Book Of Norm

This is an honest review by a tech savvy person who actually paid for it, not given it for free.  To start off with, this is a niche product. It is a rugged mobile focused laptop designed to take a beating and draw relatively little power. If you are just looking for "a decent laptop" this is a bad choice - overpriced and low specs.  Cons: - It is a USB C charger, BUT, it cannot charge on "low power" - or a cellphone charger. Most other USB C laptops can do this. It is a big downside for what is designed to be a highly portable/rugged machine.  - The screen is terrible. It reminds me of 2004 - HUGE bezel, low resolution, max brightness is low (also a downside for a rugged / outdoor oriented device). Only upside here is a sense of nostalgia for when I was in college... that will likely wear off quickly.  - The HDD, RAM, and processor are barely workable for a modern Windows machine - It is HEAVY for it's size - this is because of the rugged aspect presumably  - B...

 This is incredibly cool and would have been science fiction only a decade ago: Falcon 9 rocket launches its 550th satellite . With clearing skies and moderate winds, SpaceX's Transporter-3 rideshare mission safely launched into space on Thursday. The Falcon 9 rocket's first stage sent its upper stage and a payload with 105 small satellites on its way into low Earth orbit. Then, the Falcon 9 first stage made a smooth landing back near its launch site,  Ars reports . A well-traveled rocket  ... The first stage was making its 10th flight. Remarkably, this single Falcon 9 rocket first stage has now launched 550 satellites into orbit, as well as one Cargo Dragon and one Crew Dragon. It has flown, on average, every two months since its first launch. It would seem that rocket reuse is more than a fad. [ars_newsletter list="248910"]  

 Vail Corp sucks - we all know this. This year however has hit a new low. My own home mountain, The Canyons, is now being treated as a parking lot for the much smaller PCMR (Park City Mountain Resort). Very little terrain is open at the Canyons, the terrain that did open was slow to open, and the services are well below where they should be. At the same time, the lift lines are completely absurd.  For reference, at its best, this was The Canyons: Today, under Vail, with tons of snow, this is what is shut, gone, removed, or just not running: I would argue this is fraud. We were sold season passes to a mountain with 4,000+ skiable acres. Vail has now confidentially stated they are not planning on opening up at least 1,500 of those acres, 4 of the lifts, and some of the facilities.  The Epic pass should be considered financial fraud. Fuck Vail. 

The problem with democracy is that most people are stupid The problem with socialism is that most people won't work The problem with capitalism is that there are things which can't be valued with money

What if we had released a mild but highly infectious version of Covid-19 into the wild in Sept 2020 rather than the vaccine?  This is not SciFi, it is entirely possible. Under Western ethical standards of "Do No Harm" this is totally unethical. Under Chinese standards of "Greatest Common Good" or "Greatest Communist Good" this could an arguably should have been done.  Think through the implications. If we had engineered something like Omicron but milder (let's call it Omega) and released it into the wild in Sept 2020 - what would have happened? A huge number of people would have had a cold, and lived. A small number of people would likely still have died (making it impossible to do this under "Do No Harm") but compared to the number of people who instead died from Covid 'naturally' the outcome could have been far better - potentially millions of people and trillions of dollars better.  Who gets to make that decision? Certainly no one ...

Rich people aren't odd. People are odd. Rich people get to be themselves.

The title says it all. After seeing a 9-5 Wagon and a Discovery within a few minutes of each other I could not get over the comparison. With Saab dead, I guess you can borrow whatever you want. But in this case.. Why?

The worst car of all time. The butt of every auto journalist joke. The ugliest car ever. The 2001 Pontiac Aztec. But here is the funny thing - GM was right. Pontiac was right. Whoever designed this thing is laughing, crying, and yelling "I told you so!!!" into the void. I hear ya mystery car designer, I hear ya. The reason is, we all drive one now. We drive edgy looking crossovers which are actually cars. When the Pontiac came out, everyone made fun of it because it was "not a real SUV" but it tried to look like one with plastic and sharp lines. Journalists laughed as well all kept buying Ford Explorers, or actual cars like the Camry. Fast forward on your VCR to 2019. Pontiac is dead, the Aztec is reviled, the Camry is fading as 'cars' fall off the sales chart and the up and coming crown prince of units sold is the 2019 Rav4. Notice anything? It's a Pontiac Aztec!!!! It is based on a car. It has plastic body panels (2 tone!). It has a s...

