Popular science Youtuber Veritasium has their own board game coming out - Elements of Truth is a trivia game where it's not what you know, it's what you you know that counts.
It's all very well to say 'bookmarks mark the point in time when [a] snapshot was created', but how does that actually work, and how does it allow you to use them for incremental ZFS send streams?
The succinct version is that a bookmark is basically a transaction group (txg) number. In ZFS, everything is created as part of a transaction group and gets tagged with the TXG of when it was created. Since things in ZFS are also immutable once written, we know that an object created in a given TXG can't have anything under it that was created in a more recent TXG (although it may well point to things created in older transaction groups). If you have an old directory with an old file and you change a block in the old file, the immutability of ZFS means that you need to write a new version of the data block, a new version of the file metadata that points to the new data block, a new version of the directory metadata that points to the new file metadata, and so on all the way up the tree, and all of those new versions will get a new birth TXG.
This means that given a TXG, it's reasonably efficient to walk down an entire ZFS filesystem (or snapshot) to find everything that was changed since that TXG. When you hit an object with a birth TXG before (or at) your target TXG, you know that you don't have to visit the object's children because they can't have been changed more recently than the object itself. If you bundle up all of the changed objects that you find in a suitable order, you have an incremental send stream. Many of the changed objects you're sending will contain references to older unchanged objects that you're not sending, but if your target has your starting TXG, you know it has all of those unchanged objects already. //
Bookmarks specifically don't preserve the original versions of things; that's why they take no space. Snapshots do preserve the original versions, but they take up space to do that. We can't get something for nothing here.
However, the state’s partnership with Inversa is a big deal.
The company started working with the Sunshine State back in 2024 — and they’ve done incredible work ever since. Between May and July 2025, 1,022 pythons were removed — nearly triple the number caught during the same period in 2024.
“The new program accomplished more removals in July 2025 alone than in the entire year before,” DeSantis said in a statement. //
Ferré noted that “increasing hunter pay by leveraging the fashion sector has led to a significant increase in removals” and shared that Inversa has found that fashion brands are seeking out these types of materials to meet their sustainability goals.
The entire file server and all its features are compressed into one Python file. Drop the file into the root directory of the drive you want to use, and run it to start the server. That's it.
You can run it almost anywhere, including Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and even Raspberry Pi. You can choose to run it with or without Docker, and the whole setup is incredibly portable. Yes, you can build your own Raspberry Pi cloud server with Nextcloud, but it won't get nearly the performance you would with Copyparty.
The simplicity also extends to what Copyparty actually does. It's a web-based file server where you can upload, download, share, and store files for as long as you need. No extra email clients, calendar apps, or fancy collaborative editing features. Just a simple file server that lets you manage your files with ease.
Waiting in the darkness a few miles away from the launch pad, I glanced around at my surroundings before watching SpaceX’s Falcon 9 thunder into the sky. There were no throngs of space enthusiasts anxiously waiting for the rocket to light up the night. No line of photographers snapping photos. Just this reporter and two chipper retirees enjoying what a decade ago would have attracted far more attention.
Go to your local airport and you’ll probably find more people posted up at a plane-spotting park at the end of the runway. Still, a rocket launch is something special. On the same night that I watched the 94th launch of the year depart from Cape Canaveral, Orlando International Airport saw the same number of airplane departures in just three hours. //
The Falcon 9’s established failure rate is less than 1 percent, well short of any safety standard for commercial air travel but good enough to be the most successful orbital-class in history. Given the Falcon 9’s track record, SpaceX seems to have found a way to overcome the temptation for complacency. //
According to analyses by BryceTech, an engineering and space industry consulting firm, SpaceX has launched 86 percent of all the world’s payload mass over the 18 months from the beginning of 2024 through June 30 of this year.
That’s roughly 2.98 million kilograms of the approximately 3.46 million kilograms (3,281 of 3,819 tons) of satellite hardware and cargo that all the world’s rockets placed into orbit during that timeframe. //
But Starship’s arrival will come at the expense of the workhorse Falcon 9, which lacks the capacity to haul the next-gen Starlinks to orbit. “This year and next year I anticipate will be the highest Falcon launch rates that we will see,” said Stephanie Bednarek, SpaceX’s vice president of commercial sales, at an industry conference in July.
