Category: Tech

The Kitsune Channel

I was a first generation Roku customer. Being the sixth company founded by Anthony Wood, he named it the Japanese word for six.

My second generation Roku player on top of my first generation model

Today, I have two Roku sticks and Amazon’s me-too product, the Fire TV stick. (Fire TV has two technical advantages — there is an optional external Ethernet adapter, and the remote can control home theater receivers.)

With today’s announcement, Roku will no longer be the company it was. What’s the Japanese word for fox?

Roku is being bought out by Fox for $22 billion

https://9to5google.com/2026/06/15/roku-is-being-bought-out-by-fox-for-22-billion/

IMPish Tales

Bob Metcalfe rhapsodizes about working on ARPANET interfaces, the pre-Internet project that Bob Taylor headed.

Metcalfe later worked for Taylor at Xerox PARC, where he was a primary developer of what became Ethernet. Bob provides historical context for “America’s Technology Highway,” Route 128.

A Distorted View

How good am I at detecting audible distortion? I’ll go to Germany to find out.

https://www.klippel.de/listeningtest/

To ensure a valid test, I wore a pair of IEMs with vanishing low measured distortion. (The 7Hz x Crinacle Zero:2) This was the result from my first pass.

You reached an audibility threshold of -39 dB. This value is near the mean value of the audibility threshold of all listeners participated in the test. However, there were some other participants that were more sensitive in detecting those distortions. It is very likely that those participants had more experience in careful listening. Listeners who have repeated the test see that a little bit of training will improve their sensitivity for those distortions and reduce their audibility threshold.

Some listeners went all the way down to -69 dB! Now that I’m familiar with the test, and there are other parameters that can be selected, including music, I’ll give it another try later.

Hardware for Software

Back in January, I asked this question and expressed my doubt, regarding Amazon’s use of fiber optic cable.

Light Speed

I was correct in assuming that Amazon is hooking up with Corning for its expansion plans.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/08/amazon-taps-corning-for-op.html

With all of the talk and concern about where processors are made, what about the circuit boards designed to hold those chips?

Tanks Again

I continue to play with test the new Epson ET-2985. I’m less pleased with the scanner than I am with the printer. I’m much pickier with the former than I am the latter.

On eBay I bought a color transparency of my childhood crush Allene Roberts. (Hey, how was I supposed to know she was old enough to be my mother!) This is an image the seller made with a transparency scanner.

The results when printing on regular copier paper and matte card stock were as expected, with the latter being better. I used the default quality setting for both.

Likewise when printing on glossy photo paper. When seeing the color banding I wondered if I should have used the photo quality setting. Instead, I ran a nozzle check.

Sure enough, a minor clog was revealed in the black test pattern. Two cleaning cycles were needed to clear it. That was the second clog I’ve encountered, but wasting ink is much less of a concern with the tanks than it would be with cartridges.