Link. Choosing ignorance – the good and the bad.
Monthly Archives: January 2022
mRNA win has legions of parents.
Link. No way to be fair given Nobel rules.
Riemann Hypothesis, Explained.
Link. Sometimes YouTube is worth it.
“He was wearing one of those anti-vax ‘Live free or die’ t-shirts. I just said, ‘I see you made your choice.’ He was already so far gone he couldn’t hear me.”
Link. ER docs and cops see the worst of us.
Network Time Machine Backups: All the mediocre options.
Link. I do Synology NAS but it’s not my main backup solution.
“military invasion, which could begin between mid-January and mid-February.”
Link. The most predictable invasion ever?
“Germany would most likely eventually have to move to treating the virus as endemic.”
Link. The headline synopsis does not match the article. The experts quoted say it is endemic and we have a new routine.
“deputy patsy would be leading a small team to take the fall for all future investigations into Adams for misappropriating funds, political patronage, and nepotism”
Link. New York is weird. Too.
“…. there’s a certain point where a pawn should understand they’re a pawn, not a king, or a queen, or even a rook. So, if you’re still a willfully unvaccinated person: You’re a pawn, sorry.”
Link. We need to lower people’s self-esteem.
“first-year enrollment is 9.2 percent lower than prepandemic levels in fall 2019.” College.
Link. Very bad.
“Epstein-Barr virus infection increased the risk of multiple sclerosis over 30 fold”
Link. MS patients tend to have very effective immune systems. But EBV cannot be eliminated.
“iPhone 14 Pro models will have a new main sensor, switching from 12MP to 48MP.”
Link. 12 is too small.
What is the metaverse? The Verge.
Link. First useful summary I have found for the average geek.
“self-deception is the strongest and most mysterious of all the deceptions. With self-deception, you’re both the teller and receiver of the lie.”
Link. Fascinating and so important. Related, I think, to our capacity for denial. Maybe essential for life.
Thai unloads on Apple’s Mac strategy: “We once hoped for a successor to AppleScript; now we are grateful that it is at least still on life support.”
Link. Apple hasn’t made a significant Mac app in over 10 years.
Tianjin: “One local health official said that the virus appeared to have been spreading in the community “for some time.”
Link. Breached.
“After a lengthy back-and-forth over the election results, Mr. Trump asked how he could have lost the presidential election to Joe Biden, who he falsely claimed did not attract crowds during the campaign.”
Link. “Siri, what is narcissistic personality disorder?”
China’s COVID revolution.
Link. Maoism lives. The more entropy I accumulate the more I distrust zealotry of all causes.
Google (AI) Research: Themes from 2021 and Beyond.
Link. Long and impressive. Meanwhile Google Search results suck and iOS autocorrect is deteriorating. Something is off.
“security problems that stem from all controls becoming software controls”
Link. No plug.
“most of the 150,000 or so mail-in P.C.R. tests given to students were never returned; of the ones that were, a majority produced invalid results.”
Link. Self-administered testing only works for elites.
“Half or more of the increasing gap in wages among American workers over the last 40 years is attributable to the automation of tasks formerly done by human workers, especially men without college degrees”
Link. I believe but has been hard to show.
AIDS in Africa: astounding progress in 15 years.
Link. Science, medicine, politics. If you don’t tear up you need therapy.
Apple Watch: all apps dying.
Link. Exercise related and bike navigation among few opportunities. Apple Watch main value is getting text message when active and phone inaccessible.
“most Americans — including children and vaccinated adults — face little personal risk from Omicron.”
Link. In SF 1/3 of persons admitted with Omicron it is incidental. Likely most immunized admissions are incidental.
“There’s about $1.6 trillion worth of $100 bills in circulation — 80 percent of all U.S. currency”
Link. Neither zealots or critics speak much of Bitcoins true value in illegal transactions.
