Between my iPhone and my Apple Watch, I'm good.

That's not to say that I'm against adopting new and exciting "wearable" technology as it arrives... it's just that it would have to be something incredibly useful or amazing for me to hop on the early-adopter bandwagon.

Today Humane, a company creating AI tech, is announcing more details of their "Humane AI Pin" that they demoed in a TedTalk six months ago. Including the price, which clocks in at a whopping $699 (plus a required $24 per month for a cellular contract via T-Mobile).

I fully admit that it's an interesting trinket. With some caveats...

UPDATE - VIDEO REMOVED FROM YOUTUBE BY HUMANE: Let's say that you work hard to create a ten minute joyless video announcing your product launch. What's the best possible thing that could happen? I'll tell you what... people copy and repost your video so it goes viral. There's no better advetising because it's exponential but costs no additional money. Except Humane has started issuing take-down notices with copyright strikes against people reposting it. Apparently the launch video had some pretty serious factual errors involving how much protein is in a handful of almonds and where is the best place to see the upcoming eclipse. So Humane is working hard to remove the evidence, I guess.

The one thing they demoed that was its "killer feature" was live translation using your own voice and inflection. Alas, they had to remove the whole video, so that's gone too...

And about those caveats...

• I question the legibility of a "laser screen" that's projected on your hand. First of all... how does it focus? Second of all... the wrinkles and folds of the human hand hardly seem like the best device for projection. The central part is large enough to be readable, but I have no idea what's written around that. If anything. Maybe it's decorative?
• I rarely use the voice interface on my iPhone or Apple Watch... and even then it's when I'm not in public. I'm not going to start talking to them while I'm out in public, disrupting the peace. It would be hypocritical given the disdain I have for people who take calls on speakerphone in public.
• They put a lot of effort in talking about privacy. But if your interaction is all 98% talking out loud and listening out loud, how private can it be? Absolutely everybody will be in your business who's within earshot.
• Despite the fact that the "Battery Booster" is on the back side of whatever cloth the pin is hanging off of, it's only making the thing all the more heavy. I'd have to try it for myself, of course, but it seems like a rather large and clunky device to hang off my T-shirt.
• I'm on T-Mobile, which is the Humane service provider. And despite what their ads tell you, their quality os pretty much shit. In rural areas, like my home, I bounce between two and three bars (it is 5G-UC, not that it makes my calls stranger or my data faster). In big cities, I have other problems. Possibly from the network being overloaded? No idea. All I do know is that my cell service was better under AT&T... and much better under Verizon. To have something which is entirely reliant on "The Cloud" as connected by T-Mobile seems dicey. Feels like there's going to be some serious lag waiting for actions to be performed.
• I didn't buy an Apple Watch with cellular service because my iPhone is always with me and the non-cellular version can sponge off my iPhone's cellular connection seamlessly. It seems really weird that the AI Pin can't do that as well. You must buy a $24 a month cellular plan, even if you've always got a phone on you.
• SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS?!? I know that the R&D for this thing must have been pricey, but there's no screen, limited interactivity, and very limited uses. When I compare it to something even more outrageously-priced, like the $3,500 AppleVision Pro, at least I can see where Apple spent the money. This little box though? Look, I fully understand that Humane has nowhere to go but up, and the device will only improve as time goes on, but $700 seems a hugely expensive price to pay for it given its awkward nature and limited application.

I will watch the progression of Humane's little gadget with interest. But I won't be dropping $700 to buy the first one. Maybe they'll be able to prove its necessity in the future. Or maybe the price will drop low enough that it will be a fun thing to play with for the price.

Yeah, there's no post today.

Look, I am not going to candy-coat this... after "discovering" BobbyBroccoli, all my non-work time has been watching every single video he's produced. And I remain completely blown away.

BobbyBroccoli's channel is six years of video games. Then, three years ago, something changed. All of a sudden Broccoli (Kavan S) switched the focus of his channel to scientific scandals. And this is when things get very, very interesting. His first video in this new direction is actually a video in three parts about Jan Hendrik Schön. If you are a science geek, it's riveting. Mostly because he doesn't just go "Hey, there's this science guy and his lies almost got him a Nobel Prize." Oh no. He goes into glorious detail explaining how everything happened.

