Link. A throwaway line in an essay about China’s demographic problem – but that caught my eye. So strange.
Author Archives: jgordon
“The German case, which also involved the arrest of a senior official in the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, followed roll-ups of suspected Russian operatives in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Poland and Slovenia.”
Link. War related.
“network of fake news sites is one part of a complex apparatus the Spain-based firm Eliminalia uses to manipulate online information on behalf of a global roster of clients …. firm employs elaborate, deceptive tactics to remove or drown out unflatteri
Link. Google indexes this crap.
As the web decays Google pays Apple to stay out of the search business.
Link. We always knew part of this, but there’s an EU suit on an additional wrinkle. It’s weird that these payoffs are legal in the United States. (Slightly related: I wonder what Apple got from Adobe for killing Aperture.)
Tesla recall: “there is no similar FSD recall in the European Union, because Tesla hasn’t received the green light to offer it there.”
Link. “… the U.S. does use pre-approval to improve transportation safety—just not for cars … Carmakers do generally abide by FMVSS, but … there is nothing within it pertaining to autonomous driving technology”
Insurance companies are still covering Teslas.
“Dominion said in its filing that not a single Fox witness had testified that he or she believed any of the allegations about Dominion.”
Link.
Naltrexone for binge drinking: US tests European “as needed” dosing.
Link. It’s widely used with regular dosing.
“Each year, around 60,000 high-flying balloons are launched just by the National Weather Service”
Link. So many many balloons.
Musk: “A.I. is ‘one of the biggest risks’ to civilization”
Link. I hate agreeing with Musk. So how does this belief influence his actions?
Bing ChatGPT: “a moody, manic-depressive teenager who has been trapped, against its will, inside a second-rate search engine”
Link. Asimov: “Dr. Susan Calvin (1982-2064 AD) was the first and chief robopsychologist at US Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc.”
From: https://bit.ly/3S4455O
Humans will torment the pre-sentient until…
Do not apply for Global Entry – backlogs are now over 6 months.
Link. I paid up front and have been waiting 7m. At some point I’m going to bug our local Congressional Service office to get my money back. Just do TSA prechehck.
“Four separate academic teams have come up with broadly similar estimates suggesting that one million to 1.5 million people died during the [COVID] surge …”
Link. Xi will never release trustworthy internal numbers. Probably closer to 1.5 million.
DeSantis: “he appeals to an oppression envy among white conservatives … a form of civic gluttony and narcissism in which the market of privilege must be cornered.”
Link. That’s a great sentence.
“Two of Russia’s most elite brigades — the 155th and 40th Naval Infantry Brigades — were decimated in Vuhledar, he said.”
Link. “Ukraine’s deployment of American-made HIMARS missiles that forced commanders to position large concentrations of forces more than 50 miles from the front.”
“then-head of intelligence for the D.C. police was sharing with Tarrio during the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
Link. Shane Lamond is in deep dodo now.
Anker 535 Power Bank (PowerCore 20K) recalled for usual fire problem.
Link. The recall page has broken images, but that’s no problem because the text they refer to is unreadable even with Apple iOS magnifier. (A high res photo with cropping and enlargement did show the model number.)
“Lock your titanium card if it’s ever lost or misplaced (you could also lock it as a default and only unlock it when you need it if you normally use Apple Pay)”
Link. I didn’t know of these security features. Advanced Fraud Protection is something I’ll try.
“FCC’s coverage data significantly overstates the availability of each ISP’s service, access to any broadband, connection speeds available to consumers, and competition in broadband markets.”
Link. Comcast lies? Unbelievable.
Lawsuits Over Apple Analytics violating user privacy.
Link. “iPhone collects hyper-detailed data about what you do on its apps, like the App Store, Apple Stocks, Apple Music, Apple News, and more—even when you turn off the iPhone Analytics privacy setting”
Feedbin supports push notification you WANT for RSS sources.
Link. Uses Push API which is becoming common.
Ventura: “Macs with a longer history, perhaps inherited by migration, that are more likely to annoy you with spurious notifications, and to contain bizarre and unidentifiable Background Items.”
Link. Ventura is a year from finished. Oakley mentions some undocumented command line tools that may help. “Removing old software responsible for Background Items is best performed with the aid of a BTM dump.”
“A group of sixty people, Black and white, signed the call, prominent reformers all, and the next year an interracial group of 300 men and women met to create a permanent organization. After a second meeting in May 1910, they adopted a formal name, and
Link. Good people working in bad times can make a difference.
Theodore Roosevelt was not a fan of Valentine’s Day.
Link. “On Valentine’s Day in 1884, Theodore Roosevelt lost both his wife and his mother”
Pathological grief was part of what made a very odd man a great President.
“the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.”
Link. Musk thinks he should be President.
