"I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years. I don't support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism. But I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay." //

Laocoön of Troy
7 hours ago edited
Uri Berliner joins Bari Weiss, Alan Dershowitz, Megyn Kelly, and an army of liberals who've also been eagerly jettisoned by the fascist left. He will be blacklisted like the rest.

At some point somebody (like mebbee Mike Rowe or a few others) should organize these broken toys against the leftist monster who are eager to destroy us all.

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Meet David Zinn, the professional sidewalk chalk artist who isn’t afraid of his art getting ruined.

“It’s literal dust that will wash in the rain, which people think is a sad part, but it actually facilitates the ability to just enjoy making something for the joy of making it without worrying about whether it’s going to hang on a gallery wall for hundreds of years,” he says.

Do you use tabs or spaces for code indentation?

This is a bit of a "holy war" among software developers; one that's been the subject of many debates and in-jokes. I use spaces, but I never thought it was particularly important. But today we're releasing the raw data behind the Stack Overflow 2017 Developer Survey, and some analysis suggests this choice matters more than I expected.

Spaces make more money than tabs

One does not simply suggest changing a kernel line to help out a parsing tool. //

Cloudgazer Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
9y
17,106
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colon - Alan Perlis. //

DJ Farkus Ars Centurion
3y
368
Tabs or spaces: flexible, don't care.
Tabs of 2, 4, 8, whatever: flexible, don't care

But ask me to use a language where whitespace is syntax (eg, python) and we will have sharp words.

Jennifer Oliver O'Connell @asthegirlturns
·
Now add promotion of how Life Wins in every state by Republican elected officials of that state. Learn what's happening in your own backyard and support it. Half of these reps have no clue.

Bonchie @bonchieredstate
Trump took the right position on abortion.

Practically, more babies are saved by 6-week bans in some states than some compromise that allows abortion until 15-20 weeks nationwide and that Dems build on.

The only way you preserve pro-life wins is keeping it a state issue.
10:42 PM · Apr 8, 2024 //

But no amount of legislation is going to convert hearts and minds. That is up to us. We must not just promote a culture of Life, but emulate it at every turn, and Fr. Pavone reaffirmed that this is where the church is critical. //

Indylawyer
an hour ago
Pro-lifers need to understand that the battle has shifted from a court battle to a legislative one. Prior to Dobbs, the overriding political objective for pro-lifers was overturning Roe, and a key part of doing that was to keep the fight against it alive. It was critical that at least one party maintain a pro-life position to show that the Roe could not be regarded as settled by consensus.
...
The symbolism of a pro-life political party is less critical because many of America's states have now enacted laws prohibiting it in most situations. Instead, we need to be actively pushing legislation in every state to maximize the protection of the unborn. A 15 week ban might still be useful to highlight Democrat extremism in a state like Illinois or New York, but it should be regarded as abject surrender in most red states. Federal legislation may be necessary to support state laws and perhaps eventually prevent a handful of states from providing abortion havens to undermine their pro-life sisters. But that is far in the future and we have a hard fight to get there. For now, the main thing we need from the federal government is to stay out of the way and allow the states to protect the unborn. A federal half-measures like a 15-week limit would be difficult to enforce, would have little impact on the number of abortions, and would undermine the state efforts to go farther. I hope Trump speaks out against some of the radical pro-abortion ballot measures that are being proposed, he'd be a valuable voice in that fight. But his basic position for now is correct - it is a state issue and should stay that way.

PUSH checks allow you to send heartbeats and metrics from your servers to NodePing. Use a PUSH check for things like monitoring your servers that are behind firewalls, tracking CPU load on your Windows SQL servers, or getting alerts before you run out of disk space on your web servers.

PUSH checks are quite different from all the other check types NodePing offers. The others use our probe servers to reach out and see if your services are working correctly. With PUSH checks, you provide the monitoring results to us through an HTTP POST. You can use your own scripts or one of our many PUSH clients for Linux and Windows to push the results into NodePing.

London's Frameless is the ultimate immersive art experience. With 42 masterpieces in 4 different galleries, it's the largest permanent multi-sensory experience in the UK.

Over the last year, we've alerted our readers to specific RedState articles that Google has demonetized, meaning that no ads can be shown on those articles and RedState doesn't receive any revenue on them, for allegedly violating its guidelines. Google claims the offending articles contain "dangerous or derogatory content" or "unreliable and harmful claims," but what they really contain is content Google and/or the government deem dangerous to groupthink and the accepted narratives – content that might make people question what they're being spoon-fed by legacy media propagandists.

