Millennials and Gen Z have grown up watching politicians saddle them with economic hardships and make a mockery of their right to privacy. Now, the Biden administration wants to double down and rob young Americans of their economic privacy.
Alongside the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill is a provision that would force banks to report the transaction details of all accounts with over $600 to the IRS. But the thought of government agents breathing down one’s neck is vexing for young people, who already account for a sizable portion of the $1.7 trillion in student loan debt and have an unemployment rate twice that of older Americans. Whether it’s investing in cryptocurrency, buying a firearm, or giving to charity, this measure will only dissuade young Americans from making financial decisions that best serve their interests and values.
Like any monopoly, the government has a vested interest in shutting out competition, including currencies that compete with the ever-devaluing dollar. Biden’s recent announcements of anational cryptocurrency enforcement team and consideration ofincreased regulations on digital currency are clear signals that this administration is no friend to the crypto market, where more and more young people areputting their money. On top of Uncle Sam taking a big chunk of their crypto profits through capital gains taxes, the threat of the IRS monitoring each time a young person invests in a currency frowned upon by DC will increase buyer hesitancy, creating yet another barrier to getting out of debt and securing financial stability.
Speaking of items frowned upon by DC, it’s not difficult to imagine how increased IRS scrutiny into young people’s bank accounts will deter them from buying firearms. Over the last several years, state and local governments have started violating gun owners’ privacy in unprecedented ways with Emergency Risk Protection Orders (otherwise known as “red flag” laws), which are currently on the books in19 states and Washington, D.C. The Biden administration supports expanding these laws, even as police have used them to kick down young Americans’ doors and—in the case of Maryland resident Duncan Lemp—kill them in their sleep.
A blow to the young philanthropic spirit would be another piece of collateral damage of the IRS provision. A recent study showed onlyone-third of young Americans give to charity, due to high costs of living and unfavorable markets. Whereas the IRS caneasily weaponize itself against ideological enemies—as seen with the IRS’ admitting to targeting at least 40 conservative groups in the early 2010s—economic barriers combined with the stripping of donor privacy will discourage young people from investing in the change they want to see in the world.
Millennials and Gen Z came of age as the surveillance state came into existence, starting with the passage of the Patriot Act in 2001. Now, the government’s oft-spoken mantra “if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear” is coming for young Americans’ bank accounts. But neither the IRS snooping on their Venmo transactions nor demanding 37 percent of your Dogecoin gains will solve the problems that America faces.
This economic tyranny will only continue to build the case for young people that the government is working against their interests, not for them.
Sean Themea serves as chief of staff for Young Americans for Liberty (YAL). A recovering progressive, Sean has appeared on Fox Business, Newsmax, The First TV, and OAN.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
Amiga Format is a magazine that was dedicated to Commodore's Amiga computer line. It was published in the U.K. and had a long run lasting from 1989 until 2000. While published in the U.K., I remember frequently seeing in in book stores here in the U.S. as an import and I believe there was even a U.S. edition published for a while. The November 1996 issue (published almost exactly 25 years ago) includes:
Cover Feature
Achtung! - Much Amiga hardware is now being developed in Germany. German companies like Maxon and ProDad are powerful forces in the software market. What exactly does this mean for the future of the Amiga?
News
PowerPC delayed - Phase 5 concentrating on add on cards while development of replacement OS slips.
Viscorp plan new logo - The new owners of the Amiga want a new logo incorporating the Amiga trademark images - and they want you to help them design it.
Capital Game - Andy Smith meets the man behind the latest Amiga beat-em-up, Capital Punishment, and finds out exactly who ClickBOOM really are.
Serious
Cyberstorm Mark 2 - Phase 5 brought us the first ever 68060 accelerator for the Amiga and now they return with Mark 2. But how does it compare to its predecessor and indeed how does it match up to the competition?
CD-ROM Drives - We have often advised our readers not to attach more than one IDE device to the A1200, but two new drives from Siren and Eyetech just go to show that rules are there to be broken.
StormC - The latest C compiler features a new integrated environment for creating programs, ideal for beginners and experts alike. Nick Veitch looks at the new development package from Haage and Partner.
Termite TCP & IBrowse - Two new packages from HiSoft to help you get connected. Termite TCP is a new TCP stack and Hisoft have finally released the commercial version of IBrowse. There are plenty of alternatives available in the Public Domain so what makes these programs worth parting money for?
CD-ROMs - The latest releases from the excellent Aminet and a CD-ROM packed full of a selection of software to ease your breakdown nightmares.
Creative
Multimedia Tutorial - Ben Vost continues with more graphical ideas - 3D gadgets and images from the CD. Find out how to incorporate them into your package.
Alien Breed 3D II Tutorial - Find out how to add water and objects to your newly created levels in our second tutorial.
