Topics

1

Tech / Home Mac Repair!

« on: November 17, 2021, 08:55:13 AM »

I'm thinking Apple finally did something right!

"Here’s a pleasant — and frankly unexpected — update from Apple. The company just announced Self Service Repair, a new program designed to let users perform common repairs on devices at home. Through the program, users with damaged devices will be sent “Apple genuine” tools and components — same as the ones they use at the Genius Bar.

The company will also be offering up online repair manuals (text, not video), accessible through the new Apple Self Service Repair Online Store. The system is similar to the one the company rolled out for Independent Repair Providers (of which there are currently 2,800 in the U.S. plus 5,000 Apple Authorized Service Providers), beginning with the iPhone 12 and 13, focused on display, battery and camera fixes. A similar service for M1Macs will be launching “soon” after.

“Creating greater access to Apple genuine parts gives our customers even more choice if a repair is needed,” COO Jeff Williams said in a release tied to the announcement. “In the past three years, Apple has nearly doubled the number of service locations with access to Apple genuine parts, tools, and training, and now we’re providing an option for those who wish to complete their own repairs.”


https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/17/beginning-next-year-apple-will-mail-you-parts-and-tools-to-fix-your-iphone-and-mac-at-home/

I know the iPhone would be pretty difficult for a lot of people to repair.  Imac's I've done and had them work afterwards!

2

Tech / Watching Us Sleep?

« on: March 17, 2021, 10:49:03 AM »

Google is not going to be watching me sleep anytime soon!  What about you?

Google's got a new smart display, and trust me, it is new. The second-generation Nest Hub looks virtually identical to the original product, launched in 2018 as the Home Hub. This new device still lacks a camera, but it does have a Soli radar sensor for sleep tracking. Yes, the new Google smart display will watch you sleep, but the company stresses that it designed "Sleep Sensing" with privacy in mind. It also costs less than the first-gen display did at launch.

Owners of the OG Hub won't notice any major external changes — there's still a 7-inch display with a middling 600p resolution, a rear-facing fabric-covered speaker, and the device sensors poking through the otherwise uniform bezel. The only real visual difference is the lighter sensor window. Google says the speaker now offers 50% more bass, so I'd wager we're talking about a Home Mini to Nest Mini-style audio upgrade.


https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/03/16/googles-second-gen-nest-hub-will-watch-you-sleep/

3

Tech / We have met the enemy and they live in our browser!

« on: March 05, 2021, 09:05:47 AM »

I'm certain I'm getting too old for this stuff, the arms race to sell us stuff is heating up!

"Google is leading the charge to replace third-party cookies with a new suite of technologies to target ads on the Web. And some of its proposals show that it hasn’t learned the right lessons from the ongoing backlash to the surveillance business model. This post will focus on one of those proposals, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which is perhaps the most ambitious—and potentially the most harmful.

FLoC is meant to be a new way to make your browser do the profiling that third-party trackers used to do themselves: in this case, boiling down your recent browsing activity into a behavioral label, and then sharing it with websites and advertisers. The technology will avoid the privacy risks of third-party cookies, but it will create new ones in the process. It may also exacerbate many of the worst non-privacy problems with behavioral ads, including discrimination and predatory targeting.

Google’s pitch to privacy advocates is that a world with FLoC (and other elements of the “privacy sandbox”) will be better than the world we have today, where data brokers and ad-tech giants track and profile with impunity. But that framing is based on a false premise that we have to choose between “old tracking” and “new tracking.” It’s not either-or. Instead of re-inventing the tracking wheel, we should imagine a better world without the myriad problems of targeted ads."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea"

4

Tech / And you think you have problems with the end of Adobe Flash!

« on: January 25, 2021, 10:01:35 AM »

The railroad system in Dalian, northern China, collapsed citywide on Tuesday for up to 20 hours after the Adobe Flash programing software stopped running.

Adobe had announced as early as 2017 that it would cease support for the multimedia software on Dec. 30 last year. The American software company eventually ended the operation of all Flash content on Tuesday.

