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2024lctgmeetingchats [2024.01.10 08:42] – Steve Isenberg2024lctgmeetingchats [2024.05.08 08:55] (current) – Steve Isenberg
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 These are a record of the chats that were passed during meetings in 2024.  They have been edited to a small extent.\\  These are a record of the chats that were passed during meetings in 2024.  They have been edited to a small extent.\\ 
 To find chats for a given day, for example January 10, 2024, search for datecode 20240110 (2024, month 01, day 10). To find chats for a given day, for example January 10, 2024, search for datecode 20240110 (2024, month 01, day 10).
 +
 +====20240508====
 +===Inflammation===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:28:27 From tedpk to Everyone:
 + Where do histamines fit into all this -- since this is the height of Seasonal Respiratory Allergies?
 +10:57:07 From Judy & Mike Alexander to Everyone:
 + The prediction quote is attributed to Yogi Berra, not Niels Bohr
 +11:18:38 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + The allergy discussion raises my own experience with a recently discovered severe allergy. I_t was very specific.
 +11:18:56 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + I am undergoing treatments for my severe sting allergy.
 +11:19:31 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + • It’s hard to unlearn a chronic negative reaction to an irritating stimulant.
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +====20240501====
 +===Five Levels of Difficulty Day===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:07:16 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + For travel backward in time, has anyone solved the paradox of conservation of energy and mass?
 +10:12:12 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + As an absolute physical constant, the speed of light recently has been questioned. Over long times and distances, some theorists seem to think light may be slowing down.
 +10:19:43 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Chicken and egg -- the first chicken did not come from a chicken egg -- it came from a dinosaur egg!
 +10:20:05 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + (Not chickens specifically, but birds, generally.
 +10:27:19 From Jerome Slate to Everyone:
 + To know which came first, the chicken or the egg, order both from Amazon.  You will soon know which came first.
 +10:31:30 From Stan Rose to Everyone:
 + Interesting that these are all ideas in the Netflix series, 3 Body Problem!
 +10:33:56 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon. The chicken was at Whole Foods before I ordered it. (It was already in my cart.) What does this result prove?
 +10:39:32 From Dan Silber to Everyone:
 + I have long agreed with Bob - eggs came into existence before chickens.
 +10:43:24 From Adam Broun to Everyone:
 + https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses/general-relativity/2012/fall
 + All the courses in this series are terrific if you want to go  that deep
 +10:55:58 From Judy & Mike Alexander to Everyone:
 + Eggs must be fertilized before there are chickens.  "Chicken vs. egg" is incomplete.
 +10:57:02 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + We should be careful about eliminating the genes responsible for allergies. There are some scientists who think allergies are part of our very complex immune systems. Change one part of this system, and unpredictable effects can happen elsewhere in the immune system.
 +10:57:09 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Brand new 37-minute video from Veritasium on black holes, white holes, wormholes and parallel universes, entitled, “Something Strange Happens When You Follow Einstein's Math” ~ https://youtu.be/6akmv1bsz1M
 +10:59:40 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + Veritasium has good presentations, we’ve seen some in the past.  I’ll put this on the Potentials list, maybe we can show it in a potpourri.
 +11:00:43 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Derek Muller of Veritasium is a world-class science educator and explorer on YouTube.
 +11:01:28 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + "Designer Genes" could have ethical and population health consequences. Diversity has been one key to genetic evolution. This process is necessary when, not if the Earth's environment changes radically in the future. (No implication of human causality in these changes is needed to see this issue.)
 +11:05:14 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Ack!! Did they just refer to human genetics as a "hard drive??
 +
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +====20240424====
 +===Planning meeting===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:14:41 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Altruism:  Private Support of Science and Education.
 +10:15:44 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + On Quantum Tech, there are a few YouTube videos from Sabine Hossenfelder on various aspects of that.
 +10:24:32 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Shelf Life of Vaccines and Covid Tests.
 +10:25:13 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + “Push to DISTANT future."
 +10:40:28 From Bill Quinn to Everyone:
 + We have only an email address for Donald Cooke
 +10:43:08 From TedK to Everyone:
 + Thermoplastic polymers are extruded from a printer dubbed the “Factory of the Future 1.0," said Habib Dagher, director of UMaine’s Advanced Structures & Composite Center, where both of the current printers are located. It combines robotics operations with new sensors, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence, Dagher said.
