Office of Public Affairs | Attorney General Merrick Garland Statement on the Agreement in Principle with Cummins to Settle Alleged Installation of Illegal Defeat Devices in Engines | United States Department of Justice

Engine manufacturer Cummins Inc. today disclosed that it has reached an agreement in principle with the United States and State of California to pay a $1.675 billion penalty to settle claims that it violated the Clean Air Act by installing emissions defeat devices on hundreds of thousands of engines.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland: … “As part of the agreement, the Justice Department will require Cummins to pay $1.675 billion, the largest civil penalty we have ever secured under the Clean Air Act, and the second largest environmental penalty ever secured.”

Source: Office of Public Affairs | Attorney General Merrick Garland Statement on the Agreement in Principle with Cummins to Settle Alleged Installation of Illegal Defeat Devices in Engines | United States Department of Justice

I’m not clear what Cummins has done, or what they even could have done. I work here, and I just can’t imagine anyone in this modern, enlightened environment doing anything like what Volkswagen did. Despite my initial dismissal of that case as most-likely being run by a few, well-placed, rogue elements, it turned out to be a surprisingly deep engineering effort that extended all the way up to one level below the boardroom. Maybe more facts will come to light, but, right now, this feels like a shakedown, by a liberal administration, of a company that makes a product that’s politically-unpopular with its voting base.

Starfield’s Steam rating falls to “mostly negative,” can Bethesda still save its RPG? | TechSpot

Starfield, an RPG that excited gamers for years before release with the promise of being Skyrim in space, is ending 2023 with its Steam Recent Reviews rating at Mostly Negative. Even the overall rating is Mixed, which will doubtlessly disappoint Bethesda and Todd Howard.

Source: Starfield’s Steam rating falls to “mostly negative,” can Bethesda still save its RPG? | TechSpot

I was definitely salty when Bethesda was bought by Microsoft. Like so many others, I’ve been a long time fan of Fallout and Elder Scrolls, and was really looking forward to this one. However, as a PS5 player, I realized that Starfield and TES VI would never be coming to Playstation.

I eventually bought a new PC for the Elder Scrolls Online, and tried the digital deluxe pre-release version of Starfield on Steam. I refunded it after 12 hours. While I could see all the criticisms people are talking about with regard to the game, my particular problem was that inventory management was the worst of any open-world game I’ve seen. After this amount of time, I had collected enough “stuff” to require me to start building bases to store them, so that I could eventually build the interesting items, and start working on ships.

I discovered, to my dismay, that unlimited storage containers do not exist, as there are in Skyrim and Fallout 4. Not only that, but it was going to take precious resources to build containers that were — at their largest — still pitifully small. By the time I realized what was happening, I only had enough resources to build a single-base’s limit of storage containers, and it barely made a dent in my inventory.

The whole thing came crashing down at once. The exercise of breaking down and storing my junk — which had become a very efficient and quick abstraction in Fallout 76 — was going to be many, many more hours of work to tame, and it would never not be a chore. To me, there was simply no excuse for this.

So not only do I now view Bethesda suspiciously (even though I continue to play ESO), but I also hate Microsoft from “back in the day,” because I’ve been a fan of Linux since the start, and I watched them buy up any and all competition in the 90’s, and then use the courts and their bought-and-paid for trade press to try to kill Linux.

And above all of this, I hate the trend towards nation-state corporations having more power than governments, and I hate the reduction in choice and increased price by such moves, all while they funnel all the profits from becoming more and more integrated straight to the top.

I’m not trying to start a fight with Windows and Xbox fans. I just say all of this to preface saying this, in response to this news:

And I hope they have a terrible time with The Elder Scrolls 6 now, whatever it will be called.

How Can Sharing a Screenshot from the PS5 Be this Frustrating?

I’m GenX. I’ve been programming since I was 10. I’ve been programming professionally for 30 years now. I live with computers and software all day, every day. I am comfortable in macOS, Windows, and Linux. I want to share a couple of screenshots from my PS5 to Reddit. Seems simple, right? So how do I get them off the console, and onto a computer?