PART ONE: The Rise of Jan Hendrick Schön.
PART TWO: The Lies of to Jan Hendrick Schön.
PART THREE: The Demise of to Jan Hendrick Schön.

Last year BobbyBroccoli ran through a series on Ammerica's Missing Collider. As with everything else, it's an absolutely fascinating deep dive into the subject which spans three presidencies...

PART ONE: Ronald Reagan & the Biggest Failure in Physics.
PART TWO: George Bush Vomited & Set Physics Back by a Decade.
PART THREE: Bill Clinton & the Day Physics Died.

That mostly gets you caught up to what I posted yesterday. There's a few other videos, including this fascinating look at The Image You Can't Submit to Journals Anymore...

Assuming I don't fall down another YouTube rabbit hole, I'm guessing things will go back to whatever passes for "normal" here at Blogography.

I watch a lot of videos. If I'm awake and working, odds are I am watching (but mostly listening to) YouTube videos. And the subjects I have running in those videos are crazy eclectic because I enjoy loads of different subjects. But ultimately the videos I tend to watch more than others are those that can teach me something. AKA educational videos.

More specifically, math and science videos.

I have watched hundreds upon hundreds of such videos. So when I tell you that I have now found my favorite science video that I've yet seen, I am not speaking from lack of data.

It's an absolutely brilliant video about "element hunting" and "the man who tried to fake an element." Not only is is just wildly entertaining (both in the way it is told and the way it is graphically represented), but it is mind-bogglingly fascinating. On top of that, it miraculously is fairly easy to follow for non-scientists despite tackling a rather complex chain of events.

And it's a year old!

I'm posting it here. It's well worth your time. And you're welcome...

Now, isn't that just fantastic?

As I type this, I'm in the process of watching it a second time immediately after having finished watching it the first time.

What's so utterly bizarre is that YouTube shows me that I've seen two of BobbyBroccoli's previous videos. I remember watching both of them, liked them, and have no earthly idea why I didn't subscribe immediately after watching. It's only thanks to the YouTube algorithm that I happened upon his channel again. Which only goes to show... the algorithm isn't always bad.

At least this time I had the sense to subscribe.

UPDATE: Yeah... I may not get any sleep tonight. This guy makes exceptional videos. Like these, which breaks open a huge scandal in a beautifully visual way...

Yikes. I mean... this is the very definition of a train wreck that you can't look away from.

Boy did I fall down a rabbit hole this morning.

I woke up at 5:00am, couldn't get back to sleep, so I grabbed my laptop to see what was happening in the world... and ended up at the YouTube channel for a company called "Nest Box" which sells bird houses with a built-in camera. Then I watched the videos there for over a half-hour!

Here's the video which started it all, and this may very well be the most magical thing you see all week...

Amazing. If you have time to kill, I highly recommend the Nest Box Live channel.

I'd love to have one of these, but they're nearing $300. I wonder if I could build one of my own and stick one of my NestCams in it? Might be a good winter project!

I wish that my robots would keep to a routine. Joy, the mopping robot, kinda does. Carl, the vacuum robot, never does. This can cause a problem if you want vacuum then mop immediately after. If both robots are made by iRobot, then they can coordinate that stuff.

But if you don't? You either have to wait until the vacuum robot is finished then run the mopping robot.

Or else end up in this scenario, where it feels like they're about to fight to the death...

As it was, they narrowly avoided each other.

This time.

=sigh= Home robotics still has a ways to go, don't they?

A long while ago I bought a robot vacuum I named "Carl" after the janitor from The Breakfast Club. He was an imitation iRobot Roomba by Ecovacs, so he was cheap, but I didn't have a lot of furniture to confuse him or junk laying around my house to block him, so I was thrilled with how well it worked. Almost immediately I bought a companion mopping robot by iRobot that I named "Joy" after Joy Mangano (the lady who created the Miracle Mop (and was portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence in the movie biography Joy).

