they have anticipated obvious evil.
Bing: “Bing Image Creator allows you to create an image simply by using your own words to describe the picture you want to see. Now you can generate both written and visual content in one place, from within chat.”
Link.
GitHub Copilot X: AI assisted coding.
Link. CGPT 4 helps build the code to build CGPT 5. Don’t worry, it’s not a positive feedback loop. #beafraid
All the Biomass of Earth, in One Graphic
Link. Protista!
Minnesota health care market is an oligopoly and almost a monopsony.
Link. A few players sell and provide health care services and negotiate for payment. Costs are higher of course.
“The entire push for green energy is now in danger of failing, because progressives focused entirely on writing the checks and not on creating the institutional capacity necessary for translating those checks into physical goods.”
Link. A sane GOP would have helped.
“Republicans have gotten to the point that they don’t believe they can win a free and fair election, and in their conviction that Democrats will destroy the country, they believe cheating to win is justified.”
Link. National salvation makes a better rationale than wealth and power. It’s a happy accident that they lead to the same actions.
Basic bicycle kit list with some notes on flats
Link. Did this for my daughter, I like it. Put it in iOS notes. Contrary to what I hear everyone say changing a flat can be the hardest thing to do on a bike. Sometimes bleeding hydraulic brakes I easier.
“Ali Alexander, who helped to organize “Stop the Steal” rallies …wrote to his supporters today …”
Link. “Previously, I had said if Trump was arrested or under the threat of a perp walk, 100,000 patriots should shut down all routes to Mar-a-Lago…. Now I’m retired. I’ll pray for him though!”
Putin’s war crimes indictment is a problem for American right.
Link. “Putin’s arrest warrant for war crimes, centered in crimes against children, will make it harder to spin his authoritarianism as a virtue, especially as they claim their policies are designed to protect children.”
“Once someone like Trump issues that kind of challenge, it doesn’t matter if the indictment is for murder, campaign-finance violations, or mopery with intent to gawk”
Link. How worthless is American law?
“Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release th
Link. Modern GOP is just more of what it always was.
“India has seen an absolutely massive, tremendous decrease in extreme poverty over the past two decades.”
Link. If only the government had likewise progressed.
Study: Household task preferences by gender – divisions fit cis gender stereotypes.
Link. Among a reasonably large number of cis gender pairs I’ve known this is a common pattern.
Popular sweetener: “erythritol, in both in vitro and in vivo assays, enhances platelet aggregation.”
Link. That means more cardiac issues. Surprising and bad. I wouldn’t use it. If results hold up it’s gone.
MIGs are nice but Kyiv wants F-16s: “It’s a vicious, nasty, dangerous little airplane.”
Link.
“half of Iraq’s population of 40 million isn’t old enough to remember life under Saddam or much about the U.S. invasion”
Link. “Fallujah gleams with new apartments, hospitals, amusement parks, a promenade and a renewed gate to the city. Its markets and streets are bustling. But officials were wary of letting Western reporters wander the city without an escort.”
Russia degraded: applauding the execution of a Ukrainian prisoner.
Link. “Glory to Ukraine,” the Ukrainian says calmly. He is quickly shredded by bullets from multiple directions.”
The My Lai massacre was in 1968. The American heroes who opposed it were only rewarded in 1998. We are so similar.
The incarceration of Japanese American WWII LA Times will no longer call it “internment”.
Link. An opportunity to share a grim story and its lessons.
“Children with cystic fibrosis (CF) will no longer automatically qualify for wishes, the Make-A-Wish Foundation said, as treatments for the previously fatal disease have advanced to the point that many patients lead long, healthy lives.”
Link. If you don’t tear up you are a stone. Also, thank you evil big pharma and academia both.
Early COVID data: “[unvaccinated] Pregnant women with Covid face a sevenfold risk of dying compared with uninfected pregnant women …”
Link. HOWEVER: “Preliminary figures suggest maternal deaths dropped to roughly prepandemic levels in 2022”
I got whiplash reading this. 7x number is early pandemic. The anecdote is about a woman who declined vaccine and all-but died; she and her child did well with superb medical care.
“U.S. banks were sitting on $620 billion in unrealized losses from securities that had dropped in price at the end of 2022 … Adding in other potential losses … the total may be more like $1.75 trillion”
Link. However in the absence of bank runs that may be offset by higher returns on deposits.
Yellen: “she suggested that no matter how strong bank capital and liquidity supervision is, a bank can be put in danger of failing if there’s an “overwhelming run” spurred by social media.”
Link. But Thiel didn’t post on social media.
Wonderland Amusement Park 1910: “One key attraction was the place known as the Infant Incubator Institute or Infantorium, where, for a small fee, the public could see premature babies in incubators.”
