Cooler. Breezy. Still damp though. Cool front for a couple of days then possibly warm. Not holding my breath. Yesterday started warm and humid, ended cool and breezy.
I spent the morning and early afternoon hanging new TVs at my client’s house. The new projector didn’t fit on the old mount so I have to work that out. It’s light enough that I can hang it by myself if I have to.
All the new TVs are spy devices. “Google TV”s. Don’t let them near a network. I’m a long time TiVo user, and they collected a lot of info, but only on watched shows. They never had mics listening. And I opted out of as much as I could. It’s truly 1984 when your TV is watching you back.
Spent the evening sorting and cleaning 16 pounds of ‘costume’ jewelry from Goodwill. Lots of nice vintage pieces and even a 925 silver ring, 8g worth. Whoohoo, $5 in silver. Since I paid pennies for that ring, it’s a pretty good return on investment. When you consider the ~$20 I paid for the whole 16 pounds, maybe not. But I didn’t buy it for the metal, I bought it for the vintage. I’ve got a shoebox of nice stuff in baggies headed to the local auction. I’ll bring her the shoebox of bracelets and of necklaces that I didn’t pull out. She’ll go through and see if anything needs to be featured in a single lot, and she’ll lot up a bunch of the rest too. Oh, and a Citizen men’s dress watch that will clean up nicely too. It’s late 70s, early 80s quartz, and has a decent looking band. There is still treasure to be found.
Plan for today, interview for PreCheck. Then client’s house. Working either network, or control, or just continuing with MY issues and video routing. There is plenty of stuff left to do.
——————————————————————————————–
Japan’s sneak attack on the US was probably one of the biggest military blunders in the history of really dumb blunders. Of course that’s looking at it from today. It might have made some kind of sense, the US was divided and demoralized, and disinclined to fight. The Japs thought we couldn’t rebuild the shipping because they couldn’t have. And our style of warfighting was very different from theirs and was hard for them to take seriously.
Lot of parallels to that today. Someone somewhere could be miscalculating at this very moment. The mad mullahs maybe… Just something to think about.
And one more reason to stack it high.
nick
I spent a few days at Pearl Harbor in the late 80's (BTW, Hawaii SUCKS if you don't have any money). The Arizona memorial was very well done. A quiet, thoughtful, and serene place. Definitely worth going to.
55F and 76%RH this am. No breeze.
Tired. Went to bed late despite my best intentions.
n
Fixed locations on each end should be easy to tweak to that level of performance. IIRC, 5G "borrows" from the 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi spectrums if needed.
Why install a Google TV if the intent is to keep it off of the network?
Brand name doesn't really matter with the flat screens from what I've seen. It isn't like the Trinitron tube days when the Sony logo really meant something different.
Sharp went bankrupt trying to make the case with Aquos (sp?) being special.
Americans are mostly polite. The rest of the world views that as a weakness to exploit.
I learned to be rude in grad school and when dealing with the Chinese relations. The last time Number One Son "boss" cousin came to town on business, he wasn't allowed into the house, and I quickly put the kibash on last year’s shakedown to help another cousin with taxes on their $2 million San Francisco house.
I said, “Tell Boss Uncle that I will send the money we arguably owe him on April 8.”
Taxes were due April 7.
Why install a Google TV if the intent is to keep it off of the network?
—they're ALL smart tvs of one flavor or another. (and my partner on this is a sony dealer.)
they have VERY pretty pictures.
n
I lived there for two years courtesy of Uncle Sam. That is very much a true statement. After two months I wanted out. I was stationed on a big rock and after I saw everything I was done. I do not like salt water. The beaches were crowded. The Hawaiians, especially the Somoans. were really racists. They did not like Haoles (white people) and made it obvious. Unless, of course, the Haole had money. Traffic was terrible.
I did enjoy that old Hawaiian man in the hills with a roadside stand selling pineapple spears. Spent hours talking with him. He would always cut me fresh spears of pineapple which was fantastic. Naturally I compensated him, generally more than was asked.
I traveled to a couple other islands. Even more tourist oriented than Oahu. Military people were much less welcome.
