2025 World champion downhill ride
I used to ride a mean mountain bike years ago – but I never got this crazy. We also didn’t have such epic full-suspension bikes back then either!
Shortest car
First there was the thinnest car, then the lowest car – now there’s the shortest car? Hosted by 2 excitable Italian guys from Carmagheddon.
Truth when evaluating a tech job
You can fix software that has bad code. You can’t fix working for a bad manager.
Free Vatican Concert – Grace for the World
On Saturday, September 13 at 12pm, St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican is hosting a free public concert — and the whole world’s invited.
Pharrell Williams, Andrea Bocelli, John Legend, Jennifer Hudson, Karol G, BamBam and more are set to headline ‘Grace for the World.’ It’s a one-of-a-kind show featuring live music performed by artists from around the globe. Pharrell and Bocelli have brought together a lineup of artists from around the world that include gospel choir Voices of Fire, John Legend, Teddy Swims, Clipse, Angélique Kidjo, Jelly Roll, an international choir of 250 singers including the Choir of the Diocese of Rome. And a drone show.
It’s totally free for the public and will be streamed live on Disney+, Hulu and ABC News Live at 12pm, or register at the livestream:
Experience the concert live from anywhere — register now for free access to the livestream.
links:
- https://feverup.com/m/455663/en?cp_smn_source=secretlosangeles&cp_smn_content=grace-for-the-world-free-concert-vatican-september-13&cp_smn_term=text_cta_4&thm=6272&suid=bcaff65d-741e-4dd8-ac11-0f1381adc446
- Experience the concert live from anywhere — register now for free access to the livestream
- https://secretlosangeles.com/grace-for-the-world-free-concert-vatican-september-13/
SSD’s will lose their data if left unplugged
Did you know SSDs will lose data after a period of time if they are simply left unplugged? They do. This means you might want to seriously re-consider using SSD drives for long term storage.
How long before they start losing data? It depends on a number of factors, but it is between 1-2 years.
HTWingNut has been doing SSD endurancing testing. SSD’s endurance rating is calculated based on how long it can store data if left unplugged after a certain amount of data had been written to the drive (‘well-worn’ or ‘fresh’).
Summary: year-one fresh and well-worn drives had no issues. However, the year-two heavily worn SSD had file corruption and performance was poor. The so-called fresh drive was still good after 2 years, but ECC figures still raised concern.
Links:
Interviewing in 2021 vs 2025
There’s a LOT of truth to this. Tech jobs are imploding and people are starting to go 6-12 months between roles with hundreds of jobs applied too and dozens of reject interviews.
Portland has 5th worst property crime rate in country
For only having 600,000 people, Portland beats out Chicago, Detroit, New York, Atlanta, and all the major east coast cities for property crime rates. In 2024, there were 5526 property crimes per 100,000 persons.
Recent early data in 2025 (and anecdotal evidence from local forums seems to confirm) that it’s gotten even worse:
Links:
Empire Strikes Back light saber sells for $3.65m
The Prop Store just sold Darth Vader’s hero light saber from The Empire Strikes Back for a whopping $3,654,000.
They had a lot of other great sales, including my personal favorite, a hero M41A Pulse Rifle from Aliens and Aliens^3 – for only $189,000
Retail price nVidia 5xxx series GPUs
If you happen to be active or former military, you might just find yourself a 5070, 5080, or 5090 GPU – at retail pricing.
Tomshardware notes if you head over to TheNavyExchange – or drop into one of their retail stores, you might find some in stock. They’re not always there, but some folks have had very good luck.
Summit Everest in 7 days or less
Climbing Mount Everest has long been a process that requires 6-8 weeks of acclimatization. It’s a process that happens at altitude, which risks not only death by HACE/HAPE and also involves lots of dangerous climbing up and down through risky ice falls and avalanche paths. That is, apparently, until now.
As I wrote about earlier, a climbing group was experimenting with xenon gas therapy. It has long been known that when using the right amounts of xenon gas during medical anesthesia, it can dramatically increase red blood cell count. The mechanism is not understood – but the effect is. So why not use that effect to speed acclimatization?
Well, a group of British men did exactly that and they summited Everest in less than a week. Even casual users of xenon gas reported feeling dramatically better during their climbs.
It’s now causing a real ruckus in the climbing community. Many are saying it is against climbing ethics. The world doping council has xenon on it’s list of banned substances, but personal climbing is an open, unregulated activity. Others bring up the old argument against the use of bottle oxygen, is that ‘unfair’ too?
However all this comes out, it’s going to be an interesting time in the climbing community. The dramatic success of these climbers means the use of xenon is unlikely to disappear soon.
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