For what it's worth, I moved off of my grandfathered free Google "Workspace" account several years ago and switched the mail/calendar/contacts service to Fastmail. It took a few weeks for the spam filter to get trained properly to my incoming mail, but since then it's been damn near perfect. No complaints at all from that front. I've been very satisfied with the mail service, price, and the clueful employees they have.

Exactly correct. Itâ(TM)s the GPS rollover + a manufacturer specific offset.

There was some concern a few years ago when some GPS-disciplined oscillators used as time and frequency standards in common use among the âoetime nutâ community were coming up on their specific rollover. The devices were obsolete and no new firmware was available, but the community updated the various software that processes data from the devices in time and all was well.

It seems things were handled less well by Honda.

Invalid, or simply containing information that most QR code readers cannot read?

My understanding is that it contains binary, digitally-signed information that can prove to certain compliant QR code readers that the information is authentic and unmodified. Such scanners would presumably be used at public fora like stadiums, airports, etc.

That's not how HIPAA works. HIPAA applies to health-related entities (e.g. health insurers, providers, etc.), and limits such entities from sharing one's health information without authorization. Employers and public fora like a stadium are not covered by HIPAA and so they can request proof of vaccination from the employee (the employee can share their information as they see fit, as they're not restricted by HIPAA), as well as requesting it from their healthcare provider (but the healthcare provider would violate HIPAA by sharing it without the employee's authorization).

See https://www.hipaajournal.com/i... for details.

It's not and it isn't.

They ask you to provide your name, birthdate, and phone number or email address you provided when you were vaccinated, as well as a PIN. The system checks their records and if the phone number/email you provided matches their records, they send you a text or email with a link. You open the link and your information is only showed if you provide the PIN you entered in the first step.

This means that they only send the information to a phone or email that you already provided during the vaccination process and only show the information to someone who demonstrates they have access to that phone number or email (by virtue of clicking the link sent only to the phone number or email address) and that the person who controls the phone number or email address is also the person who made the request in the first place (by verifying the PIN). You can then save or screenshot the information and QR code to your local device and display it only to people you choose.

The link expires after 24 hours (but you can request a new one if desired) so only you have the ability to share or not share it as you please.

I agree. Last year I took a drive with my family in our Bolt EV from our home in Alameda County, CA to Lake Tahoe. The town of Colfax, CA had some typical highway gas station stops with some fast food places right off the highway and an EVgo fast charger a few blocks further into town by the old historical railroad station. Plugging in at the charger, we went into a local pizza place, had some tasty food and drink, used the restroom, and were done about 45 minutes later just as the fast charger was finishing up charging the car.

Colfax is a bit over 2 hours from where we started so it made sense to stop, use the facilities, and get a bite to eat. Charging up was a bonus that fit perfectly with that schedule.

Had we needed to hang out at a bare-bones "gas station"-type location with little facilities for the duration, that would have been less pleasant than a nice, local restaurant or someplace like a full-service highway rest stop with a few restaurants, a place to get out of the weather, etc.

I'd like to see more local stores and places with parking lots put in Level 2 chargers for drivers to charge their vehicles while shopping and eating, and put Level 3 fast chargers in more rest stop-type areas.

Quite so. Even if you don't charge up from a regular outlet but instead want a Level 2 charger, a ClipperCreek HCS-40P (the charger I have) is less than $600 and is built like a tank. Installing it took about $100 worth of 6 AWG wire, a 40A breaker, a $13 50-amp outlet, and about two hours to do it myself to code. My friend recently had a local electrician put in the outlet, breaker, and wiring and it cost $400 for parts + labor. Hardly an unbearable expense, plus it's one-time.

Agreed. Yes, there's absolutely many likely scenarios where current EVs aren't terribly practical (like people who park on the street, don't have a garage, need to haul heavy loads great distances, etc.) aren't really the greatest choice. But there's plenty of scenarios where they make a ton of sense -- I plug in my car in the garage once or twice a week after work, it waits until the power rates change to cheap off-peak costs, then it starts and is fully charged by morning. Easy. My wife, on the other hand, drives a gas car and needs to spend 10-30 minutes every week or two at Costco waiting in line to buy gas.

For years, I used CrashPlan Home for Windows (and happily paid for their cloud storage). I really liked the ease of setting up computer-to-computer backups, as well as computer-to-cloud backups. It never failed during a restore, and generally worked well. However, they discontinued their home offering several years ago, so I had to switch to an alternative.

After trying several options, I ended up with Arq Backup. It's not free or libre, but it works reliably and well with a multitude of back-ends (I use Backblaze B2, OneDrive, and a local NAS), and has the standard encryption, compression, and deduplication features, as well as doing VSS snapshots. The licensing isn't the cheapest around, but it's not unreasonable and has discounts for those with multiple computers.

