Naively, I don't think this approach would work well. Why? Storage devices work with fixed-length blocks of data at given locations. The problem with compression is that the compressed size is variable: A text file compresses well, but media, like video and audio files, are usually already compressed.

I could see an operating system working with hardware-assisted compression, but honestly, given the tradeoffs, I suspect that a bigger drive is probably cheaper and faster in the long run.

Wouldn't a solar panel and a battery be more effective?

I've gotten to the point where I take caffeine pills and drink decaf. Much more predictable.

It reminds me of when I used to go around the Valley telling people I was running a business selling vibrating toilet seats. I used to claim that "they vibrated at the brown note" and that I "crowd-sourced funding from little old ladies who didn't like eating prunes."

You'd be shocked at how many people believed me.

I gave up on noise canceling headphones years ago. Recently, I bought some good ear muffs for hearing protection while I mow the lawn. They just happened to include a bluetooth headset, which happened to have excellent quality.

They're so good, I use them when I fly, and even when I'm in an office situation. A lot of people will start talking to me, and I can't hear them at all if the music is at a normal volume. It's surprising that a $50 ear protection can outperform a high-priced set of bluetooth noise canceling headphones, but sometimes simpler is better.

A few years ago, I wrote software to compare lossy to lossless, and determined that lossy compression was only useful when listening through cheap speakers. Because I use high quality speakers, I decided to subscribe to Tidal: https://andrewrondeau.com/blog...

After about two years, I started having problems. Tidal would go into a mode where I had to restart the application in order for it to stream. Sometimes it wouldn't work for hours. Their support would ignore me, or claim it was a problem with my internet connection. (It wasn't.)

Ultimately, I switched to Google Music because I can upload music that's missing from the service. I hope Amazon offers the same feature, because that would get me to switch to Amazon.

20khz is a truism: It's an average. Some people can hear a little higher than 20khz, and some people can't. There's data that shows some people can hear up to about 28khz. (Which is still less than half of an octave above 20khz, not much.)

A lot of data savings comes from lossy formats trimming the high end down a bit, somewhere between 15-18 khz. Again, this is "good enough" in many cases: Cheap speakers, low volumes, older ears.

I ran a study about what lossy trims out, with graphs that show where the loss happens: https://andrewrondeau.com/blog.... In summary, if you're listening through a good system, lossless is critical.

In my team, it's much easier to hire overseas contractors. It's not about internal office politics; it's that we work with a contracting firm that makes a big effort to screen candidates well. I find that American recruiters are so focused on being salesmen that it's very hard to pre-screen candidates. They work hard to convince us that a candidate is awesome, when in fact the candidate is a poor match. In contrast, when our contracting firms present a candidate, there's a good chance it's a good candidate.

When you look at pictures of Pilgrim power on Google Maps, you can see where they store the spent fuel rods. They're almost on top of the shoreline: https://goo.gl/maps/yB8EG8AYNk...

I'm not really opposed to nuclear, but the politics on all sides makes it a poor option. The anti-nuclear crowd blocks legitimate research, and the pro-nuclear crowd doesn't want to do what's needed to keep radiation contained. Even worse, we can't get the politics together to move our nuclear waste to safer storage, so it just piles up at our nuclear plants forever.

Remember: Those round things in this picture contain nuclear waste just feet away from the shoreline: https://goo.gl/maps/yB8EG8AYNk...

We really need this. Pilgrim power, a nearby nuclear plant that generates a large percentage of MA's power, is set to close in a few years.

So?

I just had a Comcast install, and it cost under $30. The guy came to my house, and told me that we had 10 techs for 10,000 households. He (the installer) needs to make money for the service visit.

Comcast offers a free "self install" if the wiring is already there. They will either ship your equipment, you pick it up yourself, or you provide your own. I didn't do it because I needed the tech to bring the wire into the house from the curb.

Sounds like the start of a blockbuster comedy movie!

He's leaving because the intern program openly discriminates based on gender, sexual orientation, or ancestry. Basically, they won't hire a white American male as an intern. (See https://www.outreachy.org/appl...)

Logging a password is a beginner's mistake, like SQL injection. I found the same bug in unreleased code many years back, and raised it to management so we could track down the engineer who did it. It's the kind of (cough) mistake that can be the "straw that broke the camel's back" when dealing with an engineer who has (cough) "negative productivity."

Ideally, this kind of bug should be caught in code reviews. As someone who reviews a lot of code, even I'll admit that it's possible for something like this to slip through.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...: "The developed hologram's surface consists of a very fine, seemingly random pattern, which appears to bear no relationship to the scene it recorded."