The mopping robot was just okay.

It worked better in my bathrooms which are smaller and easier to clean because they are tile. It worked less better in the kitchen, because it was bigger and the pad got dirty before it could finish. It didn't work AT ALL in any other spaces. Partly because they were too big... but mostly because the little vibrating pad ripped up my hideously expensive (but shoddily-made) hardwood floors. I used it for a half-year in the bathrooms, but eventually trashed it.

Fast-forward to last week after I was washing my floor on my hands and knees and thought to look at mopping robots again. The one that caught my eye was the Bissell Spinwave. The pads aren't a vibrating pad, so I had high hopes that it wouldn't tear up my shitty floors...

So I went to buy one and... FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FUCKING DOLLARS?!? Does it blow me after it finishes mopping? Because that's the only way I'd spend that kind of money.

But then I Googled to see if there was an alternative that might work for less money... only to find that Best Buy was advertising the R5 model I wanted (it has mapping on the app) for $220 (which is less than the cheaper non-R5 model!). Still more money than the $150 that I was wanting to spend, but if it works...

When I got New Joy, I set her up next to New Carl so I could charge it. Once Jake came downstairs from his nap, it took him all of seconds to see (smell?) something new...

My hopes for New Joy were dashed when it left its charging station, turned a corner around the legs of my hutch, and got stuck...

Jake found this to be hilarious...

But, seconds after I took the above photo (and before I could pull New Joy out from under the hutch), she freed herself. Nice!

Which brings us to the R5 model's mapping. The reason it's supposed to be worth the $550 price tag. It's actually very cool. The unit has a LIDAR camera spinning on top which is constantly updating it as it moves around the space. For example... this is what Joy thought my living room looked like...

But once it sees that it can go behind my couch, the map is updated to reflect that...

The mapping even noticed where "rooms" are located and decided to mop the entirety of my "great room" (living room to dining room) before moving on to the kitchen/entry hall, downstairs bathroom, and guest bedroom...

But then... uh oh. The map cleared itself shortly after entering my kitchen. Even worse, Joy stopped reporting her location accurately. She would randomly appear all over my house, but then always snap back to her actual location...

Jesus. THIS is what Bissell charges FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FUCKING DOLLARS?!?

You can define Go/No-Go areas easy enough, and your robot will remember it for any future moppings...

Unfortunately, there is a minimum size area you can define... and it's fucking HUGE. If you need tiny areas defined... like my cat feeding station and second cat water fountain... you'd better fucking hope that they are against a wall so you can have it bleed off the edge. As you can see, I got lucky.

And then we get to one of the most idiotic, head-scratching failures of this FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FUCKING DOLLAR robot... you can't define rooms/areas and save them for future use. Sure you can draw an area you want cleaned and send the robot to do that, but you can't save them for next time. They disappear after the cleaning happens...

What the fuck? It would seem that Bissell expects you to clean your entire fucking house in one go. But come on, that's not even remotely feasible. Because your little mopping pads will get dirty fairly quickly, which means it will be washing your floors with dirt. Blergh. This should be a priority for Bissell, because yikes.

When it comes to my home, I don't have tons of furniture and practically no clutter. Which makes it an excellent candidate for robots. There's hardly any obstacles for it to get caught up on. And yet... this happened...

This seemed weird. First of all because Joy was, as usual, randomly reporting herself where she wasn't located. The map was showing that she was at her docking station. But she wasn't. So I had to go looking for her. Turns out she wedged herself between the toilet and the wall...

I don't even know how to respond to this. It's not smart enough to throw itself into reverse and back out of there?

Later on I stopped hearing Joy run. At first I thought she was out of battery and couldn't return to her docking station. The map wasn't reporting her location, so off I went again to try and find her. Oh. Despite her having a FUCKING "SOFT-EDGE SENSOR" LIKE BISSELL ADVERTISES, she was choking on a rug...

Jesus. But that's not the worst of it. Do you see hoe the bed in my guest bedroom has a dust ruffle around the bottom? Joy thought it was a solid wall and didn't mop under the bed! I added a "GO" area and sent her back in the room... but she returned without mopping under the bed! So the only way to mop my guest bedroom is to remove the rugs and the dust ruffle...