Arq5 was rock solid but could be slow (tasks were not done in parallel). Arq6 had a very rocky start (early versions borked the conversion of existing Arq5 backups) that put many people off. Arq7 has been rock solid as well (it can import and use Arq5 and Arq6 backups so no new data needs to be uploaded, with new data being stored in the Arq7 format, but doesn't convert existing to the Arq7 format).

I also considered Duplicati, but that has issues with VSS (it needs to run its service as admin to use VSS, but doesn't do this by default). Duplicacy is interesting, and has multi-computer deduplication. But both lack native user interfaces, and instead rely on clunky web-based interfaces.

It does has that option, and I've used it on occasion when the center screen freezes. Now that I think about it, it hasn't happened for months now. Excellent.

In California, at least, they don't allow stored energy to be sent back onto the grid. One can export solar-produced power, but not battery-stored power. Storage systems like Powerwalls are designed such that they cannot export power to the grid.

The Powerwalls have a few operating modes, including backup-only (stay at 100% charge to provide for maximum backup power in case of an outage), self-powered (minimize grid imports, with no consideration of time of day), or time-of-day-aware (where the user configures the time-of-use rate schedule for weekdays and weekends). The system automatically maximizes solar exports during peak time and manages the battery charge/discharge activity throughout the part-peak and off-peak times for the user's benefit.

Tesla doesn't have any profit incentive after the Powerwalls are sold (unless it's part of some leased system, but I'm not familiar with that) so it's entirely in the user's control.

I have a LaCrosse BC-700 that normally does really well with the eneloops. It also has issues charging batteries that have a voltage below a certain limit.

I've gotten around this by charging both a low-but-not-critically-low battery and the one that's below the cutoff limit at the same time. I use a paperclip to connect the positive terminals of both batteries in the charger for a second or two. That's enough for the charger to detect the below-cutoff battery exists and it starts to charge it normally. I'd imagine that other chargers would behave similarly.

Occasionally if the battery has been below the cutoff for a long time the battery won't charge up to full capacity but will falsely say it's "full" even though its not. I've found that running the charger's "refresh" mode a few times (usually 2-5 charge/discharge cycles) is enough to get the battery back to normal.

My Masters and PhD research was on analyzing the noble gases trapped in Martian meteorites, as well as those produced by cosmic ray spallation when the meteorite was in transit.

Since the atmosphere of Mars has changed over time, the gases in a meteorite can reveal a lot of interesting aspects of its history, like during what era of Martian history it was ejected, how long it spent in space, its diameter in space prior to being abated by the earth's atmosphere, etc.

Of course, there's a lot of other "fingerprints" we use to determine that it's both a meteorite and from Mars, but noble gases are a very powerful tool for learning more about Mars' history. I'm pleased to see similar research being mentioned here.

No. There's a complete off-site backup on the other side of the country, as well as other ways of recovering things in case everything goes sideways.

To help reduce DNS spoofing and other shenanigans, DNS records can be digitally signed. For example, Slashdot.org could be signed by the folks who run the dot-org registry, whose keys are in turn signed by the root zone operators. It all chains up to a single root key that is widely trusted by DNS servers.

For security reasons, the root periodically replaces their signing key. Since the entire internet relies on this and consequences of misuse of that key are very high, they have a formal ceremony with people in different roles to make sure everything is done exactly as planned, nobody makes any extra keys for nefarious purposes, at least two people consent to any given action, everything is documented recorded and lifestreamed, etc.

However the safe holding a piece of cryptographic hardware couldn't be opened. This delayed the ceremony and threw the plan off track. Since the people in various roles had flown in from all over the world, they had to decide if they should simply delay the ceremony a few days to fix the safe (which would need to be documented, overseen, etc. to ensure security) and carry on, or if they should use their backup systems in Virginia (which would entail short-notice travel).

One of Beidou's major design "features" is that it shares a frequency, 1575.42 MHz, with GPS' L1 civilian band. This is the same as Galileo. This works well for improving device compatibility and lowering cost for receivers (easy to build filters that can receive both but minimize interference), while also making it impossible for anyone to jam Beidou without jamming GPS. Jamming GPS would also end up jamming Beidou.

Yes, there are other bands they transmit on that are open for public use, but they're not nearly as widely used as the 1575.42 MHz frequency (this may be different for shipboard and safety-of-life systems).

Interfering with navigation systems is (or at least should be) globally frowned upon, doubly so when used for peaceful civilian purposes in busy ports, airports, etc. where loss of life or serious damage would be likely. Having higher-power, harder-to-spoof backup systems like eLORAN would also be beneficial.