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.)
“Challenger, go at throttle-up.” Forty years ago today.
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
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?
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.
I have LaserDiscs that suffer from laser rot and burned CDs with more errors than music. But I’ve never before had trouble with a manufactured CD. Until Never Before, a gift from a couple of not-so-secret Santas at work back in ’89.
I popped that Byrds disc into the Panasonic DVD player I use for CDs. Spin and click, spin and click, without reading the table of contents. Uh, oh. The deck is over 20 years old, so is it starting to fail?
In the Sony Blu-ray player, that’s only a few years old, the CD did the same thing. Spin and click with no playback. One more test in the DVD/CD drive of the old Dell tower PC confirmed the problem must be with the disc.
The album is on Lyrion Music Server in lossless WMA format. I was thinking of ripping it again into lossless FLAC. Would I have to resort to using FFMPEG to convert the files? What about trying the Samsung USB DVD/CD drive I bought twelve years ago for $30?
Success! Never Before played and ripped. What was the trouble it gave the other players? I put it back in the Panasonic DVD deck and… it played fine.
I left the CD in the player, turned it off and, 24 hours later, turned it back on. The player spun the disc and clicked.
Back into the Samsung it went. It played, I skipped around the disc a bit, took it out, then put it back in the Panasonic. No problem with playback.
So, what the heck is going on? Is the heat of the laser in the player that’s able to get past the starting point doing something to the reflective aluminum surface to flip bits, so they stay correct long enough for transplant to the other player?
Here’s a local story about a lady who loves to bake, but she doesn’t love her new, fancy oven.
The GE Appliance division isn’t General Electric. It’s owned by Haier of China, which discontinued its brand name in America after the acquisition.
I say, keep it simple and stick with what works!