Real 3D2 - Last month Graeme Sandiford took inspiration from his garden. This time around he's been waiting for the phone to ring.
OctaMED Tutorial - Darren Irvine with more top tips on making the most of OctaMED.
Blitz Tutorial - The latest Blitz tutorial shows you how to handle links in your code and John Kennedy promises that after completing this you should be able to start browsing through some of your HTML documents.
Regular
PD Select - A Monkey Island clone, a new version of an old classic and Vark 14 among others.
Workbench - Problems getting online? Trouble with your modem? Whatever the query there is help at hand.
Amiga.net - Darren Irvine is in a melodic mood.
Subscriptions - Make the most of our superb offers and get your favorite Amiga mag delivered to your door.
Mailbag - Your views in print.
Quantum Leap?
QDOS - the OS of the Sinclair Quantum Leap - This PD replacement for AmigaDos was the first multitasking operating system for home computers.
Screenplay
Previews - Soccer Sensible, Blobz and the Director's Cut of Worms. Andy Smith has all the info on the latest offerings for the Amiga gaming world.
Capital Punishment - Newcomers ClickBOOM introduce their first effort in the Amiga market and it's been hailed as the best beat-em-up the Amiga has ever seen.
DNA - Andy Smith describes it as a mix between Valhalla and Laser Squad but is it any good? Take control you your characters and lead them into war.
Humans III - Guide little characters around a host of colorful levels and you may well find yourself lost in time! This latest puzzle game from Gametek gets the once over from Andy Smith.
Reader Games - Discover an excellent version of patience that seems to have found a permanent home on Andy's machine, amongst others.
Aura Competition - It's your chance to win an amazing Aura Interactor. Now you can not only play the games but feel all the action too. Ow!
Gamebusters - A complete guide to Primal Rage and the first part of a solution to KGB.
PC Gamer is a PC gaming magazine published in the U.K. starting in 1993. There is also a U.S. edition that started publication in 1994 and at times there have been editions for other countries as well although they have typically taken content from the U.S. or U.K. editions. The July 1994 issue of the U.K. edition includes:
Overlord - To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Normandy Landing, Rowan Software and Virgin have served up the most detailed, playable and authentic flight simulation ever to grace the PC. Fight them on the beaches and re-live D-Day as it really happened...
world Cup USA - After lamentable attempts during the last two World Cups, US Gold finally strikes it lucky with its latest officially-endorsed kickabout.
Delta V - Quite possibly the fastest-moving shoot-'em-up you'll ever play - but is it any fun?
Pinball Dreams 2 - Pinball Dreamers now have four more themed tables to play, thanks to 21st Century's nicely-priced add-on pack.
The Horde - Populous meets Conan The Barbarian in Crystal Dynamics' innovative CD-ROM-based strategic hacker.
Syndicate Plus - Everyone's favorite game of mass violence and mind control is back, this time on CD-ROM and with all those deliciously anarchic extra American Revolt missions. This is where it's at.
Lemmings 3D - They're cute, they're suicidal and now they're in three dimensions! The latest outing for those lovable Lemmings breaks beyond the old two-dimensional boundaries and the result looks, well, interesting.
Pentium Power! - Are the days of the 486 numbered? Intel, manufacturers of the superfast Pentium think so. But does Pentium mean a new generation of gameplaying power, or is it all just hype? After spending a day with a Pentium system, Gary Penn's got the answers.
Coverdisks!: Take to the Skies - A particularly topical double-helping of disks this month, as our demos conveniently coincide with both the current World Cup and this month's D-Day celebrations. Our fully-playable Overlord demo enables you to test-fly our Game of the Month, with two complete missions, while World Cup 94 challenge gives you a sizable chunk of WinSport's management extravaganza to play through.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.
This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/
Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.
Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.
The first three slides have early 1960s dates stamped on them so these were probably all taken in the early 1960s. In order we have a house, a man holding some fish, two ladies lying by a lake and the interior of a house from which you can see an old car through the windows.
processed July 1962
processed September 1964
processed September 1964
Normally I just post raw scans but the first photo was heavily red tinted so I posted the color corrected and ICE processed version of that one. I'm no photo post processing expert so I just let the scanner do its thing but it seems to do a fair job.
Here's the non-processed version:
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.
In March, Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, appeared before Congress and gave a statement about misinformation on his platform and the role it plays in our political system.
During the course of his testimony to the Consumer Protection & Commerce and Communications & Technology subcommittees, Zuckerberg advocated for reform of Section 230, a legal provision that currently prevents companies like Facebook from being held liable for things people say on their platform.
“We believe Congress should consider making platforms’ intermediary liability protection for certain types of unlawful content conditional on companies’ ability to meet best practices to combat the spread of this content,” Zuckerberg said. “Instead of being granted immunity, platforms should be required to demonstrate that they have systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it.”
