Despite the point in my comment about power cable extensions coverings becoming hard through the lack of plasticizers, I confirm your point about overplasticized PVC in instrument cables.

I have a lot of instrument leads that I thought were silicone only to find that after a year or so they've gone hard. So much so that new unpacked ones can no longer be easily straightened (the kinks remain unless one heats the cable up and then straightens them).

Despite availability issues,the problem is trying to determine what's real silicone and what's not.

The ones I've had for decades are still working well; they're reliable and flexible.

I learned about the utility of rubber after becoming frustrated with PVC leads being stiff in cold weather. I stepped into Oldaker's shop on the way home one day and asked the nice older lady there about buying some silicone leads.

"Are you sure you want silicone," she asked. "Most people want rubber."

I was sure that she was nuts and that I knew exactly what I wanted, but I played along. She disappeared and came back a moment later with two sets of test leads: One with silicone insulation, and the other with rubber insulation.

I examined them both. I picked the rubber ones; they somehow seemed both tougher and more flexible. No regrets. I've bought more examples over the years for different things. (Perhaps it'd have been smart to have also bought some silicone leads from them as well, for long-term comparison. Alas.)

---

Anyway, Oldaker Manufacturing burned to the ground about 10 years ago. Whatever tooling and supplies remained after Tripplett packed up and left is simply gone.

Which is a bummer for a couple of reasons: First, they seemed like very nice people who were just trying to get by after their heyday was over. It was very much a mom-and-pop facility by the time I came 'round.

Second, I subsequently cannot find any reliable source of rubber-insulated test leads. It's only been a decade so far, and I do look occasionally. They do not appear to exist.

(There's probably be an opportunity here for someone to make test leads using vulcanized rubber and sell them, but it's limited. If it works and becomes popular, then someone overseas will clone it. And when they clone it, then others will follow with their own take. After that, it's just a hop skip and a jump before we reach the end game: Dilution.

Wherein: Overplasticized PVC test leads that are described as being rubber will be easy to find, and actually-rubber leads will be impossible to locate in the sea of noise.)

What's made this situation worse is that it seems that worry over plasticizers and health etc. has lead to a reduction in the amount being used in cables. I have some power extenstion cables whose jackets have gone so hard that I can no longer coil them effectively — even though I take care the coiled cable still ends up a tangled mess.

Even if silicone jacketing is more expensive it's so good I'd pay extra. Trouble is it's not normally available on products found at the local hardware shop.

Silicone is more flexible and high-temperature resistant, but it does have a major downside of being very easy to cut and strip. That's not great either, especially for power applications where short circuits are a concern.

Silicone also kinda sucks for crimping. Most crimps have one set of tabs which grab the conductor (which is fine) and then another set which grab the insulation, but in the case of silicone the insulation set tend to just slice the insulation and don't mechanically grab it.

AFAIK there's nothing about the SOOW spec that requires EPDM.

PVC, XLPE, and rubber insulation is more durable than silicone. THHN uses PVC, XHHW uses XLPE, SOOW cord uses EPDM rubber.

Seems to me we need to:

(1) Reverse engineer/disassemble the code to find out exactly how they're stealing our data.

(2) Hack the firmware to restore both our privacy and user-friendly functionality.

(3) Send garbage/random noise back to LG and Samsung, et al to overwhelm their servers—and actually cost them money for collecting our data.

Of course, this ought to be a temporary measure until our legislators listen to us and make what these manufacturers are doing strictly unlawful.

The real reason why vendors want users to use their apps is that an app maximizes the information they can steal from users with the minimum disruption (unfortunately users aren't aware of the fact).

I've never understood why this isn't obvious to everyone.

For years, I've avoided giving my phone number out to organisations by saying I don't have a phone. It's blistful, I almost never receive an unwanted call.

One way to familiarize students with mercury was to have several liters of it in a wide open-top jar and have them force their fist through the mercury pool to the bottom of the jar.

In fact, forcing one's hand through mercury between six to eight inches deep is not easy, some kids found it too difficult to do.

I'd describe my hand as feeling very squeezed and it being forced upwards to the surface with considerable force. The experience was certainly unforgettable.

There were some safety protocols: good ventilation (to minimize Hg vapor) and afterwards hands had to be thoroughly scrubbed with soap and water.

Very true, I still have my XT and AT manuals and use them as illustrations of how documentation should be done. Back then, good documentation included both operational and service manuals including maintenance and circuit diagrams (and as you say IBM even included BIOS source code).

IBM documentation up until at least that point had always been suburb across its product range. For example I have the original copy of this IBM typewriter manual even though I've no longer the machine because the manual is so very excellent:

https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibmtypewriricTypewrite...

Manufacturers considered their products and manuals proprietary and protected them with patents and copyrights but they were not secret as is so often the case nowadays. Right to Repair wasn't even a concept back then, had anyone suggested such a notion they'd be laughed at, as it was automatically assumed. What counts as documentation nowadays is an utter disgrace.

IBM was not alone, companies such as HP, Tektronix, Racal (and many others) also produced truly excellent documentation—especially so their maintenance and repair manuals. Equipment performance could often be judged on the quality of the manuals alone.

Those paying equivalent prices or higher for a mid spec computer do get much higher quality documentation, such as high end Toughbooks.

First is strong and enforceable law that makes it unlawful to violate one's privacy. The second is to prosecute violators directly—that is, employees cannot hide behind corporate walls and allow the corporate entity to take the blame.

Irrespective of what employers demand, employees have a responsibility to obey the law. Risk of individual employees being chucked in the slammer would change corporate culture overnight.

Fining corporations alone is a waste of time, they see such fines as the cost of doing business, losing one's freedom for an individual is another matter altogether. Employees must be frightened of the consequences of violating the law or the practice will continue.

Just a couple of hours in a supervised exam room with only one's own brain for answers.

Surely this is obvious.

For example, I used to use GIMP and became quite expert at it and would often swap between it and Photoshop. That changed when GIMP's developers removed the Fade feature (similar functionality as in Photoshop). The result is that they turned a perfectly functional program into a clunky mess that was ergonomically horrible to use. Using it was now like going from a modern auto gearbox back to a clunky manual.

Their rationale was that fading was better done by layers and such. Technically that's likely so (depending on what one's doing) but for the rest of us who were happy with the Photoshop-like Fade GIMP suddenly became useless.

GIMP's developers are more interested in some strange notion of technical purity than providing good ergonomic software that ordinary users can use. In short, GIMP's just a play toy for them, benefitting the opensource world isn't on their horizon.

Sure, as GIMP's developers they have the right to fuck up their software, what they don't have the right to do is fuck up bona fide users who've spent a large investment in learning the product by essentially making the product unusable.

Keep away from GIMP, as others have said there are much better alternatives now available.

If you're willing to test, is that comment correct - do the blending modes for filters work for you like Fade use to? If not, I'd be interested in learning more about what is lacking in the current version. Thanks!