In 1969, Bob Widlar wrote an article for EEE, "Designing Positive Voltage Regulators", arguing that fully integrated voltage regulators were impossible. The reasoning: the pass transistor kills you: it gets too hot, varying the chip temperature, and there are no standard IC power packages.

By the way, a "quantum leap" is the SMALLEST POSSIBLE leap. No smaller leaps exist.

I shall try some of your burned replicated bird meat.

"Ain't Gonna Play Sun City" is a better song than "We Are The World" and "Do They Know It's Christmas". Fight me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fR2...

James Carville Shut The Fuck Up Challenge. Difficulty: impossible.

Happy Max Headroom Incident Day, to all who celebrate en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Hea...

November 14, 1969: "Flight, EECOM. Try SCE to AUX."

I wish the airports affected by the ATC slowdown would say, “Commercial pax are the lifeblood of our business. In response to the slowdown, we are grounding all private planes.”

Memo to Beacon Hill: Yesterday's elections showed that voters across the country want their elected officials to actually stand up to the chaos, cruelty, and corruption of the Trump administration. #mapoli

Was the Palantir used by the good guys or the bad guys? Please help me out here, I am terrible at media literacy.

If you send me a campaign fundraiser email signed by James Carville, I just assume that the consultants want you to lose.

Sunset at 4:30 sucks, y'all.

I don't think that "bikeshedding" is a good name for what it represents, we should discuss alternatives

Congress told us to “Go Fund Yourself.” And with your help, we can. Our federal funding might be gone, but we’re still here. Public media needs your support now more than ever.

Hey Adobe, maybe a FOURTH pop-up will convince me to use your AI features when I am trying to read a PDF. It can't be that I don't want it. Surely it must be that you haven't obscured enough of the screen with AI bullshit...

@n = (1..1000000); for (@n) { print numwords($_),"\n"; }

Happy −3-dB Day, because 10^(-3/20) = 0.708

NPR and PBS are more than just Tiny Desk and Daniel Tiger. In rural areas across large swaths of the Western, Midwestern + Southeastern U.S., public broadcasters are often the sole source of information during public safety emergencies and weather disasters like wildfires, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

The White House has officially asked Congress to approve a rescission package — a rare and extreme measure taken with the broader goal of eliminating public media entirely. This would be devastating for local stations and the communities that depend on them. (1/2)

Happy 5.25 floppy disk day.

Today is a Square Day, 5/5/25, and it is also the 125th day of the year, which is 5^3.

The Trump administration is trying to eliminate funding for public media, which would be a crippling blow for the millions who rely on our services, from our local newsroom to our children's programming that we produce for a national audience, to emergency support services that keep us all safe.

Happy 14-dB Day, because 10^(14/20) = 5.01

Performance schedule for New England Synth Fest, on Saturday, May 3, 2025, in Ryder Hall Room 334 at Northeastern University (11 Leon Street, Boston, Mass.)

Happy 318th birthday, Leonhard Euler.

It's time for Avril 14th. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxTd...

The Massachusetts governor, the city, and the university needs to drop everything to locate and free this girl and make sure this doesn't happen again. This is DEFCON-1. If they do this to someone who wrote an op-ed in a college newspaper, they will do this to anyone they don't like.

Hey @museumofscience.bsky.social it's Leonard Nimoy's birthday! Is the campaign to build a memorial to him still active? donate.mos.org/campaign/leo...

March 16: Happy √10 Day, because √10 = 3.16

I like how I no longer know first-hand whether twitter is down

March 5: Happy 3.5-inch floppy disk day!

I feel bad for people who work phone support these days... The automated AI system that you have to navigate to get to a real person is absolutely infuriating. Gone are the days of shouting "representative" and getting a real person. By the time I get connected to a person, I AM ALREADY ENRAGED

On silly-sounding science:

"Don't speak ill of the dead" means don't gossip about someone's struggle with addiction at their funeral. It doesn't apply to powerful men that tried to make our society worse.

Don't you just love it when your insufferable boss comes to the photo op, insists on sitting at the lab bench, and pretends he helped? John Bardeen (left), Walter Brattain (right), and William Shockley (seated). These three men won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the transistor.

I think Verizon Wireless has a data leak.

Happy i^i Day, because i^i = (e^(iπ/2))^i = e^(-π/2) = 0.208

When sampling an analog signal, the sample rate must be more than twice the bandwidth of the signal to avoid aliasing. This minimum sampling rate is called the Nyquist Rate.

Evergreen post

I'm not opposed to the concept of paying taxes, but this year I do sort of wonder if there's some kind of escrow situation I can put my tax dollars into until I'm sure they won't be spent on a national reserve of meme coins.

Frustrating morning of watching my town government in action (or inaction)... The town is trying to engage in a major engineering project, and the volunteer (elected but unpaid) town officials are talking in circles.

Happy 2-dB Day, because 10^(2/20) = 1.26

Happy 1-dB Day, because 10^(1/20) = 1.12

On this day 12 years ago, @kcg.bsky.social posted the “This is Fine” comic.

TIL 2025 is not only a square, but it's a square of a triangular number, so it is also a sum of cubes.

Happy New Year GMT. That was a great fireworks show in London. I'm going to bed.

The next New England Synth Fest will be Saturday, January 11, 2025, at The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. Performances by Architrave, Hissquiet, Michael William Gilbert, NXOR, and OrangePeelMystic. Info: www.clarkart.edu/event/detail... tags @architrave.band @hissquiet.bsky.social

Wishing @tomellard.bsky.social a very December 13. severedheads.bandcamp.com/track/decemb...