Essentially what Facebook wants is for Section 230 to be modified so that companies are held liable for illegal content on their platforms unless they can demonstrate that they have systems in place for identifying it. And that’s not all. Since that point in time, Facebook has rolled out a full-blown advocacy campaign lobbying for its own regulation, even running ads on influential platforms like the New York Times.
Zuckerberg is far from alone in his designs for Section 230. Lawmakers in both of the two major parties have been gunning for reform or even outright repeal for some time.
A Brief Refresher
For those who may not be familiar, Section 230 is a previously obscure piece of legislation that was written in the 1990s at the dawn of the internet to ensure free speech protections extended to this new frontier. It’s a very basic law that says websites cannot be held liable for what others post on them, and that business owners get the final say on what speech they promote or kick off their premises—the same as any brick-and-mortar would.
For the past two years, Section 230 has been enjoying a “main character moment” thanks to former President Trump’s particular issue with it. Trump became upset by Twitter’s moderation of his content and began targeting the law towards the end of his presidency.
Since that time, both Democrats and Republicans have introduced bills that would amend Section 230. Some propose that the companies should be held liable for speech if they choose to moderate content in a way that displeases Republicans. Others in the Democrat party suggest they should be liable if they allow content they deem as “misinformation” to stay up. Both sides are essentially seeking to strip social media platforms of their First Amendment rights to moderate content on their platforms as they see fit.
Lawmakers in both camps are motivated by a desire to have more control over the content on these channels—Democrats because they want to force companies to censor more, and Republicans because they want to force companies to censor less.
Why Would Facebook Push for Regulations on Itself?
It is unlikely such laws would have much of an impact on Facebook, which already spends an exorbitant amount of money on its vast content moderation systems. Facebook already employs fact-checkers and systems that check for bullying, harassment, and violent threats.
So why would Facebook lobby for its own regulation, especially for regulations that enforce what they’re mostly already doing? Easy. Zuckerberg and the rest of his team know that competitors and start-ups would have a much harder time positioning themselves for success under the new regulatory framework. Such systems would be expensive to develop and maintain, after all.
Fortunately, at least one lawmaker is on to Zuckerberg’s grift. Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR), who is the original author of Section 230, wrote, "Mark Zuckerberg knows that rolling back Section 230 will cement Facebook's position as the dominant social media company and make it vastly harder for new startups to challenge his cash cow.”
Zuckerberg is as disingenuous in his stated aims as are the lawmakers. None of them actually care about free speech, truthful information, or bias. This is about money and control, as it almost always is when it comes to the government.
And, if these groups got their way, consumers would ultimately pay the price. Such a change would lead to fewer online options at best under Zuckerberg’s proposal. And under the more radical proposals to repeal Section 230, they would likely lead to a world where either absolutely everything was moderated, or where consumers were unable to weigh in with their opinion at all.
Who Do Regulations Really Protect?
In 1971, economist George Stigler published a paper called, “The Theory of Economic Regulation.” In it, he offered a stinging rebuke of government regulations and the popular notion that they were implemented for the sake of consumers or to correct market “failures.” Rather, he said that regulations were designed primarily for the interest of businesses.
It is actually not at all uncommon to see big corporations lobbying for regulations on their own industries. Why would this be if regulations were actually meant to restrain them? It wouldn’t. Rather, regulations are put in place to skew the market in their favor—allowing the government to pick winners and losers—and to hurt their competition. This is why it is imperative that people learn the difference between true free market policies and “pro-business” policies, which are commonly anything but free market.
The free market and individual liberty work really well, when we let them. Under the current laws we have seen much innovation, growth, and yes, competition. And though a small number of companies seem to be currently dominating the market, it’s important to remember how quickly things can (and do) change. MySpace was once the dominant platform, and now comprises a much smaller share of the market. And dozens of other social media companies such as Rumble, Parler, and Tik Tok are currently working to build from the ground up to compete.
While we may not like all of the practices of the current companies at the top, being principled means standing by our values even when things do not go our way. Ultimately, the problems presented by freedom are far less worrisome than those presented by regulation and big government interfering with the market.
Those who are currently falling for the talking points behind Section 230 attacks are being hoodwinked into supporting a regulatory framework that will only hinder the competition and make Facebook stronger.
TV Gamer Magazine was published in the U.K. from the Summer of 1983 through March 1985 and covered the various video game consoles of that time. The last two issues were incorporated into Big K before disappearing completely. The March 1984 issue includes:
Cover Feature
Tanks a lot - Taking time out from outer space, we beam down to earth for tank-based battle games, with a survey of tank games.
Reviews
The New games - Big Brother - that's Darrin Williamson to you, folks - takes a look over the new goodies, and finds the future far from black.