  • I see that I no longer have the option to upload to Twitter, which I had done before. (Has Sony officially joined the ranks of the He-Man Musk Haters Club? Or did Musk kill the API that Sony was using? Both possibilities seem equally likely.)
  • I also have YouTube, Discord, and Twitch accounts linked on the console. I have no options for sharing to any of these services either. What is the point of even having the option of linking them!? What is this doing other than just giving Sony permission to go fishing through those accounts?
  • I use the only option I see to upload them to the PS “app.” What is this doing for me? They don’t seem to be available anywhere on the Playstation website.
  • I install the PS+ app on Windows. It sticks for some time, so I kill it, only to see that Windows has hidden the UAE thing, so I never saw it. I try to install it again. It works.
  • I “sign in” to the PS+ app. I answer a stupid catcha, despite having 2FA on my account. Nothing happens.
  • I log in again. NOW I see my account. But I don’t see any way to access my screenshots. It’s just an ad page for a bunch of games that Sony should understand by now that I’m not interested in.
  • Grasping at straws, I install “Share Factory.” I shouldn’t need another application, but the name suggests possibilities… Aaand it’s a basic editor. Again, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get this media off the console. The only “sharing” option I see is to friend groups on the console. For this, it’s titled “‘Share’ Factory?” Are they serious?
  • I finally notice that the mobile PS app has the ability to look at my screenshots, and download them, but I don’t want to download them to the mobile device’s photo bank. I don’t want to allow the PS app access to my photos. I want to pull them to the PC, where I can more easily post them to Reddit.
  • At the end of all of this, the only option seems to be to put a USB memory stick in the console, and transfer media via sneakernet to my PC, like it was the 90’s all over again. The bottom line is that this seems — incredibly — to be the least amount of hassle to do what I want.

A rant on Reddit — before it was removed — surprise, surprise — confirms I’m not missing anything. I’m 54 years old. I live with bad apps and software and services like this every day, and I get sick of it. I have no idea how regular people are dealing with all of this “technology.” It makes no sense to me, and I’ve literally grown up with it. How can this be the best “we” can do here? Why aren’t we living in the future yet?

44 Years Later

The nostalgia is strong with this. I loved being able to make forms with the glyphs on the Vic-20 and Commodore 64. These keycaps have been “out of print” for a long time, but Signature Plastics is now making them to order. I thought the grey colored accessory keys were going to be more of a lime green color, but that was too bold anyway, and I like this color better anyway. It’s much more similar to the color of the function keys on the original keyboards.

Anthem Sucks, Health Insurance Will Get Socialized, Water is Wet

Once again, Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield has denied me a prescription. It’s like the 4th time in the past couple of years. I spend $10,000/year on all the insurance I can get, while my company pays the other $20K of the mortgage-sized premium. Then I have — whatever it is — $1,500 of deductible, or something. Then I have co-pays. Then I go to the doctor, and he prescribes me something — after looking at their own guidelines, and choosing the worse of two formulations, because they won’t cover “the good stuff” — and then, after ALL OF THAT, Anthem looks over his shoulder, and says, “No, he can’t have it like you prescribed it. You can only prescribe it once a day instead of twice.”

So my doctor submitted a prior authorization, which they also denied. I finally got the letter “explaining” why. Apparently, someone in the bowels of this corporate behemoth went to a government web site which has label information for every drug, and the label for this drug says to take it once a day. Therefore, according to Anthem, a doctor cannot prescribe it twice a day. Period. I’m not sure which is more stupid, this one or their last excuse, which was to steadfastly claim that I have a disease my bloodwork repeatedly shows I do not have.

In the 80’s, when “the bean counters” took over corporations, we made fun of them. We watched as companies who actually built things lost the will to invest in R&D, and abandoned long-term planning for a focus on quarterly returns. It was kind of funny to us at the time, one, because we couldn’t do anything about it, and, two, because the long-term effects wouldn’t be felt for decades.

You don’t have to look too hard to see what it’s done to the American corporate landscape. There’s no heart or soul; there’s only a question of how can they extract another dollar from the operation to return to the shareholders, whether by squeezing the customer or the employees. (I saw a comment the other day that this trend started with Jack Welch of GE fame, and I think that’s probably true.)

When it comes to, oh, I don’t know, making mufflers, this whole attitude and approach is one thing, but when that capitalistic machine gun is aimed — not at health insurance — but actual health care — well, this is what we get.

