From 2017 to 2020, GoodRx uploaded the contact information of users who had bought certain medications, like birth control or erectile dysfunction pills, to Facebook so that the drug discount app could identify its users' social media profiles, the F.T.C. said in a legal complaint. GoodRx then used the personal information to target users with ads for medications on Facebook and Instagram, the complaint said, "all of which was visible to Facebook."

This strikes me as a willful data breach of HIPAA privacy rules, as it was not done accidentally but deliberately in order to identify social media profiles in a manner visible to Facebook, and it clearly was not corrected "in a reasonable time frame", as required by HIPAA rules, as this shit went on for three years.

That's a category 4 violation of HIPAA privacy rules, and the penalty for such a violation is $50,000 per violation with a maximum for $1.5 million per year.

Essentially GoodRx admitted to violating HIPAA privacy laws in an egregious and willful manner, and is paying the full fare for the fine.

The part that amazes me, however, is that this cap of $1.5 million was written for small practices and for individual doctors--not for large corporations like GoodRx, where $1.5 million is basically a rounding error on their financials. Essentially, by doing this, we've shown that--as we move towards consolidating practices under large HCOs where $1.5 million is essentially a write-off for the cost of doing business, our personal private medical information is simply not safe. For $1.5 million, you too can mine the health data records of tens or hundreds of thousands of patients.

This tells me Congress needs a new class of penalty here, which removes the cap for large entities. Especially now, as we're seeing Silicon Valley tech companies enter the health care space, where "move fast and break things" is a mantra, and where a $1.5 million dollar "penalty" is considered a minor tax write-off.

I have AT&T's 5gb service.

The trick is, however, most desktop computers only have an ethernet connection out the back that can handle 1 gig at most. And most ethernet switches also cap out at 1gb over Cat-6.

When we got AT&T, I actually went through my house and updated the switches to 10 gig switches, and I happen to have a Mac Pro that can handle 10 gig at the ethernet port. So I'm able to actually see 5 gig at my desktop. That makes software downloads fantastic--assuming the server you're downloading from also supports 5 gig, which may do not.

So unless you're a power user, you have an especially fast ethernet connection off the back of your computer, have a computer capable of downloading data that quickly and storing data that quickly, and are talking to services which support that sort of bandwidth--you'll never use more than 1 gig transfer rates.

Back about a decade and change ago, the requirement for a pilot to have an Air Transport Pilot License, was that you had to have a Commercial Pilots License--which requires about 250 hours and additional training. But then, in 2009, a loss of control incident caused by both pilots not properly responding to cockpit warnings caused the regulators to introduce the 1500 hour rule--despite both pilots in the aforementioned accident having more than 1500 hours of experience each.

This started the pilot shortage to begin with, as to accumulate 1500 hours of flying time, at (say) $100/hour "wet" rental prices for just renting an aircraft, means you have to spend $150,000 (or find someone who you can teach as a flight instructor, as you get to count hours as a CFI) in order to accumulate the hours necessary to qualify for an ATPL.

The absurd part is that 1500 hours of experience doesn't necessarily make you a better pilot.

So rather than address the rules which prevent more people from entering the field, we're trying to figure out how to reduce the number of people in the cockpit, so we now get to have a single point of failure instead?

Honestly I'd feel safer with two pilots rather than one, even if one of those pilots only had (say) 500 or 600 hours of total experience.

And if you want to make flying even safer, require all ATPL holders to do a check ride in a Cessna 172. Because a fair number of "loss of control" accidents have happened because a lot of guys flying commercially forgot how to fly basic "stick-and-rudder" stuff; they're more or less just plugging in the approach and departure stuff into the computer and letting the computer fly the airplane.

Elsewhere I read that TSMC's water usage in Arizona is about 6 acre-feet per day, which (AFAIK) sells for about $100 per acre-foot. I suspect the vast majority of the cost to TSMC is purifying that water, since at that volume they're being delivered basically dirty water from a stream or canal.

6 acre-feet per day, assuming that's 365 days per year, is about the same amount of water required to grow around 900 acres of cotton. (Cotton requires 2.5 acre-feet of water per year to grow during a season; 365 * 6 / 2.5 = 876.

In 2021, farmers in Arizona planted and harvested 129,000 acres of cotton.

TSMC's water usage is, quite literally, a drop in the bucket.

What in the fuck? Is that in Standard English? Is this a unit of volume?

An acre-foot is a unit of volume that is one acre (or 43560 square feet) by one foot. That is, it's a volume 43,560 cubic feet, which works out to be 325,852.4 gallons.

It is, in the United States, a standard unit of volume for water used by the agricultural community, because it maps neatly onto water consumption on farms. You have 120 acres of land that needs an inch of water? That's 120/12 = 10 acre feet of water.