 +10:54:42 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + There are probably copious predictions about AGI.
 +10:59:26 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + John R. Pierce (V.P. of Bell Labs) wrote a great book, “Signals: The Telephone and Beyond.”
 +11:09:24 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + ADT Alarms (American District Telegraph).
 +11:24:40 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Related to aging hardware,  one can continue with older Macintosh hardware with Open Core Legacy Patcher (OCLP) which allows older machines to run newer versions of MacOS.
 +11:30:33 From Steve's displays to Everyone:
 + Jerry: for video work, you need Intel i7 processor, 16GB or more RAM, and a fast video processor.
 +11:35:46 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Angels on the head of a pin was in the MIT Museum Tour video.
 +11:36:09 From Peter Albin to Everyone:
 + thx Barry,I forgot!
 +11:36:25 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Reacted to "thx Barry,I forgot!" with 👍
 +11:40:30 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Synology DiskStation and other species of NAS (Network Attached Storage).
 +11:44:28 From Larry W. to Everyone:
 + In the discussion of buying a new PC, storage is so cheap that you should just buy 1 of 2 TB. Right now you can buy 1 TB SSD for $50.
 +11:50:48 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + Contact us: LCTG@toku.us
 +
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +====20240403====
 +===About Eclipses===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +09:53:53 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + PBS NOVA will probably produce an episode on the topic.
 +10:02:55 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + That airs tonight on PBS-2.
 +10:05:37 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Great American Eclipse
 + Explore the spectacular cosmic phenomenon of a total solar eclipse.
 + PREMIERES: 4/3/24 8pm
 +10:12:04 From John Rudy to Everyone:
 + See Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  Chapter 6 is the eclipse
 +10:19:28 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + In the Lewis & Clark Expedition, they relied on a predicted eclipse that would occur when they were in the Montana Territory to calibrate their clock and fix their exact position on that day, thus improving the reliability of their map making along the journey.
 +10:33:42 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + On Mars, eclipses (transits) don't block out the Sun, due to the small sizes of the Martian moons.
 +10:33:54 From Mitch Wolfe to Everyone:
 + Moon "distance from Earth varies between 225,700 miles (363,300 kilometers) and 252,000 miles (405,500 kilometers)." [About 10% diff.]
 +10:36:52 From Judy & Mike Alexander to Everyone:
 + the increase in the size of the moon's orbit is due to conservation of angular momentum: because of friction due to earth- and moon-tides, the spin of the earth slows down; the orbit of the moon "compensates" to conserve the total angular momentum of earth-plus-moon.
 +10:53:04 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + The Northeast, from western Pennsylvania into Maine, have the best shot at seeing clear skies and limited cloud cover. Eclipse forecast for Monday, April 8, 2024.
 +10:54:59 From John Rudy to Everyone:
 + apparently there have been many ads for bogus glasses
 +10:56:09 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Buying glasses in-person (or getting them for free)
 + If you'd prefer to buy a pair of approved eclipse glasses in person, the AAS recommends stopping by a Home Depot, Lowe's or Walmart to check if they have any in stock. (Some, but not all, locations sell ISO-approved eclipse glasses, according to the AAS.) Additionally, many libraries around the U.S. will be giving away free pairs of approved eclipse glasses; call your local branch
 +11:00:53 From tedpk to Everyone:
 + certain degree of unpreparedness for example the diamond ring and the less well known Bailey's beads and the Ruby necklace -- all of which relate to lunar non-spheroidicity
 +11:02:33 From tedpk to Everyone:
 + another problem with the discussion -- there is a confusion between scattering and refraction in the atmosphere
 +11:04:03 From John Rudy to Everyone:
 + best viewing is from the NASA videos
 +11:10:11 From John Rudy to Everyone:
 + blue moons roughly every 2.7 years on average.
 +11:11:08 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + But how could you see the eclipse in a plane with windows facing out the side of the plane?
 +11:11:24 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + An airliner can't outpace the shadow of the moon during an eclipse. So the advertised "eclipse flights" will not have much of an extended view of totality. Just, the planes will be above the clouds, so nearly certainly passengers will see the eclipse.