SpaceX is on pace for between 165 and 170 Falcon 9 launches this year, with 144 flights already in the books for 2025. Last year’s total for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy was 134 missions. SpaceX has not announced how many Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches it plans for next year.
Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, eventually enabling multiple flights per day. But that’s still a long way off, and it’s unknown how many years it might take for Starship to surpass the Falcon 9’s proven launch tempo. //
Despite all of the newcomers, most satellite operators see a shortage of launch capacity on the commercial market. “The industry is likely to remain supply-constrained through the balance of the decade,” wrote Caleb Henry, director of research at the industry analysis firm Quilty Space. “That could pose a problem for some of the many large constellations on the horizon.”
United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, Rocket Lab’s Neutron, Stoke Space’s Nova, Relativity Space’s Terran R, and Firefly Aerospace and Northrop Grumman’s Eclipse are among the other rockets vying for a bite at the launch apple.
Edward Lawrence
@EdwardLawrence
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U.S. Treasurer tells me there are more than 300 billion pennies in circulation. He says we use about 9 billion pennies each year. At that rate we would run out of pennies in about 33 years. This video shows the last pennies ever minted . #Penny #USMint225
5:21 PM · Nov 12, 2025 //
Yahoo News
@YahooNews
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Goodbye, penny. 👋 The U.S. Mint says it is stopping the production of pennies, a historic move more than two centuries after the one-cent coin entered circulation.
The last penny was stamped at the Philadelphia U.S. Mint during an event on Nov. 12. http://yhoo.it/43rxNJ6
2:31 PM · Nov 12, 2025 //
Higher metal prices result in higher production costs. If production costs get too high, the seigniorage – the difference between a coin’s face value and the cost of putting it into circulation – make the coin worth less than what it costs to make it.
Dave Plummer, a former Microsoft engineer, says his lean original has grown roughly 50 times in size. Rather than critique today's version, Plummer took to his Dave's Garage YouTube channel to offer a window into Task Manager's scrappy origins, including the thought process behind its development, and his unfortunate decision to include his home phone number in the source code.
https://youtu.be/yQykvrAR_po //
Early Task Manager versions could bring Windows to its knees if users gave processes real-time priority or trigger Blue Screens of Death. But Plummer didn't see preventing user choices as his responsibility.
"I believe the operating system should be the arbiter of what's allowed, and that my job was not to second guess it."
Thirty years on, Task Manager endures. As for what was the most important line of code? It isn't a line, according to Plummer. It's a habit.
"It's the habit of eating your own dog food and accountability that says if a number is wrong or a window flickers, I take it personally until the fix ships. He added: "It's a product of a time and a culture that allowed ownership over time to translate into craftsmanship.
"It's the habit of assuming that the user is trying to accomplish some real work. Ship a build, make a flight, save a document, and my job is to just fix things and get out of the way.
"And it's the habit of resilience. If the tool itself gets stuck, revive it. If the system is starving, work in reduced mode," Plummer said. "If the user needs a chisel, don't give them a Nerf bat." ®
Neil Munro
@NeilMunroDC
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More evidence that the "best and brightest" #H1Bs are just lower-level participants in a jobs-for-kickbacks C-Suite auction of the careers earned by skilled American professionals.
