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If schools are all closed down for a few months, what are the odds we get a break on school taxes?

A few weeks ago it was really nice weather, so I sat outside on the porch with the door open and the stereo cranked. It wasn’t loud enough. I missed the old Kenwood 200 watt stereo I used to have decades ago that could wake up folks in the next block. It died, but I’m still using the three way JBL speakers.
        It wasn’t nearly loud enough, so I went inside, unplugged the little Dell I bought last year (I have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and use the TV as a monitor, only not when I’m doing commerce) and went to Amazon for a new two hundred watt amplifier.
        I had been at war with Sony since they vandalized my computer with XCP when my then teenaged daughter played a CD she had bought from the record store she worked at, until I bought a Sony TV by accident. Then bought a PS4 on purpose, and when I saw that the TV remote worked the Playstation, I was happy to find a Sony receiver advertised at 100 watts per channel RMS, like the old Kenwood.
        I unboxed it, plugged it up, read the owner’s manual, and turned it on. It came with a 75 ohm antenna of sorts, with a type of plug I’d never seen before. I expected the jack to be screw on, like a television, since FM radio’s spectrum is right between TV channels six and seven.
        I have the little Dell laptop plugged into the TV, and put it on the KSHE stream. I was impressed with the sound, very crisp and clean, as good as the old Kenwood. I also liked that it had a remote control, the first stereo I ever owned that had one, even though they’ve been around since at least the eighties.
        You can pretune up to thirty stations, with the first three having dedicated recall buttons, like in a car radio.
        And it has Bluetooth, which I thought would be a good replacement for the old HP laptop’s faulty sound output jack. Unfortunately, the old laptop has an old Bluetooth chip and drivers which are incompatible with the Bluetooth on the new receiver. I’ve been running that old HP all weekend and yesterday, recording KSHE’s “no repeat weekend” and restoring all my Star Trek movies and TV shows from backup. I shut it off this morning and am letting it cool to see if I can get Linux to run from the DVD, but I’m not hopeful I can get Bluetooth running on Linux any more than I could in Windows. That is, if the DVD itself isn’t bad.
        It was a nice day, so I thought I’d sit on the front porch and listen to KSHE.
        Sony is a collection of lying bastards. Two hundred watts RMS, my ass. The decibel meter on m y phone tells me it tops out at eighty decibels. It’s not much louder than the old stereo; not loud at all on the porch, in fact traffic is louder. The old Kenwood that really did have 200 watts RMS had people down the street calling the cops on me. Nobody will be calling the cops on me for this one, because there’s no way anybody but me will hear it.
        I didn’t have an antenna with the stereo it replaced, which had screw-in 300 ohm antenna leads, and the radio was even a bigger disappointment than the wattage. I can’t pick up WQNA at all with it, but the shitty little car stereo picks it up fine. WCVS and a few other stations have static. WYMG doesn’t have any static, but it doesn’t have the sound quality I get from plugging the Dell into it.
        I cannot recommend this to anyone. The amplifier has great sound quality but is pitifully under-powered. The receiver’s quality is practically nonexistent. If I had bought it locally rather than online I’d have returned it.

Face masks can't go on forever. What we need is a vaccine to get this under control.

But then how do you know whether someone you're interacting with (and no face mask) has been vaccinated? Simple! Have an obvious mark on the right hand or forehead proving the person is safe. You can be sure of who they are. That they were vaccinated. And that they don't have any wrongthink.

Seeing anyone without the mark would be a huge indicator to distance yourself from them. Report them to authorities. Certainly not to do business with them. [Rev 13:16-18]

Fear will drive people to take the mark and report those who don't have it. And it will seem to be the wise thing to do. Even if it is actually a fatal mistake. [Rev 14:9-11] Thanks to the dear leader who made it all happen to keep us safe. Think of the children! Etc.

Such a mandatory vaccine, required for every person on Earth, would definitely not have any undesirable side effects. [Rev 16:2]

Disclaimer: I have not started any "Don't take the mark" messages prior to this journal entry. And certainly would not do so anonymously. The preceding is merely an opinion about how things might go. But I'll just say this:

Don't take the mark! It will cost you to refuse. It won't be easy to refuse.

More, if you find yourself in this situation and are reading this.

TSMC 5nm Products Leaked: AMD Zen 4 CPUs, RDNA3 GPUs, NVIDIA Hopper and Potentially An ‘Intel Xe’ GPU

Products manufactured on the upcoming TSMC 5nm have already been confirmed in a leak from ChinaTimes and while it had products that we were already expecting: AMD Zen 4 CPUs, AMD Radeon RDNA 3 GPUs and NVIDIA Hopper GPU, it also had an unexpected entry: Intel's Xe graphics. There have been a lot of rumblings on the rumor mill of Intel moving to 5nm and this is another feather in that hat. While the bit about AMD CPUs and GPUs and NVIDIA Hopper is confirmed, I would take the portion about Intel Xe with a grain of salt because as per my information - nothing is set in stone right now.