 +11:13:49 From John Rudy to Everyone:
 + I was on a plane flying near mt Everest.  Everyone moved to the right side of the plane to see the mountain.   So maybe 10,000 pounds moved sides.  Didn't notice any impact
 +11:14:58 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + The pilot would apply some changes to the airplane’s controls automatically to maintain level flight.
 +11:15:25 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Problem is that the angle from which the sun is shining (Azimuth) is at a somewhat inconvenient angle compared to flight path. From the plane’s view the sun (and thus eclipse) would be about 7 or 8 o clock when looking at a clockface. Therefore the best would be that when totality shadow starts (or right before), the plane flies in a more northern direction or even a bit northeastern so most people on board would be able to see it clearly since we would then be at a right angle towards the eclipse (9 of clock). But this requires either that the pilot is a bit flexible (like the SW pilot in 2023 who did some zig zags as spur of the moment) or needs proper flight path planning which is what Alaska airlines did.
 +11:16:20 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + In this flight path, the pilot does some zig-zags to let passengers on either side of the plane to have a view.
 +11:16:34 From tedpk to Everyone:
 + Airliner should get you above most of the clouds -- so it could be useful -- the SR-71 once flew along the path of totality fast enough to "make time stand still" by doubling the length of totality
 +11:17:36 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + But the stars would come out during totality, like they do at night
 +11:19:56 From John Rudy to Everyone:
 + Anecdotally, I just heard there was a spike in births 9 months after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.  Might the same be true with eclipses.   Or is this bogus?  Probably
 +11:21:01 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + A nova, not comet, will be present possibly during this eclipse.
 +11:21:38 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + About the Cubs and births, yes this was a local legend. Don't know about "eclipse babies".
 +11:22:50 From Mitch Wolfe to Everyone:
 + Some of the speaker's slides are from https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/ that has a lot of related materials.
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +====20240327====
 +===MIT Museum===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +09:59:23 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Sabine Hossenfelder ~ Science without the gobbledygook.
 +11:16:43 From CK to Everyone:
 + there once was a nautical museum. Is there still? And is it related to this one?
 +11:19:09 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Much of the Computer Museum artifacts when to the comparable museum in San Jose CA.
 +11:19:56 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Boston Museum of Science has a small room with some of the artifacts.
 +11:21:43 From Larry W to Everyone:
 + The nautical museum was shut down ~1970 during the anti-war protests. I don't know if ever reopened.
 +11:23:16 From Stephen Quatrano to Everyone:
 + I believe there is still an extensive collection of nautical devices, designs and artifacts in the museum.  They were indeed a core of the old museum.  I don’t know if they are in the new displays.
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +
 +====20240320====
 +===2023 Nobel Prize mRNA===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:22:31 From tedpk to Everyone:
 + 1 word of caution -- myocarditis
 +10:38:27 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Moderna's RSV vaccine is an mRNA vaccine.
 +10:41:47 From tedpk to Everyone:
 + Unfortunately -- there is at least some of the "inverse astronomers' paradigm" i.e. -- All sheep in Scotland are black" -- you can't say doing in parallel is the same as doing in series
 +10:47:18 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + From the very beginning, we now could conclude it would have been better if public health officials had never promised to "contain" COVID-19. They should from the very beginning have been forthcoming about the transition from a pandemic to an endemic virus.
 +10:48:32 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + But hindsight is always better than foresight, especially with public policy decisions.
 +10:51:35 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + The remarks about vaccines preventing Long COVID make a lot of assumptions, some of which could be challenged successfully.
 +11:20:37 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + A few weeks ago, CVS alerted me that the newest booster shots had just become available.  Can anyone say more about what’s the story with this newest vaccine version?
 +11:31:03 From Judy & Mike Alexander to Everyone:
 + Researchers and authorities had actually hoped to contain covid-19.  However, the behavior of significant parts of the  public (combined with anti-vaxx propaganda) undermined efforts to contain the virus.
 +11:34:30 From tedpk to Everyone:
 + Another key point:  The "Spanish Flu" of 100 years ago -- was qualitatively different than all the Flu Pandemics since -- highly transmissible, triggered s
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +====20240313====
 +===Sleep Deprivation and Passkeys===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:27:19 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + The types of effects on short-term memory cited in this study did not go away just by getting extra sleep after being sleep-deprived. It took longer than a few nights to return to normal functions, if I recall correctly.