Wife and I made a trip to Hawaii in 1979 for a week. We were flying from San Antonio to Portland for a week, on to Los Angeles for a week, then back to San Antonio. It was cheaper to fly by a couple hundred dollars each to fly to Portland, then to Hawaii, Los Angeles and back to San Antonio. We stayed in friend's house who were back in the states during our visit. So a cheap visit.
My opinion did not change. Still a nice place to visit, but not to stay. Wife felt the same. I doubt we will ever go back unless it is a free trip.
Would it be effective to locate and cover microphones and cameras on these? On my laptops, from the beginning, I've always covered the camera and mic with alumium foil and the mic with a piece of letterpress leading.
Our old Sharp is still our main tv. They had a recall on the sound system several years after we bought it, and when we opted for the repair, they sent a team from Abilene to change it all out right here in our house. 170 miles round trip. I hope it lasts a long time, it is 17 years old now IIRC.
Here's something from my FEMA daily brief that I've not seen elsewhere.
IDK if you can get petroleum out of the well once it's in there.
n
Would it be effective to locate and cover microphones and cameras on these?
–couldn’t hurt, if you don’t use the features. When I was doing secret stuff for the .mil and .gov some integrators would have to physically open certain TVs and clip out the potential security issues. That’s probably overkill in a home setting. Just keep it off the ‘net. It’s gonna be surveilling your media consumption habits anyway.
(or if you are very network skilled, and have good hardware, there are probably ways to block the traffic.)
n
From the CDC newsletter.
The test pretty much has to be the instant test to get results back in time. What's the accuracy of the test? And is it available everywhere?
n
When we lived out there, I noticed that Alaska offered a lot of cheap flights to Hawaii from Portland, especially this time of year, which is meteorological "peak" Winter. I suspect it has something to do with air cargo.
Friends in Florida who like to visit Hawaii could never figure out how to get a discount flight to PDX, however, without spending the whole day crossing the US. Despite fairly stable but dreary weather, Portland is fairly isolated with regard to airline service.
An Amazon device without network access will make use of an Internet connection on a nearby Kindle or Alexa device to phone home unless you perform a ritual in the cloud-based setup of all of the hardware to deactivate connection sharing.
Given 5G depends on 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi bandwidth to supplement the cellular wireless data capability, I doubt any device with a transceiver capable of operating in those frequencies could be truly prevented from going online even with access to the home WiFi turned off.
When I took a test last month, CVS emailed a link to my results certificate in a couple of hours.
The experience struck me as Kabuki. I swabbed my sinuses myself, and the sample gathering/processing took place in the drugstore's general merchandise stock room. I don’t remember a barcode or QR on the results certificate so double checking would require manual intervention which no one is going to do.
Much like the TB skin test, I'm sure the error in the system trends towards the test being positive.
Of course, a positive TB skin test still means you have to stay home by law until cleared, subject to random checks by law enforcement.
I'll watch Storage Wars tonight on A&E for similar.
LOL! Everything we do or say or watch could be streamed on a billboard without harm to us. We're boring. The only reason I've always done this is the same reason I close our blinds turned upward instead of down, and pin the drapes in hotels: I don't like window-peepers!
That confirms my experience even with an older machine. On my Win10 Dell, I have the modem set to turn off when I close the machine, and to not connect automatically. At some update a while back, MS began ignoring these instructions, and keeping the modem active. Even when I actually turn the computer off, the next time I turn it on, it will connect to the WiFi automatically during the boot up. The only time it does not reconnect now is after it shuts itself down to complete an update.
My new phone has 5G and the coverage on Verizon is spotty here in Fulshear – but everyone has data problems out here as they really need a few new towers due to the growth.
That's probably an antigen test that will find an active infection. Results in 15-20 minutes. There are a couple of versions of it – one is a take home test, but not everyone will accept those tests for travel. For travel, most places require a supervised test where the sample is taken by a third party and tested OR you take the test at home over Zoom and someone watches you do the swab and test. (There is a rapid RNA test that is in limited use, somewhat more accurate than antigen tests.)
Analysis shows that the antigen tests have a higher false negative rate. Also, they recommend doing 2 tests, 3 days apart if you have symptoms. My local CVS has the take home test kits with 2 tests for $24.
Privacy. None, end of discussion.