Less commonly used are acre-inches; there are 12 acre-inches to an acre-foot.

I grew up in Fresno, in the San Joaquin Valley of California, and as a child I'd hear the water release reports in the morning before Saturday morning cartoons would come on back in the 1970's. (The reports would indicate the number of acre-feet per minute being released for agricultural use from various dams, and was often measured in the thousands of acre-feet per minute. Nowadays that's all done via web sites.)

I'm always amazed at just how blindingly ignorant Europeans are of other units of measurement: rather than accept there are other ways to measure things they seem to fly off the handle. Which is odd to me.

Meanwhile, here in the United States, we are quite comfortable with the idea that an acre-foot is about 1,233.48 cubic meters, or 1,233,480 liters, and some of us are actually capable of switching between metric units and US Customary units.

Some of us are even smart enough to know your definition of a joule is wrong.

It takes something like 10 years to certify a new aircraft design as flight-worthy--meaning if United is going to be carrying any passengers on an electric airplane, there should be a final prototype flying now which is going through the FAA's certification process.

Even an amended type certification--taking an existing design and modifying the engine--takes something like 5 years, meaning we should at least see a viable prototype now for something with the necessary energy density.

And I don't think there is anything even remotely close to what United would require to carry passengers in the development pipeline. Hell's bells, even these guys admit the necessary battery energy density does not exist yet. (All their advise about how they plan to deliver something by 2027 depends on a battery breakthrough.) And keep in mind that FAA requirements require an aircraft to have enough reserve range to fly to the destination airport, fly to the nearest alternate airport, and have additional fuel for flying an additional 45 minutes at cruising speed. Meaning for an airplane expected to routinely fly 300 miles, the airplane must have enough range to fly almost twice that distance, assuming it's a slower prop-driven aircraft flying at 200-300 knots.

But at a deeper level, it touches on the idea that the Elite (for some quantity of "elite") don't have to play by the same rules as the rest of us. And, to some degree, it implies the elite honestly don't give a rat's ass, so long as they get to continue to play by their own rules.

Because you could argue commercial air travel--because more people are carried than by private jet per pound of jet fuel per mile consumed--is sort of the equivalent of 'mass transit.' At which point this starts looking very much like "eliminating mass transit" and only preserving "private cars", having priced private cars out of reach of the ordinary person.

And most of their system is built at grade--at ground level, or close enough.

Notice the planning map for the route from Bakersfield to Palmdale. All those blue segments? Bridges. All the purple ones? Tunnels. This is about a 90 mile run, from Bakersfield to Palmdale alone--passing through the Tehachapis, with peaks around 8,000 feet.

The run from Tokyo to Nagoya, on the other hand, hugs the eastern coast of Japan, avoiding going up and down and around a lot of corners--all of which are physically impossible at high speeds.

Or consider the proposed runs from Palmdale to Burbank.

Notice between the three proposed drawings, almost the whole route is purple? Yeah, they're contemplating building a tunnel longer than the English Chunnel--around 38 miles total for route E2A. This would make it one of the longest tunnels for transportation ever built in the world--and under nearly a mile deep under mountains that are part of some of the most active earthquake prone sites in the world.

As a note, the Swiss built a similarly long rail tunnel under the Alps, the Gotthard Tunnel, which took 12 years to build--and the Alps are not prone to the same number or magnitude of earthquakes as is the Southern California area, which has been counting the years until the "big one," when the San Andreas fault finally snaps.

And that's just two segments.

The problem in California, geographically speaking, is that San Francisco and Los Angeles are cut off from the rest of the state with some fairly tall mountains; taller than most of those through Europe, excepting the Alps--and notice Switzerland does not have a high speed rail system. Taller than most of the mountains dotting along the eastern side of Japan.

And that makes construction non-trivial, and thus, expensive.

And notice where California is building: places like from Merced to Fresno, where nearly the entire line can be built at grade.

An airport requires two miles of concrete 150 feet wide. If necessary, you could build another airport or expand capacity at a nearby airport. So if LAX is at capacity, there's always John Wayne, Burbank and Long Beach.

A train requires several hundred miles of track, including digging several multi-mile long tunnels, including one (from Palmdale to Burbank) longer than the English Chunnel.

The rail system, according to the New York Times, may wind up costing more than $100 billion to build, and that's assuming some logistics problems don't drive the price up further.

For that price you could easily triple the size of John Wayne, Burbank, Long Beach--and perhaps build a couple of new airports in the middle of Los Angeles if you so choose.

And there's an interesting demographic problem we're about to face: it appears the population will stop growing in 30 to 40 years. (Some countries have already reached peak population and are shrinking, like Japan.) Meaning if you plan for California to double its population in the next 30 years, you may be planning for the wrong future.

