Category: Tech

The Same, But Different

Two electronics repair guys I enjoy watching on YouTube are British. Mend It Mark is in England, while Graham of Spare Time Repair is now in the U.S.

By chance, Graham and Mark each recently tackled the same model CD player. It’s instructive and entertaining to compare how they go about the process of troubleshooting. (No, I haven’t yet replaced the battery in my Pixel 4a phone.)

Graham’s player had previously been worked on by somebody else and, it seems, modified. It couldn’t be fixed.

Mark’s player had a different set of problems. It was restored to working order.

Light Speed

Is Amazon Web Services developing its own, presumably proprietary, high-density fiber optic cable packages? I have my doubts, but that’s what is said in this Marketplace report.

It seems more likely that AWS is doing what Meta is doing, and working with Corning’s new fiber optic products.

Maybe this has a fuller explanation of what AWS is doing. (Full disclosure: I pay AWS $0.15/month to store some files.)

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws-insights/building-resilience-inside-awss-nine-million-kilometers-of-fiber-optic-cabling/

Neil

Neil Pappalardo has died. Sixty years ago, with Curt Marble and others, Neil created MUMPS*. To this day, MUMPS software technology, or one of its derivatives, drives the majority of hospital information systems.

I was fortunate to have started working for the great man when the company was small enough that Neil knew every employee. He was incredibly supportive of me through two extremely difficult crises; one medical (detached retina), and one financial (the mortgage underwriting fiasco).

The last time I met with Neil personally, I was both flattered and stunned when he told me, “I know what you’ve been working on. Keep it up. You have a job here for as long as you want one.”

This video will start with Neil talking about a class he took at MIT. The instructor was Amar Bose.

* Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System

AI AIEE!

White collar jobs are stuck in place. Labor growth is sluggish. How much of this is from the effect of AI-related productivity isn’t clear. Wall Street Week had a worthwhile discussion last month.

One casualty of AI is the tech site Stack Overflow.

https://boingboing.net/2026/01/14/stack-overflow-is-dead-and-its-toxic-community-helped-kill-it.html

The AI gold rush is literally tearing up acreage across the country.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/14/1131253/data-centers-are-amazing-everyone-hates-them/

Do all of the companies competing for AI supremacy really need to invest so much money in those data centers?

https://www.businessinsider.com/big-short-michael-burry-warren-buffett-ai-boom-nvidia-palantir-2026-1

The solid-state drives in those data centers have undeniable advantages over hard disk drives. Yet they can consume as much, or more, electricity than the old mechanical disks.

https://www.windowscentral.com/hardware/ssd-vs-hdd-we-know-about-speed-but-what-about-power-consumption