I did the same, pressed on it for the text, got sent straight to the video, and swore under my breath in admiration. In the current climate what he’s done isn’t risk free, despite the fact it a) should be, and b) shouldn’t be needed in the first place.

Nothing but respect for people calling out the crimes of thus administration, and when it’s someone with an unrelated platform and an audience, so much the better.

I’m not a truck-nut-ologist, so I don’t have much to go on, and it’s frustratingly difficult finding accurate dimensions for them online. I have found this delightfulawful pair (I had to look at them, so so do you).

The entire structure is approximately 40cm tall, and I measure that as 660 pixels, it look like the main ‘bulk’ of it is in the lower 330 pixels, or 20cm, and about 375 pixels wide, or around 23cm. If we assume that section is half as thick as it is wide, and approximate it as a cuboid (I’ve rounded the numbers, and unrounded the shape), that gives a volume of 5290cm^3, which is disturbingly close to the value you calculated as necessary. Allowing for the top section, I think they might just do the job.

Obviously those numbers are very approximate, but I’ve started at that model enough that it’ll haunt my dreams, and ‘Ten million aircraft carriers’ is an approximate enough description, that I think we can say it’s within reasonable tolerances of being accurate.

Thanks, this is a really handy tool. Kniwing the information was being withheld ‘just because’ was really rankling me. Now, could you just add a quick feature to read their minds and tell me why they down voted me? ;)

From the article, that should be 10^17 kg/m^3, not 1017kg/m^3. No, I haven’t checked the conversion to aircraft carriers per trucknut, I’m going to take the original author’s word for it.

I like this plan. The first half made me hate it, which is a pretty good sign it’s hitting the right key points of environmental destruction, profiteering, crypto, bad crypto and buying influence, but then brings it back right at the end.

You’re going to have to be careful not to touch anything at the dinner before shaking hands, you wouldn’t want to give the game away too early.

How can someone write a letter that does not contain the addressee?

It’s easier to bulk send them this way. No need for a mail merge, just spam it out to everyone on your list. Efficiency!

This is not the happy timeline.

Whist I would very much like a news source that just presents the unbiased facts, no such thing can exist as all of what we consume is mediated by humans, from story selection, to information gathering, to how that information is filtered, presented and finally how the reader processes it.

Even choosing to use the word ‘bribe’, the phrase ‘buying goodwill’ or just calling them ‘donations’ would be an editorial decision that would influence the reader. Depending on the reader each of those phrases would inspire different opinions. A reader who is more disposed to being positive about this administration may find ‘buying goodwill’ to be just about tolerable journalism, ‘bribe’ to be outragious slander and ‘donation’ perfectly reasonable and accurate. A more left reader would probably consider ‘donation’ to be unacceptable whitewashing, ‘buying goodwill’ to be euphamistic, and ‘bribe’ to fit their world view best. Therevis no phrasing that would avoid an emotional response, so either this can’t be reported, or the publication chooses to do so in line with their own biases.

There is also a constant tension between presenting just the bare facts of the current matter, and contextualising them for the reader, who may not be fully versed on the matter. How that contextualisation is done is also going to affect the reader’s perception.

There is, however, a very large difference between the presenting the information with some bias, and “a biased news source that tells you what you want to hear whether all the facts are there or not.” I would agree with you that the latter is a “rag”, though I would classify it that way for the willingness to draw a conclusion unsupported by fact, rather than necesarily for having bias. All sources, even your own senses, will give you a biased view of events. The critical thing is to acknowledge that and understand the bias you’re being presented with. Trying to make sure you consume sources with a variety of different biases is a good way to try to balance that, though I personally find it hard to stomach anything further than moderately right of my personal views anymore.

Like the error you used to get at boot on AT vintage machines “Keyboard not detected. Press F1 to continue”.

To be fair, back in the day I had plenty of times where Linux refused to recognise the harddrive it had just booted from. Computers are wierd, and their software is built by humans.

I feel that, but in the opposite direction. I’m used to Linux, so the weirdness of Windows is alien to me, and every time I have to try to fix a family member’s computer (“hey you’re good with computers, aren’t you? Could you take a look at a problem I’m having?” I’m a sap like that) I feel absolutely baffled as to what’s broken and how it’s even possible for that to break in the furst place.

I think your points are well made, but there is another possibility to consider, and that is deliberate language choice for effect. They certainly could have simply called it a bribe, and that would be true enough, but in my opinion lacks ‘punch’. We’re so used to that sort of behaviour that many people would pretty much just go “yup, that’s expected” and move on. By deliberately, and somewhat archly, using understatement, the reader goes “Buying good will?? That’s not buying good will, that’s bribery! Buying good will shouldn’t even be a thing!” thus neatly bypassing the first level of cynasism that a simpler statement would run in to.

I’m not going to say that us definitely what happened here, but looks quite deliberate to me. Language can be weaponised in many different ways, for different causes.

For proper user authentication the model always used to be that the user should present three things: something they were (a username for instance), something they knew (a password), and something they had (a OTP from a device, or a biometric). The idea being that, even if a remote attacker got hold of the username and password, they didn’t have the final factor, and if the user was incapacitated or otherwise forced to provide a biometric, they wouldn’t necessarily supply the password (or on really secure systems, they’d use a ‘panic’ password that would appear to work, but hide sensitive information and send an alert to the security team).

Now we seem to be rushing into a system where you have only two factors, the thing you have, namely your phone, and the other thing you have, namely a fingerprint or your face. Notably you can’t really change either of those, especially your biometrics, so they’re entirely useless for security. Instead your phone should require a biometric and a password to unlock. The biometric being ‘the thing you are’, the phone ‘the thing you have’, and the password being 'the thing you know.

So, yes, I’m entirely against fingerprint unlocking.

Raspberry PIs are great little machines, but they’re ARM based rather than x86, which can potentially limit your software choices. Once you’ve bought the PI, a decent PSU, some storage, and maybe a case the cost can also start to go up quite quickly. Another option you might want to look at is something like a refurbishd EliteDesk. You can get a decent spec for a similar price to a PI and those extras, it’s x86, they run quietly, and they’re upgradable if you need more horsepower in future.

Whoops, sounds like somebody forgot to pay their bribepolitical donation.

I’m sure you’ve already considered it, but from that description it sounds very much like make. That compares the input files’ timestamps to the output files’ timestamps, so it might be different to your plan though.

That’s really excellent work, but I read the title as ‘Carolina Reaper Center Reaches Patient #27,000!’ and got quite worried.

Every time I come across this I end up almost crying from laughter, the pacing and humour are just about perfect.

The hind legs also have the joints in proportionally the wrong places compared to the skeleton. I reckon they gave it to the intern to reconstruct, and they just hastily banged it out last thing on a Friday afternoon after a liquid lunch.

Modem noises intensify.

You’ll have permission if you go $HOME.

I’m assuming you have a lovely, caring partner there otherwise that sounds wrong.

Cat: Wow this snow is cold! Ahhhh, this is SO COLD!!!

It does have that slightly preoccupied look that suggests it wishes it had more insulation in certain areas, but it’s determined to pose for the photo anyway.