Wonka review: Willy was never meant to be the hero – Polygon

As a prequel to the ’71 movie — and specifically not an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book, for rights reasons — Wonka uses a healthy serving of musical numbers to tell the tale of how and why its quirky chocolatier became a renowned confectioner. In Wonka’s world — a whimsical, unnamed European town — the chocolate biz is dominated by three stodgy companies who collaborate as a secret cartel, fixing prices, paying off cops, and selling inferior product to a public with no other local candy options.

Source: Wonka review: Willy was never meant to be the hero – Polygon

So it’s an allegory about late-stage Capitalism. Got it.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all there for that.

Should Retired Ministers Get a Pension from the Church?

Twenty three years ago, I had a pension with Arvin. They got “bought” by Meritor. After a couple years, they sent out an email that basically said that the pension fund was “theirs” now, and they were under no obligation to keep it running and pay me anything when I retired. I took the hint, and withdrew what little money was in it, and got hammered with taxes, because of course I was.

Almost no one gets pensions any more. The few people who still get them might get something like a third of their salary when they retire, if they work roughly their entire career at the same place. For the most part, we’re all expected to fund 401K’s, or otherwise figure retirement for ourselves. Am I going to have enough to live on? Well, considering that I’m going to retire the year Social Security officially goes “broke,” I highly doubt it. But that’s beside the point. It’s on me to figure out, one way or another, same as everyone else.

Which brings me to my question: should retired ministers get a “pension” from their church upon retirement? Now, obviously, churches are not funding some massive investment portfolio to pay an actual “pension” out of the dividends from, but the idea is the same. Should churches continue to provide some sort of income to former ministers after they have retired? If no, then I guess we’re done with this thought experiment.

If yes, then how much? Since we’re talking about the church providing an ongoing salary like a pension, what percentage of the former minister’s salary would be appropriate? And, since we’re talking about paying this out of ongoing tithes, which could be used to hire new staff, and give raises to current church employees, how long should this be paid?

Let’s put some numbers to this. According to ZipRecruiter, the average salary of a minister in Indiana is $60,000 per year. Let’s be generous, and say that our hypothetical minister was working at a large church, and his pay was double that, or $120,000/yr, or $10,000/mo. How much do you feel it would be appropriate to pay this retired minister, and for how many years? 100% for life? 50% for 10 years? Some sort of sliding scale that phases out over time? Nothing, as it was on them to prepare, like all of us?

Here are some additional thought experiments. Should there be anything in the “pension” for the minister’s spouse? Does it change your answer if the church had been paying into an ampe life insurance policy? Next, let’s say that our retired minister still has “some gas left in the tank,” and takes another job after retirement, and is making a non-trivial salary with that gig, as well as collecting Social Security. Does this change your answer? Finally, what if he had been working for a huge church, and making 3 or 4 times the average, at $15-$20K/mo? Does that change your answer? In other words, do you feel like this is based on cost of living today, or is it purely based on how much he had been making?

My own biases are leaking out in this discussion because I got the rug pulled out from under me, but that’s why I’m interested in other people’s opinions. I want to see this from other people’s points of view. What do you think?

Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records | WIRED

According to the letter, a surveillance program now known as Data Analytical Services (DAS) has for more than a decade allowed federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to mine the details of Americans’ calls, analyzing the phone records of countless people who are not suspected of any crime, including victims. Using a technique known as chain analysis, the program targets not only those in direct phone contact with a criminal suspect but anyone with whom those individuals have been in contact as well.

The DAS program, formerly known as Hemisphere, is run in coordination with the telecom giant AT&T, which captures and conducts analysis of US call records for law enforcement agencies, from local police and sheriffs’ departments to US customs offices and postal inspectors across the country, according to a White House memo reviewed by WIRED. Records show that the White House has provided more than $6 million to the program, which allows the targeting of the records of any calls that use AT&T’s infrastructure—a maze of routers and switches that crisscross the United States.

Source: Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records | WIRED

I mean, I keep saying that they’re doing all of this, in the open, despite the clear intent and letter of the Constitution, but, here we are, and here we will continue to be, unless someone like Vivek Ramaswamy can get elected, and shut it down. Unfortunately, we’ve already witnessed our “deep state” kill three prominent national leaders to prevent them from changing their agenda, and watched in slow motion as no one was ever held accountable for these conspiracies, so it’s not like they’ll let him — or anyone like him — anywhere near the presidency.

Why do people use VBA?

