"Well, there's a lot of things that I suppose that I worry about. And some of these things will seem esoteric to people. The birth rate is very low in almost every country, and unless that changes, civilization will disappear," Musk said in part two of his [Fox News] "Special Report" exclusive interview Friday.

Musk pointed to declining birth rates in the U.S. and Korea, warning that "nothing seems to be turning that around. Humanity is dying." //

America’s birth rate hit an all-time low in 2023:

The nation’s fertility rate has declined since 1957, when there were 122.9 births per 1,000 women ages 15–44. Data for 2023 puts the current fertility rate at less than half the 1957 rate, 54.5. //

"I worry generally about the strength of America. America is the central column that holds up all of Western civilization... If that column fails, it's all over. You can't run off to New Zealand or some other place. It's over. So either we strengthen that column and make sure America is strong, and we'll be strong for a long time, or that roof's coming down," he told Baier.

chiasticslide Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
14y
191
Subscriptor++
If seeing is believing, they're just removing the actual script from the installer. But the script is only a 3-liner CMD. Hopefully entering this manually should still work. Or slipstreaming it into the ISO somehow. Or switching to a different OS.

Code:
@echo off
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
shutdown /r /t 0

then write up the marketing letter, format it and let it all rip on a Diablo 630 daisy wheel printer. Many, was that thing loud. Made the whole office grimace when I kicked it off. //

Re: Loud printers
You've obviously never used an ICL 1900 lineprinter: these could print at 160 characters per line at up to 1300 lines per minute. The mechanism was based round a hollow drum the full width of the paper with 160 rings of characters, each containing the complete character set. These were organised so that each embossed row had the same character in every position. The embossed drum was installed behind a row of 160 hammers and a inky ribbon the full width of the paper: both paper and ribbon scrolled vertically, though not at the same speed. The print hammers were driven off a very latge capacitor in the printer's body.

The printer was loud enough when printing invoices, etc, but George 3's print driver could easily outdo it. It separated documents by outputting, IIRC, a page throw, a job title, 10 full width lines of 160 asterisks and another page throw: when this happened the printer almost jumped off the floor and made a noise similar to a short burst from a machine gun.

These ICL printers were much louder than any IBM lineprinter I've ever heard running. That's because IBM used train printers: the character set formed a rotating chain running across the paper path and were designed so that only one character could hit the paper at a time. //

Re: Loud printers
Impact printers were getting fairly close to their practical limits in terms of printing speed. There was a flurry of development in the early 1970s to come up with better solutions. Xerox produced something that was kind of a hybrid between a drum printer and a photocopier - a set of flash lamps illuminated the correct characters on a drum transferring their images optically to the selenium copier drum. That got printing up to around 4000 lines a minute. Honeywell introduced an electrostatic system using a dielectric paper that raised speeds to 18,000 lines per minute.

However, it was IBM that developed the first laser printer - the IBM 3800. Its initial version managed only a shade under 14,000 lines per minute, but a later version raised the speed to over 20,000 lines per minute - around 2.8 km/h. With paper running that fast , a laser and a hot fuser unit, suddenly noise was not the only hazard. There's a fascinating training video for operators that shows the massive scale of the beast.

How long does it take for your 400mA multimeter fuse to blow at 600mA?
Grab a chair and watch!
The amazing unpredictability of fusing current ratings at low overloads.

Re: "I think that transducer has incorrect coefficients"
He probably could have said, "I think we should reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" and I bet no one would have been any the wiser! //

Or recognising the half-built Interocitor shoved in a corner.

Seriously, did anybody get the full set of screwdrivers needed for that thing? //

You forgot about the "Retro-Encabulator" See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgaKjVXK0KA. //

Obviously no one tried re-routing the power conduits. //

Reroute power from life support in the marketing department, they've been a waste of oxygen for several quarters. //

Nothing wrong with a well built Retro Encabulator but I'll take a good old Turbo Encabulator any day. Perhaps a bit more faff in keeping the girdle springs in check but far fewer problems with the dingle arms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag. //

It's the reciprocating dingle arm. It's always the bl00dy reciprocating dingle arm. //

Or the Diagonal Steam Trap ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgBtOKu81iY. //

I'd go with throwing open the switches on the sonic oscillator and stepping up the reactor power three more points.

