There are two outrageous facts here. First, why wasn’t this done decades ago, as part of Civil Defense? Second, why is the private sector handling this? Every public facility, especially fire departments and hospitals, should have had this already. I am also perplexed as to why the military has been so behind on various new power technologies, but that is another subject. From PBS.

Louisiana is building electricity hubs to power communities after a disaster. Here’s how they work

In one of my jobs I had to select the processors for the shared compute resource for a major US bank. I would load up all the processor family information from the web along with some benchmark data into a spreadsheet. I would graph a “bang for buck” chart that was usually a pretty simple arc. Smaller processors were cheap, but somewhat weak. Bigger processors with more cores were pricey and you usually paid a premium for the very top end. The answer, some what boringly, was always something in the middle. But it was good to have data to back this up. After all, we were buying thousands, if not tens of thousands of units.

With a home PC it isn’t so simple. I’ve been building PC for decades and I’ve settled on a Rule of Thumb. Spend about $100 each for the motherboard, CPU, RAM and disk. It doesn’t have to be exactly $100 and you can move this around depending on your needs (and how much you want to spend). I’m also recommend last year’s tech. It’s usually more solid and you can read reviews and you don’t pay the premium for the Latest and Greatest.

Upgrading my sons old gaming machine. It has an MSI B250M PRO-VD motherboard. Today it goes for well over $100, but being made for 6th and 7th generation Intel CPUs, you can guess this is just pricing of an old item in stock for repairs. The CPU is an Intel i7-7700 3.6 GHz. Today this sells for over $200 refurbished and even almost $350. Again, I didn’t pay this much new a few years back. This is just old inventory for people that need to make repairs or have other unusual legacy needs. Otherwise there is 16GB of DDR RAM and 500 GB of SSD disk.

I may be upgrading this, keeping the case and power supply. Here’s what I would pick today. Going to stick with a similar MSI motherboard, but one with on-board Wifi. Here’s the list:

• MSI B560M PRO-VDH – $129.99
• Intel® Core™ i5-11400 Desktop Processor 6 Cores up to 4.4 GHz – $147.95
• Patriot Viper Steel DDR4 32GB (2 x 16GB) 3600MHz – $92.99
• 1 TB m.2 SSD Gen4 – $89.99

Doubled the RAM and disk for less than $100 each but went a bit over on the motherboard. As far as Intel CPUs, they seem to keep getting more and more expensive. But this isn’t the place to skimp.

Oh, the GPU. Used to be optional, but this is for a gaming PC. I’ll save that for another post.

These have a long history in tech. My understanding is they were illegal, or at least ignored, in California. I always found it bizarre that someone could make you sign a document preventing you from working where you want, in your chosen field. This is simply a ploy to keep wages down. If people steal intellectual property, then punish them for that crime. Stopping a person from working for a competitor out of fear of a potential crime being committed has always been ridiculous.

FTC intends to ban noncompete clauses that bind 30 million US workers

From Patrick Nathan in Entertainment, weakly.

American Faithlessness

A sobering read on the US electrical grid.

Being accurate about demand forecasts is really important for both reliability and expense control. By not estimating the full demand implications of the previous storm Uri meant that ERCOT was flying blind to an extent with respect to ultimate system electrical demand. Lapses like this suggest a deeper degree of political influence and resulting regulatory dysfunction, a system intentionally hobbled by special interests involved in energy production.

and

New distributed forms of power generation could potentially render a significant portion of the legacy utility asset structure as obsolete or economically irrelevant. Legacy utilities are experiencing spiking demand, a consumer desiring improved reliability, but retaining a commitment to existing modes of production that are increasingly problematic. We hate the overused term “disruption”. But if ever there was an industry ripe for disruption this is it.

Ripe For Disruption: U.S. Power Generators Must Act

Staying in town for the holidays, as we usually do. Survived the big cold snap, celebrated Hanukkah a day late, but I’m blaming Google calendar for this. Got some delicious meat from my sister’s as a holiday gift (they know what we like). Went to two UT basketball games at the new Moody Arena. Not sure what was so wrong with the old arena. Sprung for the NBA season pass so we can watch the Pelicans. Made some more sauerkraut. I went light on the salt and no onions. I think the higher pH helped the fermentation. Ready for 2023.

A bigger story than it appears. The Trump campaign used vast amounts of illegally obtained personal data from Facebook in the 2016 election. And this is just the part we know about, and that people have admitted to. The biggest problem with these targeted ads is they are private and not open to scrutiny like other campaign ads. A quote:

The consulting firm, now defunct, worked for Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign in 2016, and used personal information from millions of US Facebook accounts for the purposes of voter profiling and targeting.

Meta settles Cambridge Analytica scandal case for $725m

I had to look this one up. Recent research shows that mounds on the LSU campus in Baton Rouge are the oldest known man-made Structures in the Americas. They are approximately 11,000 years old. Another article said they had been used until recently for tailgating at LSU football games.

NEW RESEARCH SHOWS LSU CAMPUS MOUNDS AS THE OLDEST KNOWN MAN-MADE STRUCTURES IN THE AMERICAS

I’m not a huge football / soccer fan, but I did watch some of this years World Cup. I enjoyed the final yesterday, even though I find the overtime shoot outs a strange way to settle a close contest.

I did have occasion to watch the 1970 World Cup final on TV. I was eight years old and visiting my great grandmother and the rest of the family in Sicily. One evening people slowly gathered in my great-grandmothers living room. There was a small black and white TV set in the corner, on a stand of some sort, facing the wall, unplugged. I hadn’t even noticed it until now. My cousin turned it around, plugged it in, and turned it on. Everyone was there to watch Italy vs Brazil in the finals.

It was a raucous time, but I couldn’t really see the TV well and probably wouldn’t have understood what was going on anyway. But everyone else seemed to enjoy the game.

After the game was over, everyone took to the streets in celebration. I remember a car with a sunroof, perhaps a VW or a Fiat going up and down the streets flying the Italian flag, horn honking. I had to ask my cousin: didn’t Italy lose? Well, yes, but they did so well! I couldn’t argue with that.