Cop Car's Beat

Week in Review - 2019Nov22

Hunky Husband's new desktop computer and monitor have been set up at his computer desk and the data from his old computer has been migrated. My new computer was delivered Tuesday afternoon while I was in the far back yard "supervising" the planting of two gingko trees. Fortunately, HH was at home to hear the doorbell ring and sign for the delivery. After carrying 10 gallons of water to each of the new trees, I was too pooped to worry about setting up my new computer and monitor (delivered 10 days ago) until after dinner.

As I had played "musical desks" with the old computer, setting it up on my non-computer desk where I had previously set up HH's old computer while draining it of data, I was able to install the new equipment on my computer desk without much fuss (photo, below). Having now transferred the data from the old computer to the new, the old computer now resides at the downstairs desk. Since, unlike HH's old computer, my old computer has no problem with the new cheapie speakers, it will do to play exercise videos for me.

INSERTION OF 11/26/2019 6:12PM - Only 7 days later

As expected, and much like HH's new computer, this computer processes lickety-split! I'm trying out using the new, flat-layout keyboard that came with the computer. It seems very strange and it is harder for me to work with the keyboard under the desktop - where I cannot see it. If, after a couple of months, I don't adjust well to the new keyboard, I shall re-install the old keyboard. It came with a computer that I purchased at least 10 years ago...perhaps 15. I do OK, already, in plain text inputting. It's the numbers and special keys that are hard for me to find - especially since the layout is slightly different from that to which I was accustomed. (Comparison of keyboards in photo, below - older keyboard at top of photo.)

Wednesday, since I was supposed to give the new gingko trees 20 gallons of water, each, I strung all three of our watering hoses together to stretch into the far back yard to complete the watering. While I was at it, I watered the walnut tree that was transplanted into the woods about three years ago, a couple of walnut saplings that I had planted in the near woods a few years ago (which have reached an astounding height of about 12" - yes, that is inches), a volunteer redbud, and the umbrella catalpa and pink dogwood trees that have been planted in what is now the edge of the woods within the past two years. Dragging around and coiling up 150' of watering hose made me as pooped as had the carrying buckets of water the 100+ feet from the house to the new gingko trees!

Three Body Problem

This artist's concept illustrates Kepler-47, the first transiting circumbinary system.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

One graduate-level course, alone, nearly convinced me to give up the study of physics altogether. I felt that I spent 30 years in a one-semester class on the three body problem; thus, I found the following item from Slashdot.org really interesting - if 50 years too late!

AI Cracks Centuries-Old 'Three Body Problem' In Under a Second (livescience.com) 122

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday November 09, 2019 @02:34PM from the matters-of-great-gravity dept.

 

Long-time Slashdot reader taiwanjohn shared this article from Live Science: The mind-bending calculations required to predict how three heavenly bodies orbit each other have baffled physicists since the time of Sir Isaac Newton. Now artificial intelligence (A.I.) has shown that it can solve the problem in a fraction of the time required by previous approaches.

Newton was the first to formulate the problem in the 17th century, but finding a simple way to solve it has proved incredibly difficult. The gravitational interactions between three celestial objects like planets, stars and moons result in a chaotic system -- one that is complex and highly sensitive to the starting positions of each body. Current approaches to solving these problems involve using software that can take weeks or even months to complete calculations. So researchers decided to see if a neural network -- a type of pattern recognizing A.I. that loosely mimics how the brain works -- could do better.

The algorithm they built provided accurate solutions up to 100 million times faster than the most advanced software program, known as Brutus. That could prove invaluable to astronomers trying to understand things like the behavior of star clusters and the broader evolution of the universe, said Chris Foley, a biostatistician at the University of Cambridge and co-author of a paper to the arXiv database, which has yet to be peer-reviewed.

 

Slashdot.org's wise saying of the day: "Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing."

Laughing along with HH

It was 1:00am, following a light lunch, today. I was kicking back in my reading chair, spreading a light quilt over myself to see if I could catch a short nap. Sometimes I manage, sometimes I don't. Before I had quite settled in, Hunky Husband came into my den with a question.

