Ken C. Pohlmann

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Signals
How Much Is Music Worth?
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Oct 18, 2021
Money, get away
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay
Money, it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream
Think I'll buy me a football team

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Signals
How Napoleon Bonaparte Invented the Compact Disc
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Apr 12, 2021
You can admit it. You are intrigued. Of course, it can’t be true. But is it purely nonsensical? Is it a “pigs can fly” kind of declaration? Or is there someway, somehow, a grain of truth in it? And if that’s the case, how on earth could you conceivably connect the dots between the Little Corporal and the Compact Disc?
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Signals
How to Make Your Own LPs
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Feb 20, 2018
If you're like me, you wake up every morning from a wonderful dream where you own a LP replication plant. In your factory, plastic goes in, and plastic goes out. Except that the outgoing plastic has magical shapes pressed into it. Now my dream, and yours, can come true.

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Signals
How to Stop Alexa from Ratting You Out to the FBI
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Jun 05, 2018
You probably saw the news story last week. Unbeknownst to them, a couple's Alexa Echo recorded their conversation, then emailed it to someone in their contact list. Creepy. Here's how you can determine what Alexa has recorded in your house, and edit the archive and delete files.

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I Fought the Mall and the Mall Won
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Nov 27, 2018
Black Friday has a lot in common with circumcision. In both cases, they generally occur whether you like it or not. And I am not a fan of things in which I have no say-so. Both of them also inflict sensations ranging from mild discomfort to outright pain. Although, women don't seem to mind it as much as men. One key difference between Black Friday and circumcision is that after Black Friday, at least you have a new TV.

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CES 2014
iLuv Rocks the SyrenPro, Wavecast, and Rollick Portable Speakers
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Jan 08, 2014
iLuv offers a plethora of portable wireless Bluetooth speakers. Not surprisingly, at CES, they expanded their lineup in this popular category. In particular, three portable speakers caught my eye: the SyrenPro, Wavecast, and Rollick.

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Signals
In a Black Hole They Can Hear You Scream
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Jun 05, 2023
So, I have this recurring nightmare where the spaceship's crew pushes me out of the airlock and, screaming, I am inexorably pulled into a black hole where I am transported into a new dimension where space and time cease to exist.

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Signals
In Cyber We Trust
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Oct 09, 2023
So, it's come to this. New TVs will have a sticker to verify that they can't be hacked. Or, maybe they can be hacked. We're not sure. The logo in the illustration isn't some goofy thing I cooked up to punk you. It is a genuine logo, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government. So you know it's a good thing.

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Signals
In Real Life (IRL)
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Mar 12, 2019
Shakespeare famously observed, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” But if Shakespeare could read modern texts, peppered with AFAIK, IMHO, LOL, OMG, ROTLF and WTF (which is NSFW), I’m not sure he would make the same assertion. And don’t get me started about emoticons.
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Signals
In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  May 09, 2017
Saturn's rings are pretty cool. They are clearly visible with even a modest telescope. Going where no spacecraft has ever gone before, the Cassini spacecraft is diving through the rings and into the gap between the rings and the planet's surface. Enterprising scientists at JPL have created a file that lets you hear the "sound" of particles impacting the spacecraft as it passes through the rings and into the gap.

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