Saturday, November 15
Daily News Stuff 15 November 2025
Lasers For Fun And Profit Edition
Lasers For Fun And Profit Edition
Top Story
- There is no hope. There are also no socks. (Apple Insider)
That Apple sock? The thing they called the "iPhone Pocket" even though it is neither an iPhone nor a pocket. That thing that costs less than a dollar to make and they are charging $230 for?
You can't buy one.
Because it has already sold out.
- Half of American households still have cable TV. (Business Inside)
The surprising number is the reverse of what the article thinks it is.
Tech News
- It's always lupus: The autoimmune disease lupus - which despite the memes is a real thing - may be triggered by the Epstein-Barr virus. (NBC)
Most people have Epstein-Barr in their systems, making it hard to track this down. It parks in your body and just sits there, menacingly.
The thing is that it infects lymphocytes, and the rate of infected lymphocytes in lupus patients is 25 times higher than in the general population. That doesn't prove a causal effect but it's a hell of a correlation.
- Reviewing the Ubiquiti Mini Flex, a tiny managed 2.5gb Ethernet switch. (Serve the Home)
About $40, which is a good price for a 2.5gb switch, and a very good price for a managed switch. It's Ubiquiti so it's part of their UniFi system and you have to use their software to manage it and not just a web browser, but even without that it's a small, unobtrusive, inexpensive switch that can be powered over PoE or USB-C.
- IBM filed a patent for Euler's continued fraction formula. (LeetArxiv)
I think Leonhard Euler can probably claim prior art, or could have if he hadn't died in 1783.
IBM didn't claim some specific novel application of Euler's work, either; they claimed the formula itself.
Incandescent Moon Interlude
There's a name for this: A Nicoll-Dyson laser. It was proposed in 2005 by James Nicoll for powering spaceships over vast distances. As he points out in the comments on the video - a rare exception to Rule One* - vaporising planets was never its intended purpose, merely a happy accident.
* Don't read the comments.
In H. P. Lovecraft's The Color Out of Space he wrote about a strange material that emitted a colour that didn't exist anywhere on the electromagnetic spectrum. That sounds wild, but in fact imaginary colours are real - imaginary, but still real - and you're about to see one.
(Maybe. Some people don't report anything special, but it worked for me and it was rather startling.)
Transcendent Teal Interlude
(Maybe. Some people don't report anything special, but it worked for me and it was rather startling.)
Musical Interlude
Disclaimer: Turn the laser around. Please.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:04 PM
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Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, November 16 2025 02:58 AM (oJgNG)
2
It kinda worked for me, but there was a duller colour crawling up from the bottom as well.
Posted by: normal at Sunday, November 16 2025 07:43 AM (Sbqr6)
3
Back in the 1990s, I worked on an exercise machine for one of our clients. It used hydraulics to generate resistance. The client had contradictory requirements ("We want to adjust the weight you work against throughout the full range of motion, with different profiles for concentric and eccentric motion, but it's gotta feel just like free weights."), and their lawyers basically copied the customer's requirements and the engineering design documents into the patent application.
One claim in the application described Euclid's algorithm for greatest common denominator.
And I'm not sure if I saw the olo or not, but I suspect not.
One claim in the application described Euclid's algorithm for greatest common denominator.
And I'm not sure if I saw the olo or not, but I suspect not.
Posted by: wheels at Sunday, November 16 2025 11:57 AM (H9lUx)
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