SoylentNews

It is in your own best interest to wear a mask if going into the hardware store to buy something to kill aunts in your home.

For starters, I have never really cared a lot about cell phones. They aren't "real computers" in my opinion, and they will never replace my desktop.

But, for reasons I'm not going into here, I suddenly need more reliable service, here at the house. That is, I need the cell phone to work, but I can't be going out into the rain, trying to find that magic spot in the yard where I get a full bar, or maybe two bars for reception.

I have, in the past, used those little cards that go inside of the cell phone, promising to boost your reception. I've had mixed results with that, none of them exceptionally good. The best of them might boost your reception by a bar. When you have no service at all, that little card will usually give you crappy service.

Looking at somewhat more serious equipment, Wilson makes a nice looking cell phone antenna for trucks and cars, that apparently gives you a nice signal boost. It sells for about $80 to $100. Problem is, the phone must be left in the antenna cradle, which probably means using the speaker phone. That sucks - you can't carry the phone around, and speaker phone always sounds like crap.

Car or truck, about $200
https://www.wilsonsignalbooster.com/weboost-drive-sleek-cradle-signal-booster-470135.html

Home use, starting about $500 to $1000
https://www.wilsonsignalbooster.com/
https://www.wilsonsignalbooster.com/weboost-470144-home-multiroom-signal-booster.html
https://www.wilsonsignalbooster.com/wilson-pro-70-plus-for-voice-3g-4g-lte.html

More serious equipment? Starting prices seem to be about $500 for a repeater. Set up your antenna, preferably in an elevated position, and point it at a cell tower. Run the coax inside the house, where it plugs into a booster device, which has another antenna to transmit the signal inside the house. Like magic, you should get 3 to 5 bars, and be able to wander throughout your home while maintaining that good, solid signal.

But, I have almost zero idea who makes good equipment, as opposed to consumer grade feel-good trash.

What is the competition for Wilson / weBoost? Some of you Soylentils have a lot of knowledge and experience in electronics. Point me at some good quality, reputable suppliers, please!!

Or, is this the best, and/or the best price, I'm going to find?

I did run across one booster system, that has to be set to one carrier or another. That is, it will not boost all cell phone signals at the same time - you have to choose one. It supposedly has a much stronger signal than any of the others I've looked at.

https://www.waveform.com/products/cel-fi-go-x

Again, that's a $1000. This particular page suggests that I can't change it from one carrier to another, instead, they want me to specify which carrier I want to use.

This one is near $1000, boosts all carriers, and they claim to have performance comparable to the cel-fi-go-x
https://www.waveform.com/products/hi-boost-home-15k-lcd-f20g-5s-lcd

So, are there better options out there? Cheaper options that are as good or better?

Yurikamome, a rail line on the Tokyo waterfront, is replacing the NEC PC-98 computers that have powered its automated traffic system since 1995.

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/ef603f22fd6026319e1299b8e531e398084a9b76

The unfwics programming language (a hobby project I've been working on-and-off for years) has reached a point where I decided to give it a subversion repository. It's still private.

I just recently named it, and since like most such projects it's likely to remain esoteric I wanted a name that would be unique. Thus, Unique Name For Which I Can Search.

The name also fits with one of the key features of the language--the ability to mix prefix, postifx and infix freely. It's not prefix, postfix, or infix. It's "un-fix". Actual paste from command prompt:

+1 2
1+2
1 2 +
dump stack
#       0;  3
#       1;  3
#       2;  3

This works because where Lisp has an "eval" function, unfwics has in "infer" function which infers how the tokens should be re-ordered before interpretation. So far, it just seems to be slightly more complicated.

Aside from that, I'm aiming for it to be both interpreted and compiled, memory safe (it's currently reference counted), light-weight, and come with a translator to C that would allow it to run "unsafe" and fast (not even working on that yet). The current interpreter is incremental so in theory it could have "green" threads. I was inspired by reading about and studying Lisp, Forth, Erlang, Joy and probably a few others.

The Covid quarantine gave me a lot of time to work on this. If you hate this kind of thing, don't look at it. If you love odd new languages you'll have to wait a bit--it's still too full of stuff that's obviously wrong so I don't want to turn it loose; but just having a repository makes it feel a bit more real now. I haven't done any professional programming in 10 years so it feels funny to be committing again after all this time too...

"You get the Trump stink on you, it’s hard to get it off.”

If there’s an organizing theme to Pence’s vice presidency, it’s that he must never offend a man whose emotional antennae quiver at any slight. That means he’s perennially validating a president who insists the pandemic is under control when reality screams that it’s not.
...
In public, Pence takes pains to ensure that he and the president are aligned. On June 26, at the task force’s first public briefing in two months, he delivered the Trumpian message that “truly remarkable progress” had been made fighting the coronavirus, despite a worrisome rise in cases in dozens of states.

