It’s either that or the baseboard heater right behind the TV stand.

DDG has also really gone downhill for me. It’s still noticeably better than Google, but DDG nows does a lot of the same shit that originally made me give up on Google years ago. I’m assuming a big part of this is because DDG heavily sources their results from Bing, and while Bing does manage to be better than Google, it’s not much better.

I really need to put some effort into trying out a few more search engines and seeing if they are any better. Last time I looked, many of them were also pulling results from Bing so they all had similar issues.

A lot of that sort of armor is more designed to deflect hits off of it. If someone can get a solid hit in, it’s possible to cut through it.

Which leads to another pet peeve of mine, which is armor that’s clearly designed in a way that it wouldn’t be good at deflecting hits. Particularly anything for women that has cups for the breasts.

That’s assuming if Biden was to issue such an order as things stand right now.

If Biden really wanted to abuse his newfound powers of immunity, his very first official act would be making sure the supreme court won’t be standing in his way for any subsequent official acts.

Right. If you were to attempt something like this, you’d be better off with something like a chunk of granite than plutonium.

What they are doing is comparing your answer and seeing if it is consistent with how it has been answered previously. They realize that not everyone is going to give the exact same answer, so as long as you answer it in a way that enough other people have answered it, it should let you in.

I’ll usually go with the minimum number of clicks that I think will get me through, since I’m lazy and it’ll also at times slow down how fast you can click which is annoying.

I’ll also answer them wrong if I think it’s a mistake that enough other people will make. “Yes… that RV over there is a bus…”

My favorite are some of the work systems that I need to access, but only infrequently, yet still have ridiculous password expiration rules. Nearly every time I log in, before I can access the system I have to change my password because of course it’s expired again. So I change the password, write it down because I’ll never remember it months from now when I need to use that password exactly once to login and change my password yet again.

I’ve often wondered if Atlassian even uses the products they sell. There’s just so many stupid bugs that I would assume no one at Atlassian would put up with if they had to eat their own dog food. Instead, those bugs don’t seem to get fixed and seem to linger in their products forever.

Maybe the old, discontinued on-premise version. The cloud version of JIRA is a huge step back.

With that said, Teams is not a good product either.

That’s also what my upper level math courses were like in college. In high school and the first couple of years of college I got good use out of my graphing calculator, but after that I reached the point where all of its advanced features were no longer useful. I just ended up leaving it at home and brought my old TI-30 Solar for class for the occasional time I had to crunch some actual numbers.

You’re using a weird definition of profit, which to most people is some sort of financial gain. Saving money isn’t the same as profiting. You’re not turning a profit when you use a $1.00 off coupon on a package of Oreos at the grocer just like you’re not turning a profit if you download a movie.

Also, go look up criminal copyright infringement. That’s what is defined as a crime legally, and downloading a movie or a CD doesn’t meet that threshold unless maybe you’re torrenting it and therefore distributing it. Morally, well you can argue that, but not everyone is going to agree with you.

Well, you can think that but realize that you’re in the minority if you think breaking copyright for personal consumption is the same as breaking copyright for profit. That’s like saying stealing a loaf of bread because you are hungry is exactly the same as stealing a car so you can strip it for parts for resale.

Also, despite what the RIAA and MPAA would like you to believe, downloading a CD or DVD for personal use isn’t illegal, which is why it’s a civil matter when someone is busted. There’s a line that needs to be crossed before the criminal justice system gets involved, and it’s above that sort of thing.

Why should the ideal temperature be right in the middle of the range?

It’s no surprise that the maximum end of the range is right around the body temperature, as it’s difficult for the body to keep itself cool once the environment is around or warmer than the body temperature. Sure, we can sweat, but that uses up a lot of water and people generally find that getting all sweaty to not be pleasant. Run out of water or raise the temperature too much and it gets dangerous pretty quickly.

On the other hand, if the environment is a lot cooler than the body temperature, then it is difficult for the body to keep warm. I’m sure for our distant ancestors who lived in what is now Africa, their minimum temperature was much higher, possibly putting the ideal temperature right around the middle of their range. Luckily for us, we have clothing and can put on more clothing to stay warm, which is how we can now make the minimum so low. But while we can use clothing to lower our minimum, we really don’t have anything different to raise our maximum vs. our ancestors - we’re both limited by how well we can cool ourselves by sweating. So for that reason it doesn’t really surprise me that our ideal temperature is towards the upper end of what we consider the minimum and maximum temperatures.

Actually, it’s the other way around. 100 degrees F weather is really hot. Driving 100 MPH is really fast.

In metric we have 40 degrees C weather is really hot, and driving…uhhh… (gets out a calculator)… 160 km/h is really fast.

That may be how you see it, but that’s not how the law works.

The pirate is looking to save money with their copyright infringement.

These AI companies are looking to make money from it.

I know what the 3/4 switch does on the back of a VCR.

I also know what a VCR is.

Your average pirate isn’t looking to profit from their copyright infringement.

In a similar way, someone getting busted for downloading a movie is a civil matter, but if they get busted for selling unauthorized copies on DVD then it can become a criminal matter.

As far as I’m aware, they had to stop doing that some time ago.

I personally find the my cognitive load with Linux is much lower now that I’ve switched over.

First of all, the Windows 11 UI is awful and ugly. The Windows 10 UI was never that great and only looks good as it ended up sandwiched between 8 and 11. I’d have to go to Windows 7 for something that’s decent. Admittedly the polish on a lot of Linux DEs and applications can leave a lot to be desired, but I have a choice between multiple DEs and many of those DEs are highly customizable. I’d have to go back to Windows 7 for something that’s better polished and works as good for me as XFCE does.

Then there’s being in control of my own computer. I control when it does its updates. My computer respects my settings and preferences and doesn’t randomly change or reset them. It doesn’t randomly install unwanted software on it’s own, or reinstall stuff I explicitly removed. It doesn’t place ads in my whisker menu or on my desktop or lock screen. There’s no telemetry being sent home to the mothership. With anything past Windows 8 I’ve never really felt like I’m in complete control and Microsoft can just do whatever the hell they want.

While there are the occasional issues as someone who is familiar with Linux it’s typically not too difficult to track it down and fix it. Though there are exceptions of course. At least if I have to edit some files in /etc they tend to stay that way as opposed to having to edit the registry with regedit.exe only to have Windows randomly undo what I did with the next update. And while PulseAudio is notorious for causing all sorts of havoc, it seems like it’s finally gotten to the point where it finally works and I haven’t had any issues with the volume control for a while now.

As for games it obviously matters what games you like to play, but the amount of tinkering I’ve had to do to play any game in my Stream library beyond enabling Proton so far is zero. Which has been a very pleasant surprise and honestly I’ve been pretty impressed with that.