Rona catches Thailand's king, queen
Quiet down kids, ple-e-ese!Â
The question remains unanswered.
Is Sunday the first or the last day of the week?
Either way, this is your Sunday, Number 143 under Thailand's junta lockdown.
THAILAND WEATHER CHILLY
The overnight in eastern Nong Bon was [b-r-r-r] 21, wind chill 17 or 63 degrees in the American language.
And after sunrise the heat began. And made this fellow and many others happy.
10 p.m. Thailand time - All Channels
Croatia defeated Morocco 2-1 to claim third place in the World Cup tournament.
Thailand's king, queen test positive for Covid.
The Royal Household Bureau reports their symptoms are mild.
 The couple, masked and fully vaccinated were last seen in public on Friday when they visited Chulalongkorn Hospital to check on the king's daughter, Princess Paht.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2462672/
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration better known as City Hall edged towards Truth yesterday.
The city invited well-wishers to write get-well messages for Her Royal Highness 'Princess Paht' Â at its two headquarters and 50 district offices.
Prayut [below] and professor-wife were the first two to respond.
After them came the elected governor of Bangkok.
And all the way from Dubai, Thaksin weighed in with his sympathy.
https://www.matichon.co.th/heading-news/news_3730249
The tourists criminals are coming
Thailand is getting thousands of foreign tourists every day -- exactly as hoped.
And mixed in with the crowds are dozens, or maybe more of scam artists, thieves and worse.
The Bangkok Post explains in the fewest words: Scam artists and criminals are back on the prowl.
Bangkok Post: https://t.ly/a-c1
U.S.A. senate bans Chinese Communist Party's TikTok on all U.S.A. government devises.
However, the new law permits TikTok to legally continue warping the minds of America's girls.
https://nypost.com/2022/12/15/senate-passes-bill-that-bans-tiktok-on-government-devices/
BUY AMERICAN
 Thailand just wants one. With an option to buy five more.
Germany Buys 5th-generation 35 F-35 Lightning II Stealth Fighter Jets.
https://warriormaven.com/air/germany-buys-35-f-35-stealth-fighter-jets
That'll be 10 billion euro, Germany.
Already on video, by Turkey's Anadolu
Activists protest Germany's plan to purchase F-35 fighter jets
 Demonstrators gather outside German parliament, warn of nuclear escalation
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/vg/video-gallery/activists-protest-germany-s-plan-to-purchase-f-35-fighter-jets/0
ICYMI
Thailand's English language proficiency worse than almost anywhere in the world
is even worse than poor countries like Myanmar and Cambodia
That was confirmed this week by the annual English Proficiency Index, which came out at the end of November, and ranked Thailand as 100 out of 112 countries.
https://tinyurl.com/dbvuvndu
SUNDAY READ
Twitter Files Part Six
 The FBI's ties to the tech giant: 'AS IF IT WERE A SUBSIDIARY.'
Yes, well, "F.B.I."
https://instapundit.com/559424/
A readable explanation of Weird Donald's last few days is by (of all outlets) Decrypto Media. (Huh?)
Trump's NFT Rollout Went Exactly as You'd Expect
Crypto analyst Eric Wall, who bought a card, eventually appeared to figure it out after a period of bemused wrangling, tweeting that to access the wallet he counterintuitively needed to download a .txt file containing the correct key from deep inside some kind of Web3 software development kit browser extension.
But it didn't end there. There are also a number of scammy "terms and conditions". And clarifications.
https://tinyurl.com/5h5bcfkc
https://decrypt.co/117431/trumps-nft-rollout-went-exactly-as-youd-expect
Just by coincidence and totally unrelated - just a coincidence, right? The top crypto story of the week:
Bitcoin and Ethereum Fall With Stocks, Dogecoin Dives 20 of crypto's top coins spiked earlier this week, then plummeted off interest rate updates from the Fed. DOGE got hit the hardest.
https://decrypt.co/117485/this-week-in-coins-bitcoin-and-ethereum-fall-with-stocks-dogecoin-dives-20
Today in History
EXACTLY 249 years ago [1773], anti-British colonists dressed up as Mohawk Indians and tossed 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company into Boston Harbour.
It was a protest against the Limeys' tea tax but the Boston Tea Party has turned out to be much more iconic than that.
And 391 years ago today, Vesuvius unleashed its volcano and killed more than 3,000 residents of Naples.
On this day in 1903 near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful sustained flight of an airplane.
1865: On this day, the United States officially ended slavery and added the 13th Amendment to the American Constitution.