HH: Where's your phone?

CC: In my purse [on my non-computer desk, across the room].

HH: [Retrieving my purse and setting it into my lap.] Would you please call me? I've looked all over the house for my phone and can't find it.

CC: [Hits the speed dial for HH's phone.]

HH's Phone: [Plays the ring tone assigned to calls from me. Sounds close.]

HH: Oh!

The phone was in HH's shirt pocket. It's hard to get to sleep following a raucous belly laugh.

Week in Review - 10/19/2019

Tuesday, as I mentioned in a comment to a post on Liz's Finding life hard? I had a neat, weather-related experience. As I wrote, there, "While working in the yard, this morning (a balmy 17 degrees C when I went out), I noticed that my clothes were suddenly soggy - and that the concrete patio was completely dampened. The dew point dropped, suddenly, and the moisture came out of the air in an instant! I've been caught in sudden fog while flying, but this was a new experience."

About an hour later, I noticed that the sun had come out, again. Looking out the window, I saw the fog bank that had just moved out. Grabbing a camera, I photographed the beautiful scene. In the first photo, below, The fog bank is the lower, dark mass of cloud, separated from the higher-level clouds, in the photo, by a small strip of blue sky.

Below is a zoomed-in photo of the largest piece of blue sky. Obviously, as is generally true when fog is present, the winds were light-to-non-existent; but, eventually, we had a totally blue sky.

 

This was the week to get a bunch of paperwork/licensure completed. Last week my renewed passport arrived, the old passport having expired in 2017 or 2018. This week, I took that passport plus a bunch of other paperwork to our local driver's license office (about 1 mile from our home) to get my "Real ID" driver's license, along with early renewal of the old license that was to expire next spring.

Below is a copy of information from Kansas Real ID web page delineating paperwork requirements. I have high-lighted the documents that I actually took with me. Please note that, by taking my passport, I was not required to present any of the documents listed in item 4. That would have been a real drag since I've changed my name twice and I'm not convinced that I have original copies of the documents attesting to those changes. Fortunately, for me, I proved to the Federal government, many years ago, that I am who I say I am, using my current name that was assumed in 1979, and they no longer require me to present documentation of name changes.

That same web site explains the need filled by a Real ID.

The REAL ID Act was passed by federal lawmakers in 2005 to enact the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation for a “set standard for the issuance of sources of identification.” This established a minimum security standard for state-issued driver’s licenses.

Beginning October 1, 2020, anyone 18 years and older will need a REAL ID compliant driver’s license or another acceptable form of ID to fly within the United States.

In addition, a REAL ID will be required to enter federal facilities where identification is currently required for entrance.

Courts, Post Offices, Social Security offices do not require identification for entrance, so they are exempt.

Kansas began issuing REAL ID credentials in August 2017. REAL ID is not a required credential but will help ease the check-in process when flying or entering a federally protected facility.

Since I no longer volunteer as a Government Liaison, I don't know why I should need to enter a federally protected facility - nor do I anticipate any need to fly; but, I've learned in life that I should be prepared. A couple of times I've been caught short by previously-made short-sighted decisions. The consequences of those decisions cost me money, time, and convenience.

Earlier in the week, I went into Wichita to renew my car tag which was set to expire at the end of October. Unfortunately, during the past year, the car tag office that had been in our City of Derby for several years had been closed. I wanted to go online to renew my tag; but, unfortunately, if I ever received a notice for renewal, I could not find it and a PIN from that notice is required to renew online. After waiting for 1.5 hours, my phone number appeared on the queue display as being the next person to be called. At that point, one of the employees got in front of our crowd of about 100 people to announce that another tag office, about a 7-minute drive away by freeway, had only one person to serve. About half of the crowd disappeared to avail themselves of a shorter wait. As I had taken Hunky Husband's tag renewal notice and check with me, I was able to pay for and receive the little stickers to add to each of our license plates (below photo).

