That’s virtua, not virtual.

I really dislike using the term “virtual” for online meetings. It implies the meeting isn’t real, or isn’t authentic, or like it’s imaginary. The meeting simply uses video cameras instead of a conference room.

Nijjar was wanted

As in, was a suspect? I assume he was never tried?

The US didn’t inform or take permission from Pakistan to send in SEAL Team 6 to kill him.

Yes, the US gets to throw their weight around because nobody wants to go to war against them. It doesn’t make it right.

I love that article. There are also ones about dates and times. The more you deal with dates and times, the more you realize how messed up they are.

It was Internet Explorer. But, what was probably confusing about it was that anything that required Internet access would start up the program that dialed the modem and connected to the Internet. So, clicking on the icon would eventually launch the browser, but first it would launch the dial-up program, which would take about 30s to connect.

As an aside, it really grates to see how Microsoft called their browser “The Internet”. And that’s the least dastardly thing they did that let them use their monopoly on operating systems to destroy Netscape.

Was it Jen? She was entrusted to take care of the Internet by Roy and Moss, and she did a piss-poor job of it.

My favourite story about aircraft design about some of the design mistakes on the F-16 fighter.

The F-16 was the first fly-by-wire fighter. They didn’t have much experience with it, and tried out some new things. One was that instead of having a stick between the legs of the pilot they used a side stick. And, since everything was fly-by-wire they didn’t need the stick to mechanically move. They decided they’d just use a solid stick with pressure transducers, since it was simpler and more reliable than a stick that moved.

The trouble was that the pilots couldn’t estimate how much pressure they were using. This led to the pilots over-rotating on take-off (pulling back too hard). Even funnier was that at early airshows, when the pilots were doing a high-speed roll, you could see the control surfaces twitching with the heartbeat of the pilots as they shoved the stick as hard as they could to get maximum roll.

That led to them adding a small amount of give to the stick, essentially giving the pilots feedback on how hard they were pushing the control surfaces.

Another more subtle issue with the design was that originally the stick was set up for forward, back, left and right aligned with the axes of the plane itself. But, they discovered that when pilots pulled back on the stick, they were pulling slightly towards themselves, causing the plane to also roll. So, they realigned it so that “pulling back” is slightly pulling towards the pilot’s body, rather than directly along the forward / backward axis of the plane.

There was a listener question on a science podcast recently that asked about how the temperature changed on the moon during the recent solar eclipse.

They almost got what a solar eclipse was, but not quite. During a solar eclipse, the moon gets between the sun and the earth, blocking the light getting to the earth and casting a shadow on the earth. The side of the moon facing the earth is completely dark because the thing that normally lights it up (the sun) is completely behind it. But, the back side of the moon is getting full sun and just as hot as normal.

I think part of the problem with understanding all this is that the sun is just so insanely bright. Like, it’s a bit hard to believe that the full moon is so bright just because it’s reflecting sunlight. It’s also amazing that the “wandering stars” (planets) look like stars when they’re just blobs of rocks or gases that are reflecting the insanely bright light of the sun.

It’s amazing if you think about it. Light comes out of the sun in every possible direction. A tiny fraction of it hits the surface of Mercury, and only some of that light is reflected back out. The light reflected from Mercury goes in almost every direction. A tiny fraction of it hits the earth. But, even with that indirect bounce, it’s bright enough to see with the naked eye.

How do you know? Apparently you’re not capable of reading the label!

So, despite the ingredients being listed, you’re still confused? Do you have a brain injury?

Barely any information on it? My guy, are you blind?

in the EU with “honey blend” you’d expect a blend of different types of honey

And, in the US you’d expect it to be something blended with honey. Different expectations, neither one of those expectations is unreasonable.

as it wouldn’t be allowed to be call honey unless it was pure honey

Right… and it’s not called honey, it’s called “Texas Honey Blend”. If it were honey it would be called “Honey”.

Having to decipher “made with real honey” to mean “its not real honey” is just fucking odd.

You don’t have to “decipher” that, you just have to look at the fact it’s a blend, not honey. The “made with real honey” is just additional confirmation that yes, it’s not pure honey.

Flip it over and look at the ingredients and its just a list? Why no percentages?

Because different food rules? Why percentages?

Gourmet stuff comes in all sorts of weird packaging

Gourmet stuff doesn’t come in bear-shaped plastic bottles.

No rules for food labelling is wild.

It would be, if it were the case. But, that’s definitely not the case here. It’s just different from the rules you’re used to. The core of your comment seems to be “this is different than what I’m used to, and I’m shocked!”

It isn’t that bad.

It says “made with real honey”, which is a pretty big clue that it isn’t real honey.

It says “texas honey blend”, again indicating that it’s honey blended with something.

And, as for “gourmet” it’s in a plastic bear-shaped container, it’s not a luxury item.

If people want to buy stuff made from high fructose corn syrup, shouldn’t they be allowed to do it? How much more obvious does it need to be that this isn’t pure honey?

I don’t know of any company that just runs mail servers. If you’re running your own mail server, you’re likely doing it on a small virtual instance. Adding web to that is easy. If you want a web frontend for email, there are plenty of options, although personally I just use IMAP.

I run my own mail server. It’s a pain in the ass and I don’t recommend it. But, trust isn’t really the issue, and the only certs I use are from Let’s Encrypt.

Yeah, but it’s bullshit and I’m calling it out, and I’ll continue to call it out, so stop it.

807 is too big for a typical auditorium.

Imagine an auditorium filled to capacity with people standing at the back and crouching in the rows. At the front of the auditorium a Microsoft spokesman is saying “Ok partners, here’s the confidential data. Make sure nobody shares it beyond this room. Ok, so David wrote a letter to his mother Nancy on March 2nd, which included the keywords ‘prostate’, ‘cancer’ and ‘diagnosis’. If you’d like to use those words to show David some ads, go right ahead – but make sure nobody beyond this room knows this confidential information. Next up is Martha…”

800ish entities is not “partners”.

“Partners” are people you could invite to site around a conference table with you. For it to be a partnership, you need to be able to have a meaningful discussion among all the different partners. 800ish is even too big for an auditorium where you’re presenting to all your “partners”. 800ish is a small arena.

Those aren’t partners.

That would be great, as long as “pay monthly” was guaranteed surveillance-free.

Nobody should be buying single use bottles anyway if there are alternatives available.

Are there alternatives available for carbonated beverages? I guess we could go back to glass bottles. But, they’re effectively single-use too.

We’ve come a long way, so that it’s normal to take a thermos to a coffee shop and have them put a tea or a coffee in it. I don’t know of any similar scheme for carbonated beverages. I’d love it if it existed, especially if you could keep your soda-pop cold for hours.