Overzeetop

It’s magic and we don’t know how it works*.

* as of my latest coursework in Biology; IDK if anything has been discovered since the 80s.

In some industries, absolutely. In others, there are benefits to staying or there really is 10 years of growth potential.

can’t fuck off from our responsibilities when we can’t be arsed with minimal consequences

This might be the most (long term) depressing thing about adult life. Having a class for a semester or a year means that the mental overhead of a class builds up but, when you’re done, that demand is gone and you start over without baggage next term. Jobs build up that overhead, but it just never lets off, ever, unless you quit to take a new job. Switching (professional) jobs is similar to a semester/year end and - esp if you can swing a couple weeks in between - gives you that re-zeroing and that little honeymoon period at the beginning like the start of a class when you don’t have homework yet. The difference is that the switch often occurs on a scale of a decade, not a year.

Having lived through it, it really does feel weird though. I (mostly) missed the gasoline crisis (I was a child). It’s hard to imagine gas pumps all over the US being out of gasoline, and mile long lines waiting for a tanker to show up so you could get gas. It’s pretty much impossible to imagine staple rationing (butter, sugar) during wartime in modern US. I certainly didn’t live through it - having the TP aisle empty during covid doesn’t quite match that. And the actual (1930s) depression. I suspect those folks would consider the crashes of 87 99 01 08 and 20 minor annoyances - a bad Tuesday - compared to what they lived through.

Think of this, though - you have Covid. Okay we have Covid. That’s a world-wide event with life-changing implications for so many. And, we can hope, we don’t get another pandemic event of that magnitude in our lifetimes. And a decade or two from now you can lord it over some kid who was born in the last 3 years and just “doesn’t understand” that “closing school for three days because the flu is so bad” is not a pandemic, and that they just don’t understand what a game changer Covid was. ;-)

It took me searching the blacks to notice. Where I play there’s usually enough glare I wouldn’t get good blacks if you swapped the LC layer for vantablack.

Yeah, that’s just a shitty (or out of spec) time base. My Seiko watch gains 1-2 minutes a day, but it’s completely mechanical so it depends on temperature and winding/mechanism tension for accuracy. There are electronic timing circuits which are resistance and capacity based, and as the resistance and capacitance of the system drift (time/age and temperature) they also drift. A crystal, made to vibrate at high frequency (piezoelectrically, iirc), will provide a much more stable time base and be accurate to seconds over many days’ time.

Interesting aside - time keeping is how ships at sea used to determine where they were in the ocean. Latitude can be found from the stars, but longitude can’t so it needs a time reference standard. The book, Longitude tells the story of the search and the competing methods for determining location prior to the invention of crystal/electronic time bases and modern GPS. I won’t say that the storytelling is particularly gripping, but the actual path to discovery is fascinating.

That’s probably just fluctuations in the line frequency and the method for keeping time varying between the two (one might use a crystal that drifts). Being on the “wrong” frequency will have it shift by hours every day. I had a (US/60Hz origin) microwave in my apartment in Bonaire (50Hz) last year that never seemed to have the right time, and when I did the math I realized it was the frequency - it was behind by ~4 extra hours every day (50/60 x 24 hours).

Funny effect, though - many cheap electronics (think coffee makers and microwave ovens) use the line frequency as a time base. Taking a 60Hz or 50Hz appliance and plugging it into the other causes the clock to be off.

Its a joke - yes.

Though, realistically, an empathy test would probably filter out a large portion of the haters. It’s harder to hate when you internalize the condition of others.

Sad, but true. About the only way to control it would be to require online comments to be directly identifiable to the person. Even Republicans appear to be embarrassed - and attempt to expunge their vitriol - when their homophobic, misogynistic, and racist comments and activities online are publicized. And even that wouldn’t eliminate it, it would just push it back underground to further fester.

And we know how strict these big companies are about voluntary compliance to the GDPR. ;-) I’m glad at least someone is putting in rules against this fuckery but, sadly, once that data is sold to the first outside vendor (Cambridge Analytica, Palantir, etc.) it’s out there and lives on the internet forever, even if the big boys are brought to heel by the EU.

If you’ve ever had a contact allow a service to read their contacts, you are in their database. That then gets cross-referenced with the (relatively few) online store providers the first time you use that address - or the obfuscated emailname.store@* version that was meant to serialize or identify spammers but which the simplest script can undo. Now your shipping/billing address, phone, and partial purchase history can be linked with every social media company that weird chick who did upside down keg hits with you that one night decided to allow contact access. Or your aunt Gertrude.

