Feel like you've been missing cool Spritely news lately, or missed a talk or two at some conference? Here's a whole bunch of @spritely speeches given this year! https://spritely.institute/news/spritely-presented-spirited-speeches-spanning-the-planet.html

Well I guess dinner comes earlier here...

That's blue cheese burgers with a sauce made from ketchup, barbecue sauce and a little bit of a thing that's called Algerian sauce.

@redchrision was the chef tonight (she usually is)

If you want to predict how this tariff story is going to shake out, the best way to do so is to invoke Regression To The Mean.

We really don't have much (any?) information about what's going to happen next, so everything is a guess.

When you're predicting without information, Regression To The Mean should be your go-to.

Here's how it works intuitively:
* A guy who has been poor all his life, but wins the lottery or something you can expect will become poor again.
* A guy who has been wealthy all his life, but from some freak market condition or lawsuit, ends up bankrupt, you can expect he will end up becoming wealthy again.

Why do the poor tend to go back to being poor and the rich tend to go back to being rich? There are a lot of reasons which, for prediction purposes, we can safely ignore.

It's actually BETTER to ignore it, because when you lack reliable information, you start trying to pull signal out of noise and you can end up telling yourself whatever story you want.

Regression To The Mean just means that things tend to go back to their normal state of being. Does it always work that way? NO. If it did, we'd still be speaking Latin. Things do change, but far far far less often than how often people THINK they will change. Refer to figure 1.

China has had a really good run over the past 30 years. Like a guy going to the casino and doubling his money in one night. Unfortunately for him, the odds are he won't be able to pull it off twice.

Using Regression To The Mean and looking at countries over the past 100 years, we can make some predictions:

Rich countries:
* USA
* Western Europe
* Japan
* Canada / Australia / NZ
* Argentina
* Venezuela

Poor countries:
* China
* Russia
* Brazil
* Eastern Europe
* India
* Africa

Argentina and Venezuela are special countries to watch because they are historically rich countries, but have been beaten down very badly. These are potentially big (albeit risky) opportunities.

My embedded research lab is basically done.

I have space and switched 12v lines for 16 modems (I currently have 4 set up).

Everything is on 3 amp fuses, but the power system is designed for about 40 amps which is the maximum the PSU can supply.

I have 11 general purpose un-switched lines for permanent installations on the top shelf. Of those, only 4 are in active use: Freebox, PKT Mini (left of Freebox), PCEngines (top), and exhaust fan (not visible). The device immediately above the Freebox takes 19v and and two devices below take 230 AC. I'll be adding another PCEngines unit later but I need a 5.5x2.1->5.5x2.5 adapter for it. As you can see, I also have some unterminated wires at the top, I'm out of 5.5x2.1 barrel connectors.

Each modem on the lower shelf is connected to an FTDI USB serial adapter, currently I have 1x 7-port hub but I will need 2 more before I am able to host 16 modems. USB is controlled by mommy.cjdns.pkt.gg (MoM = Master of Modems), the 19v device immediately above the Freebox. That one has numerous USB ports on the back (actually front) so it is a good fit for the purpose.

The modems under test are based on the EcoNet SoC. I'm currently leading an initiative to add EcoNet support to Linux mainline: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mips/[email protected]/T/ so these modems are for R&D and will later be for automated testing of new kernel versions.

Over the last couple of weeks, @redchrision and I did a really fun hackathon project.

An open source solidity framework for smart contracts that can run periodically, and also a mechanism so that transaction fees can be paid with the proceeds of the transaction. So for example you can pay the fees of a token transaction with the token itself, by selling a small amount of it in the transaction.

If you don't need it, it's boring, but if you do need it, you really do need it.

https://devpost.com/software/pollinate-framework