In Depth Reviews
Night Stalker - New it isn't, but this intriguing Mattel maze is still adding new addicts, so perhaps they'll be relieved that assistance is at hand, in the form of Paul Whiffin who shows you how to zap the robots, spiders and other meanies.
Pitfall - Harry, the hero of Pitfall, has a total of 256 jungle screens to negotiate before he can collect enough money bags, gold and silver bars, and diamond rings to make it worthwhile braving the crocs, scorpions, fires and death pits that lie in wait. Dave Bishop shows you how harry can make it.
Mr. Do - Life is just a bowl of cherries for Mr. Do - or it would be, if the Bad Guys would let him pick them from the cherry orchard, not to mention the Alpha Monster and the Blue Choppers. High scorers will cherish (sorry!) the Dave Trutzenbach guide to the eight screens and beyond.
Systems
Atari Excels - Inside the new XL generation of computers, we find there's a lot of power, plus a keyboard that really works. We take the lid off while not baffling you with the scientific jargon. Don't you wish all hardware reviews were written this way?
Competition
Win the new Atari 600 XL
Special Delivery
Getting games into your machine - A no-nonsense guide to carts, cassettes, floppies, microdrives and other thingies, from Karl Dallas, who got it all out of his bubble memory - before it burst.
The Arcade Scene
The laser game is here - After its frenzied fictional role as a space weaponry, the laser finds a real-life existence as the technology behind some of the finest video graphics you've ever seen. Andy Harris spits on his hands and climbs into the cockpit of two of the most realistic ones.
Games Governments Play
Sky wars - These games are deadly serious, as today's Biggleses throw themselves about a computer-generated sky, without endangering a million quids' worth of jet fighter. Plus some dazzling full-color pictures of what it feels like to be in the cockpit.
The TV Gamer Awards
The nominations - To guide you in filling in the nominations card inserted in this issue, here are 16 pages of reviews of the TV games of the year, listed alphabetically from Action Force to Z-Tack, complete with details of prices and the systems they play on.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.
This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/
Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.
Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.
These slides show the exterior and interior of a couple of different houses. They are not labeled or dated but based on the presence of a microwave and small tv in the kitchen, I would say they are from the early 1980s or perhaps the late 1970s.
>
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.
“Excuse me,” says your landscaper. “The mower’s out of juice. Mind if I plug in?” You look from the immobile machine to your half-cut lawn. “Outlet’s over there,” you tell him. “But let’s knock $20 off your fee? What are we up to now, 25 cents a kilowatt-hour?”
Welcome to the future. Welcome to California.
The state, committed to net-zero emissions by 2045, is moving to ban sales of gas-powered landscaping equipment as early as 2024. This is not the first attempt. Politicians tried and failed to do the same in 2003. Since then, though, more than half of homeowners in the state have swapped out their consumer-grade equipment for “zero emission equipment” (ZEE), meaning, battery-powered weed whackers, leaf blowers, hedge clippers, chainsaws, and even lawn mowers.
Electric, Because It’s . . . Quiet?
Many make the switch because, although lower-powered and less reliable (do batteries ever die at the right time?), battery-powered equipment is less noisy. That’s what prompted Mayor Stewart Welch of Mountain Brook, Alabama to begin switching his town’s tools over to electric. The bellow of leaf blowers disturbed his tennis game with a friend who, as chance would have it, had previously complained about the town’s noisy equipment. The city has spent $18,000 over the last year outfitting its public works crew with electric trimmers, blowers, and more.
According to Stanley Black & Decker, sales of the company’s electric yard equipment jumped 75 percent between 2015 and 2020. But, although lots of people are making the switch of their own accord, they’re not doing it fast enough, according to California’s legislative assembly.
Stop and Recharge
The biggest holdouts are those who do landscaping for a living, and for good reason. I searched Husqavarna’s site high and low for battery run time info for its 550iBTX, which one landscaper reviewed as “The best electric blower on the market.” For $469? Not bad, I thought. After lots of web searching about the battery, I gave up and contacted support. Turns out, it does not come with one. The lowest-priced option will cost landscapers an extra $300 and lasts between thirty and sixty minutes. The one the associate recommended, though, costs $969 (yes, more than double the cost of the blower) and “lasts up to 3.5 hours,” he told me. That’s if you run it in “normal” mode, which is half the power of Husqavarna’s $459 gas blower; boost mode saps the power faster and is about 33 percent less powerful than the gas blower.
Some landscapers make electric work, and not just those whose equipment is paid for by taxpayers, as in Mountain Brook. Chris Regis, owner of Florida-based lawn care company Suntek, is able to charge customers between 10 and 20 percent more for all-electric lawn care. He says, “There are people who don’t care and say, ‘I just don’t want the noise.’” All power to them. That’s exactly how free markets work.
