We Need to Stop All Outdoor Cats!
Marauding Cat Destroys Colony Of Threatened Australian Seabirds
A cat — just one free-roaming cat — has destroyed an entire sanctuary for threatened birds in Australia, according to a recent study
Source: Marauding Cat Destroys Colony Of Threatened Australian Seabirds
Sesame Street Gone Very Badly Wrong
It makes me very sad to see that Sesame Street has fallen under the spell of the wealthy, dangerous to children and public health, pseudo-science organization Autism Speaks. Using the muppets to promote dangerous quackery is horrible.
Learn more about this issues from Rebecca,
Source: Sesame Street Partners with Anti-vaccine Organization Autism Speaks – Skepchick
or these other news sources.
Sesame Street Chooses Wrong Narrative on Autism and Loses a Key Relationship
A PROMINENT AUTISM GROUP HAS CUT TIES WITH ‘SESAME STREET’ OVER NEW PSAS FEATURING AUTISTIC MUPPET
Why An Autism Group Is Breaking Up With ‘Sesame Street’
‘Sesame Street’ Under Fire For PSAs About Autism That Add ‘Further Stigma’
Microsoft Trying to Force Teams Desktop on Users
Microsoft must be getting desperate, they pushed out an Office update that sneakily installs a special program to automatically try installing Teams every time any user logs in. They even went so far as to name the program “Teams Machine-Wide Installer” so that it is nearly impossible to find and uninstall (all other Microsoft software has a name starting with Microsoft which is easy to find in the remove list). Thanks to the reddit users who pointed out the name.
A Must Read for Everyone
There is no easy antidote to the spread of dangerous zero-sum ideas. But perhaps the beginning of wisdom is to recognize the danger they pose, and understand why they are wrong:
Source: The Perils of Zero-Sum Worldviews Revisited – Reason.com
Windows 10 device descriptor request failed
Yesterday I encountered the error in the post title when moving my StarTech 4 Port USB to Serial Adapter from a 10 year old PC (that finally died) to my current engineering workstation. I’d never experienced that particular error before so I Googled it and read about a dozen articles with suggestions for fixing it and none of them helped.
Being an engineer of electronic instruments I realized I needed to step back, assume nobody posting on the internet really has a full grasp of how USB works, and think about the system and how to methodically troubleshoot the problem. I soon realized that I’d skipped what should always be the first tests, cables. I have the USB/Serial box mounted at the test bench and it’s connected via a long USB cable and extension back to my workstation. To make a long story short, I learned that this device is less tolerant of using excessively long (out of spec long) USB cables than other USB 2.0 devices I use. For convenience I was using an existing run that made the total distance 8 meters. Swapping the 4.5 meter extension cable for a 2 meter extension cable fixed the problem.
BTW – looking back on this problem where I wasted at least an hour of my time I noticed there was a clue on the product page. The Accessories tab lists one single item, 15 ft USB 2.0 Active Extension Cable.
This is the reality of Trump Supporters
PolitiFact rates this claim as mostly false. I rate it as just another lie, one that fits a pattern. Time and time again we’ve seen Trump promise something, do nothing to make it happen and just declare that he has fulfilled his promise anyway. He knows his followers don’t really care whether it’s true or not. That’s not why they support him. They support him because he hates the same people they do and gives them permission to do so openly.
Source: Trump Lies About Drug Prices Going Down | Ed Brayton
Ed Nails It!
This is classic Trump: Declare a crisis, strike a deal that changes virtually nothing and declare the crisis averted.
Source: Trump’s Empty, Meaningless ‘Deal’ With North Korea | Ed Brayton
The Trump FCC Always Says It Wants Broadband Competition But Now It’s Considering Reducing Competition By Law
Whether intentional or not, the FCC will give landlords and their cable financiers grounds to reject competitive entry that did not exist prior to the FCC’s preemption. This also appears to prohibit cities from adopting forward-thinking open access fiber policies in the future through city code and other local laws. Not to mention, the FCC’s intervention in San Francisco doesn’t fulfill the agency’s actual job description: to promote competition.
Update July 10, 2019
The FCC’s Office of Economics and Analytics released a paper titled “An Empirical Analysis of Broadband Access in Residential Multi-Tenant Environments.” on Monday. This report appears to give strong backup to EFF’s position on this issue. Hopefully the commission will now drop it’s plan to boost ISP’s monopoly status by preventing competition.
Study: Mandatory Broadband Access Laws in Multi-Tenant Environments
Disable Serial Mouse Detection
Microsoft Windows’ backwards compatibility with ancient hardware is usually nice to have but sometimes it detects other serial devices as a serial mouse. This happens whether the device is connected to a real TIA-232 port or a Universal Serial Bus (USB) to TIA-232 adapter. Some USB connected devices, e.g. GPS receivers, have USB to TIA-232 convertors built right into the device.
- Tap the Windows key to begin a start menu search
- Start typing regedit and when the menu entry for Registry Editor App appears
- Right click the menu entry and choose Run as administrator
- When the, Do you want this app to make changes to your device?, prompt appears choose the Yes button
- Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\sermouse
- Since Windows 10 updates will sometimes change this value back to the default, bookmark this entry so you can get back to it easily in the future.
- Change the value of the Start key from 3 to 4
- Close Registry Editor and reboot the PC
I learned which registry key to change and its setting options from here and here.
If you want to retain the capability of using a serial mouse and just disable it for on one port see here.
