Compensation? I guess if they release and 'compensate' the two Canadians they have locked up in retaliation.

China can go fuck itself.

Agreed. Reading most of the comments so far, it seems like most have never worked in a shipping environment before, understandably. But anyone who has worked LTL freight at some point will remember that people are idiots and the manner in which some material is shipped makes remote work impossible.

- Shipping 2 tons of freight on a pallet meant to take half that.
- Freight beyond the capacity of the forklift attempting to unload it (happens all the time)
- Oversize freight extending beyond the pallets
- Loads shifting and breaking during transport
- Dangerous and hazardous goods loaded by people with no knowledge of TDG
- Shifted pallets no longer level
- Freight speared by other freight
- Freight collapsed on top of freight beneath it
- Trailers with broken flooring/sidewalls
- Most properly secured loads are held in place by logistic bars and load straps - thumbs required to operate
- And the occasional and inevitable damage that happens - puncturing a 900kg sack of grain, for instance, minutes count.


The transportation industry in general, I think, gets a bit of a bad rap. Operating forklifts safely does require actual skill, and there are many people who are truly talented at it. A vehicle that heavy with the steering in the back does not handle like a car, and if you try to drive it like one it likely won't end well.

And yet you appear to be defending a man who mocked a reporter with a disability - what circle does that give you?

Personally I don't wish the man dead - who doesn't want to see him charged after he leaves office? - but the sheer hubris of him contracting Covid is amazing, and given the man's character (or lack thereof) I don't feel the slightest bit of guilt in his suffering OR of his family, paragons of virtue that they are.

The only truly regrettable thing is that he received top-shelf treatment, instead of having to go through the health care system he desperately wants to get rid of.

Why pirate movies?

As you said, given how cheap disk space is these days one could build a private library that doesn't contain any bad movies at all, and entire runs of tv shows no longer aired anywhere. I tend to watch foreign stuff that isn't even advertised in NA, and may be region-locked at any rate. Library maintenance is easy, most software I've tried keeps up pretty well. I settled on minidlna on a raspi. Not very feature-rich but rock solid for myself. Most of what I download doesn't end up in the library anyways. I often have a favorite movie playing on the tv while using my laptop to read Slashdot and split my attention watching and reading comments. Not that I expect everyone does this, but I'd bet I'm not alone. And who hasn't watched the Star Wars series multiple times? (And by Star Wars series I mean the original trilogy laserdisc rips of course, no reason to put oneself through the others more than once... except Rogue One perhaps)

I do agree that online services may make it easier to find movies, particularly older ones, lots of dead torrents exist and finding a decent one can be frustrating. But the plus side is that once you have it on disc you never have to look for it again. The problem with the streaming services is what others have pointed out before, and that is pricing and the need for multiple subscriptions. Less than a cup of coffee a day for one but I can't afford to buy the whole office a cup each morning. Torrent quality varies, sure, but if you are patient enough to wait a few months a bluray rip is completely watchable - no coughs, camera shakes, etc. If you lack the patience, 'cam' torrents are usually labelled as such. You get what you didn't pay for/wait for, I guess.

I think of it as the wild west right now, until they fight it out and one of them has a 'complete' enough selection at the price of a single cup of coffee a day, it's too pricey and too frustrating to discourage me from simply torrenting what I'd like to watch.

I suppose I should feel bad about pirating movies but I just can't. I think that constantly being bombarded with advertising everywhere and data-mined equals it all out IMO.

Well shit, there goes the neighbourhood.

Embedded video on the front page - slashdot has finally died for me.

https://www.sciencenews.org/ar...

https://www.nature.com/article...

I can't find the link at the moment, but I read another paper a couple weeks ago which gave probable estimates of how long ago Sars-Cov-2 split off from the other coronaviruses, it's been around for a very long time in bats, just the jump to humans which is 'new'.

I spent 7 years working as a laboratory animal tech for a University and I can say for certain they will be selecting which mice to euth very carefully. Not because they care about the mice from a humane context, and I'm sure most do, but in regards to what the damn things cost. For particular strains, depending on what was done to them, you would have to add up all the hours technicians spent getting them that far. Many genetically modified strains have much lower success at producing progeny, which adds to the value of any particular mouse because it could take months or years to resurrect a colony from cryo.

I remember receiving one shipment of mice from some University in France. They had sent us 20 mice, worth $7800 each.

Ultimately I never met a single PI who wouldn't raise hell if they thought they were spending one penny more than they had to. And I can count on my fingers the number of times they took the time to visit their animal room, they always sent techs for the grunt work. The dollar value or potential difficulty in replacing them are the only metrics they use in a case like this.