Given the numbers above, though, it would take a lot of lawns to make up one’s initial investment with only a 10 or 20 percent upcharge. But Regis’s investment is far greater. He has outfitted the company’s vans with solar panels for recharging batteries on the go—each van costing about $100,000. Reflecting on how much longer the same work now takes him, Jimi Layne of Mountain Brook’s crew asked, “Are we looking at dollars and cents?”
‘Expensive and Unreliable, Please’
That’s an even more pertinent question in California, where energy prices are the highest in the continental US. (23.11 cents per kilowatt-hour, as of June 2021). Gas is more expensive there, too, in large part because of penalizing policies, but researchers predict electricity prices can only rise in the golden state, thanks to a host of factors. Prices are high, in part, because the size of the state increases transmission costs, as do wildfires on mismanaged public lands that have knocked out critical infrastructure, requiring replacement.
But the biggest contributor to high prices is the state’s push to adopt wind and solar, which require big upfront investments but nonetheless necessitate a reliable backup for when the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing.
This problem came to the fore in 2020 when, for two days, California’s three big energy companies instituted rolling blackouts across the state because the grid could not meet demand. It was a self-inflicted wound. Given the state’s environmental restrictions, many coal-fired power plants are being decommissioned, and thanks to irrational fears, they’re not being replaced with clean, reliable nuclear energy, either.
Instead, taxpayers are being forced to subsidize massive investments in “renewables,” and power companies make up much of the state’s inevitable shortfalls by buying energy from more reliable, fossil-fuel plants in neighboring states. Unfortunately for Californians, on August 14, 2020, when the sun set and solar farms went offline, these companies realized they had miscalculated how big that shortfall would be. Western states were in the grip of a heat wave, and as Californians reached for the AC dials, they lost power altogether.
A Deadly Mistake
Losing power is no minor inconvenience, particularly when you live in what is naturally a desert, and especially when it’s more than 100 degrees outside. It’s not just that people can’t charge their Teslas or their ZEE mowers. One 2020 study concluded that more than 5,500 Americans lose their lives due to extreme heat annually. Climate-related deaths are a key indicator of low climate resilience, the ability of a locale to deal with extreme temperatures and weather. And, of course, climate resilience is directly dependent on plentiful, affordable, reliable energy.
But, increasingly, that is what California is doing away with in favor of expensive, unreliable energy. Unsurprisingly, the poor suffer the most. Research done in 2020 shows that many in Los Angeles can’t afford air conditioners, and many who have them can’t afford to run them because electricity prices are so high. In fact, accounting for cost of living, California has the highest poverty rate in the country, in large part because energy prices are so high. This, not in spite of the state’s adoption of “cheap” and “reliable” renewables, but because of it—because solar and wind are not cheap nor reliable and require a backup that is.
Cutting the Lifeline
Yet, with startling shortsightedness, the state assembly has sent Governor Gavin Newsom a bill that will effectively eliminate a go-to backup: gas-powered generators. The bill (AB-1346) lumps gas-powered generators in with the offending landscaping equipment and all other “small off-road engines,” referring to them as SOREs. It “encourages” the California Air Resources Board (the state’s own sort of EPA) to “adopt cost-effective and technologically feasible regulations to prohibit engine exhaust and evaporative emissions from new small off-road engines” and to consider “expected availability of zero-emission generators.”
Such generators do exist, but they are far more expensive, generate far less power, and most need to be recharged after just a few hours. Consider the GOAL ZERO YETI 3000X. It costs $3,400, and an additional $250 kit enables you to use it as a battery backup for your home. After all that, you can power a single refrigerator for less than 2.5 days, and that of course drops if you want to power, say, a few lightbulbs. By contrast, a Duromax XP10000HX can power your whole home—lights, appliances, and A/C system—continuously, running on either gasoline or propane, and it costs $1,400.
When the power went out last August, says Collin Blackwell of Eldorado Hills, California, “We went out and bought an $800 generator, so that way we could have the fridge powered up in the garage at least and be able to have food and everything in the house.” Mark Galloway of Cameron Park said he lives in a mountain community where losing power is fairly common. “You should have something, so having the backup generator and things like that—I think it’s on you to really take care of that,” he said. “It’s not like it’s something that you can’t plan for.”
But, if AB-1346 is signed into law, going out and buying an $800 generator will no longer be an option.
California legislators have not only cut ties with reality—failing to see that they’re heading for ever more blackouts—they also want to cut their citizens’ last lifeline to reliable power when these blackouts inevitably occur. California is committing energy suicide, and given that people rely on energy for just about everything, we shouldn’t be surprised by the toll this will take on human life.