So what have we got here...

• PRO: It does a good job mopping, even though you'll want to limit how much it mops to smaller areas so you can throw the mopping pads in with the wash so that you're not pushing dirt around.
• CON: Except you can't save the smaller areas you create because the app is fucking brain dead.
• PRO: The mopping pads don't rip up my expensive, shitty hardwood floors. I haven't tried the "dusting pads" but I have zero intent of ever using them, so whatever.
• CON: While the mopping is good, the vacuuming is bad. Fortunately I have a separate vacuum which does a good job, so I just run it first, but why bother with a vacuum attachment if you're not going to put a powerful enough vacuum in it to make it worth doing?
• CON: To get the LIDAR mapping capability, you have to pay FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FUCKING DOLLARS for the R5 model (or $220 if you get it on sale like I did)... and then it doesn't even report to the app reliably? It erases and can't even report the robot's location!
• CON: Apparently the robot has "soft edge" detection so it doesn't get stuck on carpets and knows when to raise the mopping pads... or whatever. But the feature is useless because the robot will choke on any carpets!
• CON: Can get stuck easily if the space is just tight enough to enter, but (apparently) not loose enough to back out of?
• PRO: The liquid cleaner reservoir is pretty big. I was able to clean my entire downstairs and never had to refill it.
• CON: The liquid cleaner reservoir is a bitch to fill. You're supposed to fill it with water to a certain level... then fill the remainder with the concentrated cleaning liquid. Except thanks to poor design, the reservoir is overflowing before you can even add the cleaner! Tragic.
• CON: The robot doesn't just "mop" in wet mode... it mops while it vacuums. But the vacuum dirt chamber is so tiny that you are pretty much forced to vacuum before you mop.
• CON: The app is awful. Fails mapping after a time, doesn't report the location of the robot accurately, doesn't save defined areas, and won't even always report when there's a problem. If Bissell is serious about staying in the robot cleaning space, they need to do a lot better than this.

Ultimately I'm going to keep New Joy because she mops just well enough that the $220 price is worth it. Had I been able to afford the original $550 price tag, she would have been boxed up and returned within one hour of opening the box.

Maybe I'm just happy that I have a solution for mopping my floors that doesn't involve me doing so on my hands and knees with a wet rag?

I dunno.

But welcome to the family, New Joy.

When I got home from work today, I was just... numb. Didn't have the energy to do anything except plop down in front of the television with an ice cream cone. Which sounds more entertaining than it was because I never bothered to actually turn the television on.

Instead I told Siri to put on some music while I caught up on the news.

And the first headline I see? FDA grants full approval to new Alzheimer's drug meant to slow disease.

Now, this is a hell of a long way from an actual cure. It costs $26,500 a year, it has been linked to death, it only slows progression for around five months, and it's more for friends and family than the person with dementia, but it's a step! And, from somebody who's intimately familiar with it... from somebody who would have given anything to have a chance at five more months with my mom where she was still mostly herself... I'd have paid the $26,500 and been grateful if it in any way helped.

And that's the way science goes.

AIDS, some cancers, and many diseases are survivable now, and it all started with a step. A step just like Leqembi is for dementia.

But there will always be those for which the science came too late.

For those left behind, I guess you just cling to the consolation that other people may be spared what you had to go through.

Maybe.

One day.

The whole "wE doN't InCludE a USB poWeR AdaPter BEcaUsE tHE enViRoNMenT aNd eVErybOdy AlReaDY haS a BunCh oF TheM" bullshit has got to stop. Nobody includes them any more and they all have this excuse. Well, my new Aqara M2 hub didn't come with a USB power adapter and I just used my last spare (off a very, very old Kindle reader!)... which means that my next device that I get I'll need to actually buy the USB power adapter. This is such crap. People should be able to request a freebie if they don't have an adapter to use. That's the only way I'll believe it's "for the environment" and not some profit margin dickery.

I don't understand people who don't find space exploration utterly fascinating.