 +10:33:33 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Tuesday, two days after losing an hour’s sleep for DST, I found myself making a substantial number of lapses and errors for lack of paying adequate attention to what I was doing.
 +10:34:19 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + N.B. ~ Business Insider has a PayWall.
 +10:34:43 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + I took an extra-early bedtime before Sunday. This took care of my issues, as I woke up "on time" for DST.
 +10:35:22 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + I tried that, but I ended up not falling asleep an hour earlier.
 +10:35:23 From tedpk to Everyone:
 + Tom Edison claimed he just napped -- never had a traditional externded sleep
 +10:36:04 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Edison is said to have had ADD -- this changes sleep patterns.
 +10:36:47 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Airline pilots reportedly take “micronaps” in the cockpit.
 +10:37:36 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + There was just an article in Yahoo News -- in Indonesia, both pilots fell asleep briefly -- and the flight went dangerously off-course.
 +10:38:13 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + https://www.kccu.org/business/2024-03-12/pilots-often-take-micro-naps-how-much-of-a-problem-is-it-globally
 +10:39:04 From tedpk to Everyone:
 + so @ JFK you need a precision timer -- and then you can migrate from pod- to- pod without paying
 +10:39:06 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Barry -- I am unusual in my ability to adjust my sleep timing.
 +10:39:50 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + I often fall asleep in front of the computer when there is nothing much to attend to.
 +10:40:39 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + So that's what you should have been doing Sat. night!
 +10:41:27 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Narcolepsy -- I once interviewed with someone who has this. She laughed at a joke and her head hit the table.
 +10:41:48 From Larry W to Everyone:
 + Narcolepsy doesn't have to the colapse type.
 +10:42:01 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + The main reason I went to bed early on Saturday night was because there was no activity to attend to in the media.
 +10:51:44 From Stan Rose to Everyone:
 + It takes about 1 day for every day of time zone shift to recover
 +10:52:39 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Sounds about right.
 +10:54:36 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + It’s a widely reported rule of thumb.
 +10:59:25 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Now and then, my iPhone issues an audio alert in the middle of the night which wakes me up.
 +11:03:14 From Umesh to Everyone:
 + Barry, I sometimes wonder if my meditation worked for the same reason your neurologist’s prescription worked.
 +11:04:47 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Umesh, I think it was Larry who spoke of his Neurologist.  But when I was working on my Ph.D., I’d take naps when my brain got foggy from too much math scribbling.
 +11:10:34 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + In 1974, on the IBM 360 at Bell Labs, passwords were saved in plaintext on a publicly readable file.
 +11:16:40 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + If someone purloined your physical device, doesn’t that defeat the security of passkeys?
 +11:18:50 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + The QR Code on the phone is old-fashioned 2FA. That's in addition to the Passkey itself.
 +11:19:21 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Even if someone got your passkey vault, they could not access the passkeys without your MAster Password.
 +11:19:37 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Trusted Platform Manager (TPM)
 +11:30:44 From Drew King to Everyone:
 + https://bitwarden.com/password-strength/
 +11:41:17 From Adam Broun to Everyone:
 + Dashlane supports passkeys in the browser too not just mobile
 +11:42:09 From Stan Rose to Everyone:
 + Quite a bit. Most of my logins now text me a code when I try to login which I th we n have to enter
 +11:50:06 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Another scam to watch out for is a fake bitwarden site where the ‘a’ in ‘bitwarden’ is the other ASCII font for the letter ‘a’.
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +====20240306====
 +===Neat Android Phone Apps===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:30:16 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Shades of Matrix, O. Henry (surprise ending), Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Theology.
 +10:31:39 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + «Creativity is Intelligence having fun.»
 +10:32:21 From Judy & Mike Alexander to Everyone:
 + … and what is intelligence?
 +10:33:28 From John Rudy to Everyone:
 + remember smellovision
 +10:34:32 From John Rudy to Everyone:
 + debby reynolds
 +10:35:16 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Intelligence is the ability to think, solve problems, and devise plans for reaching a goal.
 +10:36:29 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + We call a work of art or film creative when it goes beyond our expectations of what should be possible.