Tuesday’s chaos arose after China Railway Shenyang failed to deactivate Flash in time, leading to a complete shutdown of its railroads in Dalian, Liaoning province. Staffers were reportedly unable to view train operation diagrams, formulate train sequencing schedules and arrange shunting plans.

Authorities fixed the issue by installing a pirated version of Flash at 4:30 a.m. the following day.

https://hk.appledaily.com/news/20210117/FLXATT4LKVBGVEBRLAECJPTCHM/

5

Tech / Bad Time To Join the French Army?

« on: December 10, 2020, 08:04:51 AM »

There is a member / former member of TS that was interested in body mods and other things that could be labeled Transhumanism. That's interesting to me
in a purely intellectual science fiction way but this from CNN is going way beyond:

(CNN)The French armed forces now have permission to develop "augmented soldiers" following a report from a military ethics committee.

The report, released to the public on Tuesday, considers medical treatments, prosthetics and implants that improve "physical, cognitive, perceptive and psychological capacities," and could allow for location tracking or connectivity with weapons systems and other soldiers.

Other possible interventions considered by the armed forces ethics committee include medical treatments to prevent pain, stress and fatigue, and substances that would improve mental resilience if a soldier were taken prisoner.

The committee said that France needs to maintain "operational superiority of its armed forces in a challenging strategic context" while respecting the rules governing the military, humanitarian law and the "fundamental values of our society."

As a result, it has forbidden any modification that would affect a soldier's ability to manage the use of force or affect their sense of "humanity."
Further examples of banned modifications include cognitive implants that would affect the exercise of a soldier's free will, or changes that would affect their reintegration into civilian life.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/09/europe/french-army-soldiers-technology-ethics-scli-intl-scn/index.html

Does this frighten everyone else as much as it frightens me?  I'm also sure if the French are doing it then other countries are probably wading in as well!

6

Tech / An Interplanetary Internet?

« on: October 26, 2020, 08:54:43 AM »

I have probably read a couple of thousand science fiction books and none of them, I think, dealt with how to actually have an Interplanetary Internet!  One of the founding fathers of our current internet, Vint Cerf is working on that!

But extending the internet to space isn’t just a matter of installing Wi-Fi on rockets. Scientists have novel obstacles to contend with: The distances involved are astronomical, and planets move around, potentially blocking signals. Anyone on Earth who wants to send a message to someone or something on another planet must contend with often-disrupted communication paths.

“We started doing the math for the [internet standards] which had worked perfectly well here on Earth. However, the speed of light was too slow,” Cerf said of his early work with colleagues in the InterPlanetary Networking Special Interest Group. Overcoming that problem would be a major undertaking, but this American computer scientist and former Stanford professor is used to helping make big things happen.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/vint-cerfs-plan-for-building-an-internet-in-space-20201021/

7

Tech / You can't get away from voting if you're in space!

« on: October 01, 2020, 08:09:20 AM »

“The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.” - Kurt Vonnegut!

And apparently the vote!

How it Works

Like other forms of absentee voting, voting from space starts with a Federal Postcard Application, or FPCA. It’s the same form military members and their families fill out while serving outside of the U.S. By completing it ahead of their launch, space station crew members signal their intent to participate in an election from space.

Because astronauts move to Houston for their training, most opt to vote as Texas residents. Of course, NASA’s astronauts come from all over, so those wishing to vote as residents of their home states can work with their counties to make special arrangements to vote from space.

Once their FPCA is approved, the astronaut is almost ready to vote. Like many great things in space, voting starts with an experiment. The county clerk who manages elections in the astronaut’s home county sends a test ballot to a team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Then they use a space station training computer to test whether they’re able to fill it out and send it back to the county clerk.

After a successful test, a secure electronic ballot generated by the Clerk’s office of Harris County and surrounding counties in Texas, is uplinked by Johnson’s Mission Control Center to the voting crew member. An e-mail with crew member-specific credentials is sent from the County Clerk to the astronaut. These credentials allow the crew member to access the secure ballot.