The Flipper Zero is basically a two-way remote control that can receive, read, store and transmit a variety of wireless signals. There are plenty of other devices that can do some of these things, but the Flipper puts them all together. Plus, it’s easy to understand—anyone could pick one up and use it to read an NFC card, listen in on someone else's walkie-talkie conversation, or turn off the TV at their neighbor’s house. The Flipper Zero’s gamified presentation (and actual games) and ease-of-use could be seen as a means to demystify the technology that surrounds us, or it could be seen as a way of giving people with limited knowledge a powerful tool to cause chaos. It’s all about how you use it.

Once you pay for an e-book on Amazon, it has been licensed, not sold to you, according to the company's terms of service. This gives the company a lot of leeway in deciding what you do with a purchased e-book. The terms of service explicitly forbid bypassing the DRM and reading it on devices or apps that Kindle doesn't officially support. //

The legalities involved in bypassing DRM
Bypassing DRM is illegal in the US, thanks to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but it may be legal in other regions. The DMCA, among other things, makes it difficult to create a legal backup of the digital media you own. I reached out to Cory Doctorow, an author and vocal DRM critic, to learn more about this subject.

In an email, he explained the complexities involved in understanding where the boundary lies here. "It isn't a copyright infringement to move a book from one device you own to another ([aka 'format shifting']). However, in 1998, the US Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which created a new kind of copyright—a copyright that protects DRM itself," Doctorow wrote. "Under Section 1201 of the DMCA, it's a felony (punishable by a [five]-year prison sentence and a [$500,000] fine) to give someone a "circumvention device" that defeats an "access control" for a copyrighted work. This law applies even if you don't violate copyright.

"Say I tell you that you have my permission to move a book I wrote (and am thus the copyright holder for) from your Kindle to another device. If the Kindle book has DRM, you're still not allowed to move it. The fact that I am the copyright holder has no impact on whether Amazon—a company that didn't create or invest in my book—can prevent you from moving that book outside of its walled garden...In fact, if I supply you with a tool to remove DRM (like some versions of Calibre), then I commit a felony and Amazon can have me sent to prison for five years for giving you a tool to move my book from the Kindle app to a rival app like Kobo," he wrote.

When you download a Kindle e-book, it's available in the AZW format, and audiobooks from Audible use the proprietary AAX format. If you download these to your computer, that is format shifting, but it may be illegal if you had to circumvent DRM to do it. Doctorow added, "that means that even though copyright law says you can format shift your books, music, videos, games, [etc.], DMCA 1201 (a "paracopyright law") makes this an imprisonable felony if you have to break DRM first." //

However, without changing the DMCA, we can't expect to see real, lasting change in this space. Doctorow said as much to me: "What we really need to do is get rid of DMCA 1201, that law that makes it a crime to format shift your media...it's the same law that stops farmers from fixing their tractors, blocks independent mechanics from fixing your car, stops rivals from setting up alternative app stores for phones and games consoles...this law is a menace!"

For decades, Dr. Jim Wilder has been delving into biblical scripture, spiritual formation, and brain science. These studies led to the development of a unique model of spiritual and psychological maturation.
This model was defined in the book “The Life Model: Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You” and has been practiced at The Shepherd’s House Counseling Center in Pasadena, California (now Life Model Works) and is currently being taught in churches, marriage seminars and recovery programs around the world.

Salcedo: "You have a manner about you that gets to the nub of an issue, but you do it with a smile on your face in a classic way as everybody can see, very much in the style, in my opinion, of Benjamin Franklin. I think we need more of you and less of the Squad, and that's your liberty-loving Latino's opinion here.

What is the proper role, in your opinion, of those in government if they're playing by the John Kennedy playbook?"

Kennedy: Just tell the truth and say what you believe. The American people are plenty smart. Now they don't read Aristotle every time 'cause they're busy earning a living, they're busy getting up every day and going to work, paying their taxes, trying to do the right thing by their kids.

But they can figure all this out. And we saw them figure it out in the last election. You know, I've got this adage that I try to live by: Always be yourself unless you suck, you know, and if you suck there's nothing you can do about it.

