This program has the stink of regulatory capture.

I pay $25/month for 50 Mbits Internet without any discount. That's $5 less than the "discount" the ISPs are milking out of the FCC. I live in a small town suburb so it's not like I have a lot of ISPs competing for my money.

Don't forget your power supply. The video shows 300W at 6 ghz.

Great for heating your room in the winter.

In a dictatorship you would be right.

But in a capitalist society, some of the technically literate will realize there's an opportunity by selling specialized firewalls for TVs. The choices will proliferate for awhile until a few clear winner emerge and their inventors will make a nice sum of money selling to the technically illiterate.

One of the virtues of capitalism is it decentralizes power - an effect dictatorships abhor.

Just try to say no. Adobe screws you anyway.

I used to use an Adobe Acrobat utility, Distiller, to produce pdfs for my class. It was part of a series of tools that I had cobbled together over the years to generate individualized documents for each student.

Every few months or so, my workflow would go sideways. 99 out of 100 times, it was Adobe's fault. They'd update distiller, without my permission, and screw up the settings.

They pulled that stunt once too often last Spring. Exasperated, I finally sat down and learned how to get the same result using Python. I was so happy to purge Adobe Acrobat from my computer.

Hello, my name is jmichael and I've been clean for 185 days.

I think TSMC may have averted an invasion by warning China that mere possession of their physical plant wouldn't be sufficient to continue operations. TSMC tweeted that they rely on a global supply chain to make chips. Invade Taiwan and away goes that supply chain. Moreover, if TSMC's equipment is damaged beyond repair during an invasion, it would be years before the equipment was replaced, if at all.

The U.S. has repeatedly said it would support reunification with the caveat it was a peaceful process that Taiwan agreed to. China screwed up when they didn't honor their commitment to allow Hong Kong to self rule after Britain left. They promised a One Country - Two Systems approach which they reneged on when Britain left. Reneging on Hong Kong warned the Taiwanese they wouldn't fare any better after reunification.

A path forward would entail restoring self rule to Hong Kong. Leave Hong Kong alone and Taiwan wouldn't be as reluctant to join the mainland. If China was smart, China could end up becoming the United States of Asia by letting other countries maintain their democratically elected governments and joining China like the Territories joined the United States. The word "States" in "United States" means self rule for each region subject to the powers reserved to the Federal government.

    For that to happen, China would need a new Deng Xiaopeng to replace Xi Jinping. China's huge strides forward were due to Deng allowing private ownership, a huge break from Mao's legacy. Hopefully the Chinese recognize that before WWIII breaks out.

Nothing serious, just a fun read despite Scalzi injecting his political bias. Scalzi and I don't share political outlooks but nonetheless, he is a gifted storyteller.

The story weaves together several popular sci fi tropes into a single arc.

FWIW, I had no idea what a Kaiju was until yesterday.

Recommended.

Musk said the current generation of Starlink isn't sustainable economically and that they need Starship to loft the next generation of satellites to make it sustainable.

If Starship works, I think you're right, Starlink will own the market until competing launch providers master reusability.

If Starship fails, it remains to be seen who is still around in a few years.

A friend at work is dealing with cancer. A little over a year ago, he started receiving a stem cell treatment that put the cancer into remission.

He asked his oncologist if he was cured and the doctor responded, "let's take it 6 months at a time."

Unfortunately he just found out the stem cell therapy has quit working. But still, he's had a year of living in remission that he otherwise may not have had.

I don't doubt we'll eventually beat cancer but it's going to take a lot of small steps to get there.

Stephen Hawking said that figuring out whether electrons and quarks were point particles or had structure, i.e., where hadrons, would require an accelerator the size of the solar system.

He wasn't confident the machine would be built in his lifetime.

Warren isn't greedy enough. Our local sewer utility is privately owned and the California Public Utility Commission guarantees them a 22% return. As you might imagine, our sewer bills are north of $150/month as a result.

California has gone from the land of opportunity to the land of graft. The middle class is the chump that suffers the cost.

Remember that for a study's findings to be considered true, the study should be replicated by a different group.

That's especially true in medical studies as both Amgen and Bayer independently found that more than half of their internal research was not reproducible. Those two studies woke a lot of folks up to the fact that scientists are humans and make mistakes just like everyone else.

tl;dr Skepticism is warranted until study is replicated.

The alert won't do you much good if your phone blocks notifications when you're asleep or focusing on work.

Fortunately you can tell your iPhone to let Shake Alert notify you at any time by enabling "Critical Alert" in the app's notifications settings pane.

I've only had the alert go off once so far. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it turned out to be over blown as the triggering quake was a mag 4 quite some distance from me so the very mild shaking lasted less than a second.

Prior to going online, I'd read a newspaper every morning. It's been more than 20 years since I last held a paper.

Newspapers used to be funded by classified and display ads. Craigslist offered far better terms and reach which destroyed classified revenues. Display ads were disrupted by Google's adwords. Google's adwords also told advertiser which ads worked and which didn't meaning advertisers could spend more effectively.

The bottom line was newspapers were unable to compete so they've turned to lawsuits as a possible source of income.

Notice the papers aren't confident enough in their claims to actually pay the lawyers beforehand. The lawyers and papers are gambling that some random 12 people will be dumb enough to believe their claims.

A story that circulated in the industry back in the day involved how Centipede got its color palette.

  Dona Bailey, the lead developer, wanted a different look than what the standard Atari hardware was offering her. A tech was mucking around inside a cabinet when he bumped a circuit. She said "That's it! Stop!" when she saw the effect it had on screen. The tech pulled his head out of the cabinet and saw the saturated colors and wondered if she was sure that's what she wanted. To his eye, the colors looked awful. It was and that's how the original Centipede color palette was chosen. By a tech's accident and a developer's eye.

Rob Fulop, another Atari developer who wrote several VCS titles, would have called that event a "Lucky Bug." A lot of the games at the time had features added because a mistake led to a desirable effect.

Just Google "Death Valley Record" and you'll see a reference to a 1913 record of 134 degrees.

Some will question the data which is fine. However, be aware that the 134 degrees reading may have been high or it may have been low.

Moreover, lot of other data from the 20th century was suspect. Data from the old Soviet Union was suspect because heating fuel was allocated to areas based on need as measured by temperature. Since the locals were reporting temperatures, they had an incentive to report colder temps in order to get more fuel.

All this 130 degree number is a record for this century. Alarmist will claim otherwise.