The astronaut will then cast their vote, and the secure, completed ballot is downlinked and delivered back to the County Clerk’s Office by e-mail to be officially recorded. The clerk has their own password to ensure they are the only one who can open the ballot. It’s a quick process, and the astronaut must be sure to submit it by 7 p.m. local time on Election Day if voting as a Texas resident.


https://www.nasa.gov/feature/astronauts-to-vote-in-space

8

Tech / Jet Suit Paramedics!

« on: September 30, 2020, 07:13:14 AM »

This is a childhood fantasy and also I think I once saw this on an episode of Dr. Who:

A jet suit for paramedics which would see patients reached in minutes by a "flying" medic has been tested by the Great North Air Ambulance Service.

After a year of talks between GNAAS and Gravity Industries, a first test flight was carried out in the Lake District.

Andy Mawson, director of operations at GNAAS, came up with the idea and described seeing it as "awesome".

He said it meant a paramedic could "fly" to a fell top in 90 seconds rather than taking 30 minutes on foot.

Mr Mawson said: "There are dozens of patients every month within the complex but relatively small geographical footprint of the Lakes.

"We could see the need. What we didn't know for sure is how this would work in practice. Well we've seen it now and it is, quite honestly, awesome."

Mr Mawson said the exercise had demonstrated the huge potential of using jet suits to deliver critical care services.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-54331994

9

Community / Sparrows are singing a sexier song?

« on: September 28, 2020, 08:09:48 AM »

While I'm hardly an expert apparently those that are say that because we have less noise pollution the sparrows are feeling more free to put some sway into their songs!  Has anyone heard a sparrow lately?

When the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown forced swathes of humanity back into their houses, the silence that swept across towns and cities was such that it got its own name. The “anthropause” saw a plummet in human behavior, some of the consequences of which included an increase in wildlife sightings and a reduction in harmful pollution such as carbon dioxide emissions (sadly, not long term). Another type of pollution that was curbed was sound, and new research published in the journal Science has revealed the surprising effect this had on San Francisco’s sparrows.

Imagine you’re at a crowded bar at the back of a noisy gig (remember those?). When you try to order a drink your speech is loud, strained and a little grating on the ears – not exactly your most flattering tone of voice. For white-crowned sparrows in San Francisco, this is a bit what it feels like for males attempting to lure in a lady with their soulful singing over the calamitous backdrop of traffic.

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/lockdown-silence-made-sparrows-song-sexier-thanks-to-a-quieter-arena/?ref=thefuturist

10

Community / Our Emotional States!

« on: September 25, 2020, 08:03:46 AM »

Lost in a storm of emotions?

Have you ever felt a little mbuki-mvuki – the irresistible urge to “shuck off your clothes as you dance”? Perhaps a little kilig – the jittery fluttering feeling as you talk to someone you fancy? How about uitwaaien – which encapsulates the revitalising effects of taking a walk in the wind?

These words – taken from Bantu, Tagalog, and Dutch – have no direct English equivalent, but they represent very precise emotional experiences that are neglected in our language. And if Tim Lomas at the University of East London has his way, they might soon become much more familiar.

Lomas’s Positive Lexicography Project aims to capture the many flavours of good feelings (some of which are distinctly bittersweet) found across the world, in the hope that we might start to incorporate them all into our daily lives. We have already borrowed many emotion words from other languages, after all – think “frisson”, from French, or “schadenfreude”, from German – but there are many more that have not yet wormed their way into our vocabulary. Lomas has found hundreds of these "untranslatable" experiences so far – and he’s only just begun.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-untranslatable-emotions-you-never-knew-you-had?utm_source=pocket-newtab

11

Tech / Facebook, the evil empire!

« on: September 25, 2020, 07:53:29 AM »

My only living sister has dropped out of Facebook for awhile because it was making her crazy!  I'm not doing it during the work week anymore!  There are some relatives and friends I can't get ahold of easily and FB works for that; but I told them to Message me!  This is why:

Speaking to Congress today, the former Facebook manager first tasked with making the company make money did not mince words about his role. He told lawmakers that the company "took a page from Big Tobacco's playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset" and arguing that his former employer has been hugely detrimental to society.

