Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
As part of the Portland International Airport modernization and expansion it has been announced that the old carpet will be making a return. From PDX Next: Truth be told, we love it, too. More than a few of us have the shoe selfies to prove it. We can spot the carpet’s distinctive pattern from across…
Author: Stephan Segraves
Fear and Traveling
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
From Live and Let’s Fly: In the years to come, we will only begin to understand the devastation our overreaction to the pandemic inflicted upon the most vulnerable among us: the children who were kept out of school, the elderly and hospital patients who were separated from loved ones and made to endure pain alone,…
Positive Hitman Reviews
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
It’s your classic story, man gets blackmailed for hush money, man takes extreme measures to not be exposed by hiring killers. Then because he’s a good internet citizen he leaves a review and eventually gets caught. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Maund, who is married, reached out to his ex, 33-year-old Holly Williams,…
Long Covid and Brain Gray Matter Loss
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
A study out of the UK has found a significant number of Covid-19 patients who become hospitalized and recover have a noticeable amount of gray matter lost in their brains. The full study is here, but the important excerpt: We used structural and functional brain scans from before and after infection, to compare longitudinal brain…
Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Information Overload
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
A bit of skepticism is a healthy thing. We should question motives, goals, and drivers in our leaders and in their policies. However, it seems like the sheer amount of information is stifling our ability to take in, process, and move through the chaff. News websites are run by a few different major news organizations…
Cargo is Piling up Everywhere
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
From NPR — Soaring demand from Americans for everything from iPads to cars is leading to a surge in freight crossing the Pacific, hitting business owners such as Nephew. When the cargo with his games finally arrived on the West Coast, the container was immediately emptied so it could be sent back to China for…
Ford F-150 Lightning – An Ultimate Truck?
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
I have been on the fence on the Tesla electric vehicles for a while and for a few reasons. For one, it seems ironically wasteful to buy a new vehicle simply because “it’s electric” and has a bunch of bells and whistles. The price point tiers of the Tesla are also a downside. Yes, you…
The Covid Crisis in India
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
From NPR: India reported nearly 350,000 new cases on Sunday, more than any country on any day since the pandemic began, the fourth day in a row the country has broken that grim world record. Many worry case numbers are woefully undercounted since test kits are hard to come by, and hospitals are completely overrun….
Hacking McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
Andy Greenberg from Wired (archived, non-paywall version): Of all the mysteries and injustices of the McDonald’s ice cream machine, the one that Jeremy O’Sullivan insists you understand first is its secret passcode. But after years of studying this complex machine and its many ways of failing, O’Sullivan remains most outraged at this notion: That the…
Hacking McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
Andy Greenberg from Wired (archived, non-paywall version): Of all the mysteries and injustices of the McDonald’s ice cream machine, the one that Jeremy O’Sullivan insists you understand first is its secret passcode. But after years of studying this complex machine and its many ways of failing, O’Sullivan remains most outraged at this notion: That the…
Last Chance to Snag Emirates First Class Using Alaska Miles
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
Just a quick reminder that starting April 1, 2021, Alaska MileagePlan members will no longer be able to redeem their miles for Emirates First Class. This comes after a late 2020 announcement by Alaska that Emirates was removing the ability for their partners to redeem for the coveted front cabin. So, if you have some…
A Tale of Two Grocery Stores
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
When an H-E-B grocery store lost power in Austin, they didn’t throw food out or make people put back their purchases. From the Washington Post: Around him were a couple hundred shoppers, some with only credit cards, trying to stock up during a statewide emergency. The power had been going on and off in this…
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Threats to Critical Infrastructure
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
From War on the Rocks: Circumstantial evidence suggests that Warner was protesting 5G technology — reportedly an FBI line of inquiry. The campervan was parked in front of an AT&T transmission building and the explosion knocked down a network hub. The company website called the blast “devastating,” reporting secondary fires, loss of power, damaged equipment,…
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Facebook’s Scale
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
Adrienne LaFrance, writing for The Atlantic, “Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine”: People tend to complain about Facebook as if something recently curdled. There’s a notion that the social web was once useful, or at least that it could have been good, if only we had pulled a few levers: some moderation and fact-checking here, a…
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Nine Months of Ringing
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
When the first lock downs in the United States were announced I was returning from a work trip to Montreal. On the flight home I had not felt great but was not worried about Covid-19. The next day I felt a little better and went out for a lunch at a restaurant not knowing it…
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Prepping for the New Year with a New Look
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
In early November I hinted about a possible new look for this site and today I clicked the “update” button and took the plunge with a new design. It is a free design from the folks over at Themehaus and while I am still playing with the colors, I love the overall simplicity of the…
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Water to be Traded on Wall Street as a Commodity
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
From Bloomberg: Water joined gold, oil and other commodities traded on Wall Street, highlighting worries that the life-sustaining natural resource may become scarce across more of the world. Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities alike are now able to hedge against — or bet on — future water availability in California, the biggest U.S. agriculture market […]
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Read MoreA Single Flight Conundrum
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
Between January and March of this year I flew United quite a bit. When Covid travel restrictions hit in mid-March the airlines started changing their requirements to qualify for their statuses for 2021. In most cases the airlines actually extended a frequent flyer’s status into 2021 carte blanche but with some caveats. In United’s case, […]
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Read MoreIs United’s additional Thanksgiving capacity irresponsible?
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
United will be adding 1,400 flights for the week of Thanksgiving and plans to use larger aircraft on some flights. From that same Bloomberg article – Half of its Thanksgiving customers are buying tickets less than 30 days before the holiday, up from about 40% last year, United said. The airline will monitor bookings “in […]
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Read MoreA Refresh Coming?
Written by Stephan Segraves @ Stephan Segraves
I sometimes get bored with the look and feel of this site. I think anyone who runs a website often wonders what a new design would do for the traffic or the placement of the content, so I have been playing with new layouts and fonts and so far I haven’t found anything that really […]
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