Oldest bottle of wine unearthed

Long time readers will recall that awhile back I posted about a bottle of Roman wine from around 325 AD.  Well, that discovery has just been pushed back by three centuries:

In 2019, a glass cinerary urn containing a reddish liquid was discovered in a 1st century Roman mausoleum in Carmona, southern Spain.

...

Researchers from the University of Córdoba analyzed samples of the liquid to determine its composition. They found that it had a PH 7.5, close to neutral, and contained biomarkers that are exclusive to wine. High-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) identified seven wine polyphenols all of which matched those in modern wines produced in this area of Andalucía, including dessert wines from Montilla-Moriles, sherry-type wines from Jerez, and manzanilla from Sanlúcar. 

Cool.

Operation after action report

So yesterday had the expected and the unexpected.  The procedure itself went smoothly - it was a Mohs surgery, where they shave off layers of skin and then have a pathologist analyze them under a microscope.  If there's cancer in the cells, then GOTO 1 and repeat.  Keep going until there's no cancer left.  Simples.

I assumed (correctly) that they'd numb my ear right up so I wouldn't feel a thing.  What I hadn't expected was that I would hear everything, up close and personal.  Scrapey-scrapey.  Then when they were done they cauterized the area, which kind of sounded like crackle-crackle.  And the whiff of black smoke that floated past and the smell of burnt barbecue just added to the whole experience.

Still, it's better than cancer.

My cancer was Squamous Cell Carcinoma, the middle (on the deadly scale) skin cancer.  The one you want if you get one is Basil Cell Carcinoma, which doesn't really spread.  The worst kind is melanoma.

I had noticed a bump on my ear that didn't go away.  I went to the dermatologist after a couple months because, well, it didn't seem like it was improving with age like a fine wine.  While I was there I pointed out various other bumps and blemishes which they were unconcerned with, but they told me that they weren't going to let me leave with the thing on my ear.  And so off it came.

A week later they called and said that the pathologist had determined squamous, and I had to come back in for Mohs.  And none of that waiting six months for the next open appointment slot, can I come in next week?

And so there I was yesterday.  Done and cancer free.

What was unexpected was how bad I felt yesterday when I got home.  Everything was out patient, and I drove myself.  But I kind of felt like I had been run over by a bus.  Probably it was something unrelated (summer cold) that happened at the same time.  Spent most of the afternoon in bed and crashed early, but feel pretty good now.

Lessons learned:

1. Early detection is A Very Good Thing Indeed.  When something pops up on your skin and doesn't go away in a couple of weeks, go get it checked out.
2. Wear a hat.  I've been in Florida for 4 years and do a lot of walking.  It's Florida for crying out loud.
   

Going under the knife today

Skin cancer - hey, it's Florida, right?

I expect this is just going to be a pain in the butt (well, ear) since we caught it early and since it's not the nasty variant.  Back later.

55 year old bug fixed

This may be the oldest bug fix in history, in the 1969 "Lunar Lander" text based computer game.  I really enjoyed that, back in the 1970s.

And yes, it printed out on paper.  The story is very cool:

In 2009, just short of the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I set out to find the author of the original Lunar Lander game, which was then primarily known as a graphical game, thanks to the graphical version from 1974 and a 1979 Atari arcade title. When I discovered that Storer created the oldest known version as a teletype game, I interviewed him and wrote up a history of the game. Storer later released the source code to the original game, written in FOCAL, on his website.

...

Fast forward to 2024, when Martin—an AI expert, game developer, and former postdoctoral associate at MIT—stumbled upon a bug in Storer's high school code while exploring what he believed was the optimal strategy for landing the module with maximum fuel efficiency—a technique known among Kerbal Space Program enthusiasts as the "suicide burn." This method involves falling freely to build up speed and then igniting the engines at the last possible moment to slow down just enough to touch down safely. He also tried another approach—a more gentle landing.

"I recently explored the optimal fuel burn schedule to land as gently as possible and with maximum remaining fuel," Martin wrote on his blog. "Surprisingly, the theoretical best strategy didn’t work. The game falsely thinks the lander doesn’t touch down on the surface when in fact it does. Digging in, I was amazed by the sophisticated physics and numerical computing in the game. Eventually I found a bug: a missing 'divide by two' that had seemingly gone unnoticed for nearly 55 years."

Very cool story.

A Roman bath that has been in continual use since the 1st Century

The narrator kind of drones on a bit, but this is pretty amazing - a Roman bath that has been used continually for almost 2000 years.

Dad Joke CCCXXVIIII - special Father's Day edition

Why wasn't one Father's Day gift better than the other?

Because it was a tie.

It's time to opt out of Windows Recall

Holy cow, what a nightmare:

Microsoft is not giving up on its controversial Windows Recall, though says it will give customers an option to opt in instead of having it on by default, and will beef up the security of any data the software stores.

Recall, for those who missed the dumpster fire, was announced on May 20 as a "feature" on forthcoming Copilot+ Windows PCs. It takes a snapshot of whatever is on the user's screen every few seconds. These images are stored on-device and analyzed locally by an AI model, using OCR to extract text from the screen, to make past work searchable and more accessible.