Facebook is dying. Want proof? They are discussing paying people to add content, because people are posting less and less. http://www.inc.com/jeff- bercovici/facebook-pay-users. html Paid content = crap. There is no way this works. This is not Youtube where people follow random funny/celebrity types because it's basically TV. This is Facebook where users are meant to interact with their friends, online. You're going to pay some of them to put up content? Ridiculous. Facebook will always stick around, just like Google search will always be there, we run Microsoft Windows for our OS and we have an x86 architecture and QWERTY keyboards courtesy of IBM. It just won't be as important anymore.

I woke up to bright sunshine. There were trees above me as I looked up. It was a cold day. Cold, and blue. They often went together. I shook myself awake. My head hurt like hell. I was in the passenger seat, fully reclined. Slowly I came to, and saw Sarah sleeping in the driver's seat. I rolled onto my side and was greeted by Denali's wet nose, followed by some sloppy kisses. We were ok. I knew we were ok from that. Just that. It was going to be ok. I reached across and hugged Sarah, and she started to wake up, leaning into my hug. "Where are we baby?" I asked her. All I could see were trees around us, no road, just a dirt track behind us. She woke up to the question. "Oh baby I'm so glad you're ok. I was so worried about you last night. You kept falling asleep on me. I tried to keep you awake as we drove, but I didn't know what to do." I told her it was ok, she had done the right thing, we had to get away from Boston. She followed up: ...

I knew the key was to not panic. To pick our route carefully. To stay away from the highways and main roads where traffic would be backed up. I'd had my truck for years, which meant I still had my old paper maps in it. I drove slowly though our neighborhood as I worked with Sarah on the route. I wanted to head North first, get away from people, get away from the highways. Find a path no one fleeing Boston would try and take. I turned on the radio but all that was on was the emergency broadcast system. It was telling us to evacuate the city in an "orderly manner." I almost ran over someone, something maybe, as I listened to that broadcast. I had to swerve as the person was crouching in the middle of the road. Only as we went past I saw they were crouching over another body. Sarah said "I think we can head on local roads around Marlborough and Hudson, so right past the Assabet park." Sarah was a realtor - she knew this area far better than I ever would. She ha...

Boston. Two passengers on stolen South Korean passports had come into Logan the day before. Police were searching for them. A husband and wife. They had checked into a hotel, but could not be found. Shit. Jesus. I kept packing. The radio went on. Reports of attacks in San Diego. No one was sure yet of anything. I tried to get through to Sarah. She texted me through Facebook, she had seen the news: nukes. She was worried, wanted to know if that meant anything dangerous for us. I told her not to worry - once she got home we would head out of the city, get somewhere safe. I grabbed everything I could find. Food. Water. Camping gear. All the dog food. A couple of folding solar panels with USB ports. Flashlights. A wind up radio. I didn't have a lot of weapons. I packed what I had. Hatchet. Couple of folding outdoor knives, my Leatherman. Once the Suburban was packed I went over to the gas station. The line was crazy, but I had to wait for Sarah anyway. It took an hour to ...

We sat there watching. No one wanted to go back to work. We ate lunch and speculated. "Do you think it's a virus?" "Maybe it's a bio-weapon the South tried to use?" "Some crazy chemical like Meth but stronger." We didn't know, but no one else did either. A few minutes later Obama came on and announced that the US would be moving 4 carrier groups into the East China Sea and Sea of Japan. Abe, the Japanese Prime Minister, came on also: Japan was mobilizing their entire Naval Defense Force. Combined, it was the largest naval deployment since WWII. Even Putin said they would move in the Admiral Kuznetsov to assist. What the hell were the Russians doing helping the South Koreans? A breaking news story came through soon after - the Chinese military was evacuating Shenyang. I had never heard of it before, but reports said it was a city of more than 8 million. 8 million. It's maybe 100 miles from the North Korean border. Sketchy reports were ...

April 7th 2016 When we woke up the urgency of the news stories had shifted. Outlets were now discussing a major crises in the Korean peninsula. China had not only closed the border, they had begun to evacuate the towns close-by “for the safety of the population.” The hell was going on. The situation on the border with S. Korea was worse. They had mobilized their military and were trying to stem a tidal wave of refuges from the North. The army of the DPRK (Democratic – that’s how you know it’s a dictatorship) had stopped firing and instead were joining the panicked civilians trying to cross the border. The South had set up official border crossings where refugees were being allowed through. There were photos of crowds of North Koreans pushing against chain link fences, narrow gaps where people were shoving through one by one. Aid stations where they were being checked. Quarantine pens where they were being held on the South Korean side... Western outlets were translating the sto...

