nullhole

+1 for use of the word 'thither'

A cheeky experiment was done to prove this back in the aughts:

https://www.science.org/content/article/caveman-or-dick-chen...

"In a creative experiment that relied on rubber masks of former Vice President Dick Cheney and other distinctive mugs, researchers have shown that American crows have an uncanny ability to pick a familiar human face out of a crowd."

> It actually wouldn't be a bad idea to tie email storage with donations.

This could be done in perhaps the opposite direction: individual alumni donors tying donations to maintenance of email accounts for all alumni.

These email addresses, in some cases, must date back to the 90s or earlier. Cancelling them is a major, negative change to people who (like me!) who have come to rely on them.

I'm worried about this happening at my alma mater.

Under protest by the people managing the service, the university administration switched from a locally hosted service to the microsoft suite.

Now that there's a (probably very large) line item in the bill from MS to support email for people who don't pay tuition, there's got to be pressure from the beancounters to just drop the perk.

The north-south cultural group is correct, but I'd disagree with some of the specifics you mentioned.

The cultural division between BC and the 'west' (AB, SK, MB) is pretty strong.

Southern Ontario is a lot closer to upstate ny / the midwest than NYC, I'd say.

The Maritimes is much more like New England than the rust belt. Newfoundland isn't even part of the Maritime provinces - it's part of the Atlantic provinces.

Article on nasa.gov:

"NASA Decides to Bring Starliner Spacecraft Back to Earth Without Crew"

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-decides-to-bring-star...

@dang this seems like a better link, could it replace the current one?

I agree with your observations about "Inventing Accuracy". Personally I found the sociology focus a bit unexpected, and maybe a little too strong in some chapters, but still a worthwhile point of view.

I will definitely be taking a look at "Minuteman: A Technical History". Books dealing at least in part with the history of IMUs are few and far between.

Any opinion on the book 'Inventing Accuracy'? It covers the Minuteman guidance system for a few chapters.

The Reuters links are an example of good links IMHO. They're not earth-shattering, and follow some fairly generic guidelines, but work quite well.

Format is reuters.com/:category/:headline:date

which is all you need to know what you're clicking on. For example, I don't need to describe this link in order for its contents - and its time-relevance - to be understood:

  https://www.reuters.com/world/us-navys-newest-air-to-air-missile-could-tilt-balance-south-china-sea-2024-08-14/

Edit: they are a bit long, though, I suppose

This made me think of one thing that I've wanted to see for a long time with browsers: split-pane view.

In other words, the ability to see two browser sessions, side-by-side, with a vertical split between them. Two viewports, each with their group of tabs. The same type of view you can get in, for example, Notepad++ with its "Tab>Move to Other View", or Visual Studio's "Tab>New Vertical Document Group".

I frequently arrive at situations where I want to compare the contents of one webpage against the contents of another webpage. So far, the most usable option I've found is to split the 2nd tab off into a new window, then arrange the two windows side-by-side.

There is "Side View"[1], but that shows a bare viewport, which makes browsing in the 2nd viewport much more restricted than regular browsing.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/its-a-new-firef...

I've worked with stats in this area before and it's not pleasant. You can't escape the reality behind the numbers, not that you should.

So that's what "Señor Tadpoles" was a reference to.

One of my old favouries:

"Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness"

https://www.theonion.com/rotation-of-earth-plunges-entire-no...

There's a spike in births on Jan 1st if website records are to be trusted.

As the old saying goes,

beware brittle balsa basilicas

The better question is: why only one leading zero.

Excellent joke.

Indy still had the best looking case, though, I think. There's something about that sliced-box appearance that's so unexpected and interesting.

What's the word for "hard disk"?

Well, 5 1/4" disks were floppy on the inside & outside, so compared with them, 3.5" disks weren't floppy.

To me, at least, the name 'floppy disk' already felt like an anachronism, even in the heyday of 3.5" disks.

What intent do you infer from the fact that it's source-available instead of being FOSS?

One key thing is: don't feel like you have to suffer through reading an entire book if you don't like it. If it's a chore to read it, find something else - different author, or different type of book.

Not quite related to apostrophes, but I feel the need to point out my favourite street name of all time (as read on a street sign): St John St (-> Saint John Street)

I know, thus the smiley :)

> more than four times more expensive on a pound-for-megawatt basis

oh, the units people use today :)

That is funny, though this is more tracking-by-users than tracking-of-users

The gravity of physics always brings me down.

(sorry!)

I mean the GPS satellites are in medium earth orbit so most LEO satellites receive the signal more or less the same way as people a few hundred km further down, no?

The comms between the GPS satellites and the ground stations is pretty interesting, see figure A4-1 in this for what happens to accuracy over time if the satellites stop getting corrections from the ground:

https://navcen.uscg.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/gps/geninfo/...

That makes me think: adding a live lighting map / lightning locations would be neat, since that is the kind of thing you can see from the video feed.

There's a couple crowdsourced lighting status websites out there, might be possible to use the same data feed...

Also maybe do it across a few more industries.