Tim Kendall, who served as director of monetization for Facebook from 2006 through 2010, spoke to Congress today as part of a House Commerce subcommittee hearing examining how social media platforms contribute to the mainstreaming of extremist and radicalizing content.

"The social media services that I and others have built over the past 15 years have served to tear people apart with alarming speed and intensity," Kendall said in his opening testimony (PDF). "At the very least, we have eroded our collective understanding—at worst, I fear we are pushing ourselves to the brink of a civil war."

As director of monetization, he added, "We sought to mine as much attention as humanly possible... We took a page form Big Tobacco's playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset."

His analogy continued:

Tobacco companies initially just sought to make nicotine more potent. But eventually that wasn't enough to grow the business as fast as they wanted. And so they added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis.

Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco's bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs. But that incendiary content alone wasn't enough. To continue to grow the user base and in particular, the amount of time and attention users would surrender to Facebook, they needed more.


https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/former-facebook-manager-we-took-a-page-from-big-tobaccos-playbook/

12

Tech / Macbook feet!

« on: September 25, 2020, 07:45:10 AM »

  I bought a refurbished Macbook Pro to suit my needs and I have one problem: It keeps losing it's feet!

I tried silicon adhesive and it doesn't seem to do the trick; I'm thinking of finding a different sort of foot that I can secure through the mounting hole with a screw but better adhesive might do it!  Any ideas?

13

Tech / Giant Robot! Just like in those old monster movies!

« on: September 25, 2020, 07:38:06 AM »

"The world's largest robot—a giant Gundam that towers 60 feet above Japan's Port of Yokohama—has been under construction since January. Now, the beastly bot is finally ready to stretch its legs.

Inspired by the fictional Japanese robot of the same name—which has appeared in over 50 TV series and movies since 1979, as well as many manga comics and video games—this Gundam features a staggering 24 degrees of freedom. That means the robot can pick up its legs to walk, bend its knees, turn its head, and contort its fingers to mime hand signals.

People in Japan have caught and shared a few glimpses of the engineering marvel. Considering the Gundam weighs about 25 tons, it's pretty insane to watch it raise both arms in the air and pick itself back up after kneeling."


https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a34108996/giant-gundam-japan-testing-mode/

14

Tech / We need Badgers! How to hack your cheap mask to help it fit better!

« on: September 03, 2020, 10:23:06 AM »

I'm going to try this out; it's supposed to help keep your glasses from steaming up!

If you have worn a mask and glasses together for more than a quarter of a second, you are probably annoyed that we don’t have a magical solution for foggy lenses. Moisture-laden air is also a good indicator of where unfiltered air is escaping. Most masks have some flexible metal across the nose bridge that is supposed to seal the top, but it is woefully inadequate. The Badger Seal by [David Rothamer] and [Scott Sanders] from the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering is free to copy during the COVID-19 pandemic, even commercially. It works by running an elastic cord below the jaw and a formable wire over the nose to encourage contact all around both mouth and nose.

https://hackaday.com/2020/09/02/fog-free-mask-hack-solves-mask-versus-glasses-conundrum-with-superb-seal/?fbclid=IwAR14pQTQ6b3vN4DL7xyThoFBhAOqB5px2YH1iUM-Hc8naydtnWU5DVQX6Zc

Detailed instruction video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CSZrCUAm3g&feature=emb_logo

15

Tech / Did anyone ask the pig what it thought of the procedure?

« on: August 28, 2020, 07:59:42 PM »

Elon Musk's brain-computer-interface venture today unveiled a prototype that involves a pig with a computer chip implanted inside their brain.

The coin-sized device is implanted beneath the creature's skull.

"It's like a Fitbit, but in your skull," says Musk, and it's implanted by a robot.

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/28/neuralink-elon-musks-brain.html