I did the same check, exactly one of my apps is on the list, a shared calendar I use to coordinate with family. But using a DNS filter (e.g. personal DNS filter, available on f-droid) to see all outgoing connection requests, it is trivial to identify the ones used for the calendar itself and ones used for telemetry/tracking/ads and just block those. I've done this for all my apps, beside the privacy benefits it saves a ton on battery usage. If developers ever get wise to this and start serving core content/services along with telemetry/tracking/ads from the same URLs I'm screwed.

Yep. I had a Oneplus 5 for many years, I do like their products and their OS builds, very solid. But after switching to a flagship with a headphone jack and a microSD slot (Sony Xperia) in 2022 I will not be going back to anything without these features for a while. As a bonus, the SIM and microSD can be removed with only a fingernail, no need for one for one of those needle-like tools that every other phone seems to need.

Agreed. Especially since their opposite chirality only protects from attack by biological methods, all the chemical methods of killing bacteria will work just fine. E.g. antiseptics that destroy bacterial cell membranes by denaturing proteins will work equally well on these mirror-bacteria as they do on normal bacteria. Also the hydrochloric acid in your stomach.

True, but in my experience that can mostly be avoided with the correct use of a calibrated measurement microphone, REW and a capable DSP. Speaker geometry plays a part too, usually it's more of an issue with ported cabinets rather than sealed.

If we're being really nitpicky, you don't really 'hear' much below 20 or 25Hz anyway, regardless of room size, you feel it as a tactile sensation, which doesn't really depend on room size. This is why many home theatres don't use speakers to create such frequencies, they use tactile transducers attached to the furniture (e.g. Buttkicker products et al.). I use a combination of both.

Respectfully disagree.

Video: yes if you're streaming then the quality will be limited by available bandwidth. If you have a 4K bluray, a decent 4K OLED, light controlled room, sit close enough to the screen that it fills the same solid angle of vision as a cinema screen would, you're there. Yes the cinemas have access to higher quality digital files but 99% of people either do not have the visual acuity to notice or wouldn't care if they did. I would only be able to notice by doing a side-by-side comparison AND pixel peeping.

Audio: The vast majority of cinemas are just loud, they are not giving particularly high fidelity sound. If you like the super deep bass effects, you can not only match but easily exceed the low frequency response of a cinema simply by virtue of being in a much smaller space. My sound system (which cost less than £10K using used and DIY components) can hit 16Hz at 110dB with minimal distortion, which is easy enough because the room I'm using is only a couple thousand cubic feet. Recreating the same level of deep bass in a cinema-size space is possible, but far from practical, and certainly not economical. You won't be hearing/feeling much below 30Hz in most cinemas.

And then there's all the other benefits. Once I've bought the bluray and the hardware I can watch that movie repeatedly for free. There's nobody else there to annoy me. I can pause whenever I like. The snacks and drinks are not massively overpriced. I don't have to travel anywhere.

To be clear, I'm referring to the reply by korgitser and the link, not the AC being replied to.

This should be modded +5 informative, it's not really possible to be more factual than this. That it has been modded down speaks volumes about the kind of morons that have mod points today.

I remember the enormous hype surrounding HL2 before it came out. There was a video going around (youtube did not exist back then) which was of the trailer being shown to a group of people, they were going nuts every time something cool and new happened. And the amazing thing is that the game did not disappoint. Cut to today where games with massive hype very rarely live up to it (e.g. CP2077, Starfield, etc). Apart from rockstar's RDR and GTA titles, almost none of the modern games with big hype have actually been worth the hype.

Thank you! There was some chemical principle I had in the back of my mind while writing that post but I couldn't quite make it come to the front of my mind (physics is my field), Van 't Hoff is exactly what I was thinking of (nitpick, you put the apostrophe in the wrong place). Given that even the simplest earth-based lifeforms still rely on extremely complex chemistry, is abiogenesis even possible at temperatures below say 150K, even on cosmological timescales? Maybe someone well versed in biology could chime in?

We know that liquid water is more than likely a requirement for life, so the discovery of an ocean (subsurface or otherwise) is an indicator that there might just be life. Fine. But it's also reasonably certain that energy is also a requirement, given the distance between these moons and the sun, is there going to be enough? The maximum surface temperature of the major moons of Uranus is on the order of 80-90K, my intuition says that's just too cold. I'm not quite knowledgeable enough to make anything more than a partially educated guess either way though, so I would have liked to have seen some commentary on this from the scientists involved. Maybe there's another source of energy, like thermal energy left over from the initial formation of these bodies, or produced by tidal forces or nuclear decay? Anyone with better understanding able to give more insight?

Once again showing the fallacy and the irony of your username, makes me chuckle every time.

Cans are equivalent to plastic bottles because the cans are lined with plastic. Any difference you might taste is a result of the placebo effect. Glass is superior and does genuinely taste different/better.

One of my very favourite books. However the particle interaction you mention is merely a hypothesis. While it is still the dominant hypothesis among scientists AFAIK, it has not been conclusively proven (yet).

Sidenote: while the majority of Asimovs explanations are excellent, and his understanding of Physics was very good at the time, our knowledge of quantum mechanics has advanced a lot in the last half century since that book was published, rendering a small minority of Asimov's explanations misleading or incorrect.

You're right, I apologise for my moron comment, I didn't realise that the long-form notation was still in use in the EU. I guess I'm the moron this time. Thanks for the correction.