Darwin

I've been working from home and I have a new friend... a robin that insists on attacking our kitchen windows. He/she may be building a nest somewhere around the house, but he spends a lot of time flying into the windows. I've named him Darwin.

Book Deal: Hyperion

If you are stuck inside and looking for something to do, I recommend picking up Hyperion for only $2.99.

I've written about stuff by Dan Simmons before... here and here.

Cheap Smart Plugs with Energy Monitoring

Deal: $24 for 4 smart plugs with energy monitoring. That's less than $6 per plug!

(You have to add them to your cart to see the discounted price.)

LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Millennium Falcon

For a mere $800, you too can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

BASIC

This brings me back...

Deploy your BASIC code to our 6502 data center in just one tweet. Welcome to 8-bit cloud 😜 pic.twitter.com/ZmB1WIUx4C

— BBC Micro 🦉 bot [v2] (@bbcmicrobot) February 11, 2020

Tom Whitwell's 52 things I learned in 2016: #48

#48:

Intervision, the 70s Soviet answer to the Eurovision Song Contest, was judge by electricity grid voting: “those watching at home had to turn their lights on when they liked a song and off when they didn’t, with data from the electricity network then being used to allocate points.” [Nick Heady] (Fluxx have been working with National Grid on several projects this year)

Failure Modes in Machine Learning

Interesting framework for thinking about out Machine Learning/AI can fail.

Cannonball Run

A new record... tech assisted:

But there was also a built-in Net Radar radar detector, a windshield-mount Escort Max 360 radar detector, an AL Priority laser jammer system and an aircraft collision avoidance system—a bit of gear usually used in airplanes to help them avoid hitting other airplanes.

And:

The car was equipped with brake light and taillight kill switches, and Toman had all of its flashy carbon fiber trim covered with silver vinyl, which he also used to change the appearance of the taillights. At first glance, the AMG looked more like a mid-2000s Honda Accord from the rear, not like a car that would be cruising at 160 mph or faster.

And:

For navigation and further police detection, they ran Waze—a popular traffic-avoiding and hazard-detecting app—on an iPad and an iPhone. For the GPS data they would later need to prove that they’d actually finished in the time they said they did, they ran two dash-mount Garmin GPS units and one of those GPS tags tracked by a third party. They also had a police scanner and a CB radio, each of which had a big whip antenna mounted at the back of the car.

Via Jalopnik

ARRL and groups.io

I had read that the Yahoo Groups service was shutting down... they were a hotbed for ham radio groups. Some of those groups migrated to groups.io. The ARRL is also going to use groups.io for some of their communications.

The ARRL is using https://t.co/e5AqwWGhNu to improve communications with radio hams. https://t.co/YY7jlISjWn

— BobW (@K0NR) October 23, 2019

Echo Dot for $9?

Worth a shot... effectively $9:

Echo Dot (3rd Gen) for $0.99 and 1 month of Amazon Music Unlimited for $7.99 with Auto-renewal -Heather Gray