Month: June 2022

Fun Friday: Telescopes and Memories

I’ve been planning to write something for a while, but frankly, there hasn’t been anything really fun to write about.

Everyone is complaining about gas prices and inflation. Global trade is still bottlenecked and tangled in knots. There’s still a pandemic, folks, although you wouldn’t know it from the way people are dancing like it’s the last night before the End of the World.

On the business front, venture is busily grabbing any money they can to hoard while telling their portfolio companies to “tighten the belt”, mainly around the necks of their employees. Companies are eagerly complying by rescinding job offers and instituting layoffs. Folks are nervous as they crowd airports, hoping their flight isn’t one of the hundreds cancelled that day due to lack of flight staff. And the war in Ukraine waged by Russia in a fit of insanity continues to kill innocents and destabilize the entire EU.

Speaking of dead innocents, the US Supreme Court, destined to go down in history as depraved pandering sacks of shit, decided that guns everywhere makes for a stronger America. Their overturning of Roe v Wade, expected after the leaked draft admiring the people who burned innocent people as witches crawled out of the sewers, has been released and to no one’s surprise reduced women to that of beasts. Yes, it is not a Fun Friday for many people. Maybe it’s a Gun Friday. I’m sorry.

Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. I was twelve. It impacted my life and health for the better. Today it is officially overturned in a ruthless precedent-be-damned legal coup. I am sixty, past childbearing age. It cannot impact me directly. Yet I have daughters and young people I care about. I don’t want to see them hurt. Their happiness and livelihood and health matters to me. They should have the same rights to choice and freedom that I had. They may not know how much it matters yet. But they will. I am sure of that.

I spent the morning cleaning one of William’s prototype telescope designs for display in the office. It’s an unusually compact and minimalist design. As I cleaned the mirror and cover plate, I found a cricket living in the focuser. I watched it hop off the picnic table and out of sight, grabbed the telescope, and took it to the office.

It now sits amongst the many creative works William and I did together. Our reliquary. 375 computers. InterProphet low-latency networking boards. 386BSD articles and books and CDROM. An unpopulated six layer 375 motherboard.

In other parts of the office, an EtherSAN prototype unit box, a 386BSD CDROM with the heftiest liner notes ever made, 386 computers of various vintages used for 386BSD, and bins 386BSD and 375 disk drives, boards, and cables. Some complete and some mid-project, designs waiting for a hand to finish the work.

It is a reminder that things are never finished — they are only left in a state of usability for a time. Once that time passes, one either has to toss it away or begin again. I choose both. To toss some things away and to begin again on other things.

Young people also have a choice. They can fight for their freedoms — and they can toss them away. I hope they choose wisely.

Fun Friday: Low-Tech Delays for Cars, An Icon Retires, and Mars Sings

Silicon Valley continues to belt-tighten amidst the turmoil of inflation, the continuing and never-ending pandemic impacting global trade, and the “Hundred Days War” in Ukraine brought to the rest of the world by Russia’s kakistocracy. Venture firms continue to prioritize late stage companies with their largess, hoping to get ahead of the perceived end of civilization (just look for companies closing their Series E and F rounds). And the summer travel scene, much hoped to bring back the hospitality industry after two years of lockdowns and mandates, suffers from cancelled flights and worker shortages.

But all is not lost. On the bright side, IC cars may die out, not due to direct competition with EVs, but instead from a lack of a low-tech component — wire harnesses. According to Reuters, IC wire harnesses are not usually machine made, unlike component harnesses made in the computer industry (and also used in Li-ion battery harnesses like that in EVs like tesla). Instead, countries like Ukraine hand-crafted these necessary components for a plethera of IC cars from a variety of small sources, a low-cost approach that major auto companies saw no reason to change — until now. The EV platform is looking more and more cost-effective and sensible to auto manufacturers, all thanks to the little wire harness.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Meta/FaceBook, and women-in-business Lean-In icon, has chosen to “lean out” of her role in favor of wedding planning and philanthropy. Privately, according to the Wall Street Journal (which I will not link to as it is subscriber-only folks), Sandberg was upset with company investigations into her private meddling with tabloid The Daily Mail over its reporting of her then-boyfriend, perennial jerk and still amazingly CEO of Activision / Blizzard Bobby Kotick, as well as improper corporate expenditures for her upcoming wedding to another billionaire after she dumped Bobby.

It’s gratifying, actually, to see this woman presented as a flawless advocate of corporate womanhood 1) demonstrate such poor taste in men, especially to a tabloid notorious for its duplicity and ruthlessness — here’s hoping number 2 works out better — and 2) not even bother to use her own private staff to put together her wedding and pull out her own personal platinum card when as COO she would have scrutinized everyone else’s expenses and use of facilities / resources.

Lest anyone worry about poor burned-out Sheryl, do not concern yourself. She has made plenty of money from her sojourn at FaceBook and will not have to return her dress to David’s Bridal for a more economical one.

Finally, listen to the Song of Mars — a haunting low moan which enriches the mind and the soul, complements of Maurice, Chide, et al published in Nature. As you read the paper, listen to the dreamlike song of another world. You will be enlightened.

Happy Friday.