Three and a half chill minutes of clouds at sunset from the other day. Taken with my little drone (DJI Mini 2) at about 400ft AGL (above ground level). If you look really close at the second half you can see downtown St. Louis and the Arch. Which is about 17.6 miles away!
Category: Technology
John Green: “The deadliest infectious disease isn’t a science problem. It’s a money problem.”
John’s op-ed in the Washington Post (archive)
“In 2022, TB killed 1.3 million people, according to the World Health Organization — more than covid-19 or malariaor HIV. Each week, 25,000 people die of TB, a bacterial infection that primarily attacks the lungs.”
A random person messaging you should be treated with suspicion
Tell your friends and be safe out there.
CFXFVWP7V1
My wife bought a pair of AirPods Pro off of someone online. They were brand new, unopened. She looked up the serial number in the listing on Apple’s website. All checked out. She went and bought them for $70.1
When she got home the serial number on the box was different from the listing (CFXFVWP7V1). She doubled checked on Apple’s site. Purchased date of October 2023, with a Limited Warranty until October 2024. Ok, it still all checked out ok. Using Apple’s website to verify a serial number, according to the top Google search result (and common sense/logic), is the best way to check that they are legit. Until she went to use them.
They were fake.
The serial numbers on the individual AirPods are different than what Settings show. They pair up just like a real pair, but switching between the various audio modes does nothing.
Searching on Google, the serial number shows other fake listings (from random folks around the world!) with the same serial number. So I’m writing this post in hopes that I can prevent another innocent person from getting taken advantage of.
She ended up buying a real pair off of Amazon. The slightly newer version with USB-C. Can you tell the difference?
This Technology is Bad for You?
Ok, my headline is a little tongue-in-cheek. I’m a technologist and I want to believe that technology has improved our lives. From airplanes to vaccinations to smart phones to light bulbs. However, like everything in life, choices have consequences. Here’s two video essays I recently watched that discuss how the technology you’re using right now 👀 can do you harm. It’s not your fault, we’re still in the infancy of having the capabilities we now have – to broadcast and consume at a global an unending scale – and our squishy human brains are not adapted for this. At. All.
A pretty good summary of why Twitter/Facebook/etc are not “public squares” as traditionally (and in a historically socially-healthy way) conceived.
It’s not just social media that is causing fractures in society. We also don’t share the same popular culture as we once did. Remember when you had to sit down at the same time as every other person in your country to watch the latest episode of a show? And then talk about it at work the next day? That doesn’t happen as much any more. Our own world of shared culture is, well, less shared.
See also Joan Westenberg’s ruminations on the old internet. (Via kottke.org)