Some might argue that it's not censorship because Google doesn't require that we take the "offending" post down. I'd argue that it's still a form of censorship because it's making it painful to go against the orthodoxy. If RedState can't pay its writers, RedState and the "dangerous" truths and opinions published on the site will go away. (Or so it thinks.)

Since August 2023, Google has demonetized more than 85 RedState stories, and that total is growing every day. //

Why is Google flagging all these stories?

It's doing it because each flagged article harms our domain score overall, which lowers our ad rates and leads to a lower quality of ads being shown on our site.

It's doing it because we're getting closer to the 2024 election and Google wants to make sure that outlets that practice real journalism are sent a big message: that any criticism of the integrity of the election will not be tolerated.

Active power, P

Active power is expressed in watt (W). Sometimes this power is also called “real power.” This is the power you are actually consuming.

Reactive power, Q

Reactive power is expressed in volt-ampere reactive (var)
This power is stored in components, then released again back to the source through the AC cycle. Capacitors and inductors do this.

Apparent power, S

Apparent power is expressed in volt-ampere (VA)
(RMS voltage times the RMS current). A power supply must be capable to output the full apparent power delivered to a circuit, not just the active power.

When looking at a typical phasor diagram on a meter, it is assumed the current phasors are rotating counter clockwise, with the voltage phasors stationary at their pre-determined locations. For demonstration purposes, Figure 1 is a 4 wire wye configured system, with ABC rotation.  Phase A voltage, or Va, lays on the primary “x” axis at 0° phase shift.  Ia is laying on top of the voltage phasor at 0° as well, indicating unity power factor, or a power factor of 1.  Phase B and C voltages and current pairs are separated by 120 degrees.

When a phase shift between the voltage and current occurs, this is due to reactance on the load, typically in the form of inductance.  This creates a lagging power factor.  When something is referenced as leading or lagging, this is a means of relating the phase relationship of the current waveform to the voltage waveform, and is always with reference to what the current is doing.  ///

quadrants

To this point, the conservative justices have shown some skepticism of the government's case, which U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar is presenting. On that front, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked a question that many of us have been pondering. Namely, he asked whether Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who pulled a fire alarm before an important House vote and impeded a congressional proceeding, could be charged under the same statute. Astonishingly, the government responded with a "no." //

Returning to Bowman, he pulled a fire alarm during a voting session in the House of Representatives. Congressional members had to be evacuated, and the vote was postponed. That is a textbook example of obstructing an official proceeding, and the government's justification for not charging him is basically "because we say it doesn't count." //

etba_ss
an hour ago
I'm not sure they really care at this point. They've milked and milked and milked J6 as much as they can. They've set an example and a standard that they can do whatever they want to you if your politics do not align. The time to have been providing relief in these cases is not April 2024, but in April 2021.

I don't mean to say that it doesn't matter, but this is one of those issues that the damage has largely been done on. The whole point of J6 is to influence elections and suppress dissent, including covering up fraud and electioneering during the 2020 election. All serious efforts at exposing the issues in 2020 stopped after J6. That was the main purpose and it was instantly successful.

The time is coming where Governors, state legislators, sheriffs, etc. decide if they will follow the law and the Constitution or the federal government and the court system. The two things are not the same. We shouldn't ignore the courts for "light and transient causes", but if our Founders were willing to pick up a musket and risk the very real possibility of being hung for traitors, telling the federal government and/or the federal courts "no" isn't too much to ask. Again, you don't do this because you disagree with some largely irrelevant statute, but when it comes to such basic things as border security, liberty and political prosecution, those things aren't "light and transient causes", but ones that are fundamental to the existence of a constitutional republic. //

etba_ss Hallen
38 minutes ago edited
The problem with the court upholding the law, even if they thought it was valid and could be applied is that selective prosecution violates a higher law. The Constitution is supreme to the court or to any Congressionally issued statute or law. The Constitution includes "equal protection under the law". Selective prosecution on the basis of political connections or ideology is a direct violation of the US Constitution. So Congress could pass a law saying that it is illegal to be a Republican. That law would violate the Constitution and be thrown out.

So either the law itself must be thrown out, or at least its application in this case must be thrown out. It is a gross violation of the Constitution, which is what Gorsuch is pointing out.

