Thoughts at large

[Jimaz]

More likely they didn't know what a serial bus was

Well, it's clear that the larger DB-25 connector would have been too clunky for handheld devices so something smaller was needed. Still that doesn't explain why there evolved so many different small connectors that had the same function.

Now I'm thinking it may have been more of a legal/patent/licensing scheme. People saw new growing revenue from small devices and tried to get a slice of that pie by tweaking a component's invention enough to get their own patent so they too could sell licenses. Keeping the term "universal" seems kind of stupid in retrospect.

I've heard criticisms of big pharma doing similar things by tweaking drug molecules to keep them from going generic.

It's all about the Benjamins. Yea, greed!

[jcole]

Yep; everything has to be proprietary; always has in PCs. My first "new" PC was a Compaq back in 1996 when Windows 95 was new. Damn thing came with a 14400 modem which was okay for awhile but then they upped speeds and I wanted to upgrade the modem in the PC. I read up on it, bought a 28800, called my daughter's boyfriend who was my mentor and the network mgr at Northwood University at the time. He came over with his tools. I took the side off and sat down to go to work. {Jim always watched me and offered words of wisdom, but never took the screwdriver out of my hands when we did things together}. I started unscrewing things, confident it would be quick. Nope. They had the damn thing soldered in. After hours of working to remove it, we finally decided to use the other serial port and disable the old one, which was not as easy as it sounds. And it's been a merry go round ever since. I just build my own now, but there is always some BS to deal with in the settings or drivers that don't work.

[Jimaz]

...In case of attack, everyone's supposed to tune to 640 or 1240 kHz for further instructions....

This was a really smart idea. Those old cold warriors really thought these things out.

I just heard a story on the radio that explained the rationale for not sounding emergency sirens during the recent Hawaiian fires. The main reason for the sirens there is to warn people of a tsunami so people can run uphill, away from the coast. That is exactly the wrong thing to do during a wildfire. So the sirens were left silent and the fires caught them off guard.

It's wiser to train people to associate sirens with an as yet unspecified emergency requiring them to seek more information, e.g., from radio, before acting.

[Ray1936]

Just back from a two week visit to MI from home here in LV. It was my experience that the whole tri-county area is under total re-construction.

That aside, the trip up north was nice.

[Lowell]

You got to see one of the greenest Augusts ever. It rains some just about every day.

[Ray1936]

You got to see one of the greenest Augusts ever. It rains some just about every day.

Yes....Tuesday early a.m. when we left New Hudson for the airport it absolutely poured all the way. Were it not for the drive, I'd of prolly enjoyed it greatly. I think we've had an inch here so far this year, but that hurry cane coming up the Baja will wet us a bit.

[Jimaz]

More likely they didn't know what a serial bus was

[jcole]

[Jimaz]

Here's a man bites dog story heard on NPR just now.

Global household wealth dipped in 2022, but so did inequality

Global household wealth — basically, total assets — declined in 2022. That’s according to a new report from UBS, the Swiss financial giant. At the same time, global wealth inequality also fell.

Global wealth data gives us a sense of where wealth is concentrated.

“The gaps are so enormous that for the same person having such different experiences in life is difficult to defend,” said Branko Milanovic, an economist at the City University of New York.

Part of what’s behind the narrowing wealth gap is China’s rapid economic growth over the last 15 years or so.

“And it was not solely China,” Milanovic said. “It was also India, Indonesia, Thailand — all the countries that are relatively poor that have grown very fast.”

But the biggest reason is global wealth’s decline. People at the top lost money in the stock market, noted Adam Hollowell at Duke’s Center on Social Equity.

“Financial assets in North America depreciated significantly in 2022,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that the material circumstances of the global poor have changed.”

The report says that after dipping in 2022, global household wealth is expected to rise nearly 40% over the next five years.

[Jimaz]

....I think we've had an inch here so far this year, but that hurry cane coming up the Baja will wet us a bit.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here but it's interesting. This video is from a couple days ago, before the hurricane {remnants?} hit Las Vegas. Apparently they're releasing water from some upstream reservoir to make room for yet more water from the hurricane? It's flowing through The Linq's parking structure and is intentional.

How Las Vegas is preparing for the worst of Hilary

[Jimaz]

Every time I see 5:55 appear on a digital clock display, I imagine a 555 timer chip therein mischievously displaying its own name because it's the sole chip that could cause that to happen.

Computer Chip Walking To Stayin' Alive Synced to Music

— Anthropomorphisms "Я" Us™

[Jimaz]

The Worst Invasive Species The U.S. Has Seen in 150 Years

The Spotted Lanternfly is considered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be the worst invasive species in the last 150 years. That's because they threaten products from wine to apples, lumber and craft beer. Industries that amount to $18 Billion in the state of Pennsylvania, alone. The flies are thought to have arrived from China on a shipment of landscaping stone, join [us] as we learn what's being done by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to stop their spread

• Invasive spotted lanternfly: See it. Squish it. Report it.

[Jimaz]

Farmington Hills Kroger goes from common parking lot to rave party due to haywire lights [VIDEO]

I think what's happening here is a feedback loop among multiple daylight sensors. If each sensor controls its own light, those lights can affect neighboring sensors which would misinterpret that artificial light as daylight. A chain of an odd number of sensors could cause them to chase each other around the "sparkling" lot!

They need to add some hysteresis.

[Jimaz]

...I've heard criticisms of big pharma doing similar things by tweaking drug molecules to keep them from going generic.

It's all about the Benjamins. Yea, greed!

FTC Announces MAJOR Legal Challenge To Big Pharma Patents

The FTC is going after pharmaceutical companies have been cooking the books to prevent much cheaper generic drugs being developed.

[Jimaz]

Ottawa Citizen: Police must return phones after 175 million passcode guesses, judge says

...The police seized the phones in October 2022 with a warrant obtained based on information about a Google account user uploading images of child pornography. The contents of the three phones were all protected by complex, alpha-numeric passcodes....

The problem, the judge was told, is that more than 44 nonillion potential passcodes exist for each phone.

To be more precise, the judge said, there are 44,012,666,865,176,569,775,543,212,890,625 potential alpha-numeric passcodes for each phone....

“The Crown is asking for an order to find a needle in a very large haystack,” [Ontario Superior Court Justice Ian Carter] said.

LOL! You'd think anyone in a cybersecurity field wouldn't need a judge to explain the futility of their quest.

Maybe they're just obsessive compulsive bit twiddlers and hoped no one would notice.

[Jimaz]

Since 1990, the American Dialect Society {ADS} has designated one or more words or terms to be the "Word of the Year" in the United States. This year the word is "Enshittification."

Brilliant. Thank you Cory Doctorow!

[13606Cedargrove]

The criticism of Google is spot on: Google's rush to research an AI search chatbot, "a tool that won't show you what you ask for, but rather, what it thinks you should see."

This ship has already sailed.

[Jimaz]

From The Department of Prehistoric Office Equipment:

Yesterday I stopped at the drive-up window at the bank. They had a sign posted that said "Due to high winds, put your paperwork under the rock."

What?! It's a bank bristling with technology and the best paperweight they can muster is a rock?!