Link. “The price of admission paid for the staff, and parents owed the park nothing for the care of their baby … nurses made sure that the newborns received regular feedings from wet-nurses …. local newspapers covered their progress at the unit by giving them nicknames. Nearly all of the babies sent to the Incubator Institute survived.”
MNopedia | Minnesota Encyclopedia: “A resource for reliable information about significant people, places, events, and things in Minnesota history”
Link. Started 2011 and I only learned of it today. The about page is a good start.
Apple Family Sharing and reviewing family member charges
Link. “The relevant support article recommends using https://apple.co/3JIBQav, but that has only a 90 day history. Each family member can see their own transaction history on their Apple device, but there is no web interface I know of to review this history.”
“Google realized that most people used the voice assistant only for a limited number of simple tasks, such as starting timers and playing music”
Link. I use Siri several times a day and I’m generally happy with how it works. It does simple things well.
“If we had eons to adjust, perhaps we could do so cleanly. But we do not.”
Link. It’s not just me. Other people are awed and afraid. The old term was singularity.
“I recognize that entertaining these possibilities feels a little, yes, weird. It feels that way to me, too. Skepticism is more comfortable.”
“first demonstration of pathologists learning to identify and score a specific pathology feature originally identified by an ML-based approach”
Link. Colorectal cancer path.
“Because of how CloudKit works, we have to change one fundamental aspect of how MindNode works. Documents are no longer represented as files in the Finder…”
Link. Files are going away….
“… there’s only one OIK for any given M1/M2 Mac, and by default only the primary admin user has access to it”
Link. The Mac is drifting towards being a single user device like the iPhone.
“There are two good ways to discover which users are owners, and have Secure Token…”
“they would, indeed, create a new political party: the Republicans. The new party took deep root in Maine, flipping the state from Democratic to Republican in 1856”
Link. Great history here from when the Republican Party was with Lincoln.
“Gujarati immigrants, the predominant owners of motels in the U.S.”
Link. “Patels are estimated to own between 80 and 90 percent of the motels in small towns.” From India Abroad. The article embraces ethnic stereotypes.
Avian influenza – it’s hard to predict catastrophe
Link. In 2006 McNeil thought a catastrophic avian influenza pandemic was very likely. He was wrong then. Now he cautions against both complacency and panic. The last paragraph is morbidly amusing.
Everything is just fine.
Link. “I retired in August of 2022 so I think I’ll focus on mountain bike trail maintenance and, like Superintelligence’s Carol Peters, on the needs of friends and family.”
Pepfar – the CDC implemented program that has saved millions of lives.
Link. “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.” Started under GWB. Cheap at 7.5 billion. Sometimes we do good things.
“In Gmail and Google Docs, you can simply type in a topic you’d like to write about, and a draft will be instantly generated for you.”
Link. I regret not buying that cabin in the remote wilderness.
“Why did SolarWinds have such bad security? The answer is because it was more profitable … exacerbated by the private-equity funding model”
Link. We need liability and lawyers.
Malware that survives firmware updates.
Link. “malware checks for available firmware upgrades every 10 seconds. When an update becomes available, the malware copies the archived file for backup…”
“When trying to assess the importance of an experience, she said, “our brain just looks back and says, Well, how many memories did we make?”
Link. Why a first-tine journey seems much longer than subsequent trips.
“the production of giant-donkey bloodlines occurred at a time when mules — the sterile offspring of male donkeys, or jacks, and horse mares — were vital to the Roman economy and its military”
Link. History meets genomics.
Google Apps (Workspace) email failing? How to check DKIM and update in your DNS settings if needed.
Link. I had to dredge up old knowledge to fix this one. There are odd things happening but I think the email bounces have been fixed for now.
Forgetting COVID: “A basic assumption that we can make is that everybody forgets everything all the time”
Link. It’s disturbing and sad when a friend forgets things I did with them. It’s also normal. I forget too. We evolved in a cruel reality.
Opoid settlement caps on controlled substance prescribing are screwing ADHD patients.
Link. I’m a hardcore woke-lib. BUT this stuff drives me crazy. There’s an endless list of well intentioned things my team does that are obviously stupid from the beginning. I would love to have a sane GOP opposition.
“They say there are no atheists in a foxhole, but there are more of them than there are libertarians in a bank run.”
Link. VCs went utterly bonkers because they never imagined they’d actually need something government does (very well).
Alcohol Bans for Aboriginal Australian communities reinstated.
Link. The writing is poor; it’s not a ban on serving aboriginal people, it’s community based. I believe some US First People communities have had similar limits, but i think they were set by tribal authorities.