A special feature on the music Lillibullero, a 17th-century English political song. The song is used by the BBC World Service. The tune can still surprise even though its over 300 years old.

Image was captured during Martian spring, on May 21, by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera
In Mars' northern hemisphere, the snow and ice seen on the dunes is made of carbon dioxide - or, dry ice
As it reacts to sun, the gas that escapes carries up the dark sand from below, creating 'beautiful patterns'

California lawmakers are moving to create a "genealogy office" that would help determine an individual's eligibility for reparations. //

"Apologies alone are inadequate reparations to victims," it continued. "But when combined with material forms of reparations, apologies provide an opportunity for communal reckoning with the past and repair for moral, physical, and dignitary harms."

Despite their seeming determination to make amends for historical wrongs, California has never been a slave state. In fact, California's admission to the Union back in 1850 was contingent upon its entry as a free state, which meant that slavery was prohibited within its borders.

Hackers already received a $22 million payment. Now a second group demands money. //

Callow says the incident reinforces that cybercriminals can’t be trusted to delete data, even when they are paid. //

“Sometimes they use the undeleted data to extort victims for a second time, and the risk of re-extortion will only increase as law enforcement up their disruption efforts and throw the ransomware ecosystem into chaos,” Callow says. “What were always unpredictable outcomes will now be even more unpredictable.”

Similarly, DiMaggio says victims of ransomware attacks need to learn they can’t trust cybercriminals. “Victims need to understand that paying a criminal who promises to delete their data permanently is a myth,” DiMaggio says. “They are paying to have their data taken off the public side of the ransomware attackers' data leak site. They should assume it is never actually deleted.” //

quackmeister Smack-Fu Master, in training
7y
55
Makes perfect business sense that ransomware vendors are embracing the subscriber model. //

deviant_cocktail Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
4y
150
Subscriptor
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:—

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

(From the poem Dane-geld by Rudyard Kipling) //

Shavano Ars Legatus Legionis
11y
57,985
Subscriptor
Although Change Healthcare and their parent United Health rightly deserve to be pilloried and their stock to take a giant nose dive for this, and to lose all their doctor affiliations and patients, punishing them alone won't fix the problem. Everybody's data remains at risk as long as it's legal to pay ransomware companies.

Make it a felony for any US business or government entity to pay cyber-related ransom. Then the payments will stop, which will make the ransom attempts stop. //

freaq Ars Scholae Palatinae
6y
1,099
Stop… paying…
They will never stop if you keep paying…

its time that it becomes illegal to pay off ransomware, so that fewer people do.

Crime only stops when it stops paying…

Experience may matter more than innate ability when it comes to sense of direction. //

“People are never perfect, but they can be as accurate as single-digit degrees off, which is incredibly accurate,” says Nora Newcombe, a cognitive psychologist at Temple University who coauthored a look at how navigational ability develops in the 2022 Annual Review of Developmental Psychology. But others, when asked to indicate the target’s direction, seem to point at random. “They have literally no idea where it is.”

Personality, too, appears to play a role in developing navigational ability. “To get good at navigating, you have to be willing to explore,” says Uttal. “Some people do not enjoy the experience of wandering, and others enjoy it very much.”

Jeff S Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
15y
8,465
Subscriptor++
jandrese said:
This is actually somewhat impressive. 12,600 victims means each one was extorted for around $135, which seems like the amount of money you might expect an average 14-17 year old boy to have. That's an enormous amount of work on the scammers part. Day in and day out camming and scamming.
One of the things that often ends up being the case for groups committing organized crime is that, when you look at the hours worked to perpetrate the crime, most of the people in the crime ring don't get paid very well. The people at the very top of the gang usually make some decent money.

There have been a few studies on the economics of gangs primarily involved in drug dealing, and most of the people in the gang were making minimum wage or much less - despite taking enormous risks both legally, and the risk of getting shot or beat up or whatever by rival gangs or even your own gang if they decide it's time to 'fire' you.

On top of that, if the criminal enterprise has some success, there's a very real risk that as soon as you start making some money, now you gotta start paying out protection money to crooked cops, politicians, judges, etc.

Even that people at the top of the gangs topped out at around $130k annually, which would be a very good wage for a middle class professional, but really low for an 'executive management' person, which is the closest analog for those groups.

Makes you wonder why they don't get the idea if they are starting up what basically constitutes a business, to sell something legal instead.

Here are two options for future humans to keep us in the habitable zone.