Even accounting for hindsight bias, I think Amazon’s nuking Halo might’ve been an easy call. I didn’t make it, and I didn’t think it’d come true so quickly – they just released a new device (Halo Rise) to the lineup earlier this year; this year isn’t half over! The bands were constantly on sale, and it seemed like Amazon was trying to liquidate them. One of the few things I actually remember from congressional hearings is that Amazon, somewhat unsurprisingly, does lose money on its in-house products like Kindle and (especially) Echo1, but only when they’re on sale (which is often).

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In January, I felt the sudden urge to buy a fingerprint sensor. I have a habit of locking my desktop each time I get up, and retyping my password ten times daily was getting annoying. More than that, though, leaving the computer unattended for more than ten minutes locks the password manager. That’s probably drop-down menu away from being fixed, but a fingerprint sensor seemed cool. Naturally, my purchase research began with an Amazon search for “fingerprint reader”.

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I wrote this a few months ago, without publishing it. It hasn’t become any less relevant lately, so I’ll leave it here. I’ve never understood the point. Why? Isn’t the old adage about the positive correlation between banning things and the demand for and allure of those things true? My school district, and its superintendent – Tim “I own this” Forson – just banned another 23 books. Until today, I didn’t appreciate one of the major effects.

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The last time I had a laptop was late 2021, before I returned it and built a desktop. That was the right choice: the laptop1 was overpriced and underperformant, and the desktop turned out to be a much better fit. Not having a laptop, though, was annoying: I would have waste time, functionality, efficiency, and frustration using the computers at school. I would often have to worry about having access to a computer for sufficient time to e.

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Most of my writing these days (at least, until this site) is literary analysis for my (excellent) English teacher. Predictably, I frequently use quotes, and often, those quotes will come at the end of a sentence or before a comma. For fear of seeming ignorant: yes, I know that in American English, the comma or period goes inside the quote. For example, Tom, “forc[ing] him out of the room,” demonstrates his violent assertiveness.

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Something I read on Read Max a few months ago stuck with me. He wrote about how actually writing, or actually producing is what makes you better; what really matters is that you produce at all. I didn’t act on it at the time, but it stayed in the back of my mind, as I was thinking about (but not actually writing) my blog. The thesis of that post is essentially the rationale behind this blog, much of which I detailed here and here.

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Last week, a friend and I attended PechaKucha night, which happened to be hosted by our favorite teacher. We didn’t know exactly what to expect – we had never before been – but were confident, at least, that we might be entertained for the few hours it occupied. It was great! From monologues on the “transformative power of music”, to orations on the power of reading and the danger of banning books, the passion in each of the six-minute, forty-second presentations was contagious.

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Verizon is supposed to be the best, and the data supposedly backs that up. Their coverage is, in my convenience-sample1 backed estimation, the widest ranging. I’m ~never somewhere where I cannot make a call on Verizon. But I’m frequently unable to connect to the internet – on LTE! I prefer MVNOs They’re cheaper and easier to switch between, but the best plans (without considering price) are post-paid through the major carriers.

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I’m a little late on this one – everyone else has already had their say. And, quite honestly, I don’t have much to add. LTT, and some of its sister channels, were hacked late last week by actor(s?) who transformed them into “Tesla” outposts, featuring Elon Musk giving away free crypto. I found the attack vector interesting – something I’m more used to hearing about on Security Now, than seeing actually happen.

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Is TikTok anything more sinister than a benign waste of time? Why the outrage over TikTok? It seems that those who are outraged aren’t TikTok users, and to the extent they are, they’re sympathetic to a forced removal of their biggest time sink. Their appearance before Congress was riddled with near-incomprehensible questions and legislators thinking they were clever. The CEO was asked such ridiculous questions as, “have you directed them to change the source code,” and similarly absurd accusations that TikTok is spying through our phones' cameras to capture our facial expressions.

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