Hunky Husband finally got around to opening the box to extract his new computer. In the olden days, one received an Owner's Manual with electronics. It was, for a computer, perhaps 100-200 pages long. Prominently featured in that booklet would be a cartoon of the front and back of the unit with arrows pointing to each feature and assigning a number. That number could then be looked up on the same/next page to give the name/description of the feature. Not anymore!

With this computer came an 8-page booklet, Quick Setup Guide. The front of the guide shows cartoons of only the ports into which one is to insert a plug with a representation of the plug to be plugged into each port. Well, I set about hooking it up (without need for the 8-page booklet!) and got to this point (photo, below) when I was stumped. Arrgh! This computer, being a new model, has no VGA port. Oh, swell. I hadn't even thought about HH's monitor being so old that it is VGA. **Gnashing teeth** Now, I must decide whether to go with an adaptive cable or bite the bullet and get HH a modern monitor. As this will probably be HH's last desktop computer system, I'll purchase the monitor. It'll work out better, in the end, I'm sure.

Take another look at the above photo. At the upper right-hand corner of the back of the unit you'll see "something" (closeup, below).

It looks like a short-wire antenna (WIFI?) to me. Whatever it is, it is flimsy. The upturned leg at the bottom was bent at about 45 degrees when I first saw it. I decided that it was supposed to have a plastic cover similar to the black plastic box 6" below it, below the upper fan. I looked for it in the plastic bag in which the unit had been encased, and found it; so, the fragile thing, whatever it is, is now protected by a black plastic box. (I can't really read the lettering on the thing or I might be able to learn definitively what it is.) I've made an exhaustive search, online, for labeled diagrams/photos of this computer. The online "User's Guide" to this computer has zero graphics included! In fact, by reading it one might conclude that software setup is the only real problem with computers.

Below are scans of the two pages (front cover and inside front cover) in the HP Quick Setup Guide that include graphics.

Status Report - October 12, 2019

The bad news: In backing up my hard drive, Friday, my Outlook files got deleted (I'm blaming wonky response to mouse inputs, a problem experienced for the past several days that had driven me to pursue the massive backup to my laptop!) - and - the backup files won't work. All of my old emails are gone from Outlook. Only emails from the past few days were available from Webmail. I'm not a happy camper over that. I'll be installing Outlook on my laptop, shortly! BTW: Now the response to mouse inputs is "normal"! 

The good news: Hunky Husband's birthday computer arrived, Wednesday. When he feels like he has the patience to put up with it, HH will open the box. Part of his birthday present is that I will set up the computer; although, in light of item 1....

The best news: I had, at HH's last (left eye) post-op session with his surgeon, Dr Winn, asked if a different anesthesia could be used when she operated on his right eye - one that wouldn't cause cognitive dysfunction for a week. She seemed surprised that he had had that reaction. Dr Winn told us that she would ask that only half as much anesthesia be given HH for the right eye surgery - and made a note in his records.

A friend works at the eye surgery center. She came over to chat with us while we were in the waiting room, Thursday, and confirmed that the note about using less anesthesia was in HH's record. The "exit team" also mentioned that HH had been given less anesthetic - and - they gave him preventive treatment to keep the pressure from building up in his right eye (as it had done in his left eye) - eye drops and a huge (oral) capsule.

Yay! Although his memory was affected by the anesthesia, as expected, HH's cognitive dysfunction was much less this time and lasted but a very few hours - as far as I could tell. (My own cognitive dysfunction may make my judgement less than perfect – lol.) This was a completely different experience from last time.

When the pressure was measured at HH's (right eye) post-op appointment, yesterday, it was only 10 mm Hg. Terrific!!

I find Apple a bit late in catching up

In the past week or two, I've been treated to hearty laughs - occasioned by reading postings similar to the one, below, which I found on Slashdot.org.

