Category: General

Monday Links

December 18, 2023 / / 0 Comments

This one is going to be a bit tech heavy. Just how the stories came across my feeds.

First, of course, are a couple of Reason links.

With all the brouhaha over Florida punishing Disney by taking away their special district, this infographic is a good reminder that Disney wasn’t the only one receiving special treatment.

Over the Volokh Conspiracy, an article on the large gap on how the generations view the Israel-Hamas War.

In that same vein, we have an opinion piece from the Times of Israel called Dear World: I Don’t Care.

Here’s a couple of Ground News aggregations.

Homelessness rose to its highest levels. The housing shortage is certainly a factor, in addition to the normal causes.

There’s a growing schism in the United Methodist Church. I have some interest in this as I grew up in a UMC.

Let’s do some gun stuff.

Tam has an article on the state of red dots. At some point, I’ll have probably have to jump on the bandwagon and add one to my carry pieces.

If you have a Taurus GX4. there’s a recall notice.

Now on to tech news. I have a couple articles from a new source – 404 Media.

Polish white-hats are being sued for bypassing a train manufacturer’s attempt to force repairs to their authorized sources. I am fine with manufacturer’s saying that if you repair your stuff or take it to an independent place, that it will void the warranty. I do not support manufacturers actively stopping repairs.

A marketing company is saying it can use what your smart devices “hear” to do targeted advertising. I’m not sure if this is hype or actual, but the fact that someone is claiming they can, means that they will try to do so.

Wired has a look at Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit.

WaPo discusses recent widespread cyber intrusions linked to Chinese PLA hackers.

And finally from Ars Technica, an article about how some cats like to play fetch. The Brother sent this last one over for consideration.

Derek’s Apple Music 2023 Playlist

December 7, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Apple let me know I have a playlist of songs that I frequently played. I found the top 10 kind of interesting:

  1. Paralyzed – Beyond the Black
  2. Pasadena 1994 – Nanowar of Steel
  3. Hysteria – Beyond the Black
  4. Hurricane – I Prevail
  5. Edge of Seventeen – Stevie Nicks
  6. Fields of Verdun – Sabaton
  7. Black Rain – Primal Fear
  8. Halcyon Days – Stratovarius
  9. A Warrior’s Call – Volbeat
  10. Karate – BabyMetal

Monday Links – Super Sized!

November 20, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Just as a heads up, I have a bit of a backlog that I’m clearing out today. So, buckle up buttercup.

Of course we’re starting with a mess of Reason links.

Do right-wingers believe conspiracy theories more than left-wingers? Short answer, no. Long answer, it’s complicated.

Some are estimating the US has about 20 years to get it’s financial house in order before a debt default becomes inevitable.

The FTC’s case against Amazon is based on a faulty interpretation of one statistic. You mean Kahn’s disregarding logic in her crusade against Amazon?

Re-examination of the teen vaping panic.

Retrospective of the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act at 50.

NLRB looks to change rules aimed at how franchises work – particularly fast food franchises.

Supreme Court issues a code of ethics for the justices. One item of note is that they address recusal and the duty for the justices to stay on cases to avoid strategic recusals.

The Fifth Circuit slaps down the ATF’s recent receiver rule.

On to other stuff.

The Reload has an article on the Supreme Court granting cert on the bump stock ban. I see this less of a gun case and more of a restricting administrative agencies from making people felons with a rule change.

From Ground News, we have Sam Altman departing OpenAI. Not clear if he left on his own accord or was forced out.

From 9to5Mac, Apple surprised everyone by announcing they were integrating RCS alongside iMessage.

From NYT comes an article on a company pulling carbon and trapping it in concrete. I always thought engineering would help the planet better than trying to just cut emissions.

War Is Boring reports the Ukranian Army is trying to transition to a more professional and gender-equitable force. Um, okay. I guess improving its professionalism in the middle of a war is a good thing.

Angry Staff Officer has an article discussing the positive leadership traits of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Honestly, this kind of article was why I started reading ASO.

From The Allspark, Peter Cullen to receive lifetime achievement award.

Our last link is from Ars Technica. The old television series “Connections” is being revived! And James Burke is returning as host!

Monday Links – Catch Up Edition

July 24, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Due to drama in the Ward household, I haven’t posted Monday links for a couple of weeks. So, this is mostly tab-clearing out some articles.

Let’s start with the normal Reason links.

Police keep harassing the wrong David Sosa. He sued and was joined by eleven other David Sosas. This falls into the police need to have more attention to detail and not just take the easy road. Particularly when it comes to detaining the wrong people.

Tennessee student makes Instagram posts poking fun at the principal and gets suspended. The student sues.

