Gongol.com Archives: April 2016

April 12, 2016

A dystopian vision of the future

The Boston Globe looked into its crystal ball to see a Trump Presidency and they saw something awful

Nebraska will keep its split Electoral College votes

It's a practice that shouldn't have been threatened in the first place -- more states should follow Nebraska's lead on this and divide their Electoral College votes by Congressional district, with the statewide winner getting the two remaining votes

Speaker Paul Ryan won't run for President (this time)

He's putting his foot down on the idea of being named as some kind of unity candidate. He's needed in Congress now, and almost certainly to an even greater degree after the results of this coming November. The primacy of the Executive Branch needs to be reeled in a bit, and Speaker Ryan is the right person for the job on the Legislative Branch's side of things.

The National Weather Service will kindly stop shouting now

They are at long last changing the format of most of their reports to conventional sentence case, rather than the ALL CAPS format that had been in place since the teletype days. The practice was a technological artifact -- it was necessary when there wasn't sufficient means to send mixed-case messages. But now there is, and since sentence-case messages are easier to read and comprehend, this is a good change.

Facebook introduces 8K-resolution video camera with 360-degree viewing

For those times when it's not just enough to feel like you're there, but also to get serious motion sickness in the process