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Sunday night

Sunday,  04/03/16  11:09 PM

It is Sunday night, and I'm blogging after a long weekend of doing stuff around my new house.  Highlights included blocking the sideyard so my dogs can't escape, coercing four big guys to move a gigantic entertainment unit upstairs (a 90o turn halfway up made this especially interesting), recovering from some crappy expansion bolts that refused to expand (details and cursing redacted), and mounting curtains so they drape onto the floor just the right amount.  Great stuff.  Oh yeah and importantly, getting my second Tivo and Slingbox working so I can watch TV in my office, while ... blogging!

At right: that's not me, but it is how I feel :0

So I *finally* started watching basketball, after ignoring the NCAA tournament for two weeks.  And I watched the blowout of the world, as Villanova crushed Oklahoma by the biggest margin ever in the final four - wow, how did that happen? - and a pretty good game as North Carolina took care of business and walked away from Syracuse. 

My pick for Monday night: North Carolina.  No way Villanova stays that hot and no way NC will be as cold as Oklahoma.  I think it will be a yawner, too...

Victor Davis Hanson is brutal: A nation of Laws - sort of.  "The end of constitutional America comes not loudly and suddenly with jackboots and brown-shirt thugs, but more insidiously with soft-spoken totalitarians and their “noble” appeals to advancing fairness, diversity, and equality."  Scary and feels true. 

Exhibit A: White House under fire for 'censoring' video of French president's speech.  This is pretty Orwellian.  As Glenn Reynolds comments, "It’s not just that they're sleazy liars. They're bad sleazy liars.

Unfortunately it's not just the US: UN names Israel as world's top human rights violator.  This would be laughable if it wasn't sad.  The UN has long ceased to be useful. 

OTOH: Eric Raymond: This may be the week the SJWs lost it all.  A welcome victory for the good guys, but unfortunately the tech world is but a small corner of the real world. 

This is cool: All of Apple's products ever, in one glorious infographic.  You should most definitely click through to enbiggen.  It's charming to see all of the history; I've lived it all :) 

Just just bought an iPhone SE.  Lovin' it.  Stay tuned more to follow.

Cult of Mac: iPhone SE proves size doesn't matter.)  Oh but it does, and that's the point. 

So: Jack Welch could have bought Apple for $2B (back in 1996).  What analyses like this fail to note is that if GE had bought Apple, Apple wouldn't have become Apple.  

My favorite April Fools story: Apple unveils self-driving mini electric home on wheels.  Inhabitat are on a roll :) 

And also, hell now frozen: Microsoft cracks open Visual Studio to Linux C++ coders, and Xamarin now free in Visual Studio.  Excellent.  Visual Studio is the best IDE, hands down.  Not even going to add IMHO, because it's a fact. 

The Tesla Model 3 unveil was amazing, did you watch?  So well done.  And crisp! - 20 minutes, tops.  So many could learn from this.  So now the Model 3 is here and it's ridiculously sexy, preorders are well on their way to 300,000.  That's twice as many as Tesla expected, and for perspective three times as many as all the cars Tesla have made so far.  Wow. 

FYI: Why does the Model 3 have no instrument cluster?  "... the near complete absence of operator control displays is a logical move from Tesla because they fully anticipate their Autopilot technology to dominant the means of Model 3 operation by the car’s late 2017 rollout date...

And last but not least: congratulations once again to Blue Origin for once again launching a rocket into "space" (100km) and relanding the booster.  Ars Technica: why Blue Origin's latest launch is a huge deal for cheap space access

"After the January flight, Blue Origin's founder Jeff Bezos told Ars that refurbishing the propulsion module after that first flight cost 'in the small tens of thousands of dollars.'  His technicians never even removed the engine from the vehicle.  'We inspected it and said, 'Let's go.' It was designed to be reusable from the start.'"

I'm among those who point out, yeah, but this isn't like what SpaceX have done ... and it isn't ... but it is most impressive and a great step forward for space exploration.  Plus, it's good for SpaceX to have competition.