In September, I was invited to participate in “Birdwatch,” now known as “Twitter Community Notes.” The concept is a misleading tweet can be annotated with additional information or context by the community. For example, consider this headline: Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd holds press conference after agency says it seized enough fentanyl to kill 2.7 million people. WFLA, October 21, […]
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Is (New Technology) is Killing (My Hobby)?
<tl;dr> Betteridge’s law of headlines applies, “No.” </tl;dr> In the ham radio communities, a rash of posts are going around about how FT8 / the Internet / Millenials / Nobel-prize physicists are destroying amateur radio: K0NR’s Is the Internet destroying amateur radio? N0SSC’s Millennials are killing ham radio PE4BAS’ Is FT-8 damaging amateur radio? NZ0T’s Did Joe Taylor K1JT Destroy Amateur Radio? KB6NU Is the […]
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The Mintern
In retrospect, there were signs that The Intern might not work out: The child of a friend of the family of a Senior Executive … touted as an upperclassman from a well-known engineering school, but was just starting a search for an internship in mid-June … hasn’t been vetted or spoken with the hiring manager, but was slated to start Tuesday. The IT folks love […]
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Windows Update
Another, big batch (27) of security patches landed on my Windows 7 desktop. Since I’m likely to be running long, data-intensive jobs, I have it not apply them right away. Sensing this large group would necessitate a reboot, I avoided installation until lunch time today. The philosophy is simple: computing should not be about constantly applying software patches. One of […]
Continue readingFraud alert
Dear Valued Customer: Blah blah blah our employee’s laptop computer stolen blah blah blah your personal information may have been compromised. Sincerely, Company That Never Explained Why My Personal Information Was On Their Laptop In The First Place Um, Thanks. And argh. I found a really helpful overview from the government . In summary: You have the right to ask […]
Continue readingThere’s Water at the Bottom of the Ocean
Brian posted an article about Splenda. Not Scout’s bike Splenda, but the chemical sweetener in the yellow packets. The website he referenced cites a couple of sources, including a Sugar Industry Sponsored Web Site. As I wrote on Brian’s bog, when I read these things on the web, one of my first questions is about the motivation of the entity […]
Continue readingTime to go home
You know it’s going to be a bad day when the first email you have to send out is something like this: I hate to have to send out a note like this, but Dave tagged me with being this month’s Kitchen Etiquette Czar. Will whomever is taking out the one item out of the dishwasher, leaving it in an […]
Continue readingWhy I Hate Air Travel: O’Hell Airport
Because I have to vent…
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