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fenceposton Yes, it ‘looks like a duck,’ but carriers like the new USPS mail truck

They aren't/weren't all going to be EVs. Originally the USPS was looking at 10% EVs and 90% internal combustion but there were a bunch of challenges to that (including that ratio being based on incorrect environmental impact data). Now it's 75% EVs in the first order of 60,000 and future orders may be that high or higher (currently expected that it will be all EVs starting in 2026).

sources: article and wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_NGDV)

fenceposton Yes, it ‘looks like a duck,’ but carriers like the new USPS mail truck

How could they not love them in comparison to the 30+ year old vehicles they've been driving?

fenceposton The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

Drought in Africa is probably the most obvious, but other climate change-related migrations are basically guaranteed over the next 50-100 years.

Sea level rise will severely impact low-lying regions like most of Florida - not by putting them actually underwater, but by putting them closer to sea level which will make storm surges, etc more severe. Even if you recover, how many inundations with salt water will it take to have a significant impact? Not to mention salt intrusion into freshwater systems and aquifers.

In areas closer to the equator you'll also get higher heat - not always but regularly enough to render some areas unlivable without artificial cooling, and many of those places are ones that don't have the resources to provide cooling centers.

You'll also get more extremes at both ends - think of increasing the amount of heat energy in the atmosphere as being like increasing the amount of electricity going to a cone speaker. That speaker cone doesn't only move in one direction, what the increased energy does is increase the amount of movement. With the increased energy you also get distortion (extreme weather events vs just gradual change) and if you're really unlucky you get a one-way change of state (severe irreversible climate-driven event or a blown speaker).

Edit: forgot to include "Climate-induced migration in the Global South: an in depth analysis" https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-024-00133-1

fenceposton Elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling political campaigns

If they aren't already using a password manager with an emergency access feature, get them set up with one. As an example, if you use Bitwarden then get a family plan and add them to it - that allows setting an emergency contact who can access or take over the account if needed. 1Password and other competitors should all also have this.

The other thing you might do is have their banking and credit card accounts set up to email you transaction notifications - that's obviously more intrusive, but it should let you catch repeating suspicious transactions.

fenceposton Apple Passwords’ generated strong password format

Bitwarden's password generation is actually a little weak - it's great at generating random gibberish passwords, but it seems to be randomized at the character level so you'll get things like "Cq$ypWocG6Byp#" - hard to remember, hard to type. It lets you specify length, upper, lower, digits, (limited) special, minimum # of digits, minimum # of special, and "avoid ambiguous characters" but that's the extent of it. Even the ability to have it group character types would be helpful if you're ever going to be typing on mobile devices.

It also offers Passphrase generation using dictionary words plus digits and specials (as word separators). You can change the special character used, but it's not randomly chosen each time.

I'd love it if it had an option for pronounceable or syllable-based generation as described in the article.

fenceposton Apple Passwords’ generated strong password format

I still have fond memories of "Xyzzy" which was specifically listed as a "pronounceable password generator." That and YAPS on Palm (Yet Another Password Safe) were a great combination - and migrations through the years may mean that I still have a few of those passwords sitting in an unused corner of my current password storage.

The iOS keyboard layout and behavior for many years undoubtedly made password rules like this a necessity - can't be mode switching all the time just to put in a password.

Edit: Xyzzy could also be used to generate plausible drug names or RPG character names.

fenceposton Why don't we use awnings anymore (2022)

A few decades ago an office worker would prize a desk by a big window with lots of natural light to read paperwork by, but in the age of PCs nobody wants direct sunlight on their screen.

A couple decades ago I managed to wrangle a nice east-facing window. Bright sunlight in the AM was a pretty effective way to really get moving, but I couldn't wear white shirts because the reflection made my monitor unusable and there was a period each morning where I just needed to do stuff not at my PC (cubicle farm, my options were to face the window or face the corner with the window to one side).

fenceposton Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

My wife is a pretty voracious reader and has 3 active Kindles that I believe are mostly segregated out by genre/collection. I wouldn't be surprised if this is as much for convenience as anything else, I don't use it much but Amazon's library management and navigation on the Kindles has never impressed me.

She's also one of those folks who sideloads with Calibre as well as purchasing through Amazon.

fenceposton NASA Made the Hubble Telescope to Be Remade

Latency's not going to stop being a problem for geostationary orbits, which is why lower altitudes get used.

fenceposton Oura Ring 4

From all the alternatives linked to the listing it seems like it may be pretty generic hardware under a bunch of names. Would be interesting to see if the accelerometer in it could be used for gesture detection, and if the rings could be used for Bluetooth presence detection (e.g. for automatic screen locking).

fenceposton A $1k Wheelchair

You can get perfectly viable inexpensive bicycles as well - but if you were expecting to replace ALL of your other vehicle transport with a bike would you start by looking at ones with welded steel frames? The classic 80s Schwinn 10-speed that weighs in at 40 pounds but is pretty indestructible?

That's a $500 wheelchair.

fenceposton Mozilla exits the Fediverse and will shutter its Mastodon server in December

For people fleeing the rise of extremist content on Xitter, that seems an oddly appropriate analogy.

fenceposton Mozilla exits the Fediverse and will shutter its Mastodon server in December

It's a migration for the future, not a migration of your past content - understandable because that past content likely has references from other instances and pushing those changes across would be a heavy operation, unreliable, and probably fraught with potential security problems.

I believe for retaining content it's pretty much retaining it for yourself by downloading an archive, though some instances may allow uploading that. There's also at least one browser-based web app that lets you open and view the content of that archive - otherwise it's kind of useless.

Edit: https://github.com/zero-mstd/mav-z

fenceposton Is Tor still safe to use?

