New Fedora 30 Is Unstable

Posted: 6/12/2019  Updated/revision: 8/2/2019, 7/17/2019, 7/15/2019, 6/27/2019, 6/20/2019, 6/15/2019

A few days ago (7/9/2019) it was announced that IBM closed purchase of Red Hat. This does not alleviate my worries about the future of Fedora Linux distribution.

About around 6/12/2019, I upgraded from Fedora version 29 to 30. The upgrade went smoothly without a glitch or anything.

These are my experiences since the upgrade of 6/12/2019:

1. Fedora 30 is a sheer disaster. I am ready to dump Fedora. After about 6 or more OS updates it is still suffering from major issues: 1) the notebook touchpad sensitivity is very erratic and changes as time goes by (this is the most annoying) 2) It still freezes every so often and I have to reboot (maddening) 3) a black rectangular bar on the screen (as I write this post; see screen print below) 4) after reboot the sound is still turned off. It is becoming maddening and very frustrating! (8/2/2019)
2. Several OS updates later and one DNF upgrade later, I still see this annoying black rectangle across my screen and today it is particularly annoying because of its size and location. See screenshot below (7/17/2019)
3. Suffered at three freezes in about 24 hours after an operating system update using the Software app about two days ago. Decided to use dnf upgrade today, which, among other things, upgraded the Linux kernel. Keeping my fingers crossed! Before that Fedora 30 would freeze about every 2-3 days (7/15/2019)
4. Fedora 30 froze again despite operating system update just a day ago. I can say now that Fedora 30 freezes about every 2-3 days (6/27/19)
5. Fedora 30 froze least two more times since I reported it here on 6/12/19. Every time it happens during a routine activity working with the usual apps and totally unexpected (6/20/19)
6. For several days now, I notice frequently a single black rectangular bar appearing on my screen (size ranging from about 0.5 cm height to between 3-10 cm in width) in the upper half of my screen. Since I have a new notebook, I do not think my hardware is failing. I did not observe those bars Fedora 29 (update of 6/15/19)
7. Fedora twice became unresponsive within days and I had to reboot. It happened every time while I was doing some very routine things and I have no idea why Fedora became unresponsive. Only the second time was caught by the Problem Reporting program indicating that the “evolution-calendar-factory killed by SIGABRT”
8. When you reboot, the loudspeakers are turned off every time (a bit odd)

Screenshot of annoying black rectangle across my display (7/17/2019)

Superconductivity At Near Room Temperature Finally Discovered?

Posted: 6/10/2019

In the past several days, I have come across two media news articles claiming new and promising results regarding high temperature superconductors.

The first one and hard to believe one is from India. Researchers claim they found a room temperature superconductor ( see S1, S2). The respective arXiv research paper is apparently undergoing several revisions (see S1). The authors of the research paper do not quite seem to claim achieving superconductivity, but ”Vanishingly Small Electrical Resistance at Ambient Temperature”.

The second one is about a research team that claims it achieved superconductivity at -23 degrees Celsius, which, if confirmed, is a major milestone (see S3, S4, S5).

Very exciting times! If superconductivity can finally be realized at normal temperatures and normal pressure, then this will have huge positive implications!

Sources (S):

1. Coexistence of Diamagnetism and Vanishingly Small Electrical Resistance at Ambient Temperature and Pressure in Nanostructures (originally published 7/23/18, last update on 5/28/19)
2. Two Researchers From IISc Bangalore May Have Discovered Superconductivity At Room Temperature (updated 5/27/19)
3. Supraleitung schon bei Gefrierschrank-Temperaturen (published 6/9/19)
4. Ein Sprung zur Supraleitung bei Raumtemperatur (published 5/23/19; original press release of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry)
5. https://www.mpic.de/en/news/press-information/news/another-major-step-towards-room-temperature-superconductivity.html

Karl Marx Is The Opium Of The Intellectuals

Posted: 6/10/2019  Updated: 10/3/2019

Update Of 10/3/2019

It has come to my attention today that the French philosopher Raymond Aron in 1955 published a book by the title “The Opium of the Intellectuals”. “The title of the book is an inversion of Karl Marx's famous dictum that religion is the opium of the people, and is a derivation from Simone Weil's quotation that "Marxism is undoubtedly a religion, in the lowest sense of the word. ... [I]t has been continually used ... as an opiate for the people."”

