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Blu-rays are so done. Using high-speed lasers, researchers have created new data storage tech that could write and keep 500TB of data on a CD-sized glass disc. The 5D storage tech has higher writing speeds that might make it feasible to large-scale archiving projects. Each file uses three layers of nanoscale dots. The dots' size, orientation and position within the three standard dimensions make up the five "dimensions."

This kind of optical storage isn’t new, but there were problems in the past, particularly slow writing speeds. The new technique has sped this process up substantially, to around 230 KB per second. And, yes, that sounds pretty slow, but it could provide a way to backup data, essentially forever. It's been estimated the storage medium could withstand temperatures up to 1,000 degrees C and last 13.8 billion years at room temperature without degrading.

— Mat Smith

I wish anyone other than Kanye had made the Stem Player

Fun, but pushing the limits of the technology.

Terrence O'Brien/Engadget

So what is it? Well, it’s basically a tiny puck-shaped computer dedicated to remixing Kanye’s latest album. Using it, you can change the volume of different stems, or tracks, in the songs on Donda. For instance, if you’re wondering what “Off the Grid” would sound like as an instrumental, you can simply turn down the vocals. Terrence O’Brien begrudgingly tested it out.

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Beats Fit Pro review

All the perks of AirPods with a more comfortable design.

Billy Steele/Engadget

Thanks to some early hints in iOS 15.1, Beats’ latest earbuds are hardly a surprise. The company officially debuted its latest model: the $200 Beats Fit Pro. With a similar design to the Studio Buds that arrived earlier this year, this new pair offers active noise cancellation (ANC) alongside almost all of the features from Apple’s third-generation AirPods. Its shape seals off your ear, so ANC and transparency mode are available. Bass levels are ample without overpowering for a sound profile that’s noticeably better than Beats’ previous model. Our headphones expert Billy Steele seems to like them.

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Amazon begins its early Black Friday sales

Already?

Even though Black Friday is over three weeks away, some major retailers are getting in on the action early. Among them is Amazon, which has slashed prices on its own devices. One of the products you can save on at the minute is the Kindle, which is $40 off at $50. Kindle Kids, meanwhile, is on sale for $60 (usually $110).

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Watch the first 'The Book of Boba Fett' trailer

Star Wars' most famous bounty hunter is here.

Disney

Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) is now the crime lord of Tatooine. The trailer shows Fett and his partner, Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen, reprising her role from The Mandalorian), ruling the desert planet's underworld. The show is set to arrive at the end of December.

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The best laptops and tablets to give as gifts

And you don't have to spend a fortune to buy a good one.

If you’re thinking of getting a laptop or tablet as a gift, you’ve got a wealth of options. In the latest round of hardware from Intel, Apple, AMD and NVIDIA, all of our portable devices have gotten steadily faster and more efficient. We’ve got wildcards, too, like the cheapest iPad or gaming laptops now have almost all of the power of their desktop siblings. And with the arrival of Windows 11, it's a perfect time to give someone a nifty PC upgrade. Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar, our go-to laptop guy, lays out the best options.

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iPhones could soon detect car crashes and auto-dial 911

Apple is working on the same feature for its Watch, too.

Apple plans to unveil a feature called crash detection for both iPhones and Watches, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The feature would supposedly use sensors like the accelerometer built into Apple devices. Apple has reportedly been working on this for several years and testing it using real-world data.

Years ago, Google introduced a similar feature for the Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 via its Personal Safety app that can detect when you've been in a car crash and alert emergency services. Even GM has been offering it for years in its cars with OnStar and recently introduced crash detection to smartphones via the OnStar Guardian app.

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The biggest news stories you might have missed

Sega is making a 'Super Game' with Microsoft

Facebook is enabling a new generation of touchy-feely robots

What's in the Facebook Papers and what it means for the company

Google's Nest devices are on sale at Best Buy ahead of Black Friday

Google confirms Pixel 6 Pro display flickering issue will be fixed next month

Amazon's Project Kuiper will launch two prototype satellites by the end of 2022

Apple's new AirPods Pro with Magsafe are down to $190 at Best Buy

If you’re constantly battling for couch space, it may be time to get your dog their very own! The Cecil is a sofa-style bed from Sofa.com that features a removable, washable cover and a super durable beechwood frame. Available in a huge range of hardwearing fabric choices, this is one piece of furniture your dog may not want to share!

Take a look at all the options available for The Cecil at Sofa.com, where a portion of all profits from each bed sold goes to Dogs Trust, a UK-based nonprofit.

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© 2016 Dog Milk | Posted by capree in Beds + Furniture | Permalink | No comments

This is the cutest argument I’ve ever seen.