However, two thoughts. We have two older DirecTV DVRs. The older one actually has an Ethernet port and an analog phone line port. I don’t know if the Ethernet port works because I only use the phone line port. The newer one also has a phone line port, but I don’t think it has Wi-Fi. Doesn’t matter because we have never bought any premium services that would require a transaction. The newer one always pops up a reminder to connect to the Internet when I do certain things in the menus. Annoying, but easily dismissed. Both of them do use the phone line. I can see that activity occasionally. If I pick up any phone, the connection immediately stops. We were once told that the phone connection is needed to keep track of software updates, and of course charges. Without the connection, the DVR supposedly will eventually shut down. Never happened here, as both have always been connected to the phone line.
As for Windows 10, I used to use a UPS for my desktop computers, and got in the habit of removing power from the computer when it is OFF or in hibernation. I still do that. I had trouble with Linux computers waking up from some external stimulus, so that was when I started removing power from computers that are OFF or hibernating. My wife’s Windows 10 notebook has a battery, and I have considered removing it daily, but that seems a bother. Besides, I have never caught it turning ON from hibernation. We use Hibernate (suspend to disk) a lot in our household. I like being able to resume where I left off in just a few seconds. I only restart Windows when an update requires it.
As for Windows 10 doing unwanted things related to updates, all this is controllable in settings. The Microsoft Knowledge Base is your friend; I found everything I need, with occasional help from other sites. Actually, the Settings are pretty much self-explanatory, but it is nice to read some of the additional details. I will add that I am paranoid: I always do updates while watching, as if I could do anything to intervene. I do let Windows automatically download updates, but only install some, such as the antivirus definitions, which are usually daily. After a couple of months of getting familiar, I have everything pretty automated, but I do set aside some time on Patch Tuesdays (usually the day after) to take everything down and install the downloaded updates. It goes pretty fast. Don’t forget, I have slow Internet. When I get a faster service, I will probably change a few ops.
That confirms my experience even with an older machine. On my Win10 Dell, I have the modem set to turn off when I close the machine, and to not connect automatically. At some update a while back, MS began ignoring these instructions, and keeping the modem active. Even when I actually turn the computer off, the next time I turn it on, it will connect to the WiFi automatically during the boot up. The only time it does not reconnect now is after it shuts itself down to complete an update.
Not sure I understand your setup, but here goes anyway.
ISTR you have DSL if so, you probably shouldn’t shut your “modem” (actually a gateway, but the term sticks, and is still somewhat accurate) off when not in use. Some gateways can take up to 24 hours to optimize the connection. That might not be the case any longer.
Perversely, I have a new Arris gateway that solved many of my DSL line quality problems, but I notice that the signal to noise ratio degrades after a month or two, and the speed drops a little. Restarting it restores everything to optimum.
I really wish I didn’t have to know so much about DSL to get it to work well. Some of the cause is old infrastructure, but some is the provider making wiring changes that affect DSL but not voice. That isn’t supposed to happen, but does.
Google fiber is being laid on Thousand Oaks in San Antonio. My subdivision is off of TO, but now info from Google when it will come into the neighborhood. Google claims 1G/1G but doesn't say if it is synchronous or guaranteed for around $100/mo.
Fixed locations on each end should be easy to tweak to that level of performance. IIRC, 5G "borrows" from the 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi spectrums if needed.
I suspect that the device that AT&T gives you just connects to the nearest AT&T cell tower.
Of course. They're not hiding that. I’m curious about how much unlicensed bandwidth is involved.
@JimB, thank you for the advice! I am probably not using the correct terms. We use WiFi for the laptops, so the actual DSL modem is always on. When I say "modem" in ref to the laptops, I am talking about the computer's in-machine modem connecting to our home WiFi.
Our DSL modem (the one that gives us WiFi for the whole house) sometimes has to be cycled or rebooted by turning it off and the old "turn off power, unplug the computer line, disconnect the phone line, wait 3 minutes, then reconnect the lines and turn power on". We don't do that unless the lights turn red or if it isn't working.
The other sneaky little thing Frontier does when they are having problems is to prevent the DSL from connecting to any place other than Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix, and sometimes email. That effectively hides an outage from 90% of the people using it. They really really really don’t like to admit they are down.
Frontier is the old GTE minus whatever Bell Atlantic didn't want in the acquisition — essentially everything except UUNet and the long distance franchise. Since then, it has become a telecom dumping ground which now includes SNET, another property once owned by one of my industry employers.
