TIL: The reason I don’t have a cellular radio in my laptop is that Qualcomm bases its supposedly FRAND prices on the cost of the device their radios are put into, not the cost of the chip. Qualcomm get more for an iPhone 7 ($1000) than an iPhone SE ($500), and would get much, much […]
For years, decades, we’ve had only individual stories of cops shooting people. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Just go look. Then one reporter decided to tabulate statistics. Get numbers. Collate data. Then what did RadioLab do? Did they analyze the data, get more data, make plots, do correlations, etc.? Any of the usual data analysis techniques […]
Anytime I read a post in a tech blog (looking at you, /.) that talks about mining He-3 [1] or telescopes [2] <Vincent Price voice>on the moon</Vincent Price voice>, I know I’m dealing with an idiot and I can stop paying attention. I was sitting on a ski lift listening to the other people talk […]
The so-called liberal MSM [1] hires another conservative from the WSJ to write op-eds. His greatest hit? Stop hitting yourself! Reason #423 in a list of thousands why the NYT will never receive another dime from me… [1] There is no such thing of course. All the Sunday newsprograms are dominated by conservatives, all the […]
While some decisions make some sort of sense, these are a bit crazy-making: The power brick doesn’t come with the Appropriate Cable to charge the device. Despite all the posturing about USB-C being the all-singing, all-dancing wave of the future get-on-the-train-now (cough firewire thunderbolt cough), the Appropriate Cable isn’t really USB-C and can’t be used […]
TIL autocorrect will change the entirely correct “pin number” (referring to which pin on a connector to which a particular wire goes) to the entirely incorrect and redundant “PIN number”. Every time. Five minutes later, autocorrect was disabled. Here might be the place to note that My Benevolent Employer’s new OS imaging and MDM policy […]
I might have been in my fourth decade before I figured out that I had been taught to tie my shoes incorrectly. Pro-tip: It’s a square knot, not a granny knot. It’s still a bit of a mental catch to tie the laces correctly, even though I’ve been doing it right for all of this […]
About a year ago, while I was gallivanting around, and paying someone about three times too much to stay at my house and dogsit while they were renting their place out via AirBNB, my thermostat failed. In December. The day after Xmas. Now this isn’t Buffalo. It’s not life-threatening. But having spent a cold winter […]
I have to give Apple credit for one thing in iOS 10 – they finally made the Maps “End” button bigger than one pixel, to either see, or hit. They still haven’t figured out how to tell Siri to pronounce “LAX”, or the interchange between the 5/10 to get to the east side of DTLA […]
As a huge Apple fanboi, I’ll be ordering a new MBP as soon as they are available from my workplace (they have to go through their stupid “verification” process first, even though it’s the same OS as currently available, and it’s not like they’re going to say no to the 2500 of us who have […]
I do not understand why I can’t watch regular Netflix when overseas. I am still a US citizen, paying with a US account. It’s not as though I am going to go to a German sports bar and show episodes of Archer (“So you’re saying Germany is the Alabama of Europe?”) on all the screens […]
Once again, the drive back from Utah provokes thoughts about driving and human behavior. In Utah, with the closest thing to a German autobahn no-speed-limit experience that you’re likely to get in the US (80 mph limits, meaning 90 mph traffic [0]), people are polite, move over, and largely don’t park in the left hand […]
I can’t decide if we’ve either reached peak story, or peak podcast, when I hear the same guy telling the same story that I already heard on TAL, Snap Judgement, the Moth, TED, and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. Are we really out of new stories to tell, and new people to tell them? Yes, […]
Apple implemented a new feature which derives an “album rating” from the ratings that you give individual songs. However, they did this in the most brain dead way possible – if you rate any song with any stars, the whole album gets that rating. Then any playlist based on ratings will have the whole album […]
Tagged apple, iTunes, rant
40 hours
“A fracture occurred” is how the powerpoint read. Meaning that working alone on a Sunday afternoon, the contractor broke the glass, leading to another check for $500k to the contractor – cost-plus, don’t you know. Proof again, that will be totally ignored, that working more hours doesn’t save you money – it costs you money. […]
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