“Rather than selling as many TVs as possible, brands like LG, Samsung, Roku, and Vizio are increasingly, if not primarily, seeking recurring revenue from already-sold TVs via ad sales and tracking.”

Link. “each new connected TV platform user generates around $5 per quarter in data and advertising revenue.”

Puny revenues, but they expect the upside to be a lot bigger.

“Those who want a TV without an Internet connection have few options.” If you don’t connect your TV to the net you can use Apple TV (though it will do its own monitoring). I think the article forgot to note some of these TVs don’t work without a net connection.

Why ABLE accounts for disabled persons have been an utter failure.

Link. They found some of the problems with ABLE accounts. Ones they missed:

1. The state vendors offer crappy high cost products with crappy software. Big players don’t want this low revenue business.
2. You can’t f* get money out when appropriate because the software is so bad
3. The oversight is the usual “you are a crook and we will get you” set of impossible burdens.
4. NOBODY, including expert accountants, has much confidence about what will trigger an audit.

“the fastest-shrinking regions were the orbitofrontal cortex and other parts of the brain that have expanded the most over the past few million years.”

Link. Both humans and chimps have 17 brain regions. Some are similar size but a few are much larger in humans. They include decision-making systems that that get crappy in middle-aged humans.

There’s a hint these age faster than other regions. The result sounds squishy and nobody knows why — maybe we ask too much of these hacked together innovations.

COVID as a URI: NYT on the fading practices of a pandemic.

Link. The article fails to note that home testing is almost useless now. Tests are positive too late in the disease course.

It correctly concludes that we do not know enough to make rational risk assessments.

I’m impressed that the few who do wear masks use masks that do not protect the wearer (cloth, tattered surgical procedure masks). That is fascinating.

New translation of Babylonian cuneiform texts on divination: “features that appeared on the right side were considered to be positive and on the left, to be negative, though what constituted right and left differed in each region of Babylonia”

Link. They believed that it was possible to avert predicted doom – so it was a perfect racket. (I suspect some knew that.)

“Most of the more than 100,000 Mesopotamian tablets in the British Museum’s collection remain undeciphered”