I was one of the few GTE employees that voted my stock shares against the "merger of equals".
Just be glad you aren't in SNET. 10-15 years ago, the Death Star was determined not to deploy fiber so the infrastructure upgrade in progress in CT was halted and even reversed to the old (mostly) overhead line system.
Hilarity ensued. AT&T got lucky in that they broke the union in 2009 or that strike would have been very long and very ugly.
AT&T did deploy fiber in Texas … after the state sold its regulatory soul.
Try a small UPS on the DSL modem, like the one APC sells at Sam's for … $60 (?). Chances are that your power isn't as stable as you think, and the broadband modems are very sensitive to disruptions, no matter how small.
A UPS on our cable modem, router, and main switch stopped the weird outages issues we would have in the Summer which required restarting the combination in a particular sequence.
>> The experience struck me as Kabuki. I swabbed my sinuses myself, and the sample gathering/processing took place in the drugstore's general merchandise stock room.
At our CVS you do the swab at the pharmacy drive-thru (unsupervised) and drop the envelope into the lab dropbox. Backs up the line when trying to pick up an Rx.
Our CVS has also cut their pharmacy hours, and probably staff accordingly, and now you have to chase them by phone otherwise the normal wait time can be over a week.
And the Walgreens across from the salad to go place has closed their pharmacy on weekends. Maybe some of this is business Amazon is taking?
>> Lot of parallels to that today. Someone somewhere could be miscalculating at this very moment.
Uncle Joe had a Zoom call today with Putin, presumably telling Putin he'll have to stay late for detention if he invades Ukraine.
Not much that could go wrong there…right??
Take that Tony…
https://bigthink.com/the-future/spinlaunch-company-hurls-satellites-into-space-using-giant-spinning-machine/
If you're in Florida, Publix is probably more of a factor than Amazon. Publix probably picked up a lot of Eckerd management out of Clearwater when JC Penney gave up on the drugstores after realizing they couldn’t fix the IT infrastructure.
Plus, CVS has been very aggressive with mail order.
IDK if you can get petroleum out of the well once it's in there.
Continuous loop filtration using one to hundreds of wells. Very expensive and very time consuming. Can take years, usually decades. Samples from wells must be submitted to the EPA monthly using an approved laboratory for decades.
There was a dry cleaner in the west side of Houston who decided not to dispose of the dry cleaning fluid properly. They just poured it on the ground behind the shop for 30 or 40 years after WWII. Contaminated the groundwater for three blocks in every direction. The powers that be discovered the contamination while drilling sample wells for the Beltway 8 tollway piers crossing Buffalo Bayou. The dry cleaner promptly went bankrupt. The tollway installed the wells and filtration system at their expense so they could build the tollway bridge over Buffalo Bayou. A lot of the houses in the area west of the new tollway had septic systems, those had to be plugged and replaced with a city septic system. Big mess.
Every industrial site (power plant, refinery, chemical plant, manufacturing plant, etc) from before the 1970s is probably a future superfund site. These sites used to pour waste oil and other chemicals in the nearest hole in the ground. You will notice that any refinery shutting down (around ten refineries in the last three years) are converting to distilled products (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc) tank storage. They dare not let the site go, the EPA will swarm it.
My new phone has 5G and the coverage on Verizon is spotty here in Fulshear – but everyone has data problems out here as they really need a few new towers due to the growth.
Bunch of cheap so and so's. Verizon offered me $1,100/month for a 30 year contract to put a quarter acre cell phone tower and pad on my five acre property about five or six years ago. The rate of increase was 2% a year. I eventually told them to stuff it. The tower was going to cost them almost million dollars and they were going to sublet space to all the other vendors. The other vendors were going to make the tower zero cost for them.
>> If you're in Florida
Used to be. Back then our CVS had a 24 x 7 pharmacy so they were pretty good with keeping up to date on filling scripts. More than once an Rx was ready (notified by text) while I was on the way home from seeing the doctor.
CVS is easiest since my Rx plan is through Caremark.
Google fiber is being laid on Thousand Oaks in San Antonio. My subdivision is off of TO, but now info from Google when it will come into the neighborhood. Google claims 1G/1G but doesn't say if it is synchronous or guaranteed for around $100/mo.