For reasons, board members don't want to see the colossal economic losses.
https://bit.ly/4o6zOCy
Last edited
11:59 PM · Oct 25, 2025 //
Ron Hira
@RonHira
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Newly released gov't records show the vast majority of H-1Bs approvals are for entry & junior level jobs
83% at Wage Levels I & II
Way below market salaries
These jobs can and should be filled by unemployed & underemployed American graduates 👇👇👇
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-18473.pdf
3:54 PM · Sep 25, 2025 //
China is an authoritarian state, and has no incentive to allow any of its citizens to travel to the U.S. as students without getting something in return. That doesn't mean all Chinese students are committing espionage. On the contrary, you would expect most aren't due to the sheer practicalities at play, but the student visa program is used as a cover. When you flood universities with over half a million students from a single country, it gets a lot easier for the actual spies to hide in plain sight. Of course, putting all that aside, I'm not sure conservatives would be very upset with "half" of America's most liberal institutions closing because they can't farm Chinese money anymore. //
Raoul Bilbao
2 hours ago edited
I believe Trump is VERY wrong on this one. Don't have enough workers for certain industries? Then TRAIN people we have here (hell we are going to have HUGE job losses due to AI). Do not fund Universities with Chinese Money and Students - those students will take what they learn here and USE IT AGAINST US. So I say hell no on both counts,
RAID type - Supported RAID levels are:
Mirror (two-way mirror - RAID1 / RAID10 equivalent);
RAID-Z1 (single parity with variable stripe width);
RAID-Z2 (double parity with variable stripe width);
RAID-Z3 (triple parity with variable stripe width).
Drive capacity - we expect this number to be in gigabytes (powers of 10), in-line with the way disk capacity is marked by the manufacturers. This number will be converted to tebibytes (powers of 2). The results will be presented in both tebibytes (TiB) and terabytes (TB). Note: 1 TB = 1000 GB = 1000000000000 B and 1 TiB = 1024 GiB = 1099511627776 B
Single drive cost - monetary cost/price of a single drive; used to calculate the Total cost and the Cost per TiB. The parameter is optional and has no impact on capacity calculations.
Number of RAID groups - the number of top-level vdevs in the pool.
Number of drives per RAID group - the number of drives per vdev.
ClickFix often starts with an email sent from a hotel that the target has a pending registration with and references the correct registration information. In other cases, ClickFix attacks begin with a WhatsApp message. In still other cases, the user receives the URL at the top of Google results for a search query. Once the mark accesses the malicious site referenced, it presents a CAPTCHA challenge or other pretext requiring user confirmation. The user receives an instruction to copy a string of text, open a terminal window, paste it in, and press Enter.
The wait is finally over! We received a truly inspirational collection of photographs and stories for this year’s ‘Into the Wild’ contest. Thank you to every missionary and humanitarian worker who shared their perspective. Your commitment to service in the world’s wildest and most remote places is a powerful testament to hope.
We are proud to announce the top three winners, chosen for their compelling images, emotional depth, and strong alignment with the spirit of the theme.
All of your MX record, DNS, blacklist and SMTP diagnostics in one integrated tool. Input a domain name or IP Address or Host Name. Links in the results will guide you to other relevant tools and information. And you'll have a chronological history of your results.
If you already know exactly what you want, you can force a particular test or lookup. Try some of these examples:
Open channel flow monitoring is a long-established technique used to measure the flow rate of water in irrigation channels, streams, stormwater systems, and wastewater treatment facilities. Unlike closed-pipe systems, open channels rely on gravity rather than pressure, making accurate measurement dependent on the relationship between water level (stage) and flow rate.
The uniform application of traffic rules may seem fair, but in reality, it can create a false sense of equality.
On the one hand, the risks associated with different modes of transport are incommensurate. A car that runs a red light can cause serious or even fatal injuries. A cyclist, on the other hand, is unlikely to cause the same degree of damage. //
Furthermore, the efficiency of cycling depends on maintaining speed. Having to stop completely over and over discourages people from cycling, despite its many benefits for health, the environment and traffic flow.
Treating two such different modes of transport the same way, therefore, amounts to implicitly favouring cars, something akin to imposing the same speed limit on pedestrians and trucks. //
Rather than treating bicycles and cars as equals, some jurisdictions have opted for a different approach. The state of Idaho is one good example.
Since 1982, cyclists in Idaho have been able to treat a stop sign as a yield sign and a red light as a stop sign. Several American states (such as Arkansas, Colorado, and Oregon) and countries, such as France and Belgium, have adopted similar regulations. //
In short, adopting the Idaho stop rule would not create chaos, but would regulate an already common practice without compromising public safety, contrary to some concerns. Cyclists who rarely come to a complete stop when there is no traffic generally slow down before crossing because they are aware of their vulnerability.
