After Trump's recent grovelling to Xi, there are three possible situations re invasion of Taiwan
- no change to likelihood
- less likely
- more iikely

I know which of those seems the favourite.

Going to be hard for the US to stop export of chips to China if they are made in a China owned Taiwan

Good point - reminds me I have a couple of case fans that are meant to be super quiet and have dimples on the blades, presumably to that end.

I'm no aerodynamics engineer but a relationship between reduced drag, and quietness, seems reasonable.

They would be insane to give up their position and reputation. That sort of regard should be hallowed. I hope they know what they are doing.,

I use Keepass as my core, because I started with it a decade before Bitwarden was invented.

If you have a server you can FTP to, Keepass is the absolute bees knees. Perfect sync, and item-level granularity. That is, two devices can update different entries, then both sync, and the sync always works.

Add a toolbar button to do the sync, which is only really feasible for techies, and happy days. Your kdbx file "in the cloud" is hidden behind a password for your FTP server that can be crazy long because you never type it.

For all the relative and friends I look after, it is Bitwarden all the way.

I expect there are videos of Victorian bushfire firestorms online. Watching them is not the same as being in one, but you'll gain a little understanding.

Bizarrely, no, it's mostly Victoria, the southern-most mainland state, and south of Sydney.

I guess it's the cooler climate giving a different forest structure, among many other factors. Mind you, Melbourne had another temperature record the other day.

Aboriginals used to burn off to keep things under control, but westerners put a stop to that.

Do you honestly believe that? That no embers will distribute more than 1.5 metres?

And "That's all you need to do"? Have you never seen a firestorm? Fires jumping long gaps driven by ferocious winds?

ffmpeg -i bigfile.mkv -c copy -to 1:00:00 part1.mkv

ffmpeg -i bigfile.mkv -c copy -ss 1:00:00 part2.mkv

plus mkclean if your TV is fussy like mine

I use greek gods for my hostnames, but my challenge is to find the short names because I'm too lazy to type long names.

I was going to suggest a Polymarket on when the Iris scan database was hacked into. I didn't realise that it's not even necessary to hack into it - just fake it - and I am only shocked that I didn't think of your student's project, already.

Apropos of nothing, I worked at a place where they manually censored all incoming emails and blocked all websites apart from a tiny whitelist. It took 6 months to get our dev software & database provider whitelisted. Anyway we had a lass working with us who knew about jpeg format and steganography. We wanted her to figure how to smuggle stuff hidden in jpegs. We knew it was possible, just too lazy. And she could have done, probably easily, but refused on ethical principles. She went on to work at RSA. Smart girt.

> Verify what is said,

Finding out information that only exists inside a company, particularly a private company not listed on the stock market, is extraordinarly difficult. The walls are closed. How should we go about verifying what is said?

Thank heavens the US government is not killing its citizens.

If I take your comment, run a s/China/USA/g over it, then it is still absoutely right.

Aussie here. There are plenty of BYD on the roads.

I was standing at a bus stop the other day. An astonishing looking car pulled up in the traffic opposite me. It had a remarkable eye catching design. I checked it out from side front and back while it waited for the traffic lights. It was a BYD.

I would not touch a Tesla but would I buy a Chinese EV? Absolutely. Prefer a hybrid for the long distances, though, my next door neighbour has one.

In the eighties, fourth generation languages or 4GLs were going to spell the end of programming. Business people would design and implement the systems.

Well, that was the theory, or scaremongering, anyway.

Trouble is, that last 10% of the task is what takes most of the time.

First: Valve loot boxes are unequivocally gambling

Second: the lawsuit will fail because

a) Valve will engage persuasive barristers who can convince the jury
b) the jury will have many people who look down upon the various people who are suckered by the loot boxes
c) in looking down upon them, they will vote against them i.e. in favour of Valve