New iPhone Feature Can Send Unknown Callers To Voicemail Automatically (economist.com) 89

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday September 28, 2019 @01:34PM from the not-talking-to-strangers dept.

An anonymous reader quotes the Economist: In its latest software release, Apple has made it possible for iPhone users to send all unknown callers to voicemail automatically.

Although the feature will no doubt prove useful to the millions of customers whose peaceful suppers are ruined by fake calls, it could be disastrous for the faltering public-polling industry. The challenges telephone pollsters face have been growing. Polling by phone has become very expensive, as the number of Americans willing to respond to unexpected or unknown callers has dropped.

Back in the mid-to-late-20th century response rates were as high as 70%, according to SSRS, a market research and polling firm. But the Pew Research Centre estimates that it received completed interviews from a mere 6% of the people it tried to survey in 2018. Although polls with low response rates can still be accurate, their costs increase dramatically as pollsters must spend more time and money calling more people.

 

Why am I laughing? Because while iPhone is touting this capability, now, I've been using the capability on my circa 2007 Palm Treo phone for at least a couple of years - and the phone had the capability at birth. Any caller whose number does not match one in my Contacts listing, goes directly to voicemail.

 

BTW: My phone runs on Windows Mobile. Sadly, my service provider, Verizon, tells me that they will discontinue service to such phones sometime in the next several months. One other neat feature about this phone is that, although it is a Smartphone, it operates for me as a dumb phone + digital assistant. I can carry Office files (Word, Excel, Power Point, jpg) on my phone; but, eschew the connection to the www. Much cheaper ($15/month instead of $45/month) and I see no reason to stare at a small phone screen to do what I can do on my 17" monitor + desktop computer.

Sounds Useful - from Slashdot.org

Photo from Letting Automation Read the Fine Print

Text, below, is from Slashdot.org.

AI Reads Privacy Policies So You Don't Have To -- and It's Actually Pretty Good (thenextweb.com) 33

Posted by msmash on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @12:10PM from the how-about-that dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Don't you absolutely hate how dense and confusing privacy policies are? Considering they're full of gotchas and intentionally obscure legalese, it's no surprise that hardly anyone bothers to even read them -- we've simply accepted we're giving up our data, and with it, our sense of privacy. But thanks to this new policy-reading AI, things won't have to be this way for much longer. Guard is a recurrent neural network-based app that reads and analyzes privacy terms, so you don't have to. While it can't yet examine policies on request, the AI has rated the privacy terms of a slew of popular services like Netflix, Instagram, Twitter, and Tinder.

What's particularly nifty about Guard is that it not only gives an overall score, but also breaks down the main threats included in privacy policies. It also lists the total number of threats, and looks at past privacy scandals a service has been involved in. Like I already said, Guard has only analyzed the privacy policies of a small batch of popular services, but you can easily suggest new apps for consideration. The app was built by developer Javi Rameerez, who created the software as part of his thesis on AI and natural language processing.

 

 

IT report from casa CC:

Finally, finally, got Hunky Husband's birthday present ordered, today - an HP desktop computer to replace the boat anchor that's been sitting, idle, on his desk for the past year while he has used his laptop. The computer should be configured and shipped by October 17.

Although good at it, HH hates to get down into the details [since he's never used any of his lifetime supply, he has copious amounts of patience!]; so, of the options I presented him for his birthday present, he chose my obtaining a new desktop for him with some software packages preloaded. The machine I wanted to order was out of stock, then; but, I was able to make the choices of options and order the machine, today. 

Already, I've received an email from HP sales wanting a phone number and "best time" for them to call me to chat about a 3-year extended warranty. Now, really, had I wanted a 3-year extended warranty, would I not have specified that option? Arrrgh!

More from Slashdot.com - Star Trek, Ternary Semiconductors, & Aircraft Black Boxes

Comic-Con Trailers Include 'Star Trek: Picard' and HBO's 'Watchmen' Series (cbsnews.com) 132

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday July 21, 2019 @04:34PM from the engaged dept.