Computer and Video Games was published in the U.K. and has the distinction of being the world's longest running video game magazine but alas, even it has ceased publication. It was published between 1981 and 2004 with an associated website operating from 1999 until 2015. The November 1996 issue includes:
Features
Cover Feature: Virtua Fighter 3 - It was in this space only two months back. But now it has arrived and it is the best thing ever seen.
Freeplay - A double-sized retro computer cabin for our birthday issue, The only VF3 moves guide in existence, Complete moves for diehard arcade, Your jabberings in Freeplay Fan, The Worldwide Charts, Your fanzines, depressing news and, at last, some flinkin' highscores!
Quake Challenge - He is known only as...The Master! And he has gathered us for an awesome 14-player frag fest!
Mortal Kombat Trilogy - Red-hot info on the monster PlayStation compilation! Plus - MK4 exclusively revealed!
Tokyo Game Show - Our hot new games section is hotter than ever this month, thanks to this single incredible event!
What a Porsche Oh! - When Porsche released their first new car in 19 years, Sony snapped up the gaming rights!
Reviews
Crash Bandicoot - What better way to celebrate PlayStation's first birthday than with a visit from old uncle Bandy-Knackers. Yup, Crash has landed!
Wipeout 20197 - And what better way to celebrate our own mad bonkers birthday than with the arrival of the best PlayStation game since... Wipeout!
Worldwide Soccer - This really is the best soccer game.
Fighting Vipers - VF2 with dynamite shoved up its...
Overkill - Not to be mistaken for underkill!
Sonic 3D - And you don't need special glasses.
John Madden '97 - He's a fat troll with a fiery football.
Tetris Attack - Not Tetris, but just as awesome!
Burning Road
Real Bout Fatal Fury
Orion Burger
Scorched Planet
Actua Golf
Gene Wars
Tunnel B1
Previews
Star Gladiator - And just when you though the celebrations were all over, Capcom gatecrash the party with their first awesome foray into 3D fighting games!
Daytona USA Circuit Edition - Be careful what you wish for...
MDK - It stands for Murder, Death, Kill!
Virtual On - Supercharged robot battle action!
Street Fighter Alpha 2 - The best 2D fighting game is coming.
Commodore User was a long running magazine published in the U.K. that covered the VIC-20, Commodore 64 and other Commodore computers. The first issue was published in October 1983 and the final issue was published in February 1990 for a total of 77 issues. The March 1984 issue includes:
Eye on Commodore - Intrepid Commodore-watcher Henry Deckhand visited the recent Which Computer Show to check out any and every product linked, however tenuously, to our world.
Insuring your home computer - From Burglary to a manic coffee-cup, your micro needs protection. Bohdan Buciak has been wading through the small-print of insurance policies to come up with some viable alternatives.
Lightpens reviewed - Lightpens might appear to be very attractive devices, but they do carry a weighty price-tag. What can they do? Are they worth the money? We put three through their paces.
User Profile: Fred Reid and the Fretful Pet - Fred Reid's enthusiasm for building and repairing guitars is matched only by his passion for computers. Bohdan Buciak went along to his diminutive workshop to find out how an ageing Pet helps to make his guitars sound better.
Letter from America: a miscellany of Vic tidbits - Vic enthusiast Mike Apsey ("who needs a 64?") has been using Vics of various demeanor for a while now. We prevailed on him to assemble a potpourri of tips and tricks from what he's learned.
Screen Scene for the Vic - Our regular round up of Vic games.
Forth on the Vic - Richard Hunt reviews The Complete Forth by Alan Winfield: a tome for both the novice and the seasoned Forth programmer - it's British, and it's good too!
Go with Gortek - Gortek and the Microchips is the first of Commodore's unique Basic programming series for youngsters. A good story, fun to use, effective teaching...we helped Gortek fend off the nasty Zitrons.
Victuals - Get in tune for Monte Carlo - Give the function keys some meaning...and more!
Screen scene for the 64 - Our reviewers with Joystick Thumb and Blistered Fingers report from the 64 games room.
WP road test: Paperclip 64 reviewed - Chris Durham continues his mammoth word processing roundup with a critical look at Paperclip for the 64. It's a little pricey but displays a wealth of features.
Another Extended Basic - Mike Todd has already looked at Simons' and BC Basic. Now he gets to grips with Ultrabasic 64, similarly promising enhancements for the Basic on the 64.
Retail management on tape? - Most business software for the 64 comes on disk, but Quick Count sells its Bookkeeping System for the Cash Trader on tape. Tony Harrington blew the dust off his datasette to check its program.
Tommy's Tips - Another interesting batch of elucidations straight from Tommy Towers. This time, Tommy's dealing with variables, hi-res graphics and joystick operations.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.
This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/
Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.
Click on the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.