April 6th 2016 - 9 Months Ago I took the train into Boston that day. As usual. Crowded. Caught up on the news. That morning there were some disturbing stories coming out of Korea. Starving emaciated North Koreans running directly at the DMZ. Triggering landmines. Getting shot down by their own army before they can get close. Fucked up. I had no idea what was going on there. The South was talking about mobilizing their forces - they had already taken out a couple of ships which headed into their waters. As usual I was in meetings all day. Barely saw daylight let alone check my phone. I sent a message to Sarah around lunch. "Love you babe - how's the day going? We still good for 6:00 for dinner?" My parents were staying in Boston for a work trip just for the one night, flying back to Denver the next morning. I've looked at my phone (yes - it's still with me) - I didn't really send much else that day. A joke with my guys. A couple more messages wi...

There have been a few articles going around about a star with a very odd signature. Like most things in space, it is likely some kind of phenomenon that we have just not figured out yet... but it could be an alien civilization which has grown to the point of actually obscuring some of the light of the sun around which it orbits. The original Atlantic article , like many Atlantic articles, is well worth the read. This is the teaser: “When [Boyajian] showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked,” Wright told me. “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.” Here's why people are so interested. Unlike all of our Sci-Fi ideas about alien civilizations, they are more likely to stay in one close area than wander the stars. Wandering about is both extremely costly (in resources sense, whatever their "economy" looks like) and takes a really long time, splittin...

Have dual citizenship? How about being a naturalized citizen? In Canada, you are now second tier. This is something that strikes home as a US and UK dual citizen. The concept of stripping away someone's citizenship and sending them into exile is both anachronistic and reeks of a totalitarian police state. Citizenship is not optional. Once someone has become a citizen, they are part of your country. 100%. Forever. You cannot go back on that contract. It is even more revolting to call it "Strengthening Canadian Citizenship" just as attacks on minorities have always been legitimized (anti-gay? you're "strengthening marriage", anti-immigrant? you're "strengthening society"). Terrible See a Judge anywhere in the new process? Nope - they skipped that part.

Planning a trip soon? You may have seen T-Mobile advertise their Simple Choice Plan. $50/mo, 1GB of LTE data and (big perk!) http://www.t-mobile.com/simple-choice-international-plans.html It seems like a great deal. Step off the plane and instead of the hassle of trying to find a local SIM card, you already have unlimited (slow) data & texting - which is really all you need most of the time.  Since I was flying to the UK where much of my family lives, I went to the page, clicked the link and signed up for a plan. This plan in fact: Simple Choice Unlimited Do NOT get off a plane and start texting with this plan. T-Mobile will charge you a MINIMUM of $0.50 per text and at least $1/mb for data.  Where's the trick? You singed up for a "Simple Choice Plan" and EVERY "Simple Choice" plan comes with international travel right?  Nope.  T-Mobile maintains there are two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PLANS.  1) Simple Choice Unlimited ...

In a shocking twist, it turns out taking away people's nail clippers and water bottles does not make flying safer.  Seriously, I always though the TSA were a crack squad keeping me safe in the skies. I never listened to those naysayers who said "it's just to make it look like we're doing something." I refused to believe it "No!" I said "my shoes clearly are potential life threatening devices which need to be thoroughly scanned by that guy who looks at 8,356 images an hour and is really paying attention right now." I happily took my laptop out of my bag but left my equally large tablet in, stood in the full body scanner and got shot with harmful radiation, submitted to deep cavity body searches because it MEANT SOMETHING. Now, they've taken all that away from me. Now, when the overweight TSA lady tells me my nail clippers are too large I will no longer feel safe on the plane. When my bag gets pulled aside because I have too many wires an...

“If I’m president of the United States and you’re thinking about joining Al Qaeda or ISIL, I’m not going to call a judge, I’m going to call a drone, and we will kill you.” From the speech Lindsey Graham gave as he announced his desire to become supreme chancellor... err President of the United States. At this point apparently thinking about joining the (seriously fucked up and evil and should be wiped out) terror organizations is enough of a crime to be executed. Clearly Mr. Graham realizes that a statement which so blatantly contravenes the constitution flies in the face of the fact that the President's ultimate purpose is to uphold the constitution? He must intend to pass a new Thought Crime amendment, squaring up that little unconstitutional aspect of his preferred foreign policy.. Or maybe the republicans have simply taken up the Obama school of Presidenting: the constitution, courts, and citizens are obstacles to be ignored in the righteous cr...