Why do people use VBA? In order to answer this question, we must first look at another question – who actually uses VBA in the first place? In 2021 I ran a poll on /r/vba where I asked redditors why they code in VBA. From these data, we can clearly see that the majority of people who use VBA do so mainly because they have no other choice. Many organisations run their entire business processes with Excel, and when a little bit of automation is required VBA is usually #1 on the list.

Source: Why do people use VBA?

I was just ranting about this to my kids a couple days ago.

Even in large companies, with massive IT departments, and lots and lots of internal databases and information systems, US businesses are still run on Excel. That’s not subjective. I’ve worked for decades inside three Fortune 250’s (and a couple smaller shops), and bad Excel “applications” are in use at all of them. And after one person learns enough VBA to get a spreadsheet dealing with a particular issue to save a little time for themselves, they start sharing them with their colleagues, and the problem gets worse. Half of my career has been built on making “real” applications out of Excel spreadsheets that were wobbling under their own weight.

But why?

Back in the old days, IT grew out of the accounting department. They had the only computer in the building, and it was an IBM mainframe. Great stuff, right? Saved a lot of time and paperwork, right? Except that it didn’t. It quickly ossified the company’s work flow, and permanently hobbled its ability to adapt to change. It would take years to get any changes made in the mainframe group, and people were frustrated. Along came spreadsheets, and everything changed.

I saw it myself in my first engineering job in 1993. We got new computers with Windows 3.1 and Quattro Pro. (And AutoCAD. And, of course, on mine: DOOM!) After weeks of bugging the lady who ran the mainframe — who apparently had to write a whole program — I got her to dump the BOM for a couple of our products to compare for similarities. I downloaded the 2 files to my PC with a token ring mainframe interface card. I think they were only about 1MB each. With 8MB of RAM, I had twice as much memory as our System 36, and I could open both BOM’s in a spreadsheet, and analyze them to my heart’s content. Understanding that I had more processing power on my desk than the freezer-sized unit in the other room was eye-opening.

American manufacturing companies (at least) never got the message. The invention of the spreadsheet spared them from facing the fact that the mainframe had become the black hole of their IT world. As changes were becoming impossible to get from the mainframe group, PC’s with Windows and Excel allowed people at all levels and in all job functions to start working around the mainframe and its limitations.

Now, these kinds of companies are decades behind the curve. They thought “outsourcing” was going to fix all of their problems. When it didn’t, they thought “consultants” would be the trick. Surely “agile” will do it this time, right? No. It’s not the process; it’s the mainframe. Forcing every corporate workflow and piece of data to be kept canonically inside a 40-50-year-old legacy system’s limitations is quite literally killing the company. It’s certainly killing their competitive advantage.

My current company still breaks our primary software component into 8 pieces because that’s what would fit on floppies to send to the plant to program the hardware. Every IT system — and every spreadsheet — in the company has to deal with this 40-year-old legacy issue because that’s what we programmed the mainframe to expect, and now that’s the only way to bill a customer for it. So the logistics of dealing with multiple trees and branches of software (and multiple trees and branches of documentation about the software) is multiplied by a factor of 8 to this day. There is no escape from this black hole. You can’t re-engineer this situation. It’s too ingrained.

I worked for one group which, on every engineering release, had to get a giant table of software versions — each with their 8 part numbers — into the mainframe. The process was so onerous that they would spend days clicking through mainframe terminal emulator screens to get the information they needed, to make a spreadsheet in a particular format, which they would send to another group to actually enter back into the mainframe. Part of the problem was the spreadsheet had to be in 3 columns, but the mainframe screens were in 4 columns (or vice versa), so a lot of it was purely formatting. I wrote a little program to automate all of this, but I’ve left the group, and I’m sure no one uses it any more. The particularly stupid part of this story is that people fought me to write a little software that saved these people 10’s of hours a week in the name of their own job security.

And no one in the corporate hierarchy cares. In this day and age, the executives are all just playing the waiting game, letting things atrophy — saying all the right things publicly — while they wait until the financials are inverted enough to make the company a juicy prospect for a buyout in an industry-wide rollup by private equity.

Meanwhile, actual people have to get stuff done to stay employed and feed their families. Inside the company, the managers have to look at the three year lead times to get a simple application written by “corporate IT,” and can do nothing but just continue to throw bodies and VBA macros at it. Or, in my case, have me write something to do it. That is, until it gets successful enough that people notice, and it gets taken away from me, but that’s another story…