{"id":3919,"date":"2017-06-10T21:48:14","date_gmt":"2017-06-11T03:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3919"},"modified":"2017-06-11T10:17:18","modified_gmt":"2017-06-11T16:17:18","slug":"odd-lots-308","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3919","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href= \"https:\/\/wattsupwiththat.com\/2017\/06\/06\/solar-update-june-2017-the-sun-is-slumping-and-headed-even-lower\/\" target=\"_blank\">Solar cycle 24 is crashing<\/a>, and we&#8217;re still three years from Solar minimum. 24 really does look to be the weakest cycle in 100 years or more.<\/li>\n<li>And if you don&#8217;t think the Sun influences Earth&#8217;s climate, read <a href= \"https:\/\/wattsupwiththat.com\/2017\/06\/10\/indirect-effects-of-the-sun-of-earths-climate\/\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a>, about the Sun&#8217;s indirect effects on climate and why they make climate so hard to predict.<\/li>\n<li>I doubt the payback would be more than the cost of the equipment and the electricity, but <a href= \"http:\/\/www.instructables.com\/id\/Bitcoin-Mining-using-Raspberry-Pi\/\" target=\"_blank\">you can mine bitcoin with a Raspberry Pi<\/a>&#8211;or better yet, a whole farm of them. (Run them from a solar panel?)<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of the RPi: I burned a new NOOBS micro-SD last week, and used it to install the latest stock Raspbian. What I discovered is that this latest release has a terrible time detecting any monitor that isn&#8217;t straight HDMI. I&#8217;ve been using the RPi with older 4:3 DVI monitors through an adapter cable ever since I got my first board, and the board had no trouble figuring out the size of the raster. I&#8217;ve screwed around with the config file with only partial success; even telling the board precisely what mode your monitor speaks (1600 X 1200, 75 Hz) doesn&#8217;t guarantee correct video.<\/li>\n<li>When I was <em>much<\/em> younger I wanted a PDP-8. And then a PDP-11, which I almost got because <a href= \"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Heathkit_H11\" target= \"_blank\">Heathkit actually made a hobbyist PDP-11 desktop<\/a>. I settled for an S-100 8080, because there was actually software for it. I recently stumbled on <a href= \"http:\/\/www.sparetimegizmos.com\/Hardware\/SBC6120-2.htm\" target= \"_blank\">a hobbyist PDP-8 system based on Intersil&#8217;s IM6120 chip<\/a>. It&#8217;s not hardware you can buy; you download the PCB design and the software, get somebody to make the board (not hard these days) and then stuff it yourself. Runs FOCAL-69 and OS\/8. Paleocomputing at its best!<\/li>\n<li>From the It&#8217;s-Dead-But-the-Corpse-Is-Still-Twitching Department: <a href= \"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/politics\/articles\/2017-05-10\/aetna-is-latest-health-insurer-to-quit-obamacare-markets\" target=\"_blank\">Aetna is pulling out of the Obamcare exchanges entirely next year<\/a>, citing $200M in losses.<\/li>\n<li><a href= \"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/scientists-think-theyve-solved-the-mystery-of-our-atmos-1795959624\" target=\"_blank\">You won&#8217;t believe where Earth&#8217;s atmospheric xenon comes from<\/a>! (Actually, you will&#8230;but you have to say that these days because clicks.)<\/li>\n<li><a href= \"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/be-wary-of-the-orwellian-enlightened-class\/\" target=\"_blank\">Excellent long-form piece on why we should fear an ideologically uniform elite<\/a>. From the article: &#8220;<span style= \"FONT-WEIGHT: 400\">If you really want to live in a world without tyranny, spend less time trying to show others why you are right and more time trying to show yourself why you are wrong.&#8221; Bingo.<\/span> Because no matter what you think, you are always wrong. About everything. Nothing is simple. Nobody has the whole story. Ambiguity is everywhere. <em>Certainty is poison<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>How many times do we have to say this? <a href= \"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/entertainment\/living\/health-fitness\/article150532487.html\" target=\"_blank\">Eat fat to lose weight<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>We could use more research here (can&#8217;t we always?) but it&#8217;s certainly possible: <a href= \"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/health\/article-4506846\/Eating-salt-help-LOSE-weight-study-reveals.html\" target=\"_blank\">Eating more salt may help you lose weight<\/a>. Could be; I determined by experiment that salt doesn&#8217;t affect my blood pressure, so it couldn&#8217;t hurt to try.<\/li>\n<li><a href= \"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/low-fat-dairy-linked-to-parkinsons-risk\/\" target=\"_blank\">A correlation has been found between consuming lowfat or nonfat dairy products and Parkinson&#8217;s disease<\/a>. No such correlation is seen with full-fat dairy products. My guess: Your brain is mostly made of fat, and people who eat low-fat dairy tend to eat low-fat everything. So this is yet another reason to go low-carb high fat, even if you don&#8217;t need to lose weight. Fat is a necessary nutrient!<\/li>\n<li>After decades of difficult research, scholars have finally decoded the lyrics to the &#8220;O Fortuna&#8221; movement of Carmina Burana. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wimp.com\/o-fortuna-misheard-lyrics\/\" target= \"_blank\">And&#8230;they aren&#8217;t in medieval Latin at all<\/a>. (Thanks to Sarah Hoyt for the link.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Solar cycle 24 is crashing, and we&#8217;re still three years from Solar minimum. 24 really does look to be the weakest cycle in 100 years or more. And if you don&#8217;t think the Sun influences Earth&#8217;s climate, read this, about the Sun&#8217;s indirect effects on climate and why they make climate so hard to predict. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[41,37,15,39,43,128,54],"class_list":["post-3919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-food","tag-hardware","tag-health","tag-humor","tag-rpi","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3922,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919\/revisions\/3922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}