The Idiots who design Apps

 I do not like apps. First is the security issue. Second and most importantly is they try to fit what would take a 3" 4L screen just enough to fit onto you small smart phone. Then they use language which is incomprehensible. 

Apps designers are both arrogant and stupid, a deadly mix The arrogance come when they assume they have designed the best app in the world, and only you the stupid users fails to see that. Second, the stupidity comes when the app just does not work!

Take my latest journey. My Honda keeps popping up demanding a software update. After six months I think I discovered how to do it. Get an app. Nowhere does Honda ever say this. Yet the app fails again and again. Then you read it is a Honda defect.  

This is just the latest example. I truly hate apps. I just use the smart phone for calls and text. No other apps!

Mens et Manus

 Mind and Hands, not it is not sexist just because "men" or "man" are in the Latin word. That is MIT's motto. For a century it was a technical school, science and engineering. Yes some liberal arts stuff like English, some history, and languages. Engineers had to have some facility in German and French, and in my time Russian. Not much, but enough with a dictionary you could translate an abstract to get the gist. 

They they also had a Department on Management of Businesses, and that was related to engineers managing this stuff they produced.

Then came the 90s and new management and left wing ideas. Up sprang the Media Lab, the world of demos never getting any farther, then Philosophy  where there is a Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies at MIT.  She has published in metaphysics, epistemology, feminist theory, and critical race theory.  Broadly speaking, her work links issues of social justice with contemporary work in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind.

 Now the NY Times writes:

 I’ve written about Donald Trump’s plan to crush the academic left, but it increasingly looks as though he and his allies are targeting academia more broadly, including the hard sciences that have long enjoyed bipartisan support. “I think the extremely strong desire is to just punish universities however possible,” Kevin Carey, the director of the education policy program at New America, a public policy think tank, told me. “It’s not based on any kind of coherent policy agenda. It’s just a desire to inflict pain.”This is the context for the Trump administration’s attempt, currently being challenged in court, to slash research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The details sound technical and very boring: The new policy would limit reimbursements for schools’ overhead expenses to 15 percent of grants’ value, instead of the 50 to 70 percent that universities often receive now. But if this goes into effect, the damage will be tremendous.

 The writer alleges that Trump wants to destroy Universities. Well in my opinion and in my experience it is already a done deed. If one looks at the size and focus of Philosophy, DEI, Political Science, even Economics and Management, the seeds of destruction are already not only sown but blooming!

No longer is the focus on pure technology or science, it is everything but! The 15% number is just a bell that rings out saying, we will pay for all the research but the cost for the other stuff you get to pay out of your own pocket, that means Alumni donations. I suspect that there will be a revolt there as well. 

The Evils of Microsoft

 Over the years I have spent many days trying to get Microsoft updates to work if not having to totally reboot my system and taking almost a week to rearrange, not to mention the costs of getting replacement software.

Every update is a twenty four hour process. 

The latest 24H2 update was a massive mess. My system crashed two days ago, then I thought it may need a total reboot, a real mess, but I saw MS had sent out an update to the 24H2 that would eliminate some of the messes MS created. 

Now it seems I have a workable system but for how long.

Sooner or later MS will be hit with a massive class action suit for reckless endangerment. 

Perhaps DOGE could help here as well!

Ferroptosis and Cancer

 Ferroptosis is a form of cell death. It is driven by two factors; iron overload and reactive oxygen species, generally lipids. Recent work has focused on its use in therapeutics for various cancers. We have written a Technical Note discussing the current status and issues.

More Inflation

 New Jersey regulators today approved a 20% price increase on electricity. Why? Simple, see what the Daily Signal reports:

 New Jersey’s energy master plan is more of the same. The goals of New Jersey “are entirely driven by the objective of reducing the state’s contribution to global CO2 emissions,” writes Mark Mills, an energy analyst and director of the National Center for Energy Analytics. “[B]oth recent history and the underlying technology realities make it clear that the goals aren’t achievable; and even if they could be achieved, would lead to a minuscule reduction in global CO2 emissions.”  Mills suggests nuclear power as a better option for New Jersey’s environmental objectives. The Garden State’s plan offers dubious environmental benefits and devastating economic consequences. Mills says wind and solar “cause overall systems costs to rise, due to practical reasons relating to operating reliable grids while using unreliable and episodic wind and solar sources.” A major factor is the need to back up weather-dependent technologies with reliable and abundant fossil fuels and nuclear energy, requiring a duplication of effort and expense.

 The current Governor, the one who sent old age folks to homes to die of COVID and who just announced the harboring of illegals in his home, by referral, will be gone in less than a year. But we all are suffering from his work. 25-45% insurance rate increases, 20% electric increases, and the list goes on. His bundle from Goldman buffers his world but not that of the citizens bearing these costs.

Penmanship

 

I have noticed that penmanship has died. I see people holding a writing instrument as if they were to butcher a pig. Their writing is good at best to filling in dots. Students no longer have note books or take notes. Thus the hand, eye,brain axis is being destroyed. Thumbs work on smart phones but sooner or later cartilage will wear out.