"At Comic-Con, Sir Patrick Stewart took to the Hall H stage Saturday afternoon to discuss his new series, Star Trek: Picard," reports CBS News: The series will focus on what caused famed captain and admiral Jean-Luc Picard to leave Starfleet, and his life since.... Patrick Stewart -- who is also an executive producer -- answered questions about the show. "We never know, do we, when our best moment will be. And that is now," Stewart said. "I knew something unusual would happen. I knew I needed to be a part of it."

Stewart has been heavily involved in crafting "Star Trek: Picard" and frequently visits the writer's room... Brent Spiner, who played the character Data on TNG, said there was "no way" he could say no to the opportunity to work with Stewart again....

The show is set 20 years after the events of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" around the year 2399. This sets the series further into the future than any previous Star Trek series. But fans should not expect to see the same Jean-Luc Picard they know from "The Next Generation" series. During the press tour, Kurtzman teased that the show will be very different and "grounded." The series will explore how Picard has changed in that time, making him reckon with the choices he has made. Kurtzman hinted that there are circumstances that have "radically" shifted that have caused the beloved Starfleet admiral to question his life decisions.
The two-minute trailer includes a surprising cameo, and Variety reports that CBS has also committed to two seasons of Star Trek: Lower Decks, an animated series focused on "the support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships." (They also report that Seth MacFarlane announced season 3 of The Orville will be moving from Fox to Hulu.)

Also at Comic-Con, HBO shared the first full trailer for their upcoming Watchmen TV series, a sequel to the original Alan Moore graphic novel. Rolling Stone quotes HBO as saying that Watchmen "takes place in an alternative, contemporary reality in the United States, in which masked vigilantes became outlawed due to their violent methods."

Marvel also revealed that their next Thor movie (Thor: Love and Thunder) will incude both Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman as Lady Thor, and shared footage from their upcoming Black Widow movie. And CNET has a comprehensive rundown (with trailers) of all the DC Comics superhero shows on the CW network, including Arrow, Supergirl, The Flash, Black Lightning, and Batwoman.

 

 

Samsung-Backed Researchers Develop a Ternary Semiconductor (zdnet.com) 32

Posted by EditorDavid on Monday July 22, 2019 @07:34AM from the bits-versus-trits dept.

"Future semiconductors may perform logic with 0, 1, or 2 instead of the current binary system of 0 and 1," reports ZDNet: A South Korean research team has successfully realised an energy-efficient ternary metal-oxide semiconductor on a large-sized wafer. Professor Kyung Rok Kim of UNIST's Electrical & Computer Engineering Department and his team successfully created a semiconductor that operates in a ternary logic system instead of the current binary...

Using the ternary system of 0, 1, 2 lessens the amount of information semiconductors need to process and does it faster, resulting in less power consumption, the team said. It will also help in miniaturising chips further. For example, to express the number 128 in the current binary system, 8 "bits" will be required. With the ternary system, only 5 "trits" will be required....

Samsung Electronics has been backing Kim's research since September 2017 via its Samsung's Science & Technology Foundation, which offers grants for promising technology projects. Samsung is currently verifying the technology at its foundry business-run fab.

 

 

The Inventor Who Fought To Get Black Box Flight Recorders Into Every Plane (bbc.com) 71

 

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday July 21, 2019 @03:34AM from the before-the-black-box dept.

This week the BBC told the remarkable story of the man who invented the "black box" flight recorders -- and of all the resistance he enountered [sic] along the way.

dryriver shared this summary: In 1934, a passenger plane name Miss Hobart crashed into the sea off the coast of Australia. Among those killed was Anglican missionairy Rev Hubert Warren, whose last gift to his 8 year old son David had been a crystal radio set.

