Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Special Non-Olympic Edition

Since this is the non-Olympic edition, I'll open with an Olympic-related matter.
Notice some of the athletes appearing with what looks like pepperonis on their backs? This is called fire cupping. In brief, a large baby food jar gets its air evacuated by a small flame and stuch onto a person's back. This provides relief for all sorts of maladies, fibromyalgia and fascia disorders among them. The vacuum in the jar helps pull at the skin and other layers, ultimately causing those pepperonis.

We at ThermionicEmissions are amused by this, as Mrs lefty had this treatment about twenty years ago, Don't we sound like hipsters? The only issue was visiting a hospital at the time, when the staff asked her if she was being abused because they had never heard of it. We're an interesting household.


  • Up to 900 million android phones are at risk due to a flaw in Qualcomm chips. The bug has been fixed but your phone carrier has to do whatever phone carriers do to it before they send it to your phone. Breaking my heart, this is the bad part of android. But, as we say here, at least it's not an iDevice.

Why is it that women complain when people comment on a tv host's wardrobe but it's ok to publicly grope male athletes?


  • There's a young guy at work who answers his phone "FBI." It's heartwarming to see a younger version of me, opening his trap inappropriately, without regard. He will go far (if he's not fired on the way).

Thinking of purchasing a new, computer-controlled car? Jeep was just hacked, allowing acceleration, brake slamming, and turning the wheel at any speed from outside the car.


  • The dog continues his grief over his missing cat. We tried some sort of scent that's supposed to remind him of his mother. We're having some difficulty determining if it works, as we can only use it when we're not in the house. As he's still barking at the door when we leave, I'm thinking no. Next step: pharmaceuticals. It's only a matter of time until we're all on the same meds. The vet is talking Ativan.


AIRLINE NEWS:

So Delta experienced a 'power outage', which took down the entire airline on Monday. The power outage quickly morphed into a 'computer outage' and very limited functionality was restored by the afternoon. One day later, they're still pretty messed up.

Once again, I need to point out that there's a serious problem with aviation these days.  This is approximately the fourth airline that has had computer issues in the last year. What kind of infrastructure do our airlines have?  Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration are pretty important are pretty important functions. Important functions require all sorts of important infrastructure. I'm talking about basic things like at least two sources of power, at least two paths to the internet, at least two data centers, with automatic failover to the second one, reliable backups with functional (and tested) restore, a whole buncha spare parts onsite...  are you getting the idea? If I, in my various jobs, did not have these things, I'd be out on the street the first time there was a power outage (or a computer outage). I have heard from insiders that some of the airline infrastructure is old because the bean counters emphasize profits over equipment.

One article I read stated that this might be a human issue. I'd hope that a human could not take down an entire airline by himself, regardless of what he did to the computer. Yesterday it emerged that their power company said there was an outage, but Delta's equipment failed to switch over to a different provider.

Before any significant news came out, we were assured that this wasn't hacking. This is precisely the same M.O. when there's a shooting: "We don't have any details, but it's not terrorism." I'm not saying that Delta was hacked, but after at least four airline outages, do you think any of the airlines or the FEDERAL Aviation Association would admit to a hacking? Perhaps there were four separate instances of computer outages....I certainly don't know. Decide for yourself.

  • I hate like hell to descend to the depths of tabloidism, but here is a small collection of Leonardo DiCaprio's dating stall. Any of us could have a wonderful time with his rejects.

An Indian political activist is ending a 16-year fast.
16 years.
Fast.
As a result, the laws of medicine will be reinstated and thousands of women will want a copy of the regimen. It will become the most attempted diet of all time.


  • A Philippine lawmaker wants to ban Donald Trump from the country. Like him or hate him, he sure generates headlines. I'm amused that he gets so much response from people outside of his own country. Meanwhile, democrats also want to ban Trump from the country.

Led Zeppelin has lost a legal bid to recoup almost $800,000 in legal fees from the recent lawsuit. The judge refused because the suit wasn't frivolous. The law is the law but let $800,000 in legal fees soak in.


  • At the Olympics, Rowing in Rio was cancelled because the water kept eating through the bottom of the boats. No reschedule dates have been mentioned.

Today's Faceyspaces news: Facebook will now bypass your desktop browser's adblocker. FB and Google own 64% of the digital ad market - do the math.  So if you need yet another reason to dump FB, here it is. I get the feeling it won't matter to many- except my fine readers here.


  • Bernie Sanders just bought his third luxury home, at a cost of $600 million. After he asked nicely, they allowed him to pay for it with a check from the Hillary for President campaign.





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