The ultimate goal for Recall is to record nearly everything the user does on their Windows PC, including conversations and app usage, as well as screenshots, and present that archive in a way that allows the user to remind themselves what they were doing at some point in the past and pull up relevant files and web pages to interact with again. The archive can be searched using text, or the user can drag a control along a timeline bar to recall activities.

But security testers have raised doubts about the safety of recorded information and have developed tools that can extract these snapshots and whatever sensitive information they contain. The data is for now stored as an easy to access non-encrypted SQLite database in the local file system.

"Dumpster fire" doesn't even begin to describe it.  It's easy to imagine all sorts of ways that this would violate laws (e.g. storing healthcare PII unencrypted is a HIPAA violation).

Never mind what sort of reindeer games hackers might get up to - after all, Windows has historically been so difficult for viruses and malware to invade, amirite? 

If you're still using Windows, you should configure it to opt out of Recall.  Or upgrade to Linux.  All the cool kids are.

This is getting out of hand

Someone is going to die if this keeps up:

England's NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) has issued an urgent call to O Positive and O Negative blood donors to book appointments and donate after last week’s cyberattack on pathology provider Synnovis impacted multiple hospitals in London.

On June 4, operations at multiple large NHS hospitals in London were disrupted by the ransomware attack that the Russian cybercrime group Qilin (a.k.a. Agenda) launched on Synnovis.

The incident impacted blood transfusions, with many non-urgent procedures being canceled or redirected.

 And so for the lack of adequate backups, Blighty is running out of blood.

Alternative to Adobe Photoshop

OldNFO points out a post at Lawrence's place about how Adobe has changed their terms of service.  Basically, you have to agree that they own all the work you create with their software, in order to get access to your work that you created on their software.

Sweet. 

Now IANAL, and so don't know how the (inevitable) Class Action lawsuit(s) will play out.  However, I am an enthusiastic user of The GIMP, a free (as in speech) Open Source Photoshop-alike application.

Yes, it has a Photoshop-worthy learning curve, but it is full featured and powerful, cross platform, and free.  No weird terms of service getting changed at midnight.

If you're looking for an alternative to Photoshop, I highly recommend this.

In which I (kind of) disagree with Divemedic

Divemedic posts a complaint about squishy RINOs.  I actually don't have any disagreement on this.

Where my opinion diverges from his is that the old "left" vs. "right" paradigm is kind of ending.  I haven't seen a good name for hte new emerging paradigm, so let's just call it "populists" vs. "business as usual".  Lousy name, but this is where the political action is, both here and all over the place (Argentina, El Salvador, France, Germany, the UK).

The Press is hyperventilating about the emergence of the "far right" in Europe, which entirely misses what's happening.  I've posted endlessly about this, but this is maybe what comes the closest to a (non-Borepatchian length) summary.

Populism is regularly trashed by the Great and the Good, but the inroads that Trump is making with the Black community doesn't seem to be typical pandering, but rather tapping into a real sense of dissatisfaction with Business As Usual.  Kind of like what the rest of us feel.

It also seems that RFK's support comes from the same well spring of dissatisfaction.  If that's true, it implies that RFK's candidacy will hurt Trump more than Biden.  And I still have the feeling that there's a non-trivial chance that the Deep State will try to assassinate Trump, and maybe succeed.  The Great and the Good keep complaining that Trump has "overturned norms" but it sure looks to me that they're the ones that are doing that.

Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law. 

Dad Joke CCCXXVIII

If someone is playing a sub par round of golf, are they playing well or poorly?

A day for remembering

80 years ago the Allies stormed the Atlantic Wall.

Via Chris Lynch, we see that the French High School kids in Normandy remember.

82 years ago was the battle of Midway.  The torpedo bombers sacrificed themselves almost to a man but that opened the way for the dive bombers to rip the heart out of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

106 years ago the Marines went on the assault at Belleau Woods in the Great War.  It was one of the costliest days in Marine Corps history, and took heroes like First Sergent Dan Daly to rally the men: Come on you sons of bitches!  Do you want to live forever?

 

Truly a day for remembering.  Remember them.

Google has a remembrance today, too.

Some lesbian writer.  So brave, no doubt.  So very brave.  

Hey Google - french kids spent minutes chanting U-S-A!  You might ponder what that means.

Are any readers familiar with configuring Palo Alto Networks gear?

I know Cisco, not Palo Alto.  If any of you do know hoe to do this, Old NFO could use some help.

There are only 61 living Medal Of Honor recipients

There used to be 62.   God speed, sir.

Rest in peace, and rise in Glory.

Dad Joke CCCXXVII

I made a playlist for hiking.  It has music from Peanuts, The Cranberries, and Eminem.

I call it my trail mix.

Beach Art

We ran across a local artist whose work we quite like, Tim Steller from Stellar Art Works. Here are a couple of examples:

Of course, The Queen Of The World is a mermaid.  He has that, too.

One of the things we really like is how he takes local materials and creates works that look one way during the day and a different way when light up at night.

Recommended.  I have no business relationship with Tim, I just like his work.

Oh, yeah, he does some with gun, too.  Go check his work out.