Link. Gruber mostly on Mastodon. Twitter is ready for Trump now.
Author Archives: jgordon
macOS: Is it more secure to be a normal or admin user?
Link. “don’t think it’s going to improve security or privacy”. I have always run as “normal”. I think I’ve deleted the original admin account without bad happenings.
“proposal is that retroviral proteins (HERVK envelope in particular, and likely others?) are being reactivated as cells age, that this is directly responsible for some parts of the aging phenotype, and that this presents an opportunity for therapeutic i
Link. Osteoarthritis has been completely mysterious. Just saying.
Debates about COVID annual booster: bivalent, original, new, or none?
Link. It’s hard to improve on the excellence of the original; by conventional measures COVID is vaccine controlled.
“… whether interest payments are a major burden on the budget. In 2011 these payments were 1.47 percent of gross domestic product — half what they had been in the mid-1990s. In 2021 they were 1.51 percent.”
Link. Inflation adjusted under 1%. We don’t know if there’s a non-linear response to debt however.
Any doc can Rx Buprenorphine (Bupe) now.
Link. “U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced that the X-waiver program had been eliminated as part of the 2023 Omnibus Bill.” That program was SO stupid. So glad it’s gone.
School lunch income cutoff not inflation indexed.
Link. Many are falling out of the program; complex applications already limited use.
National debt: “First, simply return personal and corporate tax rates to where they were in January 2001. Secondly, return the IRS budget to a level where it can enforce the law to the degree it could as we entered this century.”
Link. Blame those who vote GOP.
Russian uses Russian Imperial Movement to threaten EU with terrorism. “One specific part of the agency, Unit 29155, has tried to destabilize Europe through attempted coups and assassinations”
Link. Putin’s desperation grows.
“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”
Link. Apple App Store is traveling this path. OTOH Facebook, for me, is better than ever.
In tech only Apple made smart hiring decisions during the boom years.
Link. I think Oracle does constant layoffs.
Photos Workbench 1.0 from Houdah.
Link. If my migration succeeds I will look at it. $22, not subscription!
“After last night’s sanction of almost a million dollars in a frivolous lawsuit, Trump dropped a similar lawsuit today against New York attorney general Letitia James”
Link. Maybe Trump can afford fines, but his lawyer’s can’t afford fines and licensure risks.
“even as Peter Thiel was proclaiming “the end of the fiat currency regime” and suggesting that the price of Bitcoin could rise by a factor of 100, his venture capital fund was selling off almost all of its Bitcoin holdings”
Link. Thiel would say he was teaching.
ABLE account problems (from 2019).
Link. They are abysmal. Can’t get money out. Fees very high. Usage rules terrifying, high audit risk.
ABLE accounts for disabled: “A 2019 report from the National Association of State Treasurers warned that participation was too low to maintain affordable fees for ABLE accounts and sustain the programs over the long term.”
Link. Entry age extended to 46. Our son has one, fees are high and service is worse than you can imagine. You can put money in, you can’t get money out.
“This nation is 247 years old and there has never been a person of lower and more dishonorable character who has ever served in Congress. He is America’s greatest impostor, but there is nothing funny about it.”
Link. Santos is not known to have owned people however. And he must be smarter than Boebert.
Google: “pushing groups of employees who try to ensure that technology is fair and ethical to more quickly approve its upcoming A.I. technology.”
Link. This is how the human world ends.
“The end of Roe “really quickly has become something very dangerous for the movement”
Link. Anti-abortion activists fracture, some advocating policies GOP adamantly opposes.
India: “Actors who would once perform in different films in the same change of clothes now find themselves with unfathomable wealth.”
Link. Vast influence on product purchases in country with 5 smartphones for every TV.
“Mr. Trump lashed out at Pastor Jeffress and other evangelical leaders he spent years courting, accusing them of “disloyalty” and blaming them for the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections.”
Link. Pence is taking Trump’s evangelicals.
NYT says WaPo struggling ahead of planned layoffs.
Link. Biden admin is a balm for America — but not for WaPo revenue.
Why Amazon stopped Smile program: “Matt Gratz … Southern Poverty Law Center to help it weed out some beneficiaries, saying that conservative and Christian groups had been excluded.”
Link. House GOP was going to investigate Amazon for excluding hate groups.
Daring Fireball: App Store Rejection of the Week: “I don’t generally call for anyone to be fired, but an App Store reviewer who cannot see how Ice Cubes “differ[s] from a mobile web browsing experience” is an embarrassment to the company,”
Link. I bet Apple outsources App Store reviews to an overseas low cost provider. We need a non-Apple App Store because Apple is incompetent.