 +10:38:40 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + So, creative AI would possibly be when the AI produces outputs which were not explicitly programmed into it. Generative AI is supposed to be able to do this, but not LLMs.
 +10:40:22 From John Rudy to Everyone:
 + creativity, I think, is what the 1% figures out that the average person can not.  So the average erson says "wow, that is creative"
 +10:41:22 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + "Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
 +10:41:32 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Novelty, originality and utility are some of the components of the definitions of creativity used by psych. researchers.
 +10:54:49 From John Rudy to Everyone:
 + But I do not believe that scientists yet know how creativity works.  What causes some people to pull together disparate ideas and create something new.  I suppose that some day they will.  Computers will remember something from decades ago or that someone else has said, and "creativity" may just be putting it together
 +10:55:20 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + There is still a ghost in the machine.
 +10:58:19 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + A fair amount of creative art is juxtaposing or merging two or more models that normally would not be considered related.  The art reveals some aspect that they have in common (or perhaps in opposition).
 +11:05:03 From Judy & Mike Alexander to Everyone:
 + Also, there's a form of creativity in which one person 'triggers' thinking by another.  This can be with people who are in direct contact, or it can occur remotely (so to speak -- reading something another person has written).  Triggering is well known in psychology (I think).
 +11:06:40 From Carl Lazarus to Everyone:
 + Thanks for mentioning magnifier and light app.  I found an iPhone app "Magnifying Glass With Light" (maybe the same one mentioned for Android), just installed it.  Exactly what I need for restaurant menus!
 +11:15:37 From Carl Lazarus to Everyone:
 + I use free Hiya on my iPhone.  It helps some with spam calls, but it should do better.
 +11:30:32 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + There is a “Wifi Analyzer Network Scanner” app for iPhone.  (Not sure yet how good it is.)
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +====20240228====
 +===Neat Phone Apps Part 3===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:17:46 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + ARC Search Browser (IOS only).
 +10:19:56 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + Right (iOS only) as I don’t see it on the Mac store.
 +10:26:49 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + CanOfSoup (pictures)
 +10:27:20 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Windy (weather).  Rise (baking).
 +10:41:10 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Home Assistant (runs on one’s own server).
 +10:44:30 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + So the app is free, but to use it you will need to set up a server (and the server app costs around $9)
 +10:45:36 From Larry W to Everyone:
 + The BMAX looks a lot like my NUC Desktop PC
 +10:47:24 From Larry W to Everyone:
 + Does someone sell a RAID box with Solid state drives?
 +10:55:40 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + TruNAS (Network Attached Storage).
 +11:01:22 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + ProxMox is neat. Buy one machine, and create many virtual machines on it.
 +11:09:24 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Bitwarden -- fork called Vaultwarden which is also self-hosted. So you have the same apps, but you host your own password database. 
 +
 + https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
 +
 + There's an already built instance which is someone else's server (Cloud service).
 + https://www.vaultwarden.net/
 + https://vaultwarden.us/
 +11:12:00 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + Self hosted forum in reddit
 +11:22:12 From Grace Poon to Everyone:
 + Please I have a lot of photographs of museum paintings, will photoprism be able to sort them out? At least for the famous painters? Monet vs renoit? Thanks
 +11:23:41 From Adam Broun to Everyone:
 + I doubt it will distinguish between painters, but I don’t know
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +====20240221====
 +===Neat Phone Apps Part 2===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:09:31 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + When MS Word goes away, people might consider Notepad++, AbiWord or other alternatives. Launching MS Word is too slow for quick RTF document writing and copy/paste operations.
 +10:10:25 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
 +10:10:29 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + https://abiword.en.softonic.com/
 +10:13:46 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Drew has static in his sound.
 +10:15:36 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + backmarket.com. — refurbished phones all models (and tablets and computers) at reduced prices.  Recommended by me and Harry.
 +10:18:28 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + BackMarket phones (and other devices) come with a 30-day return for any reason and a 1 year warranty.
 +10:21:35 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Rome2Rio
 +10:31:56 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + TeamViewer.
 +10:32:00 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + Team Viewer
 +10:43:15 From Jerome Slate to Everyone:
 + Is the SmartNews adjuster called the "Confirmation Bias Slider"?
 +10:51:08 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + alltrails
 +10:57:45 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + You can give it a web page and it will translate the whole page.
