When we moved I got rid of most of my power tools. They were things used for yard work that I won’t be doing anyway, like mowing a lawn. I did buy a new Worx 20V leaf blower when we arrived in New Mexico. Not that I have leaves to blow here, so I suppose it is really a Dust Blower, but something I do use.

I have an old 20V Black and Decker 20V drill that has seen better days. Since I wanted to stick with one brand of batteries, I decided to just get a new Worx drill. Found one On-Line and bought it. But I noticed I didn’t get an email receipt. I did a screen grab of the transaction and now notice no special transaction ID. A quick Google shows this place (XDC Depot) is a complete scam. Does not deliver, phone number and address fake. They didn’t charge my credit card, but still. Im usually pretty good at spotting fishy stuff On-Line but this one was slick. A very large and professional looking website. Ah well I guess I need to be more careful.

I went on to look for a Worx 20V drill and found prices all over the map. Hundreds of dollars in some cases. Went to the Worx web site (figuring shipping charges would be a small price to pay to avoid another scam). But everything I wanted was out of stock. Odd.

There is one package deal at Amazon that is maybe twice the price I think I should pay. And I do remember seeing these tools available from multiple (reputable) stores at more reasonable prices. Is this something to do with all the tariff back and forth with China (Worx is a German company but manufacturers everything in China). Maybe I better jump on that pricey drill over at Amazon while I still can.

I had no idea that the earth has “quasi-moons”.

Kamo‘oalewa is one of Earth’s seven known quasi-moons—objects that appear to be orbiting our planet, but which aren’t actually gravitationally bound to Earth, and are actually asteroids circling the sun in an orbit similar to Earth’s.

This Chinese Spacecraft Is Traveling to One of Earth’s Quasi-Moons

Lots to say about this. The guy in charge is one of the top techies from ARM and he was working with U. Manchester, which has a long history of innovative computer architecture work. I’m also a big believer in using lots of cheap, low power processors (such as ARM based cell phone CPUs) instead of the big expensive Intel / AMD server chips used in todays data centers. Anyway been following this since the 20-teens with the first SpiNNaker. Also like the work being done at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. Ah, I see the new SpiNNaker is just up the road at Sandia Labs. From The Next Platform.

Sandia Deploys SpiNNaker2 Neuromorphic System

One thing I have always wondered, and have never seen discussed, is how Franco survived after WW II. One of Hitlers earliest supporters, and perhaps even the model for his policies, Franco was the original Fascist Dictator. He murdered as many as 100,000 of his own countrymen and had them buried in mass graves. Why didnt the Allies get rid of this guy at the end of WW II (and Salazar in Portugal along with him)? From the Boston Review.

Kill It with Fire

An article about the old homebrew / hobbiest phase of personal computers. I used to subscribe to Byte magazine in my teens. I wish I had kept a few of those old issues. I do have a collection from Creative Computing on my bookshelf.

Creatures of Thought

Had a little project I was working on before the move. Had to put it aside for a few months. When I tried to run it yesterday, it failed. Seems Ubuntu upgraded Python and some older libraries won’t allow 3.13 or whatever I’m using now. Tried to install an older version, but Ubuntu uses Python as part of the OS now so it (more or less) blocks older versions from being installed. They are ways but they aren’t pretty. So I’m sorta stuck. It’s only a Raspberry Pi so I’ll just get new hardware and install on older OS. I’ll also use Virtual Environments, even though this a single user (and perhaps single application) machine.

The upshot is expect everything to be broken in the future. If you have working (Python) today, make copies of all libraries and tools in a virtual environment. Because nothing may work tomorrow. I’ll contrast this to the Good Old Days where you could update things and they would mostly work. And if they didn’t you could safely downgrade.

On a similar note I’m told everyone uses ChatGPT to look up bugs these days, the same way everyone used to search Q&A web sites, mostly Stack Overflow. So if nobody is using the Q&A sites, where will future answers (content) for big fixes and other information come from? Will AI tools leave us stuck in 2025? I can see this being a problem with other forms of content.

Now you kids get off of my lawn!

From CACM. This was a big story in the UK, but to me the real failure seems to be in the UK justice system. How did they prosecute hundreds (?) of post office employees with what seems to be little or no factual evidence. Didn’t anyone think there was something else wrong?

How Software Bugs led to ‘One of the Greatest Miscarriages of Justice’ in British History

from the Associated Press.

Fictional fiction: A newspaper’s summer book list recommends nonexistent books. Blame AI

From The Guardian UK.

Soul icon Irma Thomas on the Stones, segregation and survival: ‘Restaurants refused to serve us – we lived on sardines and crackers’