“If you occupy a privileged position in the attention economy, as Megan McArdle does now, and as I once did in a more limited way, then no, you won’t see Mastodon as a viable replacement for Twitter.”
Link. Udell’s sympathetic portrayal of those who can’t quit the Twitter dopamine fix. (McCardle’s time is passing — happily.)
What About “Log in With Twitter”?
Link. Don’t get rid of your password manager.
“the Internet’s role in a (broader) major transition for humans is more than just an analogy, and that looking at it this way informs our understanding of our troubled times, of the risks we face, and of how to address them”
Link. We used to talk like this in the 90s. Fun to see again. Via Udell.
Bike helmets getting better — and more expensive. $300 Giro Ares.
Link. The tech will go downmarket. Impressive progress supported by Virginia Tech ratings program and an informed market with money.
GOP flat tax arithmetic: “if something sells for $100 plus $30 in tax, then it’s a 23% tax—because $30 is 23% of $130”
Link. You cannot imagine how dumb they are.
Methodology Trial – subgroup analysis test. XKCD.
Link. Make this part of every clinical research methodology class.
JFK near catastrophe: “airline pilots “arm” the automatic braking system in their Boeing or Airbus airplanes, to slam the plane to an immediate, skidding stop if they have to execute an RTO.”
Link. The Delta flight made a HARD stop. Hope all laptops were stowed and belts tight. Also hope no infants in laps.
“Indian women have been racing into higher education, with government figures from 2020 showing they now enroll at higher rates than men. And yet India is still one of the most male-dominated economies in the world.”
Link. This is going to get stressful.
Another HIV vaccine fails (but failure was expected).
Link. Will be 3-5y before next attempt has results.
“the two charged pions that arise from a neutral rho decay are also entangled, marking the first discovery of two distinct, non-identical particles to display entanglement properties”
Link. I think this was expected?
“The Ukrainian army uses about 90,000 artillery rounds a month, about twice the rate they are being manufactured by the United States and European countries combined”
Link. Stockpiles provide the rest. For now. “the United States is helping Ukraine use ammunition more efficiently.”
“mounting tension between Greene and Boebert reached its boiling point. According to multiple sources, the two women were nearly in a screaming match in the Speaker’s lobby ladies room just off the House floor.”
Link. Boebert falls as MTG leaves Q behind, but MTG serves Putin and Boebert does not.
The Villages of Florida: “Lake Sumter Landing, focused on the eponymous lake and its canal, which extends south for a few hundred feet, complete with locks, and then turns into a stream that runs for a few hundred more feet before ending”
Link. Like living in an orbital habitat.
California storms: The damage and the amazing deluge, by the numbers.
Link. Astonishing numbers.
Another Nepal Airlines crash: “Nepalese flights have been banned in the European Union since 2013 citing safety concerns including training and maintenance standards”
Link.
“prophylactic vaccine that protects honeybees from American foulbrood, an aggressive bacterium that can spread quickly from hive to hive”
Link. First insect vaccine used in America. More coming especially for bees. Insects lack antibodies. “… identified the specific protein that prompts an immune response in the offspring”
Russia to send replacement for Space Station’s broken return capsule: “damage was caused by a micrometeoroid about one millimeter in diameter”
Link. All agree to be quiet.
No Increased Stroke Risk Linked to Pfizer’s Covid Boosters.
Link. The vaccines are safe and effective.
F-16s to Turkey: “… such a sale would not be a “quid pro quo” for Turkey’s approval of NATO membership for Sweden and Finland”
Link. But many suspect Erdogan is lying.
Anticipating the Sickle Cell Cure.
Link. It’s not yet a simple procedure — but the end of the disease is in sight.
China’s demographic crisis comes early: “We will start to appreciate China, in terms of its population, as an old and shrinking population.”
Link. All birth incentives failed. Party won’t do immigration. Try freedom?
Stage Manager for the unimpressed: 3 Apps and windows
Link. Finder has been a confusing mess for non-experts — I don’t think this helps. Will be interesting to try later this year when I go to Ventura.
“The New York Times now allows quick online cancels, no longer need to chat or call anyone”
Link.
COVID: “Why have we avoided the typical winter surge? Because the U.S. population has, collectively, built up immunity to the virus.
Link. We are frequently exposed now. And even hosp rate is misleading… “Massachusetts officials estimate that only about one-third of people hospitalized with Covid are actually there for Covid-related illness.”
Crash Detection false alerts from skiers stresses 911 centers.
Link. Park City gets 3-5 false alerts a day. I could never enable this feature.
Switzerland’s ski industry is dying: “warming at more than double the rate of the global mean and its glaciers lost 6 percent of their volume in the last year alone”
Link. In the US many XC ski resorts have closed. Emily and I finally surrendered to snowshoes.