[...] 2021~2022 Mass Production:
AMD: Zen4-architecture CPUs and RDNA3-architecture GPUs
Broadcom: High-speed network processor
Qualcomm: Snapdragon 875 and X60 and other 5G modem
Nvidia: Hopper-architecture GPUs
Mediatek: Dimensity 2000 series 5G chips
Intel: Xe-architecture GPUs or FPGA
Apple: A15 application processor
Huawei HiSilicon: Kirin 1100, AI and Server processors

Zen 4 may launch in late 2021, but could easily slip into 2022.

Intel was said to be producing a high-end GPU on TSMC "7nm", so this would be a follow-up. It could also be an indication that their own "7nm" process (comparable to TSMC "5nm") is failing, or they are hedging their bets and can make any product they want on that node.

Dimensity 1000 looked good on paper, so the follow-up should be interesting.

Separate Snapdragon 875 info:

Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 flagship 5nm chipset’s details leaked

WTF is "Bluetooth Milan"?

Finally did it -- got something I've wanted since I was 13, before it had a name: a phone that will boot whatever I throw at it.

It's got bugs. A lot of bugs. One of the ones I keep running into is having to pull the battery after shutting down to prevent the Goodix touchscreen from locking up on the next boot. The audio doesn't work despite being detected. Haven't tested the modem or bluetooth yet, but Wifi works, but occasionally takes a shit every hour or so.

But...
I've got Fedora 32 with XFCE and Xorg running... on a phone. Natively. With wireless and touch support. Not just a serial console or a chroot from a rooted Android.
With a modern kernel.
I can already use it for dicking around in Firefox and whatnot.

To me, that counts for something.

I have waited so, so long for this moment. And it's finally here.

EDIT: here's a link to a screenshot.

The IRS hasn't finished sending stimulus payments for up to $1,200 per person to millions of Americans, and already some are wondering if those checks will do enough and if there will be a second coronavirus relief bill. The "economic impact payments" being issued by the IRS by checks in the mail and via direct deposit to banks were introduced as a one-time payment designed to help curb the financial blow caused by the outbreak of COVID-19.

With more than 33 million people filing first-time unemployment claims since mid-March, the unemployment rate reaching 14.7% and the country barreling toward a recession that economists predict globally could be the worst since the Great Depression, talk of a second 2020 stimulus check to keep people afloat is already starting in Washington.

Today, while there is not broad enough support in Congress to pass a second stimulus package for individuals -- which some are calling the "CARES 2 Act" -- a handful of ideas from members of Congress are being discussed and gaining traction. Here's what we know about a second round of stimulus payments in 2020 for individuals.

https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/will-there-be-a-second-round-for-coronavirus-stimulus-checks-heres-what-were-hearing/

IMO, money should be reserved for those most in need. Corporations are out. I should be out. I haven't missed a payday since this whole thing started, FFS. People in need should be targeted. Yeah, it was nice getting some "free money", but I didn't "need" it.

Small businesses, and people out of work should come first. Everyone else can stand in line, and make their cases, one by one. And, again, the large corporations don't even need to get in line. Any company with overseas subsidiaries, offshore banking, and questionable tax filing practices is definitely out. Such companies are not "American", they are international and global. (I'm looking at you, Apple, Microsoft, Google, WalMart, and a boatload more.)

Thoughts?

