Scanners like to do funny things

I know it’s not very relevant, but that reminds me of a talk held during a CCC (Chaos Computer Club) convention.

It’s in German, but I’ll try to summarize it: Someone noticed the numbers on a scanned page didn’t match the original, so they hired an expert to find out what happened. Turns out that the printer they were using had a feature that would detect symbols that looked the same and basically copypasted ome cutout of the symbol onto the other to save space on the final PDF. Due to the print/copy quality, this substitution sometimes malfunctioned, substituting similar looking symbols, such as 8 and 0.

Fun fact: those gas station pills also contain Viagra, to make sure they work.

So, just buy Viagra instead. You’ll be safer.

I disagree. The Imperium of Man is basically slowly inching towards its downfall with corpse starch (i.e. ground up corpses) being a common food for hive cities and the Inquisition being an ever looming threat for the populace. Not to mention that if you ever have have the misfortune of being near anything Chaos-y, you are often greeted by the Ordo Hereticus before your life is snuffed out. And considering that Belisarius Cawl frantically fell into prayer when confronted by a powerful AI core of old does show that the Adeptus Mechanicus are far from their power way back when, let alone any promise of immortality for the masses.

Psychic blanks have it even worse, as they might not even be connected to the warp, meaning they might just fade into nonexistence after their death. And overall, being a Chaos Worshipper isn’t that great as well, as most citicem are not treated well, not to mention that the ruinous powers will slowly drive you insane as well.

Last but not least is that the end of the whole 40K in-universe might be overall crawling to an end, as the Tyranids might be unstoppable by organic beings (apart from possibly the Orks), so it might be that the universe-wide apocalypse is slowly inching closer, leaving only the Necrons behind after the Tyranids seek out the next galaxy to devour.

I’d rather choose the old boring life here in this universe any day over the one from 40K.

Ist ja auch irgendwie klar, wenn du praktisch ein thematisches Einkaufszentrum mit Eintrittspreis machst. Wahrscheinlich hätte das ganze wesentlich besser funktioniert, wenn die für die Attraktionen separat verlangt hätten. Dann wäre es wahrscheinlich ein besser Hangout-Spot für SciFi Fans und ähnlichen geworden.

While I agree that dd can be easily used, it still is a dumb command (as in its only purpose is to write and nothing else), which can result in some issues regarding validating the integrity of the installation, at least for a beginner.

Furthermore, it can be disastrous if you don’t pay attention to what you type in, as it will happily overwrite anything you type in.

Also, I don’t think that dd alone should be used as a backup, as it might result in inconsistent backups. The best simple backup system, no matter whether you are a beginner or an expert, are snapshots, and maybe using dd to backup those to an external drive to be sure.

I agree that once learning how to use dd programs like BalenaEtcher sort of become more clutter than anything else.

Still, something I would always prefer over dd is Ventoy, simply because not only allows me to easily make an ISO bootable, but allow multiple ISOs to be easily bootable on the same USB stick. I hope it never becomes abandonware.

It has always been a common strategy. Aim for the extremes, and then move to your actual goal to seem reasonable and make the opposition think they won.

It seems interesting, but at the same time the demos all seem to feature presses/simple gestures like stroking an object. The article’s title however, at least in my opinion, implies something along the lines as we see in capacitive displays, mainly a touchpad.

Interesting tech nonetheless! Especially the plant example seems interesting, as it implies that interactions can also occur on less conventional surfaces.

While genetic research has huge potential in early diagnoses, and possible prevention, of illnesses caused by genetic defects, the statement that one can determine (general) intelligence of a potential offspring by checking embryos seems nonsensical from the get go.

First of all would be the definition of (general) intelligence. What exactly is it? Even when assuming that an IQ test cannot be cheated, the concept of reflecting one’s general problem solving skills by a number makes little sense. Can we really say that a savant that heavily struggles with everything but in one field has the same intelligence as someone that is completely standard in any way when both have the same IQ score? I would say not, as the former would need much more support than the latter.

Furthermore, often points concerning something related to eugenics ignore the nature vs nurture debate. How much of our skills are dependent on our environment? To what extent can we say that our minds have a limit on how intelligent we are? It’s hard to say, as there isn’t much research about it, and experiments on that topic are often inhumane, historically speaking. So we need to keep this lack of knowledge in mind when talking about topics like eugenics.

Ome thing I don’t quite like about kitchenowl is how the grocery list doesn’t really seem to allow entering amounts of stuff, which is especially annoying when you try to shop for ingredients for a recipe. Otherwise it’s a phenomenal app in terms of unifying cookbook recipes as well. The autosummaties also work quite well, it seems.

Alternatively you can also use aluminium. Snails have a natural allergy to aluminium due to a reaction happening between the metal and their slime. Therefore they will avoid aluminium at all cost.

As well as the proportions being flipped, resulting in the now iconic look. IIRC it was supposed to be a pig initially.

Both are authentic, with the vinegar variant being the Bavarian/Swabian variant. Not sure where the mayo variant came from however.

He was Austrian, BTW.

I should have elaborated on it a bit more, my bad.

While it’s true that DDoS is more of an active technology rather than a CYA thing. It does however also act as insurance when it comes to the “blame game”: if your site goes down it’s not your fault but the provider’s fault, meaning you might be able to recoup lost profits through a lawsuit.

Of course the only way to avoid this for the provider is to provide better and stronger systems, which normally would grow homogenous through more customers and/or growing fees for all customers, which would pay for better capacity and stronger protection by itself.

However here we have a client that is a high value target that others might want to take down at all costs. Even if they didn’t sue, a strong enough attack might, alongside naturally expected DDoS on other clients, not only take down this customer’s server, but others as well, which really isn’t something you want, for the reasons stated above. And rapidly increasing security could be not worth it, as it could devolve into an arms race by proxy with a high risk of the customer leaving if you raise their fees to much, leaving you with a system which’s maintenance will now dig into your profits due to a lost big income stream, or make other customers leave if you raise the general fee.

I don’t want TP convince anyone they are not like jerks, but rather highlight why a corporation would do something like this to a (most likely) lucrative client.

I think the main problem is that people try to shoehorn OOP mechanics into everything, leading to code that is hard to understand. Not to mention that this is basically encouraged by companies as well, to look “futuristic”. A great example of this approach going horribly wrong is FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition.

OOP can be great to abstract complex concepts into a more human readable format, especially when it comes to states. But overall it should be used rarely, as it creates a giant code overhead, and only as far as actually needed.

And insurances provide monetary compensation until you become a common liability, too high to be covered by any sort of fee. DDOS protection is just the same. It’s only feasible if it happens rarely, like they usually happen. However if it’s a common occurrence it will just eat up the profits made by the fees and then some, which just is stupid to do in any case.

Ignoring the shady practices of Brave Software, this doesn’t really solve the problem. Sites will still use way too much scripting to be flashy, and that will continue to be a problem for everyone, because some of these sites willbe needed for some and will require all scripts to function properly.

What might help more in the long run is complain to the site owners that their site, despite you having an up to date browser, does not work on your phone. Sure, some of those complaints will fall on deaf ears, but even some changing means progress.