Guaranteed starts at $450/month for 10/10 mbps on fiber. 1G/1G is about $1,400/month. Plus a five year contract.
I've been talking to AT&T about connecting to their fiber on my property for six or seven years now.
Guaranteed is commercial and monitored. Residential is neither.
Try a small UPS on the DSL modem, like the one APC sells at Sam's for … $60 (?). Chances are that your power isn't as stable as you think, and the broadband modems are very sensitive to disruptions, no matter how small.
A UPS on our cable modem, router, and main switch stopped the weird outages issues we would have in the Summer which required restarting the combination in a particular sequence.
Yup, a UPS stops my DSL and cable modem problems.
"Fury as transgender UPenn swimmer, 22, who used to compete as a man smashes TWO US women's records in weekend competition and finishes one race 38 seconds ahead of her nearest rival"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10282301/Transgender-UPenn-swimmer-Lia-Thomas-smashes-records-weekend-meets-14-SECONDS-ahead-rival.html
I wonder how long are we going to allow this crap to go on ?
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
The other sneaky little thing Frontier does when they are having problems is to prevent the DSL from connecting to any place other than Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix, and sometimes email. That effectively hides an outage from 90% of the people using it. They really really really don’t like to admit they are down.
I never heard of that, and it is a problem upstream of the CO (central office.) I have never experienced it. I am talking about a complete loss of service.
In my case, it is almost always a broken wire or “bridge tap.” The broken wire causes no DSL and no voice. A bridge tap is another unused line connected somewhere between my house and the central office. This forms a stub that attenuates the DSL RF signal and weakens an already weak signal at my house. The result could be no Internet or frequent loss of sync, with greatly reduced speeds. It requires an outside line tech to test the line at multiple points and find and remove the tap. Before DSL, phone lines had many such connections, which made it easy to get a line to the CO to install new service. Today, all DSL lines are specially identified so there is no excuse, but old ways die hard. Out here, we have very few DSL qualified techs. Sometimes the pair between my house and the CO is switched, and I will get degraded performance.
Frontier has actually been more responsive than Verizon, our former telco, but they inherited a mess with decaying infrastructure and poor documentation. They also don’t have the money Verizon did. I will bet that my service calls over the 20 years have cost more than what I paid for my service.
There is hope. There is a new fixed base point to point wireless service that might be able to serve me. They need to do an assessment at my site, and I am too busy to let them. It will be some time in the new year. They offer 100 Mb/s symmetrical for a modest cost.
There is hope. There is a new fixed base point to point wireless service that might be able to serve me. They need to do an assessment at my site, and I am too busy to let them. It will be some time in the new year. They offer 100 Mb/s symmetrical for a modest cost.
AT&T just quoted that to me for my office to replace my two DSL lines. I am talking to them. No long term contract either, month to month. $225/month for 100/100 mbps.
@Greg, Thank you for the advice! I will put one on the list to buy.
If you have ever noticed the lights in your house blinking a bit when the a/c turns on, yeah, get a small UPS for the cable modem and etc stuff.
It cures a lot of weirdness.
Will they do a trial run of at least 90 days with both in place so you can compare?
Get rid of the copper and it will be nearly impossible to get the service back.
From the Google Fiber page:
In San Antonio, our 1 Gig plan costs $70/month*. Our 2 Gig plan costs $100/month*. You can add home phone service for an additional $10* a month.
*plus applicable taxes and fees
Another loss for plugs:
For those keeping score at home, President Biden is now ‘0 for 3’ on vaccine mandates
If plugs can't mandate federal contractors to vaccinate, does that mean he can't mandate masks on planes?
Like any other island, only more so. But it isn't. or wasn't, all bad. I spent a couple of days there in 1967 while we loaded supplies, etc., and our Coast Guard ship transferred to Navy control. I had not a cent in my pocket as I left it all with my wife because I couldn't make as large an allotment as I would have liked. But I did have liberty I so went on a walk through parts of Pearl Harbor, saw the Arizona memorial from across the way and so forth. During my stroll I was approached by a relatively unkempt fellow looking for money and spent the time as we walked along to explain to him that I simply didn't have any money regardless of any inclination to help him. It took about three blocks of walking to convince him. Then to my surprise it took another three blocks of so to convince him that even so, it was not necessary for him to contribute any of what he did have to me, as I had a place to sleep, food to eat, and would have money as well when I next got paid. A memorable experience for a young man on his first real excursion outside of California.