And for the animal rights nutters, every PI I worked with had to provide extensive reasons as to how many mice they would like to use, detailed procedures regarding what was to be done to the mice and had to provide justifications for every procedure in front of an animal care committee before they were allowed to proceed. I sat on a few of those, and it isn't easy to gain approval without caveats. The days of just injecting mice 'to see what happens' are long, long gone. Suffering just wasn't tolerated where I'd worked, and breaking those kinds of rules was a very short track to the door, whether or not you were a tech or a prof. Nothing scares a PI more than loss of funding.

Just in case anyone else was a little confused by the 'new' name, here's an explanation:

https://www.sciencemag.org/new...

They should have stuck with the traditional method of naming new viruses and named it after the closest body of water, political correctness be damned.

Not REALLY that expensive, if you plan ahead. I've been squirreling away spare cash for a PS5 off and on for a couple of years now, so even if it costs $100 more than expected it won't be all that painful.

I bought my PS4 in 2014, use it quite often so maybe averaged out it's about 2 hours a day, maybe a bit less, so let's go with 700 hours a year. That's 4200 hours over the past 6 years. $400 to buy, works out to $0.09 per hour of entertainment. Pretty cheap, IMO.

What gives me pause, this time, is that for the past year or so my PS4 is getting significantly more laggy in everything it does aside from running a game. The menu doesn't respond quickly anymore with a perceptible delay between a button press and the action happening, launching Youtube or Netflix seems to take longer and longer as well. The hardware itself is still solid, and so I suspect that the updates are the cause. That, and efforts to cram other services down my throat. Why do I have to be subjected to things like 'Playstation Now' or the Disney+ channel or 'Prime Video' if I'm never, ever, going to use them? From what I can tell, most of the delays I'm experiencing appear to be caused by thumbnails loading for the abovementioned services, and God-knows-what-else it's trying to do in the background. The recent Holiday sale installed a shortcut to the menu without asking, and while harmless, it seems a little intrusive for some reason. I guess this time will be based on how much I can control that kind of BS...

I'm not optimistic.

It should have been 'Dotard-45'...

At least he didn't try to give Angela Merkel a backrub.

Given his history, at least he didn't try to grab her by the crotch...

2. Close all but one -- grab the tab and pull it out into another window, then alt-tab back and click the close box on the previous window.

As opposed to 'right-click, close other tabs'? Not easier, and not faster, sorry.

Close to the right I've never used, however, but I can see how it'd be useful. My chromebook is slowly becoming more and more irritating to use, the worst offender being the constant tab reloading whenever I switch tabs back and forth with no option to turn it off. Memory usage has rarely ever been a concern, but it keeps dumping them as soon as I switch tabs anyways. Irritating. Makes me wonder who tests new changes in regards to usability.

Quite right. For lab mice, anyways, the average lifespan was 2-3 years in my experience. Most breeding pairs dropped about a dozen or so litters over their reproductive lifespan, though it varied by strain. From birth to weaning was usually 21 days, and the new female mice could become impregnated quite soon afterwards - mice ain't shy about inbreeding. I would guess that wild mice have similar breeding capabilities, though less opportunity to find suitable mates while they're still fertile.

Changing poor driving habits by heavy fines over time is the idea, speaking of missing the point. Funny you brought up eye contact, when the solution for the driver not having this RDS radio turned on is to make a flashy thing on the display that takes the driver's eyes off the road when the ambo is rapidly coming up behind you. But you seem to know everything... distracted driving laws and the like, pshaw! You're right. Do you have to actually look for the turn signal when you drive? I hope your commute isn't near me.

Maybe you're just trolling, maybe you're not, but you seem awfully aggressive about this. Normally I don't feed the likes of you.

What's a human life worth? I dunno, go ask an insurance adjuster.

This sounds like a waste of money and likely not that effective. What could work, perhaps, is if you put a dashcam on the ambo and use plate recognition for those assholes who don't make way and simply forward the videos to the police for the application of a heavy fine. Do it enough times and not only would you generate revenue, but those who have to pay the tickets will either learn expensive lessons or not be able to afford a car anymore. Win-win!

Even though it's for a good reason, I cringe every time I hear something about 'taking over' what's mine, bought and paid for. The root cause of this is bad driving habits, not lack of communication. If a driver doesn't notice the flashing lights and siren they aren't operating the damn vehicle properly, IMO.