In the first part, someone suggested an outboard sound card. I've actually had one for about fifteen years, but can't find the power supply; I haven't needed it in a decade.
        At any rate, the next morning I realized that I actually already had Broadcomm Bluetooth drivers, in the dongle’s install CD, so I uninstalled the Bluetooth drivers that were installed, and installed drivers from the disk; or rather, the network drive I had copied them to.
        Apparently the old Bluetooth chip doesn’t support the new drivers. So I again uninstalled the Bluetooth drivers, disabled the Bluetooth chip, plugged the dongle in, and installed the drivers yet again, rebooted, and...
        It was worse than before, as if it had no Bluetooth whatever. A look at the device manager showed why—it only showed the disabled internal chip, and not the dongle. Stupid Windows!
        Time for Linux. I went to the Kubuntu site and downloaded the ISO. As it was downloading I scrolled through Facebook and discovered a post from Lulu saying that they had just done a huge site redesign and there may be trouble.
        Half of my books seemed to be missing. I wasn’t going to be installing Linux today!
        A couple of hardcover books were listed as paperback, and with the hardcover’s prices. A couple led to 404s. I did a search on Lulu’s site for one missing book, searching for its ISBN, and was led to some book by someone else.
        Fortunately they were still for sale at Barnes & Noble and Amazon, so I simply changed the “buy” URL on the books’ pages.
        By then I had forgotten all about Linux, running across a magazine article about the Roman Plague Emperor, who was a philosopher. “Hmm,” I thought, “I haven’t added any new books to my site in a while, and a philosopher’s musings about a plague Rome was enduring was pretty timely,” so I went to Gutenberg; it should only take a few hours or so to format it for the site.
        There was a problem: it was almost unreadable. Darmok at Galadra. It was translated a few hundred years ago, and the language was more archaic and obscure than the King James Bible. And it got worse; each page was littered with archaic words, many of which I needed to look up in more than one dictionary because it was missing from Webster’s and OED. One word Google couldn’t even find. On top of that it appeared that whoever scanned it left all the OCR errors in. There were a lot of words starting sentences that weren’t capitalized, and words that were that shouldn’t have been. And every speck of dirt on the scanned page became a comma, making it sound like William Shatner playing James Kirk, and far less readable; “The koala eats, shoots, and leaves.”
        I decided to edit it and make it my own, making the unreadable prose readable, understandable, and if I do it right, maybe a pleasant read. I’ve been working on it all week, and am about halfway through the first pass.
        But yesterday I remembered the Bluetooth/plug problem again when it annoyed me trying to find some music among all the commercials every radio station was playing, so I burned the ISO on a DVD and started the Linux installation.
        Or thought I was. I couldn’t find the right key to get to the BIOS; I’ve seen F2, F9, F10, and F12. So I looked it up on Google. I changed the boot sequence to start with the DVD and exited. Windows started booting. WTF??
        My bad, the DVD tray was open.
        When it got to the part where it was ready to write to disk, there were only two options: try Kubuntu, or wipe the drive and install it. This was really unusual. I started using Linux when Mandrake came out a couple of decades ago, installing different distros on different computers, but every single time I could either use the whole disk, or dual boot.
        I shut off the power, opened the DVD drive and rebooted, just to make sure that I hadn’t trashed Windows, and it came up all right. So I closed the drive bay and rebooted. Half an hour later when it had only been at the opening Kubuntu screen, it reverted to text mode and displayed an error message that seemed to indicate that it couldn’t read the DVD.
        Maybe it just got too hot to read, I’ve seen that before. I hope so, if the DVD has gone bad it will be hard as hell to install Linux, since it will have to be from a thumb drive, and I’m not sure it’s possible on this machine; I saw no external drives in the BIOS’ drive list.
        At any rate I shut it off to let it all cool and decided to watch Star Trek, so I went to “Movies” on the TV, went through to the directory where the movies are stored, and Star Trek was gone.
        Damn. Star Wars was there, but not Star Trek. So I got on the computer, since the TV sometimes misses things, and it really was gone. So I plugged in my backup drive, which now has four full-system backups. The most recent backup was missing Star Trek. I finally found it on the oldest backup, started the HP back up since it has a network jack, the Dell only has Wi-fi.
        It will take days to copy all those movies and TV shows. So it will be a while before I start the next attempt at getting Linux on the HP.

Black Mirror creator not working on season 6 because we already feel depressed

Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker believes humanity could use a bleakness break.

Brooker revealed to the U.K.'s Radio Times that he's not currently working on writing season 6 of Netflix's Emmy-winning series because we've already found ourselves plunged into a nightmarish dystopia like those explored in his shows.

‘Black Mirror’ Creator Says the World Is Too Bleak Right Now for Season 6 to Happen

Black Mirror

How much use do these things get before they go on the trash heap? Or do they get incinerated as bio-hazard waste?

Will this new product cycle nullify the gains from bans on plastic bags?

From ArsTechnica:
US projects 200,000 new COVID-19 cases per day, 3,000 daily deaths by June

Leaked gov’t document predicts rise in deaths as Trump aims to “open up America.”

The United States is expected to see about 200,000 new COVID-19 cases per day by June 1, with daily deaths hitting 3,000, a leaked Trump administration document shows.

I'm feebly trying to think of a way to put that risk into perspective.

According to the Google, There are a total of 13,843 McDonald's locations in the United States as of April 07, 2020.

So let's suppose each day there would be 1 death in your community for every 4 McDonald's locations. That sounds about right.

Suppose the following happens once per day. For every four McDonald's locations in a county, a single BigMac drops out of the sky into a random location. Wherever that BigMac lands is where a death occurs in that county. Every day. What are the odds of you coming into contact with one of these BigMac biological death bombs?

How safe would you feel from being killed by a BigMac? Every day.

How likely is it you would have come into contact with a BigMac while it was still contagious? Are you protected enough from the BigMac? Maybe a full body hazmat suit if you venture out in public?

Stay at home. Bored up the doors and windows. Eat the same fine food the president eats. Standard order:

• 2 Big Mac
• 2 Filet O' Fish (yuk! and double yuk!)
• Chocolate Shake

Stock up on these items. They last forever without refrigeration.