Coronavirus and the Terrifying Muzzling of Public Health Experts – Union of Concerned Scientists
The Trump administration is scrambling to reconcile the president’s contradictions of statements made by federal health scientists about the emerging coronavirus crisis. Their solution: muzzle scientists, require that all statements be politically vetted through Vice President Pence, and punish federal employees who draw attention to gross negligence. This is a highly dangerous power grab that undermines both emergency response and public faith in the reliability of information coming out of the government. And it speaks to the incompetence and incoherence of the response to this crisis so far.
It’s hard to keep track of the number of Trump appointees who should know basic facts about the coronavirus but don’t. Then yesterday, we learned that the actual public health experts in government would no longer be allowed to speak publicly about the outbreak without the vice president’s blessing.
How did we ever live before apt-get?
How did we ever live before apt-get?
The Debian Package Manager turned 25 years old last year, and apt-get has been around for two decades now. I am old enough to remember manually installing packages using RPM and having to go around searching for dependencies.
And building a lot of software from source code using to ./configure; make; make install — and having to search around for packages to fix missing dependencies during the configure process. It’s very rare these days to have to build something from source code, unless you are tweaking some of the lines of code.
We’re not prepared for the end of Moore’s Law – MIT Technology Review
Moore's Law illustration MS Tech Computing / Quantum Computing We’re not prepared for the end of Moore’s Law It has fueled prosperity of the last 50 years. But the end is now in sight. by David Rotman Feb 24, 2020
Gordon Moore’s 1965 forecast that the number of components on an integrated circuit would double every year until it reached an astonishing 65,000 by 1975 is the greatest technological prediction of the last half-century. When it proved correct in 1975, he revised what has become known as Moore’s Law to a doubling of transistors on a chip every two years. This story is part of our March/April 2020 issue See the rest of the issue Subscribe
Since then, his prediction has defined the trajectory of technology and, in many ways, of progress itself.
Moore’s argument was an economic one. Integrated circuits, with multiple transistors and other electronic devices interconnected with aluminum metal lines on a tiny square of silicon wafer, had been invented a few years earlier by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor. Moore, the company’s R&D director, realized, as he wrote in 1965, that with these new integrated circuits, “the cost per component is nearly inversely proportional to the number of components.” It was a beautiful bargain—in theory, the more transistors you added, the cheaper each one got. Moore also saw that there was plenty of room for engineering advances to increase the number of transistors you could affordably and reliably put on a chip.
February 28, 2020 09 AM Update
Color For A Gray Day, February 15
February 28, 2020 Morning
Good morning! Well Happy, Yappy, Scrappy Friday! Final Friday of February, tomorrow being a presidential year its Leap Day – February 29th. All because the earth 🌎 rotates around the sun in 365 1/4 days. Honestly, I think it would be better to add an extra 6 hours to New Years Eve but I don’t make up the calendar 📅. Or maybe that would better to do on January 1st, with all those folks who are hung over? 🍾 Two weeks to 7 PM Sunset 🌆. Partly cloudy and 24 degrees in Delmar, NY. ⛅ There is a west-southwest breeze at 14 mph. 🍃. The current wind chill is 12. Things will start to thaw out at around noontime. 🌡️
Cold and gray but at least it is not raining today. ☁ Aggressive bus driver today, left right at 8:26 from the park and ride 🚏she’s always accelerating and braking really hard. Makes for a quick ride in for sure. Always like taking the express in on non session days, as I get a nice walk plus it’s more scenic and a faster bus ride 🚍. It actually wasn’t a bad thing that most of the earlier half of the week was session days — it was too cold and wet to walk down to the express bus for most of the week.
Today will have a slight chance of snow showers after 3pm. Partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 34 degrees at 2pm. Four degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around February 14th. West wind 14 to 17 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 28 degrees. The record high of 63 was set in 1903. 9.7 inches of snow fell back in 1948.❄
Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:09 pm with sun having an altitude of 39.3° from the due south horizon (-31.5° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 7.3 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 5:05 pm with the sun in the west-southwest (253°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (260°) starting at 5:41 pm and lasts for 2 minutes and 57 seconds with dusk around 6:11 pm, which is one minute and 14 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the First Quarter 🌓 Moon in the southwest (233°) at an altitude of 46° from the horizon, 249,433 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 6:45 pm. At sunset, look out for possible snow showers 🌨 and temperatures around freezing. While not guaranteed we will get lake effect snow, it could mean tricky conditions heading home. There will be a west-southwest breeze at 14 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 10 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 50 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will have a slight chance of snow showers. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 20 degrees at 6am. One degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around February 27th. Maximum wind chill around 11 at 5am; Southwest wind 9 to 11 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2019, we had partly cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to degrees. The record low of -2 occurred back in 2008.
Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a high of 28 degrees at 2pm. 10 degrees below normal. West wind 10 to 16 mph. Going to be a cold and chilly day for Leap Day. Look before you leap, the lake is probably frozen. Sounds like a good day to stay home, work on some soldering projects, ride the exercise bike, maybe come up with some new content for the blog, and go down to the library and get more books.📚 A year ago, we didn’t have leap day, as it wasn’t a presidential election year. The record high of 54 was set in 1976. 4 inches of snow fell back in 2012.❄
Looking ahead to Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 34. Northwest wind 6 to 9 mph. Typical average high for the weekend is 38 degrees. I think that will be the best day to get out and do something fun in the wilderness. 🌲Best of all, it will be cold enough, at least in the hill towns that everything won’t be mush and muck. Instead, it will be frozen. Although if not, I do always carry at least my inexpensive, non-insulated farm muck boots in my truck.
🌹🌻🌼Only 20 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼
As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until 7 PM Sunset 🌆 when the sun will be setting at 6:59 pm with dusk at 7:27 pm (Daylight Savings Time). On that day in 2019, we had partly sunny, sleet and temperatures between 44 and 21 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 43 degrees. We hit a record high of 70 back in 2012.