Iran is drought-prone; indeed, it is the middle of the most severe drought in 57 years, but that isn’t what is causing the current crisis. It is the logical and foreseeable outcome of decades of environmental neglect and Soviet-style mismanagement that has turned a naturally arid climate into a national emergency.
Iran’s groundwater has been depleted, primarily in an effort to surge agriculture to deal with a booming population. Tehran is sinking at a rate of 25 cm per year as the aquifers collapse. This poses a threat to utilities, subways, and the structural integrity of buildings. It is hard to imagine that the settling hasn't caused leaks in water mains.
To be clear, this is not a Tehran problem; this is an Iran problem. The drought affects the whole country, and 30 of Iran’s 31 provinces are experiencing land subsidence due to unchecked groundwater extraction. //
roggeo
9 hours ago
The Caspian Sea is only about 70 miles from Tehran, and while brackish, it has only about 1/3 the salt of seawater. The Mullahs should have spent their money on desalination plants rather than nuclear weapons, and if I can come to that conclusion in 30 seconds, I bet the Iranian people can as well.
20th Century Ltd roggeo
8 hours ago edited
And guess who the local experts are in water desalination? Yes, the inventor of the reverse osmosis (RO) process - those dastardly Jews in Israel.
Imagine how much it grinds the Mullah's gears to think about that fact. //
Buzzkill59
9 hours ago edited
If I remember correctly,several years ago Israel offered Iran and other countries in the area plans for desalination plants free of charge in the interest of regional peace but Iran and several other Muslim nations refused because they didn’t trust Israel! Now they’re thirsty… //
American by Nature Nashvillian
6 hours ago
Iran's situation reminds me of ancient Ephesus at the time of Saint Paul. Ephesus was a bustling sea port, an important hub of Mediterranean commerce.
One day his preaching caused a riot. Paul was expelled to Rome where he was eventually executed.
The Meander River which meandered through the countryside and through Ephesus to the sea, began depositing mega tons of silt until Ephesus was miles inland and no longer a port city.
Ephesus died.
Iran is dying.
"Just discovered this guy," said another poster on the song Time Don't Stop. "I've already downloaded everything I could find." Multiple people commented on how amazing the singer's voice is, apparently unaware that everything to do with Breaking Rust is generated by a computer.
It's a bit surprising given every Breaking Rust song sounds identical - same beat, same tempo, same instrumentation: They're the sort of hyper-generic songs one could only get by feeding a prompt into an AI trained on every bro country song ever recorded and asking it to spit out something that would appeal to the lowest common denominator of music fan, something it appears to have done with success. //
There's good reason artists, be they working in visual, audio, or written mediums, are so concerned that AI is destroying art: When an AI band can make it to number one on a Billboard chart, even one as small as the CDSS chart (which one country music outlet noted takes only about 3,000 sales to reach the top), it's an insult to the human artists who rank lower. //
1 hr
the Jim bloke
Terminator
A mindless and repetitive task where error checking has never been an issue
Writing and performing country music
- At last, a legitimate use for AI
also applies for Rap, which is just country music without the country, or the music.. //
1 hr
Brave CowardBronze badge
Breaking Rust
Breaking Rust shouldn't be rated A, not even AI.
A mere C++ at most.
All the mainstream distros (Ubuntu and Mint, openSUSE and Gecko Linux, Fedora, Debian) come with largely the same choice of desktops, and they're all the same. //
I am also not saying that any of these environments are bad. I have my own preferences, but I completely respect that other people have their own. That's fine too.
That is not the purpose of this piece.
What it is asking is: why are they all the same?
So many different implementations of the "traditional" (since 1995) taskbar-and-launch-menu are not different desktops.
Yes, there are differences, but they are trivial and cosmetic. //
The hidden price of duplicated effort
A very important aspect of this is accessibility. Not only for blind users, but they make a good example. GNOME 2 was reasonably good for people without eyesight, but it's gone, and none of its inheritors come close to matching it.