Original Post

Today, I was reading up on Paul Dirac (one of the most preeminent physicists of the 20th century), in particular his religious views, on Wikipedia (S2). His views, apparently were extremely ignorant and full of hubris as is not uncommon among the intellectual elite. Though, in later years, Dirac may have become more moderate in his views of religion.

“The full quote from Karl Marx translates as: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people"” (S1; emphasis added)

How many intellectuals, particularly on the left, have adopted this utter nonsense of a weirdo like Karl Marx? I am afraid, way too many!

Where does the universe come from? Where do all the many smaller and larger kind acts of goodness come from that we humans witness every day?

Sources (S):

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac#Religious_views

Superfluous Big Government Measures!

Posted: 6/9/2019

Just saw the headline FCC passes measure urging carriers to block robocalls by default. Who is selling/pushing this news (“Good News for Robocalls”) to his constituency via a weekly email newsletter? A Republican U.S. Representative from Arizona. In the language of a typical busybody politician: “I have been keeping a close eye on how Congress and the FCC can help to put an end to the robocalls we are receiving each day. … I look forward to continuing to follow this issue and work with my colleagues to put an end to daily robocalls. ...” (emphasis added)

Get the government out of this! The private sector can handle these nuisances very well!

E.g. T-Mobile is already doing a great job to screen these unwanted, mostly solicitation calls.

If the government stays out of this, private businesses can innovate and distinguish themselves from their competitors. Businesses are compelled to work harder to please their existing and future customers!

The LGBTQ Livermore National Laboratory

Posted: 6/7/2019

Today (6/7/19), I came across following posting on my Facebook page from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Livermore Pride

“The forum is just one of many events hosted by Livermore Pride, LLNL’s LGBT+ employee group, during Pride Month. The groups works every month to foster community and create a welcoming environment for everyone at the Lab.”

As a heterosexual, I do not feel welcome!

Not to be outdone, LLNL also has an Office of Strategic Diversity and Inclusion. What a waste of taxpayers money!

The world famous taxpayer funded federal research facility LLNL with a budget of $1.5 bn has a LGBTQ group established. What should be done off work as a leisure activity is done at work at taxpayers expense?

Oh, this obsession with LGBTQ affairs! This is not science! This is quite counterproductive! This outsize influence of minority groups on a major research facility is beyond comprehension!

The special status and privileges enjoyed by this minority group at a federal institution is offensive to and discriminates against all heterosexual employees!

High time for President Trump to intervene and save taxpayers’ dollars!

A Clue About Glue

Posted: 6/7/2019

No pun intended! But the English language offers some funny conjectures … (Here is another one: ingestion sometimes ends in indigestion; but I digress)  

Today, I read this interesting and very promising article: First-ever spider glue genes sequenced, paving way to next biomaterials breakthrough Huge spider glue genes proved exceptionally challenging to sequence, could lead to organic pest control and more (published 6/5/19)

A research paper published by two women! Both researchers have worked at the U.S. Army Research Lab, which also funded the research. Thus, will this research be also weaponized at some point (just kidding)?

Some salient quotes from from article or original research paper abstract (emphasis added):

1. “The innovative method they employed could pave the way for others to sequence more silk and glue genes, which are challenging to sequence because of their length and repetitive structure.”challenging to sequence because of their length and repetitive structure
2. “There are more than 45,000 known species of spiders, each of which makes between one and seven types of silk. ”
3. “An individual orb weaving spider can spin up to seven different types of silk, each with unique functions and material properties.”
4. “... the longest silk gene [previously] sequenced was about 20,000 base pairs … our gene is 42,000 bases long ...”
5. “Most spidroins [spider fibroins] are encoded by extremely large, highly repetitive genes that cannot be sequenced using short read technology alone, as the repetitive regions are longer than read length”

Nice, the full research paper is available as a PDF file from the publisher here! Here is the link to the paper by publisher.

The Outrageous Electrical Cars Scam

Posted: 6/6/2019  Reviewed/updated: 6/7/2019

Just did a rough back of the envelope calculation on how much electricity production capacity would be needed per annum if all passenger vehicles in the U.S. were to be converted to electrical vehicles in an instant.