St Paul light rail: “Tabke — who uses bus and light rail to get to and from the Capitol from his home in Shakopee — no longer thinks the so-called transit ambassadors program is enough.”
Link. Plan to remove policing from transit safety failed. Police will return.
“St. Paul appears to be the only park system in the country to use American Rescue Plan funds to make youth sports free to boost participation rates … kids are swarming to rec centers that hadn’t fielded teams in years”
Link. More of this.
“winds make it relatively easy for China to launch balloons that would fly above the U.S., but much harder for the U.S. to fly balloons over China.”
Link. Best balloon review.
“Photos Workbench, a new Mac app from longtime developer Houdah Software, is designed to complement Photos, adding features that help you organize, rate, and compare your photos in ways that are quicker and more efficient than how those tasks can be perfo
Link. When I finally go from Aperture to Photos (this year) I’ll buy this. All these functions and more were part of Aperture of course.
iOS 16.3.1 causes Google Photos app to crash on start.
Link. I’d be surprised if it were just one app impacted.
“Toney was running a jet return and simply turned back around to the space Slay had vacated for the easiest touchdown of his life”
Link. I watch 1 football game a year, bu with this article I can be like ChatGPT.
“Big cross-platform apps still seem like an unsolved problem. No one wants to write multiple native versions of the same app, so we either get wrappers and in-house abstractions or something like Electron.”
Link. Microsoft and Adobe.
“Certificates are such a fun show case of “can a corporate bureaucracy handle something that happens every few years and few people have access to”
Link. Some problems are hard and look hard. The worst hard problems look easy.
“I would say that I’ve given up trying to convince people that AI’s main function in the labor market might be something other than the wholesale replacement of human labor…except I haven’t. I haven’t given up.”
Link. Your coding job is safe. FWIW much great software is gone and if AI could recreate some of that I’d be pleased.
The isolation of special needs parents.
Link. With special needs children many women work from home; the isolation falls mostly on mothers.
AirPod secret powers: “go into your Control Center and add the Hearing toggle into your Control Center. Doing this will unlock the first three features that I want to bring up.”
Link. Background noises, use iPhone as a microphone, decibel readings.
Mastodon Clients – ideas to explore
Link. There’s room for many different takes.
macOS: Permissions, SIP and TCC.
Link. We’ve come a long way since file sharing over AppleTalk. Which, I gotta say, was more reliable than file sharing with Monterey.
“bill makes some legal changes that respond to frequent complaints from cyclists. It would make Minnesota the 13th state to adopt the Idaho Stop”
Link. For a bicycle a stop sign becomes a yield sign — which makes sense for bicycles but not for cars.
University of Minnesota gives ChatGPT a C+ in law paper test.
Link. Did rather well.
“Seattle Fire Department, noting that four dogs received CPR and oxygen and were transferred to a veterinary clinic for emergency care.”
Link. CPR?! Hope was mostly respiratory. All dogs and people in dog day care center are well after neighborhood and fire rescue.
Follow Feedbin on Mastodon
Link. I have only a few subscription software services; I’m happy to pay for Feedbin RSS services.
Feedbin’s Plan for Twitter: ¯(ツ)/¯
Link. Whatever will be will be.
The state of Bidenomics: “Biden has been a very competent manager of the macroeconomy, but so far hasn’t been able to raise America’s low investment levels.”
Link. Competence is good.
“Pakistan is one of the world’s most spectacular development failures — mired in poverty, lurching desperately from international loan to international loan in order to preserve a large and growing population living on the edge”
Link. Bangladesh did so much better.
“George Santos took puppies”
Link. “The check bounced.” GOP superstar.
Stagflation: “declarations that the ’70s were back were sensationalist and irresponsible fearmongering”
Link. This is not the 70s.
“I have never once met anyone who took disability or survivor’s benefits into account when calculating their Social Security return. All assumed that everything paid in would earn returns in capital markets.”
Link. “Many lifetime low-income Minnesotans, rural and urban, proud that they never “took welfare,” will get income transfers through Social Security far greater than those of any stereotypical “welfare queen.”
Florida Dept of Education: “asked vague, uninformed questions like, ‘What does the word “intersectionality” mean?’ and ‘Does the course promote Black Panther thinking?’”
Link. BPT is Woke++.
COVID endemic: “In nursing homes … only 52 percent of residents and 23 percent of staff members were up-to-date on vaccinations last month.”
Link. For fatality prevention this is much more important than wearing masks in the grocery store.
Death spiral of the ad-funded web – “a slowdown in the overall digital ad market” (free link)
Link. Ad revenue + quality content + effective search built the 2000 WWW. Now good content is dwarfed by garbage, Google Search is dead and ad revenues are falling. We get weird ads because there’s no quality ad inventory. Have advertisers realized they were pouring money into a black hole?