My ISP is "having a sale" of sorts. There have been at least three versions. I bit on today's offer.
So. Pay with Zelle. They save merchant fees. I lose out on the Cash Back on the credit card. Whoop, 1.5% of $92.12 isn't enough for large fries at Whataburger.
Pre-pay for 3 months and you get half a month credit. Pre-pay for 6 months and you get a full month credit. Pre-pay for 12 months and get 2 months extra.
And then the "what I did" deal. Pre-pay TODAY via Zelle and get double credit.
Yeah, cough up for 12 months and get 4 months credit.
Duh. I'm going to pay anyway. My risk is that the ISP might go out of business. I think they are solid.
Oh and double your plan speed through the end of January.
So I'm maybe getting 60 down and 20 up for a couple of months. My current plan is 30/10 and with all of the trees I'm hitting 25/4 depending on the weather and time of day at the speed test sites. Works fine, solid and stable connection. Over the air TV buffers a lot more than the Roku (which is zero). I have no complaints.
I'm paid up through March 2023.
I'm crabby enough to think that if they have a rate increase, my credit will be used up before March 2023. But a deal is a deal…
WRT to courts shutting down plug's mandates, remember how evil they said tRump was for his executive orders?
The drill team at the high school has a male on the squad this year.
Shorts, no skirt, but he does have to wear the boots.
If you have a cool next door neighbor what's to stop you from splitting the price? Some PVC going from garage to garage buried a few inches deep and with a run of Ethernet.
Or just share your wi-fi. A Unifi can go at least 100 feet.
Unlike PayPal or a standard credit card, the kewl kidz payment services like Zelle don't offer chargebacks.
Paying your ISP is safe, but be careful where else you use the service.
We dodged another commie bullet:
‘Bye bye, comrade’: President Biden has accepted Saule Omarova’s request to withdraw her nomination
Can't believe he put her up in the first place. I guess plugs doesn't vet his nominees.
Yep. Frost had a couple of click through warnings to the effect that "if you approve this, the money is gone".
I'm so old that I remember "Anything you can do, I can do better."
No. The Feds can still mandate masks on planes. In the terminal outside the TSA checkpoint is debatable, however, but half the country remains cowed/afraid so compliance is recommended if you don’t want to miss your flight arguing the point.
The lesbians who run the TSA in Portland used to run “Halt” drills in the terminal where they had no jurisdiction … like they were practicing for something.
Things that make you say “Hmmm…”
I'm using EE in the UK for landline phone and broadband. For £35.36 a month, I get "up to 76Mbit down" VDSL with no usage cap, phone line rental, and free off-peak voice minutes.
Cell service is from Vodafone, unlimited voice minutes and texts, and 20GB/month data, for £18.90 per month. I could probably save money on both of those, but they're very affordable to me, and "If it ain't broke…"
I have a UPS on my (3rd party) VDSL router, even though utility power is stable here in West London.
G.
Which reminds me, I should do a firmware update on the VDSL router, a Draytek 2860n+. I last did that a year or more ago, and there have been several releases since.
G.
@paul:
There's probably a clause in the T's and C's that says "No". Although how they'd prove it is beyond me.
G.
Sharing with your neighbor means assuming the risk that might be into kiddie porn or something else illegal.
Exactly.
Is “I’m too stupid to lock down my wi-fi” a defense? Why not? I assume you can do the kiddie porn and whatever just as easily at some random McDonalds.
"Microsoft Confirms It Will Update Windows 11 Before October 2022"
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/259902/microsoft-confirms-it-will-update-windows-11-before-october-2022
"Microsoft has explicitly confirmed that it will not wait for the next major version of Windows 11 to fix the many problems with this OS."
Really makes me want to hit that little button on my taskbar to update my PC to Winders 11.
Not.
Venmo has the same issue.
My wife uses Venmo to pay our daughter's violin tutor in advance, who currently operates from Amsterdam after his wife's job offered her the overseas opportunity.
I'm not really thrilled with the arrangement, but it is $100/month so I'm not going to sweat it too much.