Web3: “micropayments, but in crypto”
Link. Wait! I like that! I’m a huge fan of micropayments and enemy of subscriptions. Now I have to be a crypto fanboy?!?!
“It takes about 200 hours of investment in the space of a few months to move a stranger into being a good friend.”
Link. That seems high, and hard to achieve outside of work or school.
“The slowest ager gained only 0.4 “biological years” for each chronological year in age; in contrast, the fastest-aging participant gained nearly 2.5”
Link. Lifespans don’t vary 6x however. This aging variability is easy to see in dogs.
Botulism: “why canned foods have a burnt, metallic taste and jarred sauces can sometimes have a harsh acidic note”
Link. So good.
Cowpox transport: “Twenty-two orphans, ages 3 to 9 … accompanied by lead doctor Francisco Xavier de Balmis … and Isabel Zendal Gómez, the head of the boys’ orphanage”
Link. The orphans, and Balmis, saved tens of millions from Smallpox. Adopted by families in Mexico they must have descendants now.
Create a computer-to-computer network on Mac
Link. Ad hoc Wi-Fi is deprecated in Big Sur but can be resurrected. Via TidBITS.
Moderna’s mRNA Flu Vaccine: Meh so far.
Link. Nice flu review.
Inside iCloud+ Private Relay.
Link. I will enable eventually.
Djokovic: “On Dec. 16, the day he said he tested positive, he appeared at a live-streamed public event. The following day, he appeared at an awards ceremony for junior players, where photographs showed that he was not wearing a mask.”
Link. Either he’s lying or he’s an asshole.
Screen Time calculation nonsensical due to persistent web sites.
Link. I think this bug is new in iOS 13.
“H01 is a petabyte-scale dataset, but is only one-millionth the volume of an entire human brain. Serious technical challenges remain in scaling up synapse-level brain mapping to an entire mouse brain (500x bigger than H01), let alone an entire human brain
Link. June 2021. Mouse is exabyte.
Mathematica 13 – 1/3 of a century of development.
Link. I used it in grad school around ’95. It was just a toddler then. (The programming models were kind of everything.)
Time Machine has a bug with backup to APFS
Link. With large numbers of small files
Converting from Aperture to Apple Photos: Personal results
Link. The first of many updates to this blog post. I was unable to find any useful descriptions online so I’m doing my own experiments.
Aperture and unsupported image formats – use Photos and export as TIFF
Link. Video formats are, of course, much harder. For me Adobe’s DNG converter is good enough.
“Sibelly said there were no staff absences, pointing out that most teachers had contracted Covid last month or over the Christmas holidays.”
Link. London. Essentially all teachers will get Omicron, but without surveillance many won’t know.
The Case Against Crypto(currencies) – “every use case is better served by another simpler technology except for crime, ransomware, extralegal gambling, and sanctions evasion”
Link. Handy reference.
How Mars got red.
Link. It’s a bit complicated.
“Many of number theory’s most important problems arise when mathematicians think about how multiplication and addition relate in terms of the prime numbers.”
Link. The starting points are so easy to understand. Then the warp drive kicks in.
“If you see a hedgehog in your backyard,” he said, “you should probably avoid kissing it.”
Link. MRSA evolution from fungus vs. bacteria on hedgehog skin.
Antigen tests less sensitive to Omicron.
Link. More pressure on PCR.
“Feature that allows me to use Google’s search engine through DuckDuckGo: prepend “!Google” to searches. Basically, DuckDuckGo launders my search.”
Link.
Oracle’s Ellison: “You’ve got to be good at intellectual intimidation and rhetorical bullying,”
Link. That’s the Ellison we know, but this shocked: “He later disavowed this as the strategy of an “inexperienced and insecure” C.E.O.”. WTF? Is there nobody we can trust?
“school disruptions were an important issue for swing voters who broke Republican — particularly suburban white women.”
Link. GOP will encourage unions to fight for remote schooling. Article doesn’t mention unvaccinated teachers – a weird omission.