This is actually a bigger deal than the headline suggests if the claims are to be believed. Hopefully the licensing isn't too expensive for it to be widely adopted if manufacturing at scale is easy.

They don't say how it degrades in water, but if it can degrade in ~2months outdoors then that's actually pretty good.

Most biodegradable eco-plastic is a scam because it's either only partially degradable, or only degradable in industrial facilities. If I can throw this packaging in my own compost bin then that would be a huge way to get rid of single-use plastic.

That's very dubious, since where I live they have to honour the shelf price even if it's wrong.

What happens when they raise the price while I'm on the way to the register? How can I possibly counter this?

I actually had something similar happen to me. I grabbed something, I was mischarged, I told the cashier who told the manager who checked, and the manager changed the price while I was standing at the checkout and claimed it was always that price. I usually check the UPC when something is on clearance so I know I'm buying the right thing. I didn't buy the item.

Now I always walk with them to the aisle to see the price so they don't pull that on me.

If you're a convenience store but pallets of Coca Cola, then they kind-of can. They can just blacklist you from buying Coca Cola in the foreign country.

It's also different because they're selling you continuous access one month at a time instead of a physical good you drink and they can't take away from you. I've been to places where service costs are lower for locals than for tourists, and this is told to you outright. Stuff like museums, taxis, etc. It's a similar idea YouTube has.

Prices are also almost never based on cost, they're based on what people will pay.

I live in Canada, and cars are more expensive here than in the USA. US dealerships near the border refuse to sell new cars to Canadians, even though it's legal for everyone as long as you make sure to pay duties on the way back. I'm guessing each brand has some rule against it.

Ultimately VPN users aren't a protected class so it's legal to discriminate.

There is some problem with that as you say, but the company doing the poll is pretty well-respected by the west. They were also labelled a foreign agent by Putin at some point, so I looked at their opinion.

This is an interesting op-ed by the guy who runs the polling company, talking about preference falsification.

There's an estimate that <10% of people in Russia have motive to lie because of power they'd lose if their opinion got out, and the theory is that this is usually constant. Unless Putin is scarier than 2 years ago you can still compare differences in opinion, even if you don't trust the magnitude. The guy also said that you can look at the positive responses as having a share of neutral because people who aren't informed just go with the majority instead of saying "idk".

But no matter how much lying in polls there is, the amount of people worried about sanctions went down compared to 2 years ago, and compared to 2015.

Which makes sense considering how much physical capital western companies left in Russia, since VW can't take an auto factory back to Germany with them even if they can take some equipment (but not all).

If you're using any hash smaller than your file (not just md5), then it's always possible to have 2 different files that match. This is just from pigeonhole principle. No matter what you use there will be collision.

md5 is just bad because it's small so it's easier to generate this match. It's also a question of how easy is it to reverse engineer a match, which apparently md5 is worse for on pictures than I expected.

I thought md5 is vulnerable to generating 2 colliding files, not to trying to generate a match to an existing file.

Edit: wow I didn't realize md5 matching a picture was that easy, looks like you can make any image look enough like that twitter-deboonked one to generate a fake match. How has no one done this yet.

Thanks for the links, it's pretty interesting stuff I haven't kept up with for a while.

I didn't hear about that potential apple attack, I wonder if you could generate a collision with a pic that looks close enough to the twitter image they auto-deboonk and a pic that's completely unrelated, got twitter to add your new similar image to the auto-deboonker, and then troll on twitter by posting the unrelated image.

That'd be similar to that apple attack you linked, but it depends on how twitter auto-deboonking works and how easy you could get them to add a similar-but-different pic to their deboonker database.

If you have access to a quantum computer you could do this easily. With current computing it's hard.

It was Danish King Valdemar II, who had the flag fall from the sky to him as a sign. Some historians say it was a cross-battle dream, like Constantine, or like the 1217 Seige of Alcacer do Sal.

