chiph

I love the book. We had an Eclipse MV/8000 at college. And abused the hell out of it - when one of my classmates compiled their ADA programs we knew to take a coffee break.

But I can't help but think that the book helped normalize death-marches in the industry. I'm still recommending it to colleagues, but with the caveat that we are not in a "do or die" situation, so go home and get some good sleep.

Sadly no. They were found unconscious, then taken to the hospital where the doctors determined that brain death had occurred.

While I don't have diabetes, I will be getting an advance directive made. This was horrifying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_healthcare_directive

I think it's unlikely that Apple is paying the spot price for memory. They almost certainly negotiate delivery/price contracts in advance. Maybe the contract for the chips used in the 512GB model will expire soon?

A friend's coworker had their pump lock on, and inject the entire reservoir of insulin into them. They were discovered in their home by the police after family members lost contact. No idea if it was an Omnipod, but I would hope that all insulin pumps have a separate watchdog circuit to prevent this.

Many years ago, I worked on a project in Tennessee where the bank was installing computers in their branches (previously the tellers were using mainframe terminals). At the same time, they were consolidating the leased data lines to the branches to save money, as everything there was now a network device - including the ATMs.

The IBM representative on our team was working behind the through-the-wall ATM, routing some wires when a customer walked up (you could see them via the camera). Being a prankster, he started talking to her in a robotic voice: "Please insert card", "Please choose a transaction", etc. After a few of these he couldn't hold back any further and started laughing. The customer got the joke and started laughing too: "I knew someone was back there!"

Briefly, he was their first (and only) talking ATM.

IBM terminals were the original stateless clients. :)

I had a PS/2 Portable 70 for a while. It was a luggable Microchannel PC with a orange plasma display. Going through airports with it was a hassle as it didn't have batteries - I would have to find an outlet to power it on for airport security inspection.

It's about a 12 minute walk in Austin, from Hobbiton Trail to Mordor Cove.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/EgUb7EXTaHguiPKJ7

I finished treatment for prostate cancer this summer. Most of my time in the x-ray machine was spent getting the alignment right. They'd take a CT scan, do some image analysis and other computations, then adjust the table some small amount before turning the beam on.

I'm curious how they do the alignment with the histotripsy machine. I would think that they could obviously do an ultrasound scan to get the gross alignment correct. But perhaps there is a CT scan afterwards that lets them make the fine alignment. It probably also helps that the liver is a much larger gland so aiming is less critical?

24 of the cases originated at a church where the congregation is primarily eastern European. But to your point - as long as the local population is below 95% fully vaccinated, it's going to spread. Regardless of national origin or religious & personal beliefs.

https://www.goupstate.com/story/news/local/2025/12/11/sparta...

This is because the upstate (of South Carolina) has a large eastern European population, dating back to some of the churches there welcoming in ex-Soviets in the 1990's. The new families (Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) didn't get the MMR vaccine, so now they're vulnerable.

I absolutely loved my Moto X with the walnut back. I switched to an iPhone when it stopped getting security patches.

It was built back when Google owned Motorola, before they sold off everything but the patent suite. And was intended to be their flagship phone - which the Pixel later became. Looking at the GrapheneOS FAQ, it doesn't look like I have a prayer of installing it on such an old device as it doesn't have the needed security hardware. Is there a lightweight Android install available?

25H2 is better than previous versions, where I used Beyond Compare to do file copies because explorer.exe would crash, corrupting the copy. Still needs a lot of work to improve reliability.

Some have position sensors built in (so the computer knows where things are). But yes - if you only have 2 pins it's self-explanatory.

If you have access to the wiring diagrams, I have seem people apply 12v to the correct pins to reverse the motor, moving the piston back from the rotor.

> They will also be asked to use their iPhone to read the chip embedded on the back of their passport to ensure the data’s authenticity.

I installed an RFID app from the Apple app store (3rd party, not from Apple) and it couldn't read the chip in my passport. Perhaps Apple's firmware was filtering those out at the time?

Like many people, I throw my change into a jar when I get home. One time I only kept pennies and used an old apple cider jug. Turns out that a gallon of pennies is worth almost $55 [0]. And that carrying a heavy glass jug filled with pennies to the Coinstar machine is very anxiety inducing.

Speaking of which - the Coinstar machines near me will give you several options for redemption. Some of which have been Amazon and Home Depot e-gift codes that have no redemption fee.

[0] A potential worthless interview question...