An excellent and very simple test of accessibility is to use a desktop PC and just unplug the mouse. Windows remains highly usable with only a keyboard. As standard, without enabling any special accessibility aids, windows can be opened, moved, resized, switched and closed, entirely with the keyboard. //
The accessibility features and keyboard controls of macOS are not available at all until enabled, whereas in Windows, they are part of the standard UI, there for everyone to use. //
There are other designs out there. There are more desktops than Windows and macOS, and all offer their own unique benefits. Reimplementing the same old desktop model over and over again doesn't help anyone: it just wastes a huge amount of talent and effort. ® //
Tuesday 17th May 2022 08:55 GMT
DrXymSilver badge
The curse of overchoice
Overchoice is actually a term for when a consumer is given so many options, often varying in ways which are meaningless or confusing that they end up making no choice at all.
Linux has always had that issue and it is illustrated in the article in all the desktops that exist or existed. I expect most prospective Linux users just want to install the thing and use it for something. They really don't care what desktop is powering their experience providing it is easy to use, discoverable, familiar, doesn't throw any nasty surprises at them and lets them get on and do stuff.
There are an almost ridiculous number of Windows-style desktops on Linux – and mostly this applies to the BSDs, too. Most of them are implemented in C, and most use various versions of the Gtk toolkit for their widgets: menus, dialog boxes, buttons and so on.
In approximate age order, the ones still being maintained today are Xfce; MATE, which is a fork of GNOME 2; LXDE; Linux Mint's Cinnamon; and Budgie, implemented in the GNOME-centric Vala language. //
Now we're up to 23. We could dig deeper, but we hope that we've made the point by now. There are several different languages here (but a lot fewer than 23 of them), and several different graphical toolkits (but again, well under 20). This is a vast amount of effort spent reinventing, and then maintaining, the basic concept of a round thing on the end of an axle.
But the underlying concept here is really quite a simple one. The window managers can't match the functionality of the Windows 95 Explorer, and not one of the desktops captures the simple elegance of the original. Windows 95 let you put the taskbar on any screen edge, but you only got one, and you couldn't change its length, or re-arrange or resize its contents, let alone change their orientation. Multiple rows was your only option. //
Remember the Basics of the Unix Philosophy:
Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.
That 1995 design was simple. The components of the desktop – the task bar, the file manager, the text editor, and so on – don't need to exchange lots of rich, complex messages. //
Nearly two dozen different Windows-like UIs represents a titanic waste of programmer effort, skill, and time. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people, working hard for decades… but all on different projects, meaning that none of them achieve greatness. For an example, look at KDE Plasma's 36 launcher menus.
It is 27 years since the first release of KDE, and I suspect that Microsoft has been laughing all the way to the bank ever since. The FOSS world can do better, and it's time it started to try. ®
Adventure II
An early (British) expanded version of the mainframe adventure game
(aka Advent440)
Jack Pike, writing in to the May 1979 issue of Practical Computing, discussed his efforts of porting the mainframe Adventure from non-standard Digital Fortran to standard Fortran; creating a new version of Adventure... //
The source code for the game was recovered by adventure historian Mike Arnautov, who has his own website about that particular version of the game (as well the history of the mainframe program and its many other ports). https://www.mipmip.org/adv440/index.html. //
There are several articles online about Adventure II. I would recommend reading Jason Dyer's exploration of the game, written as part of his All the Adventures series.
https://bluerenga.blog/tag/adventure440/?order=ASC
When Congress passed the Pittman–Robertson Act of 1947, it did something rare: it trusted ordinary citizens more than bureaucrats.
Hunters agreed to tax themselves—an excise on firearms, ammunition, and archery gear—to restore the nation’s wildlife. Every box of shells, every rifle sale, sent dollars straight to state conservation agencies. No congressional earmarks, no political games.
By the 1950s, millions of GIs returned home with a love for the outdoors and a war-forged respect for rifles.