I guess hallucinating crosses during or after battles was just a common thing for a while. Everyone who lost while hallucinating a cross probably died so there's probably some confirmation bias there too. It's like how praying for your team to win a superbowl only works if you end up winning, if you lose then I guess the other team prayed harder.

In Canada you have to pay extra for a 5G plan even if you have a 5G phone. And grandfathered plans/plans you've been on for a while keep the low speeds.

I had a super cheap prepaid plan with 3g speeds until I switched last month because I was on it for so long.

Some prepaid plans here just cut you off data completely unless you prepay for your overage. Others let you go over and charge you like $5 per 200mb over (ridiculous).

There are post-paid monthly plans that don't do overage charges, but they throttle you so much it's not really useful.

Edit: just checked, for 50 CAD (around 40 USD) you can get 100GB of 5G a month prepaid, for a plan that gives you complete US coverage as well.

That seems like a pretty bad deal actually, you can probably find a better 4g or even 5g plan in the US for that.

Prepaid companies in Canada (who generally have worse pricing than the US because all the cell companies have agreements with each other) have 20-40gb/month for that price (depending on the limited time sales), but not unlimited w/ throttling like you have.

Now that you mention it, I see your point. The Southern cross is probably worse for being a symbol of the explorers who discovered land to be colonized than for the cross itself IMO.

Meanwhile the Nordic countries have sideways crosses because one of them started it since they had a king see a cross or something in a battle, and then they copied each other's homework. The king didn't even meet Jesus, he just hallucinated a cross. If you met the guy then at least that's a story. That's like putting Elvis on your flag because you saw him in a potato chip.

My top concern in switching to electric lawn equipment is removable battery storage in the winter, and battery degregation/range concerns.

I bought a used 4 stroke lawnmower from someone moving away, and it mows my whole lawn.

Considering the rate at which my laptop battery deteriorated, I don't think the lawn mower battery would last 2 years if I want to do my whole lawn at once.

Electric replacements for 2 stroke stuff is definitely way better, I love my electric trimmer/edger. It's easier to charge a battery than mix the oil/gas and smell all that purposely burned oil.

I hope you live somewhere you can sell that solar energy back to the grid, batteries are the worst part of electrifying stuff. I wonder if anyone's built a water tower in their backyard for energy storage. Pump it up during the day, release the water down into a cistern at night.

What if there were exponentially more than we thought.

• Tianemen squared

• Tianemen cubed

And so on and so on

edit: someone else made a very similar joke in a different earlier thread that i did not see. I will be paying that user royalties.

They use shekels in the areas that are bombed by Israel?

I guess that makes sense, but still interesting. I never really thought of what currency they'd use.

I'm surprised Arch is that high compared to other distros.

Also interesting that people are actually switching to windows 11, everyone I know is staying on win10 as long as possible because they're more used to the interface.

Oh shit when did that happen lol.

Time to try and get my WhatsApp group chats to Signal, even though no one else in them cares about security

I never liked/used telegram because it needs my phone number so it's not anonymous. Idk why it's used as a discord alternative, it's not really better except for lower moderation.

If signal had group chats it'd be perfect for my purposes.

Idk what I'd use to text/have voice anonymously to other Hexbearians/feds, there's probably some IRC spinoff useful for that idk.

Damn they fixed the text issues, it's actual letters now.

AI is taking my job of making nonsensical beetle baily comics

I wouldn't believe you because the beat/instruments are very 2000s Timbaland-y.

I now looked it up and The Neptunes (Pharrell) produced it, which makes sense because of the weird, idk, syncopation on the beat. I take back Timbaland because if he made the beat the instruments would stand out more and be more annoying (not that I'm annoyed, I just don't know how else to describe it).

I'm not music educated, so idk if my words are right.

I also feel like the singing is 2000s RnB style, but idk if that's just bias from knowing it's old, the instrumentation, or how the vocals are produced. I can't really name that many modern RnB woman singers so I don't have a good comparison frame. Compared to HER or SZA the vocals aren't that produced, Kelis is more imperfect and slightly raspy which i think would be edited more these days.