> Design For Rapid Scale In a Crisis

One of the things that I think Anduril (Palmer Luckey and other founders) is doing right is designing for manufacturability. The invasion of Ukraine has shown that future conflicts will use up weapons at a very high pace. And that the US capability to build them at the rate needed to sustain conflict isn't there anymore. But that one thing that could help is making them easier to build. (the decline of US manufacturing is a related but separate topic)

This goes along with what I saw growing up. You had the retail mastering (with RIAA curve for LP, etc.) and then the separate radio edit which had the compression that the stations wanted - so they sounded louder and wouldn't have too much bass/treble. And also wouldn't distort on the leased line to the transmitter site.

And of course it would have all the dirty words removed or changed. Like Steve Miller Band's "funky kicks going down in the city" in Jet Airliner

I still don't know if the compression in the Loudness War was because of esthetics, or because of the studios wanting to save money and only pay for the radio edit. Possibly both - reduced production costs and not having to pay big-name engineers. "My sister's cousin has this plug-in for his laptop and all you do is click a button"...

And now we have the Loudness War where the songs are so highly compressed that there is no dynamic range. Because of this, I have to reduce the volume so it isn't painful to listen to. And this makes what should have been a live recording with interesting sound into background noise. Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

If you want a recent-ish album to listen to that has good sound, try Daft Punk's Random Access Memories (which won the Best Engineered Album Grammy award in 2014). Or anything engineered by Alan Parsons (he's in this list many times)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Best_Engineer...

3M was indeed a big player in those markets. I purchased both 5.25" and 3.5" 3M floppies and they were good quality and reliable.

I expect they left the market because of declining use and the entrance of much cheaper foreign manufacturers. I expect they didn't enter the flash memory market as they had no existing manufacturing base for them to build on. They would have had to rebrand another firm's chips and circuit boards.

In high school I had one of the mechanical "flip" clocks. Then later an LED clock which almost certainly used the LM8560 (a Sony, which lasted far longer than I expected. Back when products were built with quality in mind). And as the article says, the chip depends on the AC frequency (50/60 Hz) to keep accurate time. For the US market, that input was likely hardwired to 60 Hz via a jumper. Japan must have used a switch, given it's mixed 50/60 Hz national power standard.

These days I have an LCD clock that does not use the LM8560 but instead gets it's time from the Radio Data System values embedded in the FM broadcast. Possibly using the Sanyo LC72723 to decode them. The CT (clock Time & Date) data field is accurate to within 100ms according to wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Data_System

I was thinking it could be blue ice - leakage from another jet's waste holding tank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ice_(aviation)

Is there enough power in the nearby parishes to supply 2.2GW? Also - will there be enough skilled labor?

Paying at Best Buy was torture - watching the cashier move their mouse around (on the slanted mousing surface they were given so they couldn't just let go) and click the buttons, going through 3 or 4 screens and waiting for them to load vs. using the keyboard. They would have been done with me and on to the next customer in half the time.

There's nothing like getting your product problem exposed on a channel with 9+ million subscribers...

In the days when you used custom printed forms that had a number printed on them by the printer - when you loaded a new box of paper into your printer you had to input the first form number into the system so they'd match.

If you opened boxes in "whatever" order you'd have invoice numbers that would run contiguous for 150 or so counts (the number of forms in the box), then skip to the next multiple of 150 to correspond to when the next (or previous!) box had been used.

I'm starting to run into that and I'm not even retired yet.

Mom uses a stylus with a conductive rubber tip to operate her Pixel. Which shouldn't be necessary.

With regard to learning to use a new release - since Apple (and no one else either it seems) ships a manual with their pocket computer these days, they need to have a group of people creating videos that explain how to use it.

Of course, if you can't get past the OOTB setup, that might of of minimal use...

None of the cards I have today have embossed numbers on them. Which I like as they don't leave an imprint on my wallet's leather. But to use one back in 1995 the clerk would have to hand-write all the numbers and expiration date[0] on the credit slip. A process that is fraught with error.

[0] After looking it up in the booklet of known bad cards that was mailed to the store, or calling their card processor's phone number to check.

It's only a matter of time before the LLMs start having paid product placement in their results. Even open-source - the money needed to train & operate these models is just too enormous.

Could there be a distributed training system run by contributors, like the various @Home projects? Yeah, decent chance of that working, especially with the widespread availability of fiber connections. But then to query the model you still need a large low-latency system (i.e. not distributed) to host it, and that's expensive.

Also, shake the ABC fire extinguishers. The powder can clump in the bottom of the cylinder. Or replace them if they're 15+ years old - the local fire station will take them to use in their training classes.