Just register as a Democrat and you'll never be charged.
@lynn:
But they won't fix one of the major problems (to me) – telemetry. Or the basic beta nature of the software, and the way it dramatically changes every 6 months.
As far as I'm concerned, Windows peaked at XP (with Luna disabled in favour of Classic, which was Win2K-alike) Win 7 is tolerable, with Aero off, and the best approximation to Classic enabled.
I don't want TIFKAM, or the butchered version of it that passes for a UI in Win10 or 11. I have to support one Win10 machine, for my wife's cousin, and that's one too many.
G.
I've written before about one of my Col. Bat Guano neighbors who was one of the Pentagon's leading Korea experts during the Obama years. He got caught harassing another neighbor's wife via email through pen tracing — no warrant necessary — and the DoD spirited him out of the country overnight as soon as the arrest warrant was issued.
Eventually, he did get caught during an attempt to reenter the country through a tiny airport in Virginia, but the case never went to court and the arrest record was sealed.
Unfortunately for my neighbor, the Interwebs didn't get the memo.
https://arrestfacts.com/Glen-Nagy-020V43
Should have mentioned that "up to 76Mbit down" is actually high-50s in fact, which is more than enough for me.
G.
Paul+Hampson, what a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing it. Especially nice to hear today, on Pearl Harbor day.
That is great! My little sort-of-granddaughter takes piano lessons over the internet. She is 7, and it is remarkable how effective the lessons are. She plays very well for her age. She likes it and is willing to practice every day, which makes the difference. But I am impressed that quality instruction can be done without any need for in person coaching, at least at this stage!
A law that needs to be changed:
Civil asset forfeiture trends after police dog praised for finding $100,000 cash in passenger’s luggage
Bye, bye cash. Good luck getting it back. It's probably drug money, right?
>> Unlike PayPal or a standard credit card, the kewl kidz payment services like Zelle don't offer chargebacks.
Paying your ISP is safe, but be careful where else you use the service.
The best thing you can do if you want to use Zelle or Venmo is to open a separate checking account at a different bank and only use that account for paying people with a cash app and only deposit/transfer in the amount you're paying. You still leave yourself at risk of sending money to a fraudster but if your primary checking account is hacked and money is stolen via a cash app you'll have a really difficult time getting that money back. Remember, banks are not your friend.
Be aware that there are lots of text-message scams related to Zelle. You get a message similar to ‘we noticed a charge on your account – call/text is not correct’. If you call/text, you’ll get the scammer that will ask you to enter a ‘verify code’ number to verify your account.
That results in the scammer resetting your email on your account (because they are doing a ‘lost password’ thing, and need the verification code). And shortly after that, your account is drained.
You are protected against this, but it’s a big hassle to contact your bank and do the ‘fraud’ thing to recover your funds.See https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/11/the-zelle-fraud-scam-how-it-works-how-to-fight-back/ for details on this scam.
"Elon Musk says ‘civilization is going to crumble’ if people don’t have more children"
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/07/elon-musk-civilization-will-crumble-if-we-dont-have-more-children.html
"The tech billionaire said low and rapidly declining birth rates are “one of the biggest risks to civilization.”
His comments come as a growing number of people are deciding not to have children, citing concerns such as climate change and inequality.
Musk added that too many “good, smart people” think there are too many people in the world and that the population is growing out of control."
Musk is not wrong. USA 2030 is going to be a way different place than USA 2020.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
What would we do without Zoom?
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/Better-mortgage-firm-has-mass-layoff-Zoom-16673576.php
Build it and they will come…
Guess the two Govs need to be educated about "induced traffic demand."
ITD
Cue the first 10 minutes of "Idiocracy". B)
Some of you know but some probably don't that I've been posting for a decade at Daily Pundit and for a couple weeks at Cold Fury. You can immerse yourself in the Wisdom of SteveF and bring traffic their way by clicking here and here. I'm sure "wisdom" is the word, along with "humor" and "gentility".
The long-form essay I'm currently working on mentions population trends and eugenics, as part of a broader discussion of unpopular ideas.
Sell the median to a private company for reversible tolled express lanes like Virginia did with pieces of I-95 near DC.
Life imitates "Back to the Future Part II".
I never met anyone from my last job in person.