The numbers are truly shocking and I can only hope I made a serious calculation error!

Here are the inputs:

Item	Specs	Value	Unit
Electrical passenger vehicle	25 kWh per 100 miles	250	Wh/mile
Nuclear power reactor	1,000 MW capacity	8,640,000,000,000	Wh/year
Transportation	Total U.S. vehicle miles for light duty vehicles in 2017	2,220,801,000,000	miles/year

Notes: 25 KWh per 100 miles is probably a conservative number

Here are the results:

Item	Value	Unit
Estimated total electricity consumption by electrical passenger vehicles	555,200,250,000,000	Wh/year
Estimated required number of 1,000 MW capacity nuclear reactors	64	Count

Summary

Given the 2.2 trillion vehicle miles per year on U.S. streets and highways, we would need about 64 nuclear power reactors with 1,000 MW capacity just to generate the electricity for all the electric passenger vehicles. Currently, there are only a total of 98 operating nuclear power plants in the U.S.!

P.S. I did a double check calculation on a daily basis instead of per annum and the results were very similar, i.e. more than 60 nuclear power reactors with a capacity of 1000 MW would be needed to power all electric passenger vehicles.

Sources:

1. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=207&t=3
2. https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-miles

In Memory Of the 30th Anniversary Of The Tiananmen Square Massacre

Posted: 6/5/2019

Human creativity paired with yearning for freedom and democracy defeats totalitarian communist censors anytime:

Source: Anything from rubber ducks to iPads are being used to keep the memory of Tiananmen alive (published 6/4/19)

P.S. Just in case, the reader needs a refresher:

Why Is The Human Heart Still So Unknown?

Posted: 6/5/2019

A simple answer would be that for a very long time the human heart was downplayed as a pure muscle that could easily be substituted with an artificial heart!

Just read this interesting article: Unknown mini-proteins in the heart (published 5/30/19 by the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine). Here is the link to the corresponding research paper.

Here is a quote from the introduction of this article (emphasis added):

“The human heart holds many secrets. And not just in a figurative, emotional sense; also from a rational, scientific point of view, we know surprisingly little about the function of the muscular organ that supplies every cell of our bodies with oxygen – and why it sometimes doesn’t do what it’s supposed to.”

More quotes:

““With the help of a relatively new technique known as ribosome profiling, or Ribo-Seq, we have now been able to determine for the first time not only in isolated cells, but also in intact human heart tissue, which mRNA sites the ribosomes migrate to,” … . “Using special algorithms, we were then able to calculate which proteins are produced in the heart during translation.”

Using this technique, the researchers discovered a whole series of tiny, previously unknown proteins. Another surprising discovery ... was that many of the microproteins were encoded by RNAs that were not believed to have encoding properties”

“Using special microscopic techniques, … to observe that, once produced, more than half of these micro proteins migrate to the mitochondria .... “This means that they are obviously used in the heart’s energy production processes,” ... “Since many heart diseases are caused by a faulty energy metabolism, we were particularly interested in this result.” ”

“The translation of micro proteins is not restricted to the heart and prominent in the translatomes of human kidney and liver.”

The Slow, But Peaceful Revolution In Germany

Posted: 6/4/2019

The latest elections to the European Parliament confirmed again that massive changes are underway in the political landscape of Germany over the last two decades or so.

German citizens have begun to realize that indeed change is possible by elections and by forming new political parties to upset the political status quo! We the People are in charge of our destiny!

The two traditional peoples’ parties (i.e. CDU and SPD) of Germany that have dominated and governed the country since 1948 are reduced to almost a shadow of their former self.

One huge stumbling block remains the awful chancellor Angela Merkel who has long outlived her welcome! Any respectable, responsible politician would have voluntarily resigned as chancellor years ago! History will treat the 16 years of Angela Merkel very unkind, I am afraid! She has single handedly and with a single focus converted Germany into the successor state of the GDR! She has managed to transform the Christian Democratic Party  into an environmental party surpassing the Greens! Quite a sad feat!

This slow revolution in German politics will go down in German history like other turning point events, e.g. the peasant revolt, Hambacher Fest, Revolution of 1848, Weimarer Republik, Frankfurter Paulskirche ...