Finally, a judge has ruled that the ATF overstepped its authority by saying inert items are “gun parts”.

Going on to other articles.

The civil trial against the coward Scot Peterson continues – and apparently requires a live-fire reenactment. Article from local tv.

The NY Times’ Wirecutter section has an article on what you need for birding. I only add it to the links because the author neglected any dog treats. Which based on his history and his infamous viral moment, you’d think he would include.

From PC Gamer, an article that 87 percent of old games are unplayable without resorting to piracy of some sort. Umm, yeah. Blinks in City of Heroes.

From the Washington Examiner, an article regarding a study that disputes all the claimed benefits of the transition to electric vehicles.

FIRE explains that the current brouhaha over Jason Aldean’s little ditty is an excellent example of the Streisand Effect.

Finally, from The Verge, a new self-transforming Grimlok toy is being released. It looks nifty, but not $1,500 nifty.

Monday Links – Lots of Links

June 12, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Sit back, this is going to be a long one this week.

First, let’s start out with a bunch of Reason links.

Here’s an article on the recent Trump federal indictment.

No, Adam Smith was not a progressive.

Critics of lockdowns were muzzled.

Firing professors for the political views is unconstitutional – left-wing views edition.

SPLC is still overcounting hate groups.

Finally, the Biden administration is still refusing Second Amendment rights to cannabis users.

In other gun news, the deadline for pistol brace owners to submit the proper paperwork or be considered felons as passed. According to The Reload, only a quarter-million did so. In the best case, that’s 250,000 out of 3,000,000 – or about 8%. However, using industry numbers, it’s more like 250,000 out of 40,000,000 – or about 0.6%.

Now that the serious stuff is out of the way, let’s go on to our light items.

First, here’s some teasing that there’s a new Macross animation in the works.

Speaking of Macross, here’s an article that AnimEgo is going to crowdfund a release of the old Macross II anime from the nineties.

From The Brother, we have the top 10 finalists for Illusions of the Year.

Also from The Brother, we have an Ars Technica article about Redditors using Stable Diffusion to create working anime QR codes.

Monday Link Time

August 22, 2022 / / 0 Comments

First, just in time to celebrate the feds for passing their crony corporatism for the semiconductor sector, comes this article from Bloomberg about a coming bust in that sector. The semiconductor market enjoyed a massive run-up in orders during the pandemic, sending sales and stock prices to new highs and triggering a global scramble to find enough supplies. There was hope in some circles that the boom could be sustained for several more years without a painful pullback, but chipmakers are now facing a familiar problem: growing inventory and shrinking demand. [Snip] But fortunes have turned swiftly for the biggest chipmakers. Companies like Nvidia Corp. are reporting more that 40% annual declines in their core businesses, while Micron Technology Inc. warns that demand is evaporating fast in many areas. Well, this feels familiar. Particularly those of us who have watched the boom and bust cycles in the firearms industry.

The joke was that the lamentations of enlisted soldiers who couldn’t poorly spend their enlistment bonuses or sign up for bad loans on Dodge Chargers and Challengers, because the automaker is discontinuing them. Dodge will be putting an end to its iconic Charger and Challenger lineup real soon as the company teases a new era of mystery cars to come. The electrified future is slowly creeping into Dodge’s ICE-ladened inventory. It sounds like the lamentations will be short-lived as the young men will have electric versions to make bad decisions about.

At least, it will be cheaper in the future to hear better as the FDA approves OTC hearing aids. Come October, instead of being forced to visit an audiologist and shelling out thousands of dollars for the added expense, hearing aid users will be able to purchase FDA-certified hearing aids from any major retailer like Amazon, Walmart or Best Buy without needing a prescription. IMO, we will see some good, generic hearing aids, but the best will still require special testing and fitting. Kind of like electronic ear pro we have now.

In the life-saving category, we have an article from Active Response Training on the best tourniquets. You really need to RTWT. And take a Stop The Bleed course. And don’t cheap out on your tourniquets.

Finally, our light item (courtesy of The Brother) is on the proper method of peeling off Post-It Notes. The article is amusing, but the TLDR is peel side to side, not down to up.

Fixing the Formatting

March 31, 2022 / / 0 Comments

For my frequent visitors, you probably noticed issues with the formatting. Namely places where quotations should be are a small string of symbols. Apparently, this is caused by so-called smart quotes. Fecking hell.

Anyways, The Brother found a fix. At least for the ones I’ve done in Scrivener – aka Badmoon and ZS. I’m going to fix those first. Then I’ll look at how to do the others. Please be patient.

Edit 1: Finished with Badmoon