The United Arab Emirates has a Mars probe (named Hope) that sent back one of the most amazing shots I've ever seen. It's of the moon Deimos above The Red Planet, and the image composition is so amazing that you'd think it was Photoshopped. Or CGI. Or a painting. Or anything except a photograph...

Photo from Emirates Mars Mission

The mission was originally set to end by now, but the UAE just extended it another year. The probe's wide orbit of the planet allows study of the planet and its moons in a way we haven't had before.

My fascination with Mars is directly attributed to the Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom novels...

Incredible painting by Michael Whelan shown the Martian moons of Barsoom for Thuvia, Maid of Mars

Burroughs had a fascinating take on the moons Phoebus and Deimos, which Barsoomians (AKA "Martians") call Thuria and Cluros. Because the moons are very small... just 17 miles and 9 miles across, respectively)... people shrink when they approach them. John Carter visits Thuria in the book Swords of Mars only to find the surface area was similar to that of Mars, relative to his tiny size.

Phoebus and Deimos are notable not just because they are so small, but also because their orbits are really close to Mars. Phoebus is just 5,800 miles away... Deimos 14,500. Earth's moon, for comparison is 238,900 miles! But it gets worse. Phoebos's orbit is decaying 6 feet every hundred years. Which means it's likely to break apart (Mars gets a ring!) or crash into the planet in another 50 million years.

Thanks to NASA's Perseverance rover, we actually know what a solar eclipse looks like on Mars...

I could go on for pages writing about Mars and its moons. The exploration of our neighboring planet is a fascinating subject on which there are volumes of research, photos, speculation, and fiction available. It's a bottomless pit from which I'm happy to keep falling.

UPDATE: Ironic to note that after I wrote this entry, I was watching a movie when all of a sudden my Sonos Arc soundbar made a loud POP then the sound cut out. It was seriously loud. I thought that the dresser fell over in the guest room or something. I thought it had blew out, which seemed impossible given that I didn't even have the sound up that loud, but after unplugging and plugging back in, it was find. Until it happened again! After some Googling, I found that this is a KNOWN ISSUE and Sonos hasn't done shit about it. Apparently it has to do with several audio sources, including Xbox and newer-generation AppleTV 4K. Like the one I just bought. So, yeah, not sure where I go from here. I guess I call Sonos and complain (as everybody else has done) and hope they get off their fucking asses and fix the problem. Though this has been an issue for over a year and nothing's been done, so who knows. In the meanwhile, I've gone back to my original AppleTV 4K in the hopes that the Sonos problem will abate until it's resolved. If it gets resolved.

UPDATE-UPDATE: Two days running off the old AppleTV 4K, and no pops. I switch back to the Rev. 3 AppleTV 4K and they start up again. WTF?!? I am assuming that Apple is using HDMI and Atmos standards to make their little box... so what's the deal with Sonos? Frustrating. Am I never going to be able to update my media sources now?

When it comes to the Dolby Atmos spatial audio on my Sonos Arc soundbar, I was less than impressed. Despite buying a Sonos mount, positioning the soundbar 4-inches below my television as instructed, and cranking the height channel to maximum, I just wasn't feeling it. I'd watch scene after scene of the best Atmos mixes available, confirm that Sonos was receiving Atmos sound, and never heard anything of any substance. It was a heck of a punch to the gut after paying the money it cost me.

Then Sonos released the Era 300 (which I reviewed here) and all of that was supposed to change.

And so I bought into their game, fully expecting to return the speakers when they let me down as the Sonos Arc had done.

But then they actually ended up worth being the price of admission. Once I adjusted the rear speakers to point slightly inward... increased the height volume to maximum... increased the treble by a lot... increased the bass by a bit to compensate... and increased the surround audio a touch... it all kinda came together. The only thing I could do to improve it further would be to add a wall in my open living space so that the left channel could reflect instead of drift towards my kitchen. Something that's not in the cards, alas.

But still... darn good. Mostly for spatial audio music, because the Atmos mixes we get for home video is lacking. Though the situation is improving, some movies are more impressive than others. Below is a list of my favorites. My top two are films by Denis Villeneuve, who seems to take spatial audio very seriously.

