Well, I've also gotten a flu shot every year since the bird flu, no ill effects whatsoever.

BUT. The first AZ vaccine shot did provide me with most of the range of side effects, which I felt for sth like 3 days. The second shot was no more than a sore arm and a headache for the day after.

Considering this reaction to the vaccine, I suspect I'd have had a strong reaction to a real infection, so... good thing I'm now fully vaccinated in case I encounter the real thing - Delta is making rounds...

As a general rule, I'd sign this. Octavia rather than Golf, Superb rather than Passat, etc.

There's a couple reasons I didn't go that route: a) the Superb wasn't available as station wagon back when we were buying the Passat. b) Skoda doesn't have the Sharan (Seat would have the Alhambra). c) I now know the VW garage for its good service, so I'll rather stay with them than switch to a yet unknown Seat dealer.

I only wish there were more choice left in the "family van" range, pretty much everybody's moved over to SUVs, which I abhor.

Just wondering, where does this one come from? BMW? Mercedes-Benz?

My wife's car is a VW Passat station wagon straight from Germany, getting 12 years old in a couple of months. It's quite literally the most care-free car I've seen so far, so much so that I've very recently decided to buy another VW. I guess having a gas engine rather than diesel helped a bit.

Note: I had a BMW 3 series coupé back before the kids, wonderful car to drive, but maintenance wasn't cheap.

When did you last check? 2.10 has been out for a while now, and if you cared to try the development 2.9, that particular issue was solved quite a long time ago.

It's been years that I've been using GIMP 2.9 and 2.10 to process my astro photos, which absolutely requires better than 8-bit-per-channel color depth.

I prefer free and open source software on principle. I'll consider buying proprietary software if it's really necessary. Paying a rental, especially if it locks the user data into proprietary formats, is something I'd consider utterly nuts.

This!

I'll have to admit to having driven my car after having had at least one glass too many - so, impaired, but not out cold. On the rare occasions this happened, I did not have any trouble getting home safely.

A couple years back, I went for an observation night an hour's drive away after having had another astrophotography session the night before, i.e. not much sleep. The session was fun, we had some public, and after the public was gone I used the opportunity (hey, the sky was way darker there than what I'm used to) for another short astrophoto session. After, another hour driving home. Trouble was, it was quite hot, and my car's air conditioning didn't work properly... boy, I thought I'd never get home. Even with windows open, I had a very hard time staying awake, not a drop of alcohol in my blood but instead a coffeine&sugar beverage. I didn't really want to stop for sleeping, with quite some expensive gear in the back and obligations the day after. That's been my single worst peace of driving, ever, and I'll make damn sure that never happens again.

That said, it will be a cold night in hell before I trust some "AI" to drive me around. I can't really fathom why the industry thinks autonomous cars are actually wanted by their customers... unless they consider normal drivers as "not-their-customers". IMHO, they'd better develop a simple reliable battery-electric vehicle with good range without fancy gimmicks, to sell at affordable prices. Any gadgets that supposedly will help the drivers will only tend to make them worse drivers as they rely on these gadgets - thus better not have them and keep drivers alert.

In case anyone wonders: my driving lessons were from a place very near to Germany, with quite the same philosophy.

I'll add that at least in some cases, it's not only the RAID controller hardware, but even the exact BIOS version that counts.

So, hell yeah, go software RAID. Which is exactly what I've got running for my self-built home NAS. The only draw-back is the monthly check that takes quite a while to complete. Considering this is for home use, and the way it's scheduled, I can easily live with it.

A propos drones, I'll just leave this here. Introduced in 1969, more than 50 years ago.
Lockheed_D-21

If it were the impact of a huge-ish asteroid, sure. For a classic quake, wouldn't the panic rather be geological than astronomical?

S,cnr!

I don't know about other countries, but where I live the building codes by now mandate that infrastructure for charging points be at least prepared in new buildings.

Considering the cost of buildings, appartments, I'd wager a charging point would quickly become a deal breaker, so I'd expect existing buildings to be retrofitted accordingly. Charging points do get subsidized by the state, too.

If I were to buy a battery-electric car, adding in the charger would be a no-brainer. Of course, considering the current cost of even the small BEVs (2-3x the cost of a conventional car), for me it's still a no-go.

You should have a look at the range of vehicles Ford offers in Europe. It is quite different from what they sell in the US, much of it developed right in the EU (Germany). Something like the famous F150 isn't even on sale in the EU, except maybe from an overseas importer.

Ford has gone pretty much all-out on the SUV craze, but there are "normal" cars left: the small Fiesta, the compact Focus, the limousine Mondeo (I think it's called Fusion over in the US), the family vans S-Max and Galaxy, plus the transporters. The SUVs are probably much smaller that the US monsters, i.e. adapted to the EU streets and regulations.

In my own experience with Ford, they are cars that handle quite well and are of acceptable quality. As a family father, I'm quite happy that Ford has kept their vans available, unlike most others that have ended theirs. I've been looking into replacing my 9 year-old S-Max, there's not much choice left - it will either be a new S-Max (that would be the brand-new hybrid), or the more expensive, but higher quality, Volkswagen Sharan (which isn't yet available as a hybrid btw). No SUV for me, no "bus" either.

For many of us, that's been true since the US's batshit crazy reaction to 9/11. There was some hope things would get better under Obama, but then Trump proved it was possible to be even worse than George W...

Well until sanity returns over there, no tourist $ from all those who agree with that assessment.

I wonder if this picture is actually a composite of different exposures, or at least cut together from one shot.

I took a picture myself on the same evening (from Europe, lucky I had a break in the clouds), and the moon appears further away from Jupiter/Saturn than in this one.

Anyway, to plan this and execute such a shot is beautifully done. I still wonder about why doing this on film, but to each his own I guess.

Isn't NIF rather a research project on high-powered lasers for future use as weapons, or for simulating nuclear explosions?

Pretty much the rest of the world is working on tokamaks, stellarators etc. when it's about fusion energy.

Maybe NIF should have a shark pool, too.

Not really. It is the result of the will to have independent launch capability. France especially has wanted to have top-notch know-how for their ICBMs, I don't think that's changed.

Pre-SpaceX Ariane was also the main reliable and relatively affordable commercial launcher, at least for those not willing to go with the Russians. IIRC they covered more than half of the market. Arianeespace is also working on catching up to SpaceX, not necessarily by the same methods. e.g. they are pushing hard on 3D printed rocket engines etc.

RISKS is still here, you'll find the digests at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/.

They've had a lot of stuff on voting too, and many other areas too.

The digest was recommended by one of my professors back in the mid-90ies on usenet comp.risks, I still read them via their RSS feed, long after my ISP has shut down its usenet news server.