I asked the task-force member why, at times, Pence hasn’t worn a mask in public to model responsible behavior. Is it because he doesn’t want Trump to see and take umbrage? “That’s the only reason,” this person said. “He’ll wear it in a microsecond. He doesn’t want to egregiously look like he’s opposing the president.” (Asked about Pence’s mask-wearing message, John Fea, a historian and the author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, referenced Pence’s Christian identity: “You can’t apply these scriptural ideas about loving your neighbor until you first understand that actually wearing a mask is to protect your neighbor.”)

I'll be the first to admit I'm a fan.

First time I heard her play, was about 8 years ago. It was just Amy, a guitar, and a tambourine. Still a teenager and up on stage in front of maybe 100 people. By the end of the first song, I knew she was gifted. Outstanding voice and timing. When the crowd applauded after the third song, I heard her say "Awww!" in a "You like me, you really like me!" Sally Fields kind of way. She didn't know how good she was! I knew then I was witnessing something special.

Background: I played an instrument in band for 8 years (grade school through high school). In college, I was a member of the sound group that set up, mixed, and tore down concerts at the student union (and other venues). There's more, but suffice it to say I like to think I have an "ear" for music.

I saw her perform several more over times over the years as she went to Berklee School of Music in Boston, started a band, did some touring, moved to New York City (Brooklyn), and then to Los Angeles. She proceeded to co-write songs for other artists: "Back to You" -- Selena Gomez; "Without Me" -- Halsey (#1 Billboard charts); "Adore You" -- Harry Styles; et al.

In January of 2020, she was listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 for music. It's an annual list of the top 30 people under 30 years old who are recognized for their accomplishments.

On several occasions I had the good fortune to meet and chat with her. She has always struck me as a genuine, humble, down-to-earth person first and foremost as well as a gifted performer.

She signed with Warner Music about a year ago. She'd been working on an album and was on the verge of its release... and then the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

Finally, the first single off her upcoming album is out. There's a video up on YouTube: "Queen of Silver Linings" -- Amy Allen. She has an Instagram page and an official web page which also has links to where the single is available..

More background info is available on her Wikipedia page.

UPDATE:

"Queen of Silver Linings" is a different style for Amy. She used to have a bunch of videos of her own up on YouTube, especially of when she was fronting her band (Amy & The Engine), but took them down a while ago. That said, other people who saw her perform had put up videos, as well. Some are of poor quality, so I'll spare you having to endure those. Here are some "historically representative examples". For starters, check out Get Me Outta Here (Vine Sessions), Love Me (Sofar Session), and Love Me (Live at Boston Tree Lighting )

One of the very old hard disks (Western Digital Green, 2TB) that I recycled to put in my new PC is starting to fail. At the moment I have a manual backup strategy where I have a pair of disks partitioned identically, one as the "live" system and the other as the backup, and I rsync things across as and when needed.

I was looking at the price of SSDs and they're still way too high for what I need. I am not going back to 1TB of storage. I really need at least 3TB so I was looking at buying some more spinning rust.

I did a quick search for hard disk reliability by brand and found some tables which, at a glance, basically told be not very much apart from that there's one brand I don't trust and apparently I was right.

I was looking at Scan Computers and I was thinking of buying a pair of Western Digital Blue 4TB drives, but they're on pre-order. I noticed that there are Toshiba drives, which look like they should be a lot faster for about the same or less money (7200rpm vs 5400rpm, 128MB cache vs. 64MB cache).

For about the same money (a few £ more) as a pair of Western Digital 4TB 5400rpm drives, I could get four 2TB Toshiba 7200rpm drives with 64MB cache, or four 5400 WD Blue 2TB drives, and RAID them. I was thinking of RAID 10 (striped and mirrored).

In the past I have usually bought slower drives since I imagined they might last longer. Am I over-thinking this?

Update: I bought a pair of 4TB Toshiba X300 disks (non-SMR). They seem pretty quick so far. I put the very latest Slackware64-current (kernel 4.5.50) on and copied over all my data. The only thing to note is that the heads are quite noisy compared with the old 2TB Western Digital Greens.

The beast has been summoned.
Microsoft patent for neural interface is real.

Patentscope:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606

Google Patents:
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2020060606A1/en?oq=WO2020060606

Full text:
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/58/f5/bf/bf453d0035610f/WO2020060606A1.pdf

Even Reddit cover provided some selective insight:
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/gfmknu/microsoft_neurogress_patent_wo2020060606_and_the/

Now, where is my Dark Matter Houkai Energy source to power all those fancy mechas I could input to with a Microsoft patented interface?
Give me some Herrscher core to enhance this Neurogress link. Trust me, I can control it up to Phase 4.
https://www.neurogress.site/