IIRC the Home editions of Windows now do have drive encryption at least if signed into with a Microsoft account, but they have almost no features for managing that encryption beyond turning it off or getting the recovery key from the MS account.

At the time I was talking about, Bitlocker drive encryption on Windows 7 required either Enterprise or Ultimate, and for a 2-5 person office with no domain and a couple laptops they wanted encrypted outside the office Truecrypt was a perfectly viable option.

fenceposton Is Tor still safe to use?

IIRC there were a lot more options by the time of the Truecrypt-Veracrypt shift. Truecrypt was around when drive encryption was otherwise an expensive enterprise software thing, but I think Bitlocker was included with Pro versions of Windows by the time of Veracrypt so that probably became the easiest free option - and probably with better compatibility as well.

fenceposton Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

Archived a couple hours ago: https://archive.is/Kw0Pg

95g, USB-C rechargeable up to 85 days of operation, separate control and charging boards, multiple replaceable components for easy maintenance.

Probably lots of ways to free up space, most notably by using a smaller battery but with a few resources you could probably combine the boards and probably not even be obvious ("generation 2, less expensive to produce"). With state-actor level resources new boards would be easy as would something concealed within a LiPo battery.

fenceposton Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

Thinner (less durable, but who cares?) plastic shell to free up space for explosives, but would likely be obvious if someone opened it - which might be a common thing if these were being used as remote triggering devices.

If they were using a AA battery, replace the battery with something that provides you space to work (e.g. put in a AAAA or button cell that would provide appropriate power but lower capacity) because you don't really care if the battery life drops from months to weeks.

fenceposton Charging lithium-ion batteries at high currents first increases lifespan by 50%

Thanks, the hazard of glancing at HN then reading the article from a phone. Autocorrect does not love me.

fenceposton Charging lithium-ion batteries at high currents first increases lifespan by 50%

Sorry that I didn't jump back on to respond sooner.

Re: consumer electronics, the obvious big example is cell phones, and notably major manufacturers have started adding features to extend battery lifespan by capping charge levels. Samsung has had this for a few years, originally capped at 85% but changed in a recent update down to 80%. I believe this occurred around the same time they extended their software support to 5 years. Apple added the same thing in iOS 17 with the iPhone 15 models, but despite obviously having the hardware capability ("optimized charging") they didn't enable the feature on earlier models.

fenceposton Charging lithium-ion batteries at high currents first increases lifespan by 50%

TL;DR the high current causes a layer on the negative electron to form a bit differently (and obviously faster), previously it was thought that a slower initial charge led to better formation. This is a process tweak incremental improvement, not anything truly fundamental.

fenceposton When Serial Isn't RS-232, Geocaching with the Garmin GPS 95

Yep, and probably back when I was on Usenet.

fenceposton When Serial Isn't RS-232, Geocaching with the Garmin GPS 95

This takes me back to the days of ordering a custom injection molded 4 pin connector for a Garmin III+ or IV, back in the days when you wouldn't just 3D print one and throw in a few pin connectors.

fenceposton Police cannot seize property indefinitely after an arrest, federal court rules

I suspect that this pattern for sentencing is so that even if some charges/convictions are reversed the remaining sentence makes that reversal not really significant in real-world terms.

fenceposton Police cannot seize property indefinitely after an arrest, federal court rules

I was on jury duty recently that seemed the epitome of "you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride," along with a terrible job done by the prosecutors. I explicitly told the defense attorneys on the way out that they didn't win their case, the prosecution lost by doing a terrible job with evidence.

Violation of an order of protection case, charged with violating a 500 foot OOP by 2 feet. Apparently part of the sidewalk at a nearby intersection was 498 feet from the house, but they didn't even pop up a map of the area just threw a bunch of street names at jurors from all over the major metro area.

fenceposton East Germany invented 'unbreakable' drinking glasses

There are a bunch of cleaning and separating steps that happen for removal of organics, metals, plastics, different colors of glass, etc.

Pretty sure the chemical reaction to actually dissolve glass is not particularly fast and I have no idea what you'd do to later precipitate it out, but it may not be an economically viable approach.

fenceposton East Germany invented 'unbreakable' drinking glasses

It's absolutely routinely done and there's a lot of PCR glass used, but there's also a significant amount of cleaning needed. I'm not involved in the industry beyond past interest in glasswork, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were packaging changes happening all along that improve the simplify cleaning - eg chemically soluble ink printing on containers instead of glued paper or composite labels.

fenceposton East Germany invented 'unbreakable' drinking glasses

For people talking about glass recycling, it's not NEARLY as simple as you might think because of input issues. Along with CoE (Coefficient of Expansion) concerns that may arise depending on the exact input materials, recycling ends up with grit and contaminants in the material, and those end up as inclusions in final products. That might not be a concern for glass blocks, but for anything where you care about the end quality (food containers, large sheets of glass for windows, etc.) inclusions can result in a lot of production loss. It's also not like you can just melt it and let the inclusions float or sink out - molten glass doesn't flow like water, and particles don't just move through it.

fenceposton "We ran out of columns"

I think you misspelled "Visual SourceSafe" - and depending on when this VB was written it might actually predate VSS as a Microsoft product.

Source code management back in the days of VB (long before VB.Net) was not the same as what you see today.

fenceposton "We ran out of columns"

Oh dear god no. The solution is not throw VS at it and run from the code, the next step is some combination of excessive logging (which to be fair may resolve the issue all by itself) and/or throwing in a ton of DoEvents because Visual Basic.

fenceposton After 10 years, Yelp gave my app 4 days

If you're depending on the continued existence of any Google product beyond GMail, Google Cloud and advertising you should really consider fallback positions. The existence of Youtube is also guaranteed, but the existence of any particular API or service that you might depend on? Not so much. Hell they'd probably consider killing GMail if they didn't need the accounts to tie advertising impressions to individuals.