Second after second, minute after agonizing minute I waited, daring to hope that I would once more hear the crunch of your footsteps in the midday snow, and gaze again upon your warm face! This is the happiest moment of my life since yesterday!

Via Reddit.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Pups

Most teenagers deal with plenty of stress, from school to homework to their home life, but oftentimes teens don’t have to deal with unusual embarrassments like Rain has. This 16-year-old kid had to deal with his parents, Dale and Rochelle, waving as he left for school. Not wanting to endure the embarrassment any longer, Rain told his mother, “Don’t let dad go out there again.” Instead of listening to his son, however, Dale had something else in store.

The pictures below show Dale’s clever response to his son’s request.

(via wimp.com)

Most teenagers deal with plenty of stress, from school to homework to their home life, but oftentimes teens don’t have to deal with unusual embarrassments like Rain has. This 16-year-old kid had to deal with his parents, Dale and Rochelle, waving as he left for school. Not wanting to endure the embarrassment any longer, Rain told his mother, “Don’t let dad go out there again.” Instead of listening to his son, however, Dale had something else in store.

The pictures below show Dale’s clever response to his son’s request.

(via wimp.com)

Dr. Coogie writes in:

This morning I was on the computer, reading overnight notes on my patients. These were the nursing notes on one guy:

00:23  Patient yelled at nurse for pushing Dilaudid "too slow."

01:00  Patient running up & down hall yelling for more Dilaudid.

01:25  Patient called nurse an ugly bitch because she hadn't pushed Dilaudid faster.

02:00  Patient apologized for calling nurse an ugly bitch and asked for more Dilaudid. When informed he could only have it within the schedule set by pain management, he called her an ugly bitch again.

02:10  Patient ran to another nurse's station trying to get more Dilaudid.

02:30 Patient yelled at nurse for giving Dilaudid too slow, said "It's like giving me low octane fuel instead of high octane fuel."

02:40 On call physician notified of patient's behavior.


02:49 Patient seen by on-call physician, who informed the patient he would not be getting more pain medication than the pain specialists recommended.

03:40  Pt escorted back to room by security, who found him downstairs in ER demanding Dilaudid from staff there.



I absolutely LOVE this nurse.  I ran up and gave her a high-five before shift change.

California-based sculptor, Krisztianna, creates these eerily exquisite Day of the Dead inspired mounted female heads after coming home from her day job as an Art Director at an advertising agency. She calls the heads Muertitas, recalling the importance of the Day of the Dead culture to her and her family when she was growing up. Kristztianna says, “Birth, death, and rebirth are all fascinating concepts, and the the art of the sugar skull is a powerful visual that helps me express my joy of life and respect of finality.”

Driven by a fascination with storytelling, each Muertita represents a season captured by the crowning floral arrangements surrounding each face. The sculptures are made from a mix of styrofoam, paper maché, wire, clay, wood, acrylic, synthetic flowers, twine, pins, glue, sealant, screws, and as Kristzianna says, “lots of love.”

View more of Kristzianna’s work and information about the Muertitas at krisztianna.com.

(via Reddit)

Every ER has its call roster, that sacred list of oracles, laying out who we can call when our patients need some service that we cannot provide. If I need a cardiologist, or a neurosurgeon or even a dermatologist for some acute emergency condition, all I need to do is ring up the operator and tell them, “This is the ER doc, I need [insert name of specialty here].” And like magic, ten minutes later, I’m talking to the local expert in whatever the patient has.

Fun fact: in the last month, I have consulted both physiatry and rheumatology from the ER.

So I was a little surprised recently when I had a patient with a nine-millimeter proximal infected ureteral stone and I called the operator to get me urology, only to be told, “There’s nobody on call for urology.” Huh? I pulled the call roster from the wall and scanned it:

Urology - No Coverage
Opthalmology - No Coverage
ENT - No Coverage
Plastics - No Coverage

Wow. That’s a lot of specialties that we don’t have access to. For the record, we are not some little 40-bed rural hospital. We are a 100,000 visit facility that styles itself a “regional medical center” and accepts transfers from a large catchment area. And evidently there are multiple services we no longer offer, at least not in the evening and at other inconvenient times.

Why is this? Because these local specialists have decided, as individual groups, that ER work is taxing, difficult, low-paying and high-risk. (Tell me about it.) And one by one, they have decided to quit. They just said, “Nope, not covering the ER any more.” And our hospital is not the only one facing this problem. It is, in fact, probably the biggest challenge facing emergency medicine nationwide.