I just try to be myself, and I mean it, I don't hate anybody. When I say my prayers at night, I ask God, "Don't let me hate." You're entitled to your opinion, I'm entitled to mine. The difference between me and many of the loon wing of the Democrats is that I trust the American people to figure it out on their own, and they always do. ///

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Friday that the Trump administration had granted permission to West Virginia to ban the use of federal food assistance dollars to buy soft drinks. At an event in Martinsburg, WV, RFK Jr. gave West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey a first-of-its-kind waiver to permit the ban and had a message for the rest of the country: “Apply for a waiver to my agency, and we’re going to give it to you.” //

This marks a turning point in the battle between nutritional advocates and beverage manufacturers and sellers over whether SNAP dollars should be used to buy soft drinks.

Soft drinks are the top item purchased with SNAP benefits.

Soft Drinks
Fluid Milk
Ground Beef
Bag Snacks
Cheese
Baked Breads
Cold Cereal
Fresh Chicken
Frozen Handhelds and Snacks
Lunchmeat
Candy
Infant Formula
Frozen Pizza
Refrigerated Juices/Drinks
Ice Cream
Coffee and Creamers. //

Personally, I think the framing of this issue as a "government overreach" or "rights" argument is the height of dishonesty. SNAP benefits, as the name indicates, are "supplemental" to the normal food budget. The money is a government benefit and it has the right to decide what that benefit can be used for. If you want to buy candy and soft drinks, go right ahead, but use your own money. The other major nutritional program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, also known as WIC, already prohibits soft drink purchases, and the sky didn't fall in.

Senator Kennedy -- challenging the status quo, like Noah.

"All the fact checkers died" is savage 🤣

On Thursday, two Republican Senators, Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), revealed a bill that would abolish the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in favor of private security at the nation's airports and other secure venues. //

The measure would officially abolish the TSA three years after being enacted into law, which the senators believe would provide time for security needs to be privatized. //

The TSA should be eliminated and replaced with privatized solutions that are more targeted, streamlined, and where appropriate accountable to limited government oversight," he added.

The senators specifically denote in the legislation that the reorganization plan can't require private security companies to do warrantless searches or extend the TSA in any way. //

Private security firms, arranged by the local airports' management, have the advantage of being accountable. Screw-ups can lead to a company losing a lucrative contract, so there is a strong incentive to be effective. TSA, as with any bureaucracy paid for by taxpayer dollars, has no such incentive.

Kernen: “Did you call for Lloyd Austin’s resignation? Not only did we lose 13 service members, we left $70 billion worth of equipment that fell into the hands of the Taliban.”

“Couple of years later, he was out of pocket for two weeks and didn’t tell the White House. Did you ask for him to resign at this point?”

Coons: “The fact the Secretary of Defense was getting healthcare is fundamentally different from the Secretary of Defense sharing on an unsecured platform attack plans.”

Kernen: “The point is you’re going to complain about a splinter in one eye and ignore a 2x4 in the other eye.”

In signing the EO, President Trump used the authority granted him by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), which empowered presidents to shape and oversee the federal workforce. We'll see what the judicial branch has to say about that and whether or not they held previous presidents to the same standards. //

Eric Blanc (also at ericblanc. b s k y ) @_ericblanc
Trump's executive order tonight has illegally cancelled union contracts for 67% of the federal workforce & 75% of unionized federal employees — roughly 700,000 union workers

This may be the single biggest attack on the labor movement in American history
10:45 AM · Mar 28, 2025. //

G3
an hour ago
Labor unions came about to protect employees from predatory employers...is the federal government in the habit of mistreating its employees? No? then why should federal employees be unionized...other than to line the pockets of a select few at the top.

Frankly, most unions are worthless - especially the teachers' union. //

NorCalGC SH-2F SCPO
22 minutes ago
My grandfather was a member of the carpenters union. During WW2 he moved to the SF Bay Area to work as a welder in the shipyards. It was a nonunion job. When the war ended he went back to work for the union. After he’d put in his 30 years he went to the union office to get his pension. They told him he wasn’t eligible because his 30 years weren’t consecutive. They screwed him out of his pension. No one in his family has had any use for a union ever since. //

Az-Mt
an hour ago
Congress allocates money for wages and benefits so administration should not negotiate on anything except working conditions. Very little use of unions. Also stop deducting their dues. Make the Union collect them.

And the media was running anonymous stories claiming that Hegseth's colleagues thought he should resign; for instance, Trump allies are starting to notice Hegseth's growing pile of mistakes - POLITICO and Concerns about Hegseth’s judgment come roaring back after group chat scandal | CNN Politics.

