You can limit your battery charging, so it doesn’t charge to 100% by default. It’s better for your battery life, because Li+ batteries lose more capacity when they’re fully charged and discharged. So keeping them somewhere between the 30-85% range will dramatically extend the life of the battery.

Because there is very little overlap between “programmers who design the systems to be as efficient and reliable as possible” and “UX designers who consider elegance and ease of use, even if it means the install is a few extra MB in size”.

Tons of FOSS UIs tend to fall into one of three categories:

1. CLI. Maybe a third-party GUI exists.
2. Laughably horrendous monstrosities that make early 90’s websites look good
3. A direct ripoff of a paid software that has actual UX designers.

It’s because the people designing the FOSS aren’t UX designers, so they either make their best guess at it (the laughably horrendous choice) or they just copy whatever paid software they’re trying to replace.

Exactly. Well-functioning agencies can point to statistics over long periods of time… But politicians don’t like boring “funding education caused crime to drop by {x}% ten years later” statistics because they aren’t sympathetic nor inflammatory. They’re also hard to attribute directly to the agency in question, because there could always be confounding factors that have skewed the numbers.

It’s like the difference between fire code/building regulations, and a fire department. Builders and real estate developers hate fire code regulations, because it’s expensive to comply with. Fire code prevents a lot of fires from starting, (and ensures buildings can be quickly and safely evacuated if a fire does occur), but it is seen as an expense. It’s something the real estate developer is required to pay for, and they resent it. But everyone loves their local fire department. Fire department funding is seen as an investment. They’re big, flashy, loud, and everyone knows when they work. And notably, the fire department only has to respond when something isn’t prevented by the local fire codes.

If your electrical system quietly works for 50 years without causing any fires, (because of your local building codes requiring the wiring to be done in a way that avoids fires) your fire department never needs to respond to a fire in your building. So the building owners tend to go “why do we even need all these expensive fire regulations, if there hasn’t been a fire here in 50 years?” There isn’t any way to point at the fire code and go “look at all the fires that these regulations prevented in your building,” because the fires never existed in the first place.

In reality, the two (building codes and the fire department) are working in tandem to keep people safe. But one is much more visible, so it’s the one that people tend to focus on.

And importantly, the conservative mindset is entirely focused on direct cause and effect. They’ll never look at larger systems. Criminal does crime, police catch criminal. Cause, effect. Sex causes unwanted pregnancy, unwanted pregnancy leads to abortions. Cause, effect. My building is on fire, fire department responds. Cause, effect.

They’ll never go more than one step away from a given system, because that would remove the direct cause and effect that they’re focused on. They won’t look at why the building caught on fire, or we could prevent it from happening again in the future. Which is why we would see them push to deregulate building codes, while simultaneously pushing to fund the fire department. Because they’re focused on the direct cause and effect. And as far as they’re concerned, anything slipping past the existing regulations is enough to prove that the entire system is ineffective. Because again, they see the cause (whatever slipped through the regulation) so they know what the effect will be. Never mind the fact that the regulation prevented a whole lot of other things from happening. They see a building on fire, and go “well I guess the fire codes are a waste of money. Might as well fund the fire department instead.”

Even cooking the food isn’t enough in many circumstances, because some food poisoning isn’t caused directly by microbes, or is caused by microbes with spores that can survive being cooked. Microbes multiply in the bad food and produce toxins as a byproduct, or they use hardy spores to multiply instead of dividing. Even if you thoroughly cook the food to kill the microbes, that doesn’t eliminate the nasty toxins or spores they left behind.

Botulism is a good example. Botulism is caused by the botulinum bacteria, but the bacteria itself isn’t harmful. It’s only because the bacteria produces a potent neurotoxin that causes paralysis. Cooking food that was infected with botulinum isn’t enough to eliminate the risk of botulism, because heat doesn’t destroy the neurotoxin.

Or hell, there are microbes that can tolerate temperatures that most food safety standards would consider safe. For example, there is a microbe found in starchy foods that causes something called Fried Rice Syndrome. The spores aren’t killed at boiling temperatures, (which is the temperature you cook rice at), so they can multiply even after the rice is fully cooked. It’s called Fried Rice Syndrome because it’s most frequently seen when people order Chinese takeout for dinner, leave it sitting out on the counter, reheat it a day or two later, (thinking that the heat will kill any microbes and make it safe again), and then suddenly their liver is fucking shutting down. Because the spores weren’t killed when the food was cooked, had time to bloom while sitting out on the counter, and have now thoroughly infected the food.