And it’s not even that complicated. Are you in the contacts list of anyone who has ever used the internet? Google, yahoo, or microsoft definitely know who you are in their internal databases and can create a web of contacts and likely contacts just from a couple of emails. Heck, I remember when there were “contact synchronization” websites where you could transfer your contacts between gmail addresses, or to/from other mail services. It was free, so I can just about guarantee they’re selling all of your info, which has been checked and corroborated by however many of your contacts decided to use their services.

That “not having” Facebook or [insert nearly any other major information-based corporation] means that those companies don’t have your information and profile already completed in their database.

Indeed. A relatively lightly administered area which was predominantly (3/4) Muslim. Then Britain took it over following WW1 and said “The Zionists supported us during the war so we’re going to carve out a Jewish homeland in this space where they say they used to live a couple millenia ago and we’re going to pretty much ignore that there’s someone already living there.”

Now you have people displaced who felt their homeland was taken and people transplanted who believe their homeland is due them and the most extreme factions have guns and bombs to argue about it. There is no solution where Israel remains and stays at peace with it’s neighbors, some of whom were displaced to make space or Israel.

It saddens me that this is the case. My great grand-parents were Jewish and fled the pogroms in western Russia to come to the US. Zionists are a stain on our religion.

Terrorists and Religious zealots (a Venn diagram which is nearly a perfect, single circle) will never recognize basic humanity, because power and control are more important than any human life. To expect peace in a land claimed as sacred by multiple groups is simply guaranteeing unending violence.

LOL

I know a Wookie who is gonna have to resign from congress now.

Sorry, in advance, for the long, descriptive post, but the value of a dedicate, slide mute switch is somewhat nuanced.

The mute switch on an iPhone is a physical slide switch. Without looking, you can feel if it’s muted (back) or active (front) position. Alternately, you can see the condition as, when it’s in the “mute” position, it has an exposed orange (painted) indicator. Neither of these verifications require that the phone be awake or to light up the screen. It can also be activated with the device off, so that if you turn the phone on in a quiet place you don’t have to wait for the UI to become responsive (usually after start notifications have actuated, which occur before software buttons can be pressed to mute the phone). It is a single action to mute, compared to a 5 gesture sequence to silence the phones primary sounds (which can be ringtone OR playback volume, but not both) and an 6-8 gesture sequence (depending on the wake-status of the last used app) to silence the secondary phone sound. Note: I’m assuming that face unlock is active and you are staring at your phone obtrusively; entry of the unlock code would add 7-9 additional touch gestures.

While I agree that a button is nice, it still takes at least two actions - press the button and visually confirm its actuation puts it into the desired mode. There are times when you are unsure what mode the phone is in. On an iPhone, that is not visible from any screen until you either a) wake the phone and actuate a volume button (neither visual nor haptic feedback occurs when a volume button is pressed) or are logged into the phone (two minimum gestures plus face authorization) and use the action center (swipe function) to visually verify th volume position.

Now, you could easily argue that this is fucking terrible UI design, and I would 100% agree with you. I would, likewise agree, that most technical features on an iPhone are certifiably obtuse - ex: you cannot turn on your hotspot without entering the settings app; it’s not even an action center icon option as it is on Android. I would add that it’s also monumental dumbfuckery that your hotspot is the name of your phone and cannot be changed. Or that there is no function to alter the Prompt volume in the phone (ie. for GPS directions) unless the prompt audio is actively playing - difficult if the prompt volume is accidentally (or temporarily) set to zero. In 3rd party apps the prompt volume is several menus deep; for the OEM map application, it doesn’t exist - there is literally no setting.

But, it remains - if you want to mute the alerts on your phone, the switch requires fewer actions and zero view of the device to actuate, and zero activation of the screen or login to verify it’s condition. You may never need to discretely silence your phone or check that it is in silent mode without taking the phone out and unlocking it, but many of us find it quite useful.

The author is under the impression that the button will be infinitely remappable. Given Apple’s history, I expect it to be rather limited. I will sorely miss the mute switch which has both a tactile and visible position indicator which does not require waking the phone, or even having the phone on, to actuate (should you want to turn on your phone without getting bombarded with notification sounds).

It will be the think I probably miss the most when I eventually upgrade. The brilliance of the switch is that it is a switch - which means can be verified by feel or by sight to be in the silent position without needing to wake or even take you phone out of your pocket.