Now I get it. I die a little inside when I have to call in a board-certified urologist at 0300 to put in a foley on some poor 87-year-old in urinary retention, after all my nurses and I fail to get it in. I really hate inconveniencing them, especially when it’s something that I maybe should have been able to handle myself. But that’s the life of an ER doc and I am pretty inured to it by this time. (Maybe I’m all the way dead inside?)

Which is why I was kinda incensed by the recent post over at Kevin’s site: Should Doctors be paid overtime for taking call?

The cardiologist writing that post painted a beautiful picture of how much call sucks, and I get it. I know the absence of call played into my decision to pursue Emergency Medicine as a career. But the question posed, in the context of the current situation, feels almost like blackmail: “Pay me or I’m gone, too.”

The history here is that being on call has pretty much always been a service that is part of the practice of medicine. No matter your specialty, if your patient got sick at night, you would be called in to deal with it. As the number of patients without established doctors grew, most hospitals had “no-doc” coverage rotating for unassigned patients. When you are on call, you don’t get paid for phone calls, but you do get paid if you have to come in and see or admit a patient (presuming they have insurance). In the old days call may have been a practice-growing revenue stream, but for a long time now it’s been a poorly-reimbursed time suck for most specialists.

A growing trend we are seeing nationally is for specialists to demand — and receive — reimbursement from the hospital just to be on call. Our hospital being a skinflint catholic shop responsible steward of resources told the specialists to pound sand, which led to their absenting themselves from the medical staff and call roster. But many hospitals, especially those in highly competitive markets, have started to pony up and pay docs to take call.

The math of this is really challenging. Once you are paying one group to be on call, it’s hard to justify not paying all of them. The most demanding, in my understanding, have been ENT, Hand, Neurosurgery, Optho, Plastics and Urology. The going rate seems to be about $1,000 per night, though YMMV. Ironically, these are among the least-consulted and highest-paying surgical subspecialties, which further creates an unseemly impression of physician greed. But if you meet their extortionate demands, that winds up costing the hospital $6,000 a day, 365 days a year, or about $2.2 million annually, assuming all the other specialists don’t pile on with their own demands. That’s for nothing, mind you: for being “available” without doing any work. No calls? You still bank nearly as much as I did for a busy shift of seeing patients.

And there is a tendency to see the hospital as the font of endless dollars, but hospitals are in rough shape. Their typical profit margin is in the 2-4% range, frequently dropping to zero or negative when the economy dips a bit, and under relentless pressure from medicare and insurers to accept lower reimbursements. While it’s tempting to look at the gross revenue and assume that of that $50-100 million, "surely the hospital can afford to pay to keep me on call,” in reality that is not the case.

The grim reality is this: we pay more than any other society for health care (and get less for it). There is no new money coming into the system; quite the opposite. When specialists demand extra money for a service that they have previously provided not for free but based on only professional reimbursement, that’s going to pull resources from somewhere else. Maybe it’ll be fewer ER nurses. Maybe it’ll be fewer staffed inpatient beds. It’s going to come out of the budget somewhere.

Which is why I am kind of glad our facility held firm in the face of the extortion of the surgical specialists. These guys all make ~$300K a year. I feel that if I (also well paid) have to see folks at 3am as part of my gig, they should too, and not command some premium for the service.

Am I bitter? Yes, a little. But much of that comes from the fact that I see the consequences of the specialists who opt out of call. I feel like they are still really well paid and are shirking their duty to the community and to the patients. That patient with the kidney stone? I had to transfer him out of our gleaming $500 million hospital to the county facility where a resident could take care of him. His care suffered because of the greed and entitlement of the local specialists; this wasn’t the first or last time I will encounter this problem. I don’t like seeing patients used as pawns, and I get a little enraged when local doctors jeopardize patient care over economic concerns. As I see more and more physician practices being bought by hospitals, in part to secure their call networks, I see these guys digging their own graves.

So, no, I don't favor paying specialists for being on call. Suck it up, guys, and do the right thing for your patients. Structure your practices to make call suck a little less, maybe. I empathize. When I'm sitting in a mostly empty ER at 4AM, I'm not getting paid either. But overall, we both make enough to have pretty good lives and still not opt out of caring for those who are unlucky enough to get sick at inconvenient times.

As seen on Instagram.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Bunday Morning Comix

(251): I'm not sure New Orleans is real. Even the grocery stores sell vodka.

A video for the Norwegian Association Of The Blind makes the case that dogs, in fact, ARE the best choices for a seeing-eye companion. Gonna have to agree on that.

Via 22 Words.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: What Is This I Don't Even