That’s part of what makes food safety standards so important. They aren’t just focused on what is safe after cooking, because they can’t trust that all foods are cooked well enough to be safe.

The unlicensed suppressor will get you into just as much trouble as destroying the camera. Plus, suppressors don’t eliminate sound. It’s not like in the movies where you get a quiet “thwip” noise. The suppressor simply takes the gun from “almost guaranteed hearing damage without proper PPE” to “was that a firecracker? Or someone hammering a nail?” Sure, there can be quiet shots with the proper suppressor and ammo. But if you’re bootlegging it to avoid licensing requirements, you’re probably not using the optimal setup.

And this is why calling them “license plate readers” is hugely disingenuous, to the point of being straight up propaganda. The term vastly downplays what they can do. They don’t just scan license plates. They scan nearby devices’ Bluetooth and WiFi signals. They scan faces. They scan gait to determine specific limb proportions. They scan tattoos and birthmarks. They scan bumper stickers, dings/dents, etc… If you walk in front of a camera, it will use every trick in the book to try and figure out who you are specifically.

People also shouldn’t pair those masks with infrared-blocking sunglasses or goggles. Because the cameras can see in infrared, and will see straight through regular darkened lenses.

Only the most dastardly vandals would leave their phone (and all other Bluetooth devices) at home, plugged in charging, auto-lock fully disabled, on their home WiFi, with YouTube set to auto-play a playlist. That would create a watch history that the vandal could later use to prove that they were active at home at the time of the crime. Again, you definitely shouldn’t do that.

Yup, she literally just wants to be the next Lewinsky. She doesn’t actually care who the president is, as long as she gets to be on his knob. It’s the office she’s attracted to, not the specific person. Trump was simply the only president dumb enough to respond to her and grant her access.

It’s largely because the “tens of thousands” is usually a result of being uninsured. And if you’re uninsured, it’s usually because you’re unemployed. And lenders tend to get squirmy at the idea of giving a loan to anyone who hasn’t been fully employed since the day they were born.

There was actually a rule implemented by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau shortly after the pandemic, to prevent medical debt from impacting your credit history. Because lots of Americans were suddenly finding themselves in an awful job market with tons of medical debt from being sick. But last year, the fifth circuit court of appeals (the one that presides over Texas and Louisiana, and which is stacked with conservative judges as part of the Southern Strategy) voided the rule and allowed medical debt to appear on credit reports again. The ruling from the conservative court also prohibited the CFPB from implementing similar rules in the future.

It depends on the situation. Emergency rooms are required by law to stabilize emergency medical issues, regardless of the patient’s potential ability to pay. This is because there used to be a big issue with ERs dumping non-paying patients. If the hospital didn’t think a patient could pay, security would literally wheel them across the street, then just leave them there to figure their own shit out.

ERs run on triage, (and lots of people go to the ER for things which could be handled by an urgent care or family doctor instead), which means wait times entirely depend on your specific situation. Mildly upset stomach? You’ll probably be waiting at least a few hours, especially if it’s a busy night with lots of more urgent patients. Chest pains with a history of heart disease? You’ll have EKG leads stuck to you before you’re even finished telling the intake nurse what your issue is.

And the big key thing is that ERs are required to stabilize an emergency medical issue. They aren’t required to provide follow-up care, long-term support, etc… If you show up with a cut that needs stitches, they’ll stitch you up. But they’ll tell you to follow up with your regular doctor to make sure it’s healing properly, and to remove the stitches in a few weeks. Don’t have a regular doctor because you’re uninsured? Good luck, hope it doesn’t get infected, then maybe chew some Tylenol and remove the stitches in your bathroom.

The thing that really got her attention was me pointing out I can’t make a gallon of gas by myself, buy I can make a kilowatt of electricity with stuff I have lying around my house/yard.