 +11:17:53 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + What Is a Passphrase, and How Can I Create One?  https://www.dashlane.com/blog/what-is-a-passphrase-and-how-can-i-create-one  So it appears passphrases can be handled by dashlane, and this was 2 years ago.
 +11:26:37 From Dan Silber to Everyone:
 + You can always express your age by converting to the Celsius scale: subtract 32 and multiply by 5/9. Thus, 30 Celsius is 86!
 +11:27:47 From Adam Broun to Everyone:
 + I have an app you might be interested in : Arc Search
 +11:35:07 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + info@lctg.toku.us.  or.  lctg@toku.us
 +11:35:31 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + If you have suggestions to present for next week, email me/Steve or lctg@toku.us
 +11:43:01 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + US Mobile Plans
 +11:43:37 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + https://www.usmobile.com/plans
 +12:01:04 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + https://www.amazon.com/My-Stroke-Insight-Scientists-Personal-ebook/dp/B0019IB0II/ and Ted talk https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_my_stroke_of_insight
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +====20240214====
 +===Phone Apps and Neat Websites===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:04:36 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + I often ask (repeatedly, if necessary), “Who’ calling, please.”
 +10:04:59 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + I expect a real name and a company name and a location.
 +10:11:38 From Alice  Meade to Everyone:
 + Has anyone figured out how to watch Napoleon for free?
 +10:12:17 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + I get very little Spam on both Comcast Voice and my US Mobile Cell Phone plan. My phone is almost never active. This may affect the willingness of spammers to call me.
 +10:18:54 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + If you’ve already paid for something once, reviewing later it shouldn’t be an issue.  But viewing fresh content might be problematic with respect to Intellectual Property Rights.
 +10:21:14 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + There are arrangements about this already.
 +10:22:58 From Grace Poon to Everyone:
 + I use the Minuteman library, you can request movies and I just watched Oppenheimer again at home with subtitles, plus the special feature with the PBS documentary, which I always find it interesting.
 +10:23:24 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + ChatGPT says:  «The top-level domain (TLD) ".ph" is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Philippines. TLDs are the last segment of a domain name, which follows the "dot" in an internet address. Each TLD is assigned to a specific country or territory, and ".ph" specifically denotes websites associated with the Philippines. It is commonly used by individuals, businesses, and organizations based in or affiliated with the Philippines.»
 +10:23:40 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Bard concurs.
 +10:33:33 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + One problem with ReelGood -- it offers VPN suggestions for getting around regional blocks. This also has ethical issues.
 +10:34:50 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Public Libraries also may rent out equipment for viewing DVDs and BluRay Discs.
 +10:40:24 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + TLD .tv is actually owned by the country of Tuvalu.
 +10:47:23 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + RPN is Reverse Polish Notation.  (Push-Down Stack)
 +10:47:50 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Operations apply to the topmost numbers on the stack.
 +10:49:24 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + RPN has no parenthesis keys.  If your calculator has parens keys, then it’s not RPN.
 +10:50:29 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + LOL means Lots of Love.
 +10:51:56 From Judy & Mike Alexander to Everyone:
 + Wikipedia will also give you acronyms
 +10:55:16 From Grace Poon to Everyone:
 + inaturalist is good for birds, plants ID etc
 + ‘seek’ for plants is a simpler ID version, 
 + Merlin is great for birds
 +10:55:43 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Are the plugins available for the free version of ChatGPT, or only the premium version?
 +10:56:10 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Peter says, “Only the paid premium version.”
 +11:00:45 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + FYI, Acronym finder is a web site acronymfinder.com and an app as I demo’d, and it’s free and extensive.
 +11:01:49 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Unless they’ve changed it, any given chat can have at most 3 plugins enabled.
 +11:04:05 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + The hp 15c calculator app that I demo’d is free for iOS, search for “Retro 15c”.
 +11:05:29 From Adam Broun to Everyone:
 + You might enjoy suno.ai (built by some former colleagues of mine).    Generative ai to compose music and songs from a prompt.
 +11:10:01 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + There is a plugin for asking questions of a PDF document.
 +11:14:26 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + There are Browser Plugins and ChatGPT plugins, and it’s sometimes hard to remember which is which.
