It makes me wonder if politicians, celebrities, etc. have their plate numbers already entered into Flock as a whitelist of people not to pull over.

The story makes it pretty clear that the cops are, as usual, not doing any independent thinking. The system says to pull that car over, so they do what the system wants. They don’t double-check to see if what the system is telling them to do is reasonable. If someone fat-fingers some data entry and the plate for the governor of California gets added to the system, the cops might charge up and box him in and jump out with their guns drawn. That might result in someone with actual power getting mad about Flock. So, maybe they prevent that by pre-loading the system with a whitelist of plates that are assumed to be in the clear.

Yes?

Yeah, I lived in Switzerland for a time, and they’re pretty normal there too. When it got hot, sometimes I’d throw the windows wide open at night and let the place cool down to 20ish. Then, around 9am I’d shut all the windows and shades. I was also lucky because I had windows on opposite sides of the apartment, so I had good cross ventilation to blow the heat out.

When I’d come home it would be low-20s or mid-20s inside, while outside it was above 30. But, like you said, if the heat wave lasted too long, the concrete would heat up. I’d still throw open the windows at night, but once the concrete of the building was up to about 30 degrees, even if it dropped below 20 at night, it would still be 25ish indoors in the morning.

At that point, when it was 25ish indoors, below 25 outside (but heating up) and 30ish degrees in the walls, I wasn’t sure if it was smarter to shut everything and try to keep the warm air out, or open things and hope that the ventilation allowed the concrete to cool.

Also, at night even though cross-ventilation was a good plan, and it cooled things off, I lived in a loud neighbourhood (by Swiss standards) and it was so much easier to sleep with the windows shut. Those windows reduce the noise from outside so much.

Where is this? It has outdoor-style shutters and what I suspect are German-style windows behind them.

I love those outdoor shutters. Not only are they great for keeping the heat from getting inside, they also mean you can have a TV in a room with big windows. If you want to watch a dark movie, or any movie that would be ruined if things are too bright, you can also lower the shutters. They’d probably also be good in a violent storm.

Luckily, you can just see if they drive a truck or not.

Good point.

I heard a podcast recently (99% invisible) that talked about how the “60 degree” screw became standard in the world. Before that, there were many competing types of screw, which meant that there were all kinds of incompatibilities.

What they mentioned only in passing was that the British Empire already had a standard at 55 degrees. At that point, the British empire was huge. The smart thing to do would have been to simply adopt the British standard and make it the worldwide standard. Instead, the US forced the rest of the world, including the whole British Empire to adopt the new standard.

I imagine if the US hadn’t entered WWII the world might be using German standards, or it might be using British Empire standards, or maybe even Soviet standards, but it definitely wouldn’t be using American standards.

US stays isolationist

…

US takes Canada

Which one is it?

Hmm, yeah, if it is the desktop environment that’s having issues, that could be hard to recover from. I’ve never had that happen, or even heard of it happening. Maybe try out Gnome? Or try reinstalling? it doesn’t sound like a normal problem, and if it’s not a driver issue it could be just reinstalling will be enough to get things working.

I can’t help you, but I gotta say that is a cool effect. Some game should do that intentionally for a character who’s on mushrooms.

Robertson wanted to be paid for his good design. Henry Ford didn’t want to pay, even if it was a tiny amount.

Ford was willing to use an inferior screw design that could cause production issues rather than pay a license to use the superior design. And, even though the patent expired a long time ago, these decisions have momentum.

I would bet that Torx is more popular than Robertson even though it’s a much newer design. Is it a better design? To me, Robertson seems to have the edge when it comes to simplicity, but Torx could be better for industrial applications because multiple lobes that have a surface perpendicular to the direction of torque probably gives it more control. Also, thanks to Ikea, I’d bet that hex-head bolts are incredibly common. They share most of the benefits of Robertson. I suspect they’re a little less efficient though because the closer you are to a circle shape, the less the faces of the screwdriver tip align with the direction of torque. I wonder if there are advantages of hex over square, since you see hex so much more often.

It wasn’t an intentional feature. But, when they realized it happened it became a feature that they thought was useful.

There are a lot of things like that, where something has a design quirk that people come to rely on. The quirk is so useful that people assume it was designed to work that way intentionally, but sometimes it was just coincidence.

You were wearing it wrong.

Oh, so you don’t poop standing up?

So, don’t piss on other people’s floors. Aim better. You can still do that while standing up.

the acceptable amount for one to pee on their own floor willfully is none

Nobody’s talking about willfully peeing on the floor, we’re only talking about microscopic amounts of pee mist that could drift away from the stream when you’re peeing from 50 cm from the bowl instead of 10 cm from the bowl.

Every toilet I’ve seen has a big air gap under the seat even when the seat is down.

Unless you take a bath / shower immediately after using the toilet, you’re then walking around with a thin coating of waste on you all day.

Sitting down takes longer. IMO it also flows more easily if I’m standing. I’ll sit if I’m tired, or half-asleep, or whatever. I’ll stand most of the time to get it over with faster.

ass interruption

Do you have a cloaca?

You’re weird because apparently you don’t clean your bathroom floors.

Sure, microscopic amounts of pee gets on the floor. Then, every couple of weeks you clean your bathroom.

You know that when you flush a toilet you aerosolize a bit of the contents and they drift out and land around the room too. Does that bother you?