Pete Hegseth has been targeted for destruction, but he was merely a participant in the chat group. This isn't new. It comes after another failed attempt to claim that Hegseth had briefed Elon Musk on top-secret war plans targeting China.... The question is: Why?

The answer to that, I think, lies in what Hegseth has done since taking the reins at the Pentagon. He has swiftly removed the most problematic military leaders and replaced them with people who support his agenda. He has largely uprooted the massive DEI infrastructure transplanted into the Pentagon during the Obama years and nurtured to maturity under Biden. He has made great strides in focusing the Pentagon on fighting and winning wars. I think the team he is building will begin to repair much of the damage done to the services, particularly the Navy. His willingness to work with DOGE ensures he is making enemies in the right places. As we've noted before, Hegseth is facing a lot of pushback from the status quo in the Department of Defense, and he's not backing down. //

There is no logical reason why Pete Hegseth should resign or be fired over the Signal fiasco, but there is a very logical reason why that blunder is being used to discredit him and try to have him removed. Hegseth is an existential challenge to the left's "long march" through the military. He's taking back ground the left fought hard to gain in turning the military into a giant petrie dish for social experimentation. The team he is putting together holds the promise of being transformative. That is why Pete Hegseth has become the target.

Immediately completing tasks that only take 60 seconds to do is the key to productivity and decluttering, according to experts.

While household tasks can seem insurmountable — heaps of laundry to wash and fold, a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink, dust collecting on shelves — a simple 60-second rule can help mitigate how overwhelming it may seem. //

In short, the rule is that if a chore can take less than a minute to do, such as picking up dirty clothes off the floor or wiping down countertops, it should be completed immediately. //

The 60-second rule could be a game-changer for seasoned procrastinators or people who have mental health struggles or ADHD, according to Hallmark.

This is because doing one small task at a time is less anxiety-inducing than an onslaught of chores to complete all at once.

Crawford | March 26, 2025 at 11:46 am
“No matter where you are and what you’re accused of, you deserve due process if you are a citizen of America.”

Simply not true. US citizens who had gone to Germany and volunteered for the Wehrmacht were not given due process during WWII, and no one expected them to receive it. They were enemy combatants, no more.

TargaGTS in reply to Crawford. | March 26, 2025 at 12:47 pm
That’s true. They were not afforded due process on the battlefield…in Europe. However, some were captured in the US. For instance, the US citizens involved in Operation Pastorious (three total), were granted due process (as were the other German nationals captured with them) and that would eventually produce the case SCOTUS decided, Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942). Those men were eventually sentenced to death. Their convictions upheld by the Court but two of the three US citizens were granted clemency by FDR and I think later deported to Germany after the war. One was executed weeks after the sentences were upheld.

Three weeks ago, NASA revealed that a shipping container protecting a Cygnus spacecraft sustained "damage" while traveling to the launch site in Florida.

Built by Northrop Grumman, Cygnus is one of two Western spacecraft currently capable of delivering food, water, experiments, and other supplies to the International Space Station. This particular Cygnus mission, NG-22, had been scheduled for June. As part of its statement in early March, the space agency said it was evaluating the NG-22 Cygnus cargo supply mission along with Northrop.

On Wednesday, after a query from Ars Technica, the space agency acknowledged that the Cygnus spacecraft designated for NG-22 is too damaged to fly, at least in the nearterm.

Fox News Senior Correspondent and host of "Special Report" Bret Baier sat down with Elon Musk and the entire DOGE team on Thursday. This is a step up from the individual interviews done with Musk and one or two of the members. While their work overlaps all of the government agencies, each DOGE member spoke to the findings at particular agencies like the Social Security Administration, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Health, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of the Interior.

Baier kicked off his questioning with Musk, asking what are the DOGE budgetary savings goals and what he thinks he's achieved thus far?

During the continuing resolution fight, the drum the Democrats kept beating was that Republicans wanted to gut Medicare - despite the fact that Joe Biden's administration oversaw years of cuts to Medicare Advantage, the plan increasingly chosen by the nation's seniors. Dems won't characterize cuts to Medicare Advantage as Medicare cuts, though, because what they're really trying to do is eliminate Medicare Advantage as a way to push "Medicare for All."