These slides were processed in October 1971 and were probably taken around that time. The first two feature The Texas, a civil war era locomotive that was put in service in 1856. It mostly hauled freight uneventfully during the civil war but was involved in a famous incident known as "The Great Locomotive Chase" in which The Texas was commandeered to pursue (in reverse) Union spies fleeing in another locomotive called The General. They were caught and executed. The Texas was retired in 1907. In 1927 it was put in the basement of the newly constructed Cyclorama. In 1936 The Texas was restored to what was believed to have been its wartime appearance which is how it appears in these photos. In 2015 The Texas was restored to its 1880s appearance and moved from the Cyclorama where it had been since 1927. It was put on display at the Atlanta History Center in 2017. I think the 3rd photo was taken in Riggold Georgia (where The Great Locomotive Chase ended)...perhaps a tourist area of some kind. The final photo appears to be of Stone Mountain.
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.
On Thursday, Ron Paul said YouTube had abruptly removed one of his pages without warning.
“Very shocked that@YouTube has completely removed the Channel of my Ron Paul Institute: no warning, no strikes, no evidence,” Paul said on Twitter. “Only explanation was "severe or repeated violations of our community guidelines." Channel is rarely used. The appeal was automatically rejected. Help?”
A separate page operated by the former Texas Congressman and presidential candidate, the Ron Paul Liberty Report, remains active on YouTube.
The news comes one day after the Washington Post ran an article noting that YouTube, which is owned by Google, is blocking “all anti-vaccine content and banning prominent anti-vaccine activists.”
“YouTube is taking down several video channels associated with high-profile anti-vaccine activists including Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who experts say are partially responsible for helping seed the skepticism that’s contributed to slowing vaccination rates across the country,” the Post’s Gerrit De Vynck reported. “As part of a new set of policies aimed at cutting down on anti-vaccine content on the Google-owned site, YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous."
This is not the first time Dr. Paul has run afoul of Big Tech.
In January, Paul found himself locked out of his own Facebook page. The company later said the issue was the result of a page administrator’s access accidentally being removed, a mistake Facebook corrected.
A Thorny Issue
The growing problem of social media censorship is a thorny issue for libertarians. As private companies, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have the right to decide what content they choose to allow on their platform. (Although the government has no right to intimidate these companies into censoring, as it evidently does.) That said, many see the cultural values of viewpoint diversity and the free exchange of ideas as the cornerstones of a tolerant society and classical liberalism.
This is why many viewed bans on controversial figures such as radio personality Alex Jones and former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos as dangerous, even if they disagreed with many (or all) of the things they said.
“Twitter is a private company. It can set its own speech policies, and those policies don't have to be fair. There's no universal human right to own a Twitter account,” Reason’s Robby Soave pointed out after Milo Yiannopoulos was banned in 2016. “But if Twitter wants to live up to its stated commitment to maintaining a public forum where provocative, controversial, and even occasionally rude or hurtful speech is tolerated, then it should consider restoring Yiannopoulos's profile.”
Unfortunately, Big Tech has not listened to these sensible pleas. And as some predicted, the bans did not end with Jones and Yiannopoulos. More and more people have found themselves purged from social media platforms for Wrongthink.
How did we get here? I asked this very question when Paul was locked out of his account by Facebook earlier this year.
Banning the president of the United States was shocking. Taking action against Ron Paul is horrifying. It is senseless. Paul is a man of principle and peace. He is 85 and not active in politics. Paul does not incite violence and is a threat to no one.
How did we go from banning Alex Jones to taking action against Ron Paul in the space of two years? The answer is not hard to find. It lies in a principle abandoned.
“Once you start making exceptions to a universal principle/general rule, you begin to undermine it; it becomes easier to make further exceptions,” FEE’s Dan Sanchez pointed out in 2017. “If the hate speech of Nazis are to be restricted, why not the hate speech of traditionalist conservatives? If the violent, seditious rhetoric of Nazis are too dangerous to allow, why should the violent, seditious rhetoric of communists be tolerated, or any fundamental criticism of the government?”
Free Speech Is an Essential Value
Americans need to remember that having the power to silence someone is not the same thing as being correct. (As Tyrion Lannister noted in Game of Thrones, “When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”)
Free speech and free expression are vital to a vibrant society. And yet while stifling scientific discussion (even on sensitive topics like vaccines) runs counter to the very idea of scientific inquiry, Google and co. are under no obligation to embrace these values.
Fortunately, we live in a market economy. That means users have other options, and as some on Twitter suggested, it may be time for Americans to seek these options out.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.
Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
Winning at Computer and Video Games (Summer 1984)
I'm not really sure of the history of this magazine but Winning at Video and Computer Games was another 1980s video gaming magazine published in the U.K. It covered both console and computer games. The name makes it sound like it emphasizes tips or strategy guides but that does not seem to be the case. I've only found a couple of issues online so I don't get the impression it was very popular or around very long. The Summer (May/June) 1984 issue includes:
Compute! was among the best multi-format computer magazines of the 1980s. Compute!'s Gazette was an equally great magazine dedicated to the Commodore 64. Compute! had a number of other machine specific spin-offs but none of them ever did as well or lasted particularly long though there was nothing really wrong with the quality. Compute!'s Amiga Resource is one of these spin-offs that happens to be dedicated to the Amiga. The Summer 1989 issue includes:
Features
The Ultimate Amiga - Build the perfect system for any job.
Multitasking Miner - A conversation with the father of the Amiga.
Amiga Zapshots - Using Canon's hot new video technology.
Expanding the 500 - Who says the 500 can't be as powerful as the 2000?
Buyer's Guides
Video Hardware and Software - Doing what the Amiga does best.
Telecommunications Software - The doorway into the Amiga community.
Music Products - Hardware and software that lets you play and compose.
Laser Printers - High-quality output for a high-quality computer.
Strategy Games - Joystick not required.
Departments
The Window - Meet our staff.
Readers Feedback - Commodore in education and Bridgeboards for the 500.
Trends - News, new products, and rumors.
Ask Rob Peck - Gadgets: rolling your own.
CLI Clips - Making a custom CLI disk.
Programmer's Page - Adding color to the Workbench.
Spotlight on Digi-View - Using NewTek's popular video digitizer.
Best of the Boards - The flexible shareware editor - Uedit.
User Group Update - Where the Amiga community gets together.
Amiga Art Gallery - Computer art on display.
Columns
Abstractions - Life and times of a Dragon's Lair junkie.
Just for Fun - Human vs. Human, computer referees.
Taking Sides - WYSIWYG: Useless of Useful?
Reviews
Distant Armies
Fantavision
Falcon
Universal Military Simulator
Mini-Reviews - Amiga Resource looks at programming tools and animators, fighting and flight simulators, programs that nag, and more.
On Disk
Contents - Advanced Laser Chess, X-Ray, Power Poker, Mr. Gadget, and more.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.
This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/
Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.
Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.
This set features a lady and her dog, another of her dog in the snow, another shot with some other dogs, and a garden. No labels or dates but these are likely from the late 1950s or early 1960s.
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.
Ayn Rand famously quipped, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s latest viral flub seems perfectly calibrated to confirm the late author’s wise words.
At a Monday press conference, Psaki was confronted by journalists citing data showing that House Democrats’ proposed tax increases would violate President Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000.
In particular, multiple studies have shown that the proposed increase in the corporate tax rate from 21 to 26.5 percent would lead to lower wages for workers and higher consumer prices. (A de facto tax increase for those earning less than $400,000 if not technically a direct one.) The press secretary responded to the journalist’s query by downplaying the potential pass-along costs and simply declaring them immoral.
“There are some... who argue that in the past, companies have passed on these costs to consumers,” Psaki said. “We feel that that’s unfair and absurd and the American people will not stand for that.”
That’s nice. But the laws of economics are unmoved by Psaki’s personal condemnation, and Americans who will bear the real brunt of the tax hike proposals certainly care more about what the practical impact will be than the White House’s moral musings.
Whether Psaki and Biden think that corporate tax hikes should lead to lower wages or high prices is utterly immaterial. They do.
Both a near-consensus of empirical research and basic economic theory confirm this reality. Indeed, a study by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that a previous Biden proposal to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent—so, slightly higher than the 26.5 percent proposed now—would have shrunk the size of the economy, lowered wages, and eliminated 159,000 jobs. We can safely assume that similar dysfunction would accompany the latest proposal.
Of course, the destructive fallout of their proposed tax hikes is a politically inconvenient reality for the Biden administration. But that’s no excuse for denying or downplaying it. Jen Psaki’s empty moralizing and hand-waving cannot change the laws of economics. Nor will the press secretary’s words comfort workers who bear the brunt of bad policymaking.
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Big K was a short lived gaming magazine published in the U.K. in the 1980s (1984-1985 specifically). It also incorporated some of the contents of TV Gamer which apparently bit the dust just before Big K but that wasn't enough to save it. The decision to cease publication must have been up in the air for a while as there was a new competition introduced and some to be continued articles included in the final issue. On the other hand, an obituary was also included for the magazine. The final issue from March 1985 includes:
Games Programs
Midnight Falls on N'Ganth for MSX
Egg Eater for VIC 20
Battleships for Atari
Draw! for Spectrum
Caverns of Nogard for Dragon
Software Reviews
Up Front
Pick of the Month
Review Pages
Merrie Melodies: Island's BBC music system
MSX Games: A First Look
Features
Big K First Readers Poll Results, The Winners, the Losers!
