HiWire

Alone Time 2 – Slynk

Happy Birthday!

I don't think killing the hackintosh is high on Apple's priorities. Looking at the WWDC videos, it's still obvious that Apple relies heavily on 3rd-party development to keep the ecosystem viable. They have a lot of cash, but they have wisely continued to limit their growth (and product platforms), even after all the acquisitions. That does sometimes make Apple look very slow-moving, as they have fewer partners and markets than Microsoft, for example.

They do mention Apple's move to ARM in the last 10 minutes... killing off the Hackintosh (mostly). Intel released details on a hybrid, mobile-oriented, stacked platform (Lakefield) this week with a big Intel x86 CPU and smaller Atom CPU: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15877/intel-hybrid-cpu-lakefield-all-you-need-to-know

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Dancing in the Dark (Bruce Springsteen cover) – Emmelie de Forest

A sentry gun today keeps the tourist hordes away 🔭

So... no UA 571-C Sentry Guns to guard my shark (with frickin' laser beams) moat? 🦈 The sentry gun scenes were removed from the theatrical cut of Aliens and added back later on home media director's cut versions. Advanced pest control:

Microsoft is coming under fire (again) for forcing Edge on people: https://www.theverge.com/21310611/microsoft-edge-browser-forced-update-chromium-editorial I think the title is linkbait and the tone is overly alarmist. I never used Edge as a primary browser (I doubt many people did), but it makes sense to include one with the operating system. No doubt the old Edge was full of security holes and switching to the Chromium version fixes some of those problems. I have a bigger problem with Microsoft forcing new Windows 10 users to create a Microsoft account. You can get around it by disconnecting the computer from the internet, but it shouldn't be so difficult to say "no" to a Microsoft account (and Apple are like this with the Apple ID as well).

They'll probably bungle it.

Dirty Mind – Prince

My PC has been randomly waking from sleep since last summer. It's usually plugged into a power outlet, so it's not a huge deal, but it's disturbing that the problem hasn't been fixed in almost a year. Microsoft has also released Edge as a macOS browser. I've been using it since last week and it's been pretty decent. I upgraded to Chromium Edge on Windows a few months ago but I don't use it very often. Yesterday, I logged into my Boot Camp Windows 7 for the first time in a few weeks and noticed that Microsoft was recommending the Edge browser in Windows Update (official support for Win7 ended in January). Better than Internet Explorer 11, I guess. And they're trying to ram an urgent security update this week to machines via the Microsoft Store, which nobody uses: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/unscheduled-fixes-for-critical-windows-flaws-delivered-through-rare-channel/

I think pro users will keep an Intel Mac around for old applications until the long transition is over. The preliminary test results from the developer kit are promising – imagine what numbers from an A13-based kit would look like: https://www.laptopmag.com/news/apple-silicon-gets-the-benchmark-treatment-first-results-are-amazing But it will be an uphill battle for some developers, especially those who haven't made the transition to 32-bit apps yet. Some of those will be dead-ended on Macs running Mojave or Boot Camp indefinitely. Take a look at the WWDC videos for an idea of what's coming – I'd rather be optimistic than pessimistic: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc2020/

Ars Technica made a video about the F-15 cockpit controls, which led to a sidebar by the author about Boeing in the 2000s: https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/06/human-interface-come-on-a-tour-of-an-f-15c-fighter-jet-cockpit/?comments=1&start=80 Which led to an article about the McDonnell-Douglas / Boeing merger: https://www.msn.com/en-za/money/news/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis/ar-BBYzJXz TL;DR mistakes were made. Another tragic story of corporate aggression, cost-cutting, and greed. I'm against continually escalating airline ticket prices, but compromising safety to cut costs led to inevitable disasters.

So I checked Windows Update out of curiosity yesterday (actually looking for an Edge browser update) and noticed that the 2004 update has been around since May and Microsoft has been delaying the rollout. Then I looked for 2004 update problems and got a long list... what do you guys think about the latest major update? I'm inclined to delay this for as long as possible on my personal computer. Microsoft's track record with major updates has been truly terrible in the last few years, going from bricked computers to lost data. I'm afraid to estimate how many millions of dollars of productivity and data have been lost from these problems in enterprise and home computing.

Happy Birthday!

What's funny is that I used to have a box of these power cords at the office (and I still have a few) – I used to harvest them from all the retired PCs and other equipment. I'm sure they'd all sound exactly the same... but:

That's what I thought, too. In this case, Arcam was probably right... stick with a normal power cable and it will sound just fine. My plan was to try it with the CD player and if there wasn't a noticeable difference, try it on the preamp (Arcam FMJ C31).

I thought there was something odd about the testing method. Still, there aren't a lot of other objective measurements with this stuff. The backstory is that my CD player's tray (Arcam FMJ CD36) stopped working a few years ago and the repair shop lost the original power cable when they gave it back to me, so they gave me a generic substitute (which is probably about the same). That's when I started thinking about getting an upgrade cable... not for a huge audiophile improvement, but just to have a "nice" cable. The Shunyata Venom 14 caught my attention because it was one of the least expensive power cables. It couldn't possibly make my equipment sound worse... I keep thinking that the money spent on audiophile power upgrades could buy a lot of music.

I was looking at the Shunyata Research Venom 14 power cables (for my CD player) when I came across these videos. Looks like you can really dive down the rabbit hole on this stuff – my system is already connected to a PS Audio Duet. Thoughts?

Yes, and I always wondered why they didn't name the whole act the Silvertones. I've waited for years to see the show come out again, but at least it's available on YouTube in low res for now. I've never owned a Chris Isaak (or Hum) album... looking forward to catching up, though.

Dancin' – Chris Isaak Totally forgot about the David Lynch connection: http://somethingelsereviews.com/2015/01/10/james-wilsey-chris-isaak-guitarist/ I miss watching the Chris Isaak Show late at night.

Hats – The Blue Nile