TECHNOLOGY
What do you call 1000 dead cryptocurrencies at the bottom of the sea? A good start. (Tom's Hardware)
After everyone and their cat jumped on the bandwagon in 2021, 2022 saw a net reduction in the number of cryptocurrencies plaguing the world. Not a dramatic reduction - a little under 10% --- but we'll take what we can get.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cryptocurrency-token-downturn-2022
More stealthily than a cat burglar, Google has ended support for Windows 7 and 8.1 users for its Google Chrome web browser. siliconrepublic.com)
The plan to stop supporting these ageing systems is "tentatively scheduled" for February 7, 2023, the expected release date of Chrome110.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/google-chrome-support-windows
The U.S.A. Upper House aka Senate passed a bilk to ban the Communist Party of China's TikTok software on all U.S. government-issued devices -- phones, tablets, you name it.
The bill specifically allows the CCP to continue the attack on American girls.
FBI chief Chris Wray: The CCP has broad access to TikTok, allowing them "to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations."
Trump was right. The CCP "doesn't share our values."
and more, at
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/senate-passes-bill-ban-tiktok-government-devices
But there are scads of people demanding we FOLLOW THE SCIENCE and here's what The Gang of 97 says:
 Bills to totally ban TikTok in the U.S.A. might do more harm than good
 Recently proposed policies might not solve bigger security concerns
 ... Skeptics aren't convinced by TikTok's process for handling users' personal information.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/bills-tiktok-ban/
TECHNOLOGY
Next-generation graphics cards could get more expensive thanks to the death of SRAM. (Tom's Hardware)
I think Tom's means even more expensive or EVER more expensive because the cheapest card from the current generation has a list price of US$900.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/no-sram-scaling-implies-on-more-expensive-cpus-and-gpus
Ronnie is Ash!
An all-new Pokémon series has been announced for early 2023.
Join 2 new characters and 3 Paldea starter Pokémon as they adventure through the Pokémon world!
Ronnie is Ash. Who knew?
A Cambridge PhD student has solved a Sanskrit grammar problem that has puzzled experts for 2500 years. (BBC)
Which if you read the article makes the experts look kind of dumb.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg3gw9v7jnvo
ChatGPT expects to make $1 billion in revenue by 2024. (Reuters)
I didn't realise there was that much demand for terrible, horribly written, back-page articles for The New York Times.
https://www.reuters.com/business/chatgpt-owner-openai-projects-1-billion-revenue-by-2024-sources-2022-12-15/
IBM has announced a 24 core Power CPU aimed directly at Oracle's pricing model. (The Register)
Power-based servers tend to have fewer cores per CPU but lots of separate CPUs, which is great until you realise that Oracle prices per CPU rather than per core. This version has up to three times the cores per CPU - and the only reason for it to exist is clearly to run Oracle SE2 cheaply.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/15/new_ibm_power_cpu_for_oracle/
NOTE About That
If you go to more than two CPUs - regardless of the number of cores - the Oracle license cost per CPU almost triples, so running six, eight-core CPUs instead of two 24-core CPUs would run about eight times as much in licensing fees - with a support contract, about half a million U.S.A dollars per year per server - 17.5 million baht in real money.
Question asked
Oh look! A new word! Dragphobia. Is that like Coulrophobia?
Why is GLAAD giving the aura of a penumbra of an emanation of appearing to be pro-grooming?
https://instapundit.com/559328/
From the Great James Lileks:
http://lileks.com/bleats/archive/22/1222/25.html
The Secretary of State of the USA Antony "Don Tony" Blinken got through an entire 164-word statement about Thailand without once mentioning that in his opinion, Thailand is a democratic democracy.
 We are honored [U.S. spelling] to have you as a friend, partner, and ally.
https://th.usembassy.gov/statement-by-secretary-antony-blinken-thailand-national-day-2022/
'Meksen has faster hands than a Filipina pickpocket'
If you haven't seen Thai fighter Stamp Fairtex fight, then there is a smallish piece of your life that's missing.
The January 24 fight against dominating French-Alkgerian world champ striker Meksen, out of Phuket, will probably be the best and most-noted of the year.
Short, sweet and powerful example of Meksen's ability inside the octagon at
Tickets for the Impact Muang Thai bouts are on sale -- 150 to 12,000 baht. No one under 12 allowed. Try
https://www.thaiticketmajor.com/sport/one-fight-night-6.html
George Orwell predicts tonight's World Cup
