Just to key in on the overlap between FOSS and privacy, because the source code for the software is open, it means that anyone can take a peek at how everything is running under the hood (among other things). It becomes possible to verify that software is storing data locally and properly encrypting when applicable (as opposed to blindly trusting the software’s author and or lawyers).

It may also be a fun fact that best practice in encryption is to open source your algorithms. The helps safeguard against backdoors and mistakes/ errors that could compromise the security of the algorithm. Much for similar reasons as above, as it allows the security community to check your math (in a field where it is incredibly easy to get your math wrong).

Where does the King keep his armies? In his sleevies!

Same reason most things are funny, or at least mildly amusing: inversion of expectations.

Enh, the tech space is very much innovate or die. So yeah, they could probably throw everything in maintenance mode and make a reduced headcount work, but if AWS goes stagnant it’s entirely likely that Amazon goes the way of IBM and Motorol. Especially when someone (likely, Microsoft or Google) comes to take a slice of the AWS market share.

I don’t know about a min length; setting a lenient lower bound means that any passwords in that space are going to be absolutely brute force-able (and because humans are lazy, there are almost certainly be passwords clustered around the minimum).

I very much agree with the rest though, it’s unnerving when sites have a low max length. It almost feels like advertising that passwords aren’t being hashed, and if that’s the case there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that they’re also salted. Really restrictive character sets also tell me that said site / company either has super old infra or doesn’t know how to sanitize strings (or entirely likely both)…

I’m not sure if it counts as underground (it’s been around for ages), but if you’ve never thought about how your shoelaces contribute to the overall fit and comfort of your shoe, I’d recommend giving Ian’s shoelace site a visit.

Same. The Motorola Droid 4 is my all time favorite phone, not viable as a modern daily driver, but damn do I miss being able to pop the keyboard out for longer messages, compose mostly coherent messages without looking, or just reclaim screen real estate.

one more

1080 for most disks, with 4K when marked ultra hd. It’s worth noting disk video is usually uncompressed much less compressed, so it may very well look better than a stream of the same resolution.

You raise very valid points, and water usage (and over allocation) is a huge issue but it is worth mentioning that Arizona has fairly consistent and predictable weather, decently reliable power grids (with access to cleaner energy sources like solar, hydro, and nuclear), and is pretty seismically stable.

Don’t get me wrong, water consumption is going to be a huge issue once these plants really get going, but I don’t think it’s entirely stupid and nonsensical to park them where they did.

Humor is admittedly subjective, but I enjoyed the random mismatched and subversion of expectations enough for a chuckle. The trolly problem setup and pretty much every other detail being ultimately irrelevant is rather amusing in an absurdist humor (Hitchhikers Guild) or anti-joke (yo’ Mama’s so fat…

) kind of way.

Uhh, I may not be the sharpest software developer in the shed, but I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking for here. By the sound of it, you’re looking to build and deploy an entire e-commerce website without any JavaScript at all, correct? Which makes me more than a little curious about what you’re expecting to use instead.

Nothing can help you now. You are one with the cheese and the cheese is one with you…

If you liked Scalzi, I highly recommend Old Man’s War if you haven’t read it. I’ve only read first one, so I can’t speak to the rest of the series, but I really enjoyed the kind of gritty starship troopers-esq vibe laced with humor and realistic characters.

Aaey! This is one of my personal favorites (along with the Bad Wolves cover: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaS93WMRQQ )

Oh hey, it’s this song. I can’t hear it and not plug the Bastille cover/ mashup: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nLq86a34yHY

Depends, can you see the future?

Agreed! I had a math professor once say that epiphanies usually happen in one of the three B’s: Bed, Bathroom, and Bus. There really is something magical about stepping away to let your brain chew on a problem.

Man, it sounds like you’d be an awesome addition to the community! Definitely approach it on your own terms, 3d printing can be as cheap or expensive a hobby as you make it (speaking as the owner of a Thessian Enser 3).

It’s incredibly powerful (and satisfying) to be able to fix the plastic bit of something and give it a new life rather than just throwing it away.

Kinda depends, if it’s a popular something, there’s usually a model online that someone else has been kind enough to share (generally on Printables and/ or Thingiverse). My most recent experience with that was the shift knob on my mixer cracked and fell off, a quick download, a few grams of filament, 20 minutes, a few persuading taps with a mallet, and everything was good to go.

Beyond that, it’s a bit of personal preference and a bit of you’re trying to do, something like a dial cluster in a car is going to be far more complex that something like a mounting bracket. The stuff I tend to fix/ replace tends to be fairly small, so personally, it’s a matter of sitting down with a pair of calipers to measure the object and replicate it in CAD (Autodesk got me young, so I’m on the Fusion 360 train at the moment). One of the most amazing things about 3d printers is that you can go from design to prototype extremely rapidly, which allows you to iterate the design and make it better each pass. Got a hole doesn’t quite line up, a wall that’s too long, an arm that doesn’t quite reach, etc? tweak it and try again. It’s a little bit of trial and error, but with experience it becomes more of a controlled process as you figure out what works and what doesn’t.