HiWire

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

Amiga 4000 Restoration featuring Commodore Engineer Dave Haynie I never had an Amiga, but a friend showed me some awesome games on his machine back in the day. The Amiga and Atari ST versions of games were always better than the PC versions.

No Boot Camp on Apple silicon for now: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/heres-whats-happening-to-boot-camp-amid-the-apple-silicon-transition/ The Verge writes that Microsoft has not given out a Windows 10 ARM license (yet) and virtualization like Fusion or Parallels might take a while: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-mac-arm-windows-support-boot-camp We'll have wait to see if this means Apple will offer both CPU options, e.g., iMacs with ARM or Intel processors.

Soviet synth

Out of the Blue – Electric Light Orchestra Relentlessly cheery 🌞

Mariam Batsashvili – she's on the Liszt 😄

There's a rumor that the next iMac will be coming at the end of the year: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/23/kuo-24-inch-imac-new-design-4q20/ I remember being very excited after Steve Jobs returned to Apple and the new Bondi Blue Macs were introduced in 1998.

The first Intel iMacs (September 2006) were supported until Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (released 2009, updated until July 2011) and the ones released in 2007 were supported to OS X 10.7 Lion (released 2011, updated until 2012). So it might be safer to stick with Intel, as their "transition" ARM computers might have technical limitations that shorten their support life, if history is anything to go by (having Windows Boot Camp compatibility on Intel Macs is useful as well). I'd wait until the next iMac update. Some of the 8th-gen Coffee Lake processors in the current iMacs date back to late 2017... a poor value, in my opinion.

Homegrown – Neil Young 1974 says "hello" again

I wonder if Spatial Audio will work at all on 3rd-party products. I'm guessing the answer is "no" for now. I was thinking the same thing about x86... I think I'll get the last Intel Mac (7nm?) unless it's a total disaster. My home computer will be 9 years old soon. I'm also running Mojave and I don't want to install Catalina (if at all) for a while. It's still full of bugs. I just caught that everyone is going to be calling the latest macOS BS. Maybe they have a finely-developed sense of irony. The A12Z in the Developer Mac Mini doesn't sound that impressive. I was hoping to start with an A13 at least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A13 I'm not a Swift programmer, but I thought a lot of Apple apps ran at a high level of abstraction, so there shouldn't be a lot of machine-code level optimization required for stuff that isn't running down to the metal (like games and graphic programs). I hope Rosetta 2 runs old apps smoothly and reliably like they showed in the demo.

Sign me up

Happy Birthday!

Powerful. Wikipedia: "'An Enemy of the People', produced by Berlin's Schaubühne theater, was performed in Beijing from September 6 to September 8, 2018, but the subsequent touring of the show was cancelled due to its themes. The audience in Beijing reportedly showed overwhelming support for the character Dr. Stockmann, and shouted criticism of the Chinese regime during interaction parts. Even in subsequent censored performances, audiences yelled "for personal freedom!" The regime's censorship officers would not agree on any more subsequent touring unless it was doctored in favor of the regime's thought on what a play should be." but also: "Ibsen took a somewhat skeptical view of his protagonist, suggesting that he may have gone too far in his zeal to tell the truth. Ibsen wrote to his publisher: 'I am still uncertain as to whether I should call [An Enemy of the People] a comedy or a straight drama. It may [have] many traits of comedy, but it also is based on a serious idea.'" On a lighter note, this is my favorite British drama (looks like there won't be a revival, though): http://britishperioddramas.com/news/blackadder-writer-confirms-if-that-rumoured-new-season-will-happen/

I think it's the reverent gloss on the show. The show means to satirize the upstairs/downstairs genre but actually revels in its conventions. I think it was very popular everywhere at the time it was on air (I completely missed the boat as a TV contrarian), but I took a quick look at some of the Downton parodies on YouTube and none of them are as clever as the show itself (i.e., it is self-parody). It's easy to make fun of the show because it wallows in minutiae and melodrama, but I admire the commitment of the actors. Most of the show is ridiculous, which is why everybody plays it with an absolutely straight face. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/style/better-check-the-beds-edwardians.html "Mary has such a punchable face"