Rick Tumlinson has a pretty good op-ed.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The FDA Strikes Again
People with Apple watches could be monitoring their oxygen levels, but the regulators require that the ability be disabled for users. This is classic regulatory capture by the industry.
CATS
A DVD autopsy of one of the worst flicks ever made.
Space Resources
Glenn told me a few days ago that he was working on a piece for the Journal. It’s up now (but paywalled). He has an excerpt.
[Friday update]
Chris Johnson, of the Secure World Foundation, has a long disquisition explaining the background and purpose of the Executive Order.
[Bumped]
[Update Sunday morning]
Another take from Professor Michelle Hanlon. And a longer-than-necessary one from Dimitra Stefoudi.
[Bumped again]
Computer Fun
Patricia’s machine has been acting up for months, dying unexpectedly. I tried replacing CPU, memory, and power supply. Also cleaned the CPU heat sink. But to no avail, and now it shuts down almost immediately after boot. So it’s probably the motherboard.
And of course you can’t buy new FM-2 mobos any more, so it means new processor and memory as well, plus a graphics card, because the Ryzen doesn’t support on-board integrated graphics. So we just had to lay out about $600 for an upgrade, but it will be a much better machine, with a Ryzen 5 3600X (same as mine) and 32G of RAM in a single stick (upgradable to 128G). It will also be able to support multiple monitors. Unfortunately, it won’t be here before Tuesday.
[Sunday-morning update]
Wow, time flies. I just realized from an old blog post that her mobo was five years old.
Death By Meteorite
The first credible evidence of it. These aren’t the ones we really need to worry about, though, and there’s not much we could do about them if we did. We need to focus on the city killers (or worse).
Ventilators
Nearly everyone put on them in New York died.
So much for “life saving.” Of course, the problem is that by the time it’s so extreme that they decide to put you on one, it’s probably too late. But this shows that the ventilator panic was probably pointless.
We’re learning rapidly how to deal with this, but we’ve unfortunately lost a lot of unwilling guinea pigs. It reminds me of what I say in the book: Every aviation regulation is written in blood. People always have to die or be injured for us to learn.
The Second Amendment
Virginia Democrats complete their shredding of it.
Let the lawsuits commence.
Pulse Oximeters
Seems like a good idea to keep one on hand. Probably unnecessary until you feels symptoms, but you wouldn’t want to need one and find them out of stock at CVS.
Video Chats
Why are they so exhausting? I haven’t been doing many, and I don’t see a need for a camera. I was glad last week that Allison had hers, though.