—yeah sure… whenever I hear that, I hear echos of early pc ads citing 'organizing your recipes' as a good use for the shiny new computer. WHICH experiments? What ground breaking idea is being held up by not having access to micro gravity? Is there a list? It's always seeds and fire…
n
(from the article on flinging stuff part of the way toward space…)
@Nick
re: USN contaminating water in Hawaii
I happened to stop at PBS during the News Hour, and they had footage from a meeting at the Navy base, and interviewed the head guy (also chief engineer) at the Honolulu water department.
USN has 93,000 in dependent housing. A week went by after the initial report. People were talking about their kids screaming after they bathed. One woman in tears about having to put a dog down. Affected well provides 24% of the water. They can flush the system but it takes a week.
Honolulu shut down their closest well ahead of any problems. They've been pleading for action since 2014. 250 million gallons of petroleum products in 20 tanks sitting over the aquifer.
Maybe time for someone to get off their dead ash and prioritize real problems in the Navy.
https://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2021/11/what-to-make-of-eric-zemmour
"a scourge from immigration"
yup, got that too
sumovem in congress
Turns out my truck has an HD radio, and several stations here have additional programming available on sub-channels. Often that programming is completely different from the main station's programming.
I was listening to the alternate of our local country station, and they were themed as "Red Dirt Country" or "Texas Country". Whatever that means, a song caught me ear and really drove home why the left and the gun grabbers won't every understand a very large chunk of the population.
Song is I Got the Guns, by Roger Creager.
For some people, beyond 'freedom' or self defense, beyond hunting for fun or food, beyond BFYTW, guns are a treasured link to their departed loved ones.
"once owned by my nana and pawpaw, now they're mine…"
"well I don't have the memories that I can hold on to, I keep hangin' on to his old guns…"
[when his grandma passed, sister got her earrings, but ] "me, I was eight years old– and I got the guns…"
"the great depression only made him stronger.. .. … and showed us how to overcome, and I can feel his strength when I hold his gun…"
Yeah, door to door confiscation. I'm sure that will work.
n
Line in the sand.
Turns out my truck has an HD radio, and several stations here have additional programming available on sub-channels. Often that programming is completely different from the main station's programming.
I was listening to the alternate of our local country station, and they were themed as "Red Dirt Country" or "Texas Country". Whatever that means, a song caught me ear and really drove home why the left and the gun grabbers won't every understand a very large chunk of the population.
Song is I Got the Guns, by Roger Creager.
For some people, beyond 'freedom' or self defense, beyond hunting for fun or food, beyond BFYTW, guns are a treasured link to their departed loved ones.
"once owned by my nana and pawpaw, now they're mine…"
"well I don't have the memories that I can hold on to, I keep hangin' on to his old guns…"
[when his grandma passed, sister got her earrings, but ] "me, I was eight years old– and I got the guns…"
"the great depression only made him stronger.. .. … and showed us how to overcome, and I can feel his strength when I hold his gun…"
Yeah, door to door confiscation. I'm sure that will work.
I wonder if Everclear would make a great Molotov Cocktail ?
"Everclear" by Roger Creager
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t__SVLJdlYo
I'll never drink that stuff ever again.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10285587/Growth-use-home-tests-leading-cases-going-unreported.html
–people treating their health status as a private matter makes it harder on .gov.
Awww.
n
Did I mention that our SCHOOL DISTRICT support foundation has a shooting event as a fundraiser? Pretty sure I did at some point. Sporting Clays tournament as a matter of fact. Three gun might be more exciting, but how big could the audience be anyway?
n
"Sporting clays". Bah. Skeet Golf is what you want for a real excitin' sport. If the shooter on your team can take the other team's ball out of the air, you win that hole.
Misremembering Pearl Harbor
The tactically brilliant but strategically crazy attack on Pearl Harbor unleashed incalculable furor against a once sophisticated Japanese empire, which foolishly attacked the United States at peace. By Victor Davis Hanson December 5, 2021
https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/05/misremembering-pearl-harbor/
Maybe Joe got TPTB to change the definition of "transient" in all the dictionaries…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-inflation-falling-unemployment-prompted-powells-fed-pivot-11638786601?mod=hp_lead_pos2
trust me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AfEhjBsKEA&t=104s