Trump nominates old CIA hand to run agency

Thie morning's US gov shakeup.  Rex Tillerson is out as Secretary of State.  Mike Pompano from CIA is nominated as new Secretary of State.  Gina Haspel nominated to run CIA.
   The newsies are all atwitter about Gina Haspel, first woman CIA director, ever.  Cool.  But she is an old CIA hand, been working at the agency since the 1980's.  CIA has a poisonous corporate culture.  Specializing in  gross intelligence failures, damaging leaks to the NYT,  attempts to destabilize all Republican administrations, disastrously wrong predictions. 
   Not a promising background.

Win 10 shows phantom files and folders

Back in the real versions of Windows, (95,98,NT,2000,XP), Explorer showed a straight forward picture of your hard drive.  Each file of folder showed as a single icon, in it's proper place in the hierarchy.  You could move, rename, delete, execute, display and change file properties.  This worked.
   Micro$oftware weenies couldn't leave stuff that worked alone.  For Win10 we get an Explorer that displays a single folder icon or file icon multiple times, at different locations.  Some of the icons cause error messages when clicked upon.  Some icons can be deleted without deleting the real disk file that the icon stands for. 
   It's irritating, in fact so irritating that I am thinking about upgrading this laptop to Linux.

Greenies snooker US Navy

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/03/08/the-us-navy-is-cancelling-a-program-to-turn-gas-guzzling-destroyers-into-hybrids/

US Navy allowed greenies to start up a hybrid propulsion program for destroyers.  Musta been a bunch of pure USN desk weenies to fall for this scam.  No real sea officer would have fallen for it.  Hybrid propulsion sort of works in cars because a car only needs full power for a few seconds to accelerate to speed.  Once at speed, the power demand on a car engine drops way way down.  Hybrid cars have small engines, just enough to keep the car moving at speed and charge the battery.  To accelerate a hybrid car uses battery power.  Hybrids get slightly better fuel economy than straight gasoline powered cars, at the expense of carrying essentially twice as much propulsion machinery.  And costing $10k more than a straight gasoline powered car.  It is doubtful that the small fuel saving of a hybrid will pay off the extra $10K cost over the life of the car.
  This doesn't work in ships.  The water drag is so high all the time that the engines must produce serious power all the time to keep the ship moving.  In fact a ship's top speed occurs when the water drag matches or exceeds engine thrust.  The engines never get a break  during which they can charge batteries.   Since a ship's engines never get a chance to loaf at part throttle, carrying extra electrical equipment, generators and motors, just adds weight, it doesn't save any fuel. 
  You gotta wonder about the Navy officers who fell for this scam.  Were they Annapolis grads?  Does not Annapolis teach engineering anymore? 

Summit Meeting with the NORKS

This ought to keep the newsies busy for a long long time.  Mostly it's a propaganda exercise between Donald Trump and Little Rocket Man.  The winner is the one who convinces the world press that he is a reasonable man and the the other guy is a loon.  Donald Trump has a lot of experience in this area.  And he speaks English, the world wide language.   Does Little Rocket Man speak English? 
   If any agreements are reached, I suspect that the NORKS will violate them, just as they have violated past agreements. 
   Churchill once said "Jaw, jaw is better than war war."  Of course he said this back before nuclear weapons were invented.    Starting up the Korean War again is a bad thing.  On the other hand leaving the NORKS with nuclear tipped ICBM's is a bad thing too. 
   Let's hope that gaining a propaganda victory in the summit meeting does not allow the NORKs to continue with their nuclear missile program. 

Big Brother Facebook is getting pretty snoopy

So I'm checking Facebook this morning to see what my friends might have posted overnight.  And bingo, a message from Facebook itself.  Saying something like this. "We have detected a friend request from someone you don't know.  If you decide that this request is from a fake personality you can report it to us be clicking here and here." 
Wow.  They really are checking closely.
 So I check my friend requests, and sure enough, there is a new one.  A gorgeous woman judging from her photo.  No mutual friends.  No friends at all.  No photos.  Looks like a fake personality sure enough. 
  And thinking I might report this I click back to my "home" only to find the provocative post from Facebook has disappeared.  So I let it slide. 
   Take away.  Big Brother Facebook is really watching you.  Beware of what you do.

NPR blathering

Yesterday I had NPR on my car  radio.  They started out discussing a report that Lyndon Johnson had authorized after riots in Detroit and Newark in the later 1960's.   The report picked up the name "Kerner Commission Report" after the name of the commission chairman.  The report blamed the riots in Detroit and Newark on "white racism".  That was fifty years ago. 
   NPR ran on talking about the Kerner Report for a good hour.  All the speakers said that white racism was terrible.  Nobody gave specific examples of said white racism, naming names and dates.  Nobody suggested ways to improve the situation, new laws, regulations, prayers, education policies, anything.  For an hour of airtime all we learned was the NPR and their on-air guests were against white racism.  Groovy, I'm against it myself.  But to serve as useful public discourse, rather than just feel-good BS, you have to suggest courses of action, not just a dislike. 

I'm so glad my tax money goes to support this kind of broadcasting. 

Farewell to Radio Shack

I needed a one ohm resistor, fairly high wattage, to use to measure current draw on a DeWalt thickness planer.  The planer had been blowing circuit breakers.  I was about to set off for the Radio Shack in St Johnsbury until I decided to check it's location on Google Maps, it has been some time since I last visited it.  Surprise.  Google Maps showed the St Johnsbury Radio Shack as "closed".  In fact it showed a whole bunch of New Hampshire Radio Shacks as closed.   Closest one still open was all the way up in Colebrook. 
   Well it was a nice sunny day, the car needed a little exercise anyhow, so I drove up.  And they had the needed resistor, and I bought some other hardware too.  Poor old Radio Shack stopped selling, or lost, or something, the high value high margin product you need to make enough money to stay alive.  Back in the old days, Radio Shack sold stereo equipment under their own Realistic brand name.  And ham gear and TV sets, and they pioneered the personal computer business with the TRS-80.  Back in the day, the Trash-80 sold as well as Apple II.  Somehow all the decent high margin products went away and Radio Sack was left with hardware bits and pieces, batteries, cables.  Low value stuff.  And now they are closing up.  Too bad.