 +11:15:15 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + Send your topics ideas to: info@lctg.toku.us (Or to Bob, John, Peter, or Steve and we’ll forward)
 +11:15:49 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + I played with a PDF-Questioning Plugin for a friend’s Master’s Thesis.
 +11:20:44 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + Google Image Search can recognize and translate text in an image.
 +11:32:34 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + There’s only a modest number of routes, not an astronomical number of possible itineraries.
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +
 +====20240207====
 +===Space Update===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:07:50 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + "InSight" stands for "Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport."
 +10:11:07 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
 + When he says that it reaches Mach 1, is that relative to Mars speed of sound?
 +10:13:46 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + «The speed of sound on Mars is significantly lower than on Earth. On average, the speed of sound on Mars is around 240 meters per second (about 784 feet per second), compared to about 343 meters per second (around 1125 feet per second) on Earth at sea level.»  [From ChatGPT]
 +10:15:05 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + I’m guessing that you don’t want the rotors to break the sound barrier, as that would waste energy.
 +10:20:27 From Judy & Mike Alexander to Everyone:
 + The tips of some of the earthbound helicopters' blades evidently do exceed Mach 1.  In those cases, the helicopter sounds like it's generating a rapid series of explosions -- very annoying.
 +10:21:25 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + I don't think the Martians will mind, much. : )
 +10:22:04 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + i suppose on earth, we can afford to waste energy by emitting sonic booms. But on Mars that would not be a sensible use of limited power.
 +10:23:09 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
 + Maybe the very low density of the Martian atmosphere might cause much less of an issue.
 +10:24:38 From Larry W to Everyone:
 + The US doesn't use counter rotating blades because they're too loud. but Russia does have some.  They are however more efficient.
 +10:28:49 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + You don’t need the tail rotor with a pair of counter-rotating lift blades.
 +10:37:20 From Carl Lazarus to Everyone:
 + How do we know the size of Mercury's core without any seismic measurements?
 +10:43:02 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + I think it’s based on measurements of the strength of Mercury’s magnetic field.
 +11:00:04 From Larry W to Everyone:
 + The Chinook helicopter which has two sets of rotors on the opposite ends of of the aircraft do rotate in opposite direction also not requiring a "tail rotor". This seems to be much more efficient. I wonder why there aren't more such designs. Also I assume the  Osprey blades rotae in opposite directions.
 +11:04:48 From Chuck Kaufman to Everyone:
 + are the Webb photos real color?
 +11:05:51 From Judy & Mike Alexander to Everyone:
 + No.  Webb detects infrared radiation.  So the colors must have been added by NASA to make things clearer.
 +11:16:26 From Carl Lazarus to Everyone:
 + I hope Boeing installs all the bolts.
 +11:25:53 From Judy & Mike Alexander to Everyone:
 + "A billion here and a billion there.  Pretty soon it becomes real money."
 +11:30:29 From Barry Kort to Everyone:
 + It really sucks to have an open gash in the side of the passenger compartment.
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
  
 ====20240110==== ====20240110====
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 11:07:51 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone: 11:07:51 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
  Can the heat of an object be measured, so that maybe a lost hiker on a colder ground could be detected using their body heat  Can the heat of an object be measured, so that maybe a lost hiker on a colder ground could be detected using their body heat
 +</code>
 +</WRAP>
 +[[lexingtoncomputergroup|return]]
 +
 +====20240103====
 +===Using files across Windows, Apple, Linux, etc platforms===
 +<WRAP prewrap>
 +<code>
 +10:31:24 Barry Kort: WiFi speeds vary.  2.4 GHz WiFi is slower than 5 GHz WiFi, and both are typically slower than hard-wired Ethernet.
 +10:32:34 Bob Primak: From th AX standard onward, MIMO uses multiple channels simultaneaously to increase network throughput. WiFi-6 is even faster.
 +10:34:30 Barry Kort: Synology makes a nice local network storage device for your LAN.
 +10:54:12 Bob Primak: Actually, nearly all fiber-optic ISPs have symmetrical upstream/downstream bandwidth. Verizon is by no means unique in this regard, for businesses.
 </code> </code>
 </WRAP> </WRAP>
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2024lctgmeetingchats.1704904978.txt.gz · Last modified: 2024.01.10 08:42 by Steve Isenberg