SCSI + more things - Ged Carroll

2 minutes estimated reading time

SCSI

SCSI was a huge part of my early computer life. It was the way my Mac connected to external hard drives, printers, optical scanners and early optical drives.

Hotness — Sun Microsystems computers used SCSI to and powered the dot com boom.

SCSI still lives on as a software layer in enterprise computer systems connecting storage together. It even exists within the USB mass storage device class.

SCSI is a reminder that technology is often build of layers of older technologies.

Consumer behaviour

Meet the Psychedelic Boom’s First Responders | WIRED – this is likely to end very badly for some people. Having known people who had bad experiences growing up, I am leery of the trend towards psychedelics

Economics

The slow death of downtown San Francisco | U.S. | EL PAÍS English – San Francisco’s problem is now as much reputational as it is economics now with the city labeled as being in a ‘doom loop’. Much of the blame seems to sit with the city administration under Mayor London Breed.

Mayor London Breed — San Francisco mayor London Breed

Energy

Saudi Arabia and Russia are trying to make oil more expensive | Quartz – KSA’s biggest problem had been that Russia hadn’t honoured its rate cuts to date. We’ll see if they do so

Finance

Don’t lose the exponential benefits of fractional share trading | Financial Times

Gadgets

Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans | Financial Times – not terribly surprising. I suspect that the problem is sourcing some of the components such as the screens. I imagine that there are challenges with manufacturing yields and throughput.

Start-ups: smart clothes have been wearing experience for investors | Financial Times – smart fabrics didn’t win out over wearables

Hong Kong

Hong Kong national security law: who are the 8 targeted with HK$1 million bounties? Calls for sanctions, links to 2019 protests among alleged offences | South China Morning Post

How to

How to Use FiveFilters to Create RSS Feeds for Any Web Page

Japan

Radio Taisō: A Nuanced History of a Nearly 100-Year-Old Tradition – Unseen Japan

Materials

Great summary of the current state of rare earth metals processing. China appreciated the strategic nature of these materials before everyone else did and has been prepared to tolerate a high degrees of pollution in processing to build a monopoly.

Online

Skype was a thing in the early 2000s. I knew companies that used it in a similar way to FaceTime now. I used it for conference calls and video calls with friends around the world. I had completely forgot that eBay had bought Skype, I could only remember Silverlake acquired it and then sold it on to Microsoft.