Young David Warren spent hours a day tinkering with the radio, eventually learning enough electronics engineering to build his own radios and sell them to other people. David Warren later grew to be a Rocket Scientist working for Australia's Aeronautical Research Laboratories. In 1953, the department loaned him to an expert panel trying to solve a costly and distressing mystery: why did the British de Havilland Comet, the world's first commercial jet airliner and the great hope of the new Jet Age, keep crashing? David Warren was confronted with a daunting problem -- how to determine from heavily deformed crashed plane fragments what had happened to the plane while it was in the air... Warren had an interesting idea -- what if every plane in the sky had a mini recorder in the cockpit...?

Warren's superior did not approve of the idea and told him to stick to chemicals and fuels.

When Warren got a new boss, the new boss was more sympathetic, but told him to do the R&D for it in complete secrecy. Since it wasn't a government-approved venture or a war-winning weapon, it couldn't be seen to take up lab time or money. "If I find you talking to anyone, including me, about this matter, I will have to sack you." When Warren first floated the idea of a cockpit recorder publicly, the pilots' union responded with fury, branding the recorder a snooping device, and insisted "no plane would take off in Australia with Big Brother listening."

Undeterred, Warren took to his garage and invented the first "Black Box" flight recorder.

Emma

For the past 15 years, give or take, I've considered Ronni Bennett (of Time Goes By) to be a blog friend. For the past umpteen years, she has dedicated her Saturday postings to presentation of interesting items sent to her by her multitudinous friends and fans. She calls those postings Interesting Stuff. Had I not read the comments to today's posting, I should have missed noticing one YouTube presentation. I'm happy that I, belatedly, found it (below).

 

Computer ventures

For the past few years, I've spent a small (teeny tiny) fortune with Amazon buying mp3 files of music - mostly for Hunky Husband, but also for myself. Our cars have built-in mp3 players to which I feed flash drives full of judicious choices from all of that music from Amazon. I kept gnashing my teeth because I couldn't rip music from our CDs for this purpose. Now, I'm kicking myself. Why did I assume that, because I couldn't get it to work, it couldn't be done? I assumed that the anti-piracy systems on our old CDs were keeping it from happening. Boy, am I stooooopid!

The local Senior Center hosts various groups of people who wish to play cards, sing, exercise, etc, Monday through Friday 0800-1700. There is a group of women who meet a couple of times each week (Monday PM and Wednesday AM) with each person bringing some sort of needle work (knitting, crocheting, tatting, quilting, embroidery...) to work at as we chat. Monday, a woman unknown to us dropped in on the group. It turns out that she contracts with the Red Cross to teach swimming at the Derby Recreation Center. Somehow, in chatting with her, I lamented about spending so much money on mp3 files of music that I already owned on CDs. She says, "Oh! That's simple if you have a Windows OS." We went into the computer room (10-15 computers are set up in it) and she showed me how! Yay!

Rushing home (it's only a 20-minute walk), I gave it a try. You are kidding me! The commands she was using did not appear when I used Windows Media Player. Grrrrrrrr! However, now that capability had been demonstrated, I went online to see what others were experiencing. Surely enough, there were several different approaches listed that had solved the issue for various people.

After trying a few of the approaches, to no good end, I was becoming discouraged. Plugging on, I tried the last approach - modifying the Registry. Good grief, Lucy, it works! I just had to add one file that contained one character! After getting my desktop set up, I set up my laptop - while I could remember how to do it. That was yesterday.

Today, I've spent 2 or 3 hours ripping music from CDs. HH is excited that I'll be able to rip music off of his CDs for the flash drive for his car. During those past few years, I've assiduously sought an mp3 version of Margaret Whiting's "All I Want Is All There Is and Then Some" - to no avail. A few minutes ago, I made another search. Wonders never cease - I found it! It is the words that I find so fascinating. It expresses my theory of life, so well.

Margaret-whiting-all-i-want-is-all-there-is-and-then-some

I had previously bought a version of the song by Eartha Kitt. (I think that falls under the category of, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.") As much as I like Ms Kitt's voice, I don't like the wording as well and, in this case, think Ms Whiting's voice matches the song, better. You may judge for yourself.

Eartha Kitt-All I Want Is All There Is and Then Some