Yeah, the Technology Connections video on solar panels vs ethanol production (growing corn to turn into ethanol to add to gasoline) was honestly a great tool for convincing people who simply never bothered to think critically about it. I don’t even need to get them to watch the video, I simply paraphrase some of the arguments he makes.

Kind of a “I’m going to shoot you in the head but I feel bad about it” sort of thing.

Not sure if you were making a reference, but one of Israel’s most distinctive propaganda tactics is literally called Shooting And Crying. Basically, get your former IDF soldiers to act all sad about the atrocities they had to commit, so the public focus stays on sympathy instead of the war crimes and genocides they committed. Nobody feels good about kicking a crying person while they’re down, so it’s a way to shunt blame and avoid being held accountable for your own actions.

Basically, divert the blame onto the shadowy and faceless “they”. They ordered me to do bad things. They put me in situations where I was forced to make impossible choices. They forced me to struggle to survive. They are the reason I had to do all of those awful things. Because “they” is a faceless amorphous entity that can’t be held accountable and can’t defend itself against allegations. Meaning “they” is easy to shift blame onto as long as I remain a sympathetic victim in the public’s mind. If I keep crying, I never actually have to apologize for my war crimes, because they should be the ones apologizing instead.

As someone who used to do projection mapping professionally: I agree

It’s notable among YouTubers, mostly because YouTubers quickly became the new emo bands. Know how it was sort of an open secret that all of the emo bands in the 00’s and 10’s were sleeping with children? And they all got canceled when the literal decades of allegations started coming to light?

Yeah, that’s YouTubers now. Especially YouTubers who make content that is popular with kids and tweens, like lots of the original Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite YouTubers. And Mark does well in that age demographic, so everyone was holding their breath to see if he’d ever be accused of anything. But for all intents and purposes, Mark seems to be YouTube’s version of Keanu Reeves; very down to earth, not full of himself, just wants to make content because he is driven to do so.

I actually hated the Hector plotline, but that’s just because I was expecting the angry and reluctant asskicker Hector from Curse of Darkness. Instead, we got an autistic-coded soft bean whose primary motivation for devil forging was “humans are mean and scary so I’ll just make my own friends instead.”

I liked the new Isaac, but he was certainly a different kind of villain. The original was engaging when you first met him… But the interest quickly waned when you realized he was just an absurdist psychopath who missed the violence, and there wasn’t really any deeper motivation behind his actions. He was pretty much exactly what you expected when you first met him. The new Isaac was more brooding, but that meant there was room for the writers to explore his motivations.

Also worth noting that Costco doesn’t require a membership for their fresh food, pharmacy, or (depending on where you live, and your local liquor laws) liquor store. You can just tell the greeter that you’re there for the pizza, and they’ll wave you through.

Their pharmacy is often one of the cheapest, and the pharmacy techs at my local Costco are all super helpful. Apparently working in pharmacies is pretty soul-sucking, but my local employees always seem to be in a good (and not just artificial “retail smile” good) mood.

And yes, the Costco brand vodka is every bit as good as Grey Goose.

Sort of. The program uses a specific part of the website for its auto update. And it also didn’t do any kinds of TLS (https) validation (which would prevent changing the destination). They also signed their installers (which would throw an error if the file had been modified) but the auto update didn’t check for a valid signature. So basically the two big things that a browser would do when you visit the site to download the installer, the auto updater just… Wasn’t doing.

So people who visited the site to manually download the installer were fine. They would have been alerted if the TLS cert was invalid or if the installer wasn’t properly signed. But if you used the auto updater, you wouldn’t get any of those errors and it would happily install the malware.

Rebooting your phone actually encrypts the device, and it will stay encrypted until the first unlock. But the side button simply disables biometrics. The phone is still unencrypted on the backend, so other workarounds (like some sort of exploit that allows them to bypass the PIN) will allow them to see the phone’s contents.

This is particularly important because cops can image a phone after they seize it, to try and hack later. If they manage to image the unencrypted phone, that whole process is much easier. But if the phone is encrypted when they image it, they’ll basically just get white noise.

They also weren’t doing any kind of SSL verification for the download request, nor were they doing any kind of hash verification or signing. The former would have prevented a redirect attack in the first place, and the latter would have prevented downloaded files from being modified or swapped out.