1. Blade Runner 2049 (2017 - Denis Villeneuve)
   How this movie didn't make a billion dollars is beyond me. It is an absolute masterpiece. Not only is it an impossibly good sequel to one of the most incredible films ever made... it manages to capture the atmosphere that made the original so mind-blowing. All while having a great story and flawless casting. It's a miracle on-screen. It's glorious to behold. And when it comes to the Atmos sound design? You're in the film. The many voluminous spaces fill your room with echos and reverb. Music is lush and all-encompassing. Small moments... like striking a piano key... are made to feel huge. You feel the rain falling on you in the dreary, brutalist environment of 2049's Los Angeles. Explosions rock your soul. The Atmos is meticulously crafted to be exactly what it needed to be, and makes me appreciate the movie all the more.
2. Dune (2021 - Denis Villeneuve)
   It is one of my favorite novels of all time. I've read it a dozen times. It is impossible to adapt into film. But it's been adapted twice. The 2000 TV series was a mess. I actually did enjoy the 1984 David Lynch film (which holds up very well, actually), but it was more style over substance. The Denis Villeneuve Dune, however, is genius. The writing team behind it acted like a skilled surgeon... knowing exactly what to cut while keeping the soul of the novel. And the Atmos soundscape that was crafted for the film is everything you dream about when your sound system can take advantage of it.
3. John Wick 3: Parabellum (2017 - Chad Stahelski)
   There are few franchises more deeply satisfying than everybody's favorite emo-assassin, John Wick. Each installment ups the ante in cool ways, and the brilliant Atmos soundtrack is no exception. Parabellum does an amazing job of creating immersive sound that gets better with each new movie. From rain pouring down from the sky to bullets bouncing around a room, you're there in the middle of the unrelenting action. And oh what action it is.
4. Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness (2022 - Sam Raimi)
   Disney/Marvel spends a great deal of money to make their movies a fantastic experience. But when it comes to their Atmos mixes for home video, they've been hit-or-miss... but mostly miss. You hear the film in the theater and it's great... then listen to it at home and it's kinda not. I guess the spatial audio is not a straight 1-to-1 conversion and requires work that Disney doesn't want to pay for. But it's been getting better since Avengers Infinity War & Endgame, and Multiverse of Madness is one of the best so far. The inter-dimensional jumping sounds very cool, but there's other more quiet moments with birds chirping and air moving that are just as nicely done... as it should be.
5. Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame (2018/2019 - Anthony & Joe Russo)
   The movies themselves were among the best super-hero flicks to ever be released. Smart story-telling combined with amazing special effects. And sound. You can tell that some serious money was put into the Dolby Atmos positioning, because so many scenes were beautifully mixed. And that battle at the end is where it all comes to a head.
6. Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018 - Christopher McQuarrie)
   It hadn't occurred to me to check out this movie until somebody in a Sonos forum recommended it. Very nice. There are scenes where the auditory positioning is meticulously crafted, but not in a way that sounds artificial. No easy feat.
7. John Wick 2 (2017 - Chad Stahelski)
   Unlike the consistent spatial audio in John Wick: Chapter 3, the Atmos effects are a bit more hit-or-miss with the second chapter. The ones you get are brilliant... then they just... disappear. You'll get a few scenes where obvious height queues could have been used, but weren't. It's a shame, and I'm not sure why this is. Maybe budget? In any event, the sound design is still top-notch. It just could have been more.

What surprised me most was the Atmos mixes I liked the least. I read over and over and over that my favorite movie of 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road had some of the best Atmos work to date. And yet... I was seriously underwhelmed by the overhead effects, which were so random as to be distracting (unlike John Wick 2 where you can forget about it). The height channel would pop up when it wasn't needed... then be missing when you'd expect them to be there. It's bizarre. But still an incredible movie. I just think it sounds better with a 5.1 mix.

Which is rare.

Most times, the Dolby Atmos mix is incredible... even when it's not consistent. And finally... finally... I can hear it in my home theater thanks to the Sonos Era 300's.