A very large part of the problem with the bullet train was always geography. You can't do high speed rail and wind the tracks through the twisty path taken by Highway 5 through the Grapevine; the turn radius would necessitate the train slowing down to perhaps 80 mph or slower. As I recall the plans have the high speed rail system passing through Palmdale and down Highway 15--passing through the Tehachapis, which have similar problems.

Essentially the entire path from Bakersfield through to Burbank is a lot of hand-wavy assumptions, similar with the path from Madera to Gilroy, which need to pass through the coastal range, the mountains separating the San Joaquin Valley to the Pacific Coast.

And notice where they're actually building: along the easy part, in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley--where land is flat and lines can be built straight. (At 190mph, the turn radius for a high speed train has to be at least 2.5 miles, which is a serious limitation on routing.)

For the same reason Switzerland doesn't have a high speed rail system.

But somehow the state's leaders assured the voters it was all solved; a few tunnels, a little clever planning, some hand-waving--and you'll have a high speed rail system so fast you can take it from Los Angeles all the way to San Francisco in two hours and twenty minutes, including stops along the way in Bakersfield, Fresno, Madera and Gilroy.

Because there are oh, so many people who would want to travel to Bakersfield, Fresno, Madera and Gilroy.

Meanwhile, a plain ticket from Los Angeles to San Francisco is under a hundred bucks--without massive government subsidizes and without a high speed rail line bisecting the farms of central California, along what one local politician called "that shitty little string of towns along Highway 99."

It's become a political issue, sure. But underneath it all, it was never really about party politics. It was about California thinking we could have a prestige project akin to the high speed rail system in France, despite the practical problems.

Frankly I'm of the generation who would rather use a printer from 2005--and keep a loaded shotgun next to it in case it starts making any weird noises.

Meaning while I build software--and have built my own share of mobile apps, desktop apps, and server apps, both by myself and in various teams for various purposes--I know what goes into them. And I'd rather have a mechanical thermostat and a car with mechanical ignition timing, because frankly I know the crappy quality of the software that is being used to build the world.

So yeah, I use cash. And I'm fine with continuing to use cash.

Ritual is a stabilizing influence on a society. And for the UK, the Queen was stabilizing because she was at the heart of a bunch of government rituals.

Dispense with those rituals, as Trump did when he was President, and you get a mess.

Right now I'm smoking a brisket. (It's in the electric smoker as I type this, and anxiously wait for the internal temperature probe to hit the target temperature.)

The Cambridge link I gave above gives meat a "1: lightly processed" rank.

But is smoking "ultraprocessing" the brisket? Am I guilty of ultraprocessing my food?!?

Nevertheless, the consumption of red meat is linked to higher rates of certain types of cancers, so regardless if it's "ultraprocessed" or not, I don't plan to do this very often.

Ultraprocessed foods include prepackaged soups, sauces, frozen pizza, ready-to-eat meals and pleasure foods such as hot dogs, sausages, french fries, sodas, store-bought cookies, cakes, candies, doughnuts, ice cream and many more.

That's aesthetics. That is, it's telling us what is bad but not why it's bad. For example, for ice cream--is store bought ice cream bad in general? My local grocery store sells "Howling Cow" ice cream, made at NC State University, and which contains no artificial sweeteners or artificial thickeners; is that as "ultra-processed" as (say) an ice cream made by a national conglomerate? Is it better, or worse, than ice cream I may make at home from half-and-half, sugar, corn sugar and vanilla extract?

Processed and ultraprocessed meats, such as ham, bacon, salami, hotdogs, beef jerkey and corned beef, have long been associated with a higher risk of bowel cancer in both men and women, according to the World Health Organization, American Cancer Society and the American Institute for Cancer Research.

But that's because certain smoked meats are linked with bowel cancer regardless of how they are prepared. Regardless, in other words, if you bought it at a grocery store in a plastic wrapper, or bought it from a butcher's shop where he smoked the sausage casings he ground and stuffed the day before. That is, it's not the preparation that's bad; it's the ingredients--and you're better off eating less of them, even if you got the meat fresh from a butcher.

Fresh meat, which, by the way, according to the Cambridge link I gave above, is ranked with a 1: minimally processed.

These overly processed foods are often high in added sugars and salt, low in dietary fiber, and full of chemical additives, such as artificial colors, flavors or stabilizers.

Often, not always, and I can't help but see this formulation as an aesthetics call--processed foods are bad because they're icky--rather than from firm science: foods high in salt are problematic.

Was that so difficult?

Yes, because when you peel back past the "eating processed food is bad for you because they're processed by people wearing lab coats doing things we don't like" aesthetics which also gave us proposed bans on "calorie-rich sodas" but didn't propose a ban on coffee milk-shakes you get from places like Starbucks (because, ultimately, one is favored by the upper-class and the other favored by the lower class), you find there is no consistency in the judgement calls.