Spider-Ant
Spider-Ant
Does whatever a spider can

*forked to Mbin now.

People used to post Piped/Invidious links all the time, but that eventually became a problem because it meant the link often went to a different proxy than the one that might be a user’s preferred server, and it made it harder to copy the link for use with a preferred server. After some discussion, the consensus became that people should just post the YouTube URL as the main link so users could utilize the preferred proxy they likely already have configured, and then (optionally) include a Piped/Invidious link in the body text for those who don’t currently use a proxy but would like to try it.

Having not watched the video, was the leak a real accident or one of those times where governments decide to experiment on their own soldiers without telling them they’re in an experiment?

I would like to have seen Montana.

I haven’t paid much attention, but I had some myCharge units I bought at Costco last year get recalled. I suspect a lot of these have cheap batteries from suppliers that don’t put much effort into consistent quality. That’s “okay” with alkaline batteries where the worst that happens is they leak and maybe ruin the device they were in. Have poor quality with a lithium battery and you get a fire or even explosion. I suspect with Anker or some of the other brand names at least you’ll actually get a recall if there’s a problem. A lot of the other no-name, fly-by-night brands on Amazon or elsewhere probably don’t even give you that.

!oddlyspecificplaylists@sh.itjust.works

Ah yes, Crenshaw’s Law in action

I’ve long wondered about how that became a strong profanity

They were bought and basically no longer exist. Hot Topic was going to buy them but then GameStop came in with a higher offer. For a while they launched ThinkGeek retail stores in shopping malls but eventually shut them all down and now they basically only exist as some tchotchkes in GameStop stores. Even the website just seems to redirect to the main GameStop page now, not their “store” within the GameStop webstore.

They do at Costco in other countries

Our family had a 286 PC-compatible running Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS, built by someone at my dad’s job; I think he built and sold computers as a side gig. Looking back I strongly suspect all the software he included was not paid-for, or he bought it once and kept reinstalling it.

I’ve had a Kindle for a long time and considered upgrading to a non-Kindle device but was concerned that they don’t seem to get manufacturer updates for very long. This could make that more attractive!

All the abovementioned practices were facilitated by Delivery Hero’s minority shareholding in Glovo. Owning a stake in a competitor is not in itself illegal, but in this specific case it enabled anti-competitive contacts between the two rival companies at several levels. It also allowed Delivery Hero to obtain access to commercially sensitive information and to influence decision-making processes in Glovo, and ultimately to align the two companies’ respective business strategies. This shows that horizontal cross-ownership between competitors may raise antitrust risks and should be handled carefully.

I suppose it can work if they still face robust external competition, like how Hyundai and Kia own stakes in each other and use their combined efforts to compete on the global market, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if even that has anticompetitive implications in their home market of South Korea, both for consumers and workers.

I read an article a while back highlighting how many “tech bro” products seem to be about eliminating human interaction, like grocery or meal deliveries, or self-checkout in stores. There is a convenience factor for these things at times, of course, but with the way many of these executives seem to be pushing exclusively using their services and having zero direct interactions with other humans it starts to raise questions about perhaps their own interpersonal skills and why they want to eliminate the human interaction. This feels like more of the same.

By this logic, is every person driving a Toyota pickup also showing support for Islamic militants?

Don’t buy anything in the Chrysler family of brands, or get the extended warranty if you do

You should file a police report or a report at IdentityTheft.gov. Give as many details as you can, but also recognize as another commenter mentioned that the names you’re seeing are probably also stolen identities. This almost certainly won’t result in any real action unless an investigator can tie enough cases together to identify a suspect. The main reason to do this is you can then go to the credit reporting agencies and place a fraud alert on your records, which should require anyone opening a credit account for you to do extra verification that you’re actually requesting it. If you don’t have a formal report that request only stays active for 1 year but with a formal report they’ll keep it active for 7 years, or at least that was the case a few years ago. You should also freeze your credit report if you haven’t already, which will make it inaccessible to anyone who would want to read it, such as a potential lender. It does become a slight pain to unfreeze it anytime you’re actually applying for credit, but makes it extremely difficult for anyone else to successfully apply for credit in your name.

As it got dark they began the arduous procedure of aiming the laser and something very quickly dawned on everyone: While considerable attention had been made in the design and alignment of the laser’s optics and in achieving good sensitivity of the optical receiver, no-one had really thought too seriously about the practical difficulties of aiming a very narrow beam over a distance of 118+ miles! Using a number of improvised techniques, the laser crew managed to get the beam “close”, setting the elevation with various shims and other pieces onhand, but getting both azimuth (horizontal) and elevation (vertical) dialed in proved to be a hair-pulling task.

After a bit of fussing, the receive site crew was tantalized by the occasional brief, bright flash from the distant laser but it seemed as though the transmit site crew could never repeat the maneuver - plus the necessary corrections - to get the laser back and on-point! When the receive site crew queried the Grassy Hollow folks about this on the radio it turned out that they were using two primitive tools to adjust the aiming of the laser: A large rock tapped at the end of the metal channel in which the laser was mounted for coarse adjustments and a much smaller rock for fine-tuning!

Having had to re-align a microwave radio link over a distance of about 30 miles, using a mount that was actually designed to make fine adjustments, I can only imagine how frustrating this was!

I haven’t finished but this is a very interesting read