motd - 10/##/2024
-----------------
10/30/2024 Daylight Savings:
https://www.hedgerhumor.com/daylight-saving-time-3/
10/30/2024 Steve's badge:
https://lmnt.me/blog/steves-badge.html
"Many people assumed [Steve Jobs] didn't use a badge. But
he did. ... While almost every [Apple] employee had it
pinned or on a lanyard, Steve kept his in his wallet. When
badging in, he took out his wallet and held it to the reader."
10/28/2024 Nabataean temple found submerged near Naples:
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/2-000-year-old-temple-from-indiana-jones-civilization-found-submerged-off-italy
10/28/2024 Buffer Time, the card game:
https://modiphius.net/en-us/products/star-trek-lower-decks-buffer-time-the-card-game
10/28/2024 Eject when finished in MacOS Sequoia:
https://appleinsider.com/inside/macos-sequoia/tips/how-to-use-macoss-finder-eject-when-finished-feature
"Starting from macOS Sequoia you can now tell the Finder to
auto-eject the .dmg's volume once the copy completes.
To do so, mount the .dmg of your choice, start copying files
by dragging them from the .dmg's volume to the Finder. Then,
while the copy is still going, Control-click on the mounted
volume and select Eject from the popup menu.
If the copy is still running, the Finder will throw up an
alert telling you it can't eject the volume because it's in
use. But now in macOS Sequoia, that alert features a new
button: Eject when finished. ... If you immediately click
Eject when finished, the Finder will automatically eject the
.dmg's volume when the copy is done."
10/28/2024 CDs remain relevant:
https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/10/cd-not-dead-evolving/
10/23/2024 Blurry blue and yellow swirl desktop picture:
https://unsplash.com/photos/a-blurry-image-of-a-blue-and-yellow-background-3BxjA6QDowk
10/21/2024 Temperature scales:
https://xkcd.com/3001/
10/21/2024 A new Smiley novel - Karla's Choice:
https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/karlas-choice-nick-harkaway-review-george-smiley-09jpzshg6
10/21/2024 The newest Mersenne prime is (2^136279841) - 1:
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2024/10/21/new-mersenne-prime-found/
"There are now 52 known Mersenne primes, but the number just
announced may not be the 52nd Mersenne prime. It has been
confirmed that the 2[^]136279841 - 1 is prime, but it has not
been confirmed that there are no Mersenne primes between the
51st Mersenne prime and the number just announced."
10/21/2024 Penguin Random House updates copyright notices for AI/data mining:
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/penguin-random-house-underscores-copyright-protection-in-ai-rebuff
"No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence
technologies or systems. In accordance with Article 4(3) of
the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790, Penguin Random
House expressly reserves this work from the text and data
mining exception." (internal quotes omitted)
See also:
Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790 Article 4:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32019L0790#d1e986-92-1
"1. Member States shall provide for an exception or
limitation to the rights provided for in Article 5(a)
and Article 7(1) of Directive 96/9/EC, Article 2 of
Directive 2001/29/EC, Article 4(1)(a) and (b) of
Directive 2009/24/EC and Article 15(1) of this Directive
for reproductions and extractions of lawfully accessible
works and other subject matter for the purposes of text
and data mining.
...
3. The exception or limitation provided for in paragraph 1
shall apply on condition that the use of works and other
subject matter referred to in that paragraph has not
been expressly reserved by their rightholders in an
appropriate manner, such as machine-readable means in
the case of content made publicly available online."
10/19/2024 MacOS sometimes leaks traffic after system updates:
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/macos-sometimes-leaks-traffic-after-system-updates
"We have found that you could be leaking traffic on macOS
after system updates. To our current knowledge a reboot
resolves it."
10/16/2024 Schrodinger's cats:
https://wronghands1.com/2024/10/15/schrodingers-cats/
10/16/2024 The future is chana masala and hummus :-)
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-chickpeas-key-crop-future-food.html
10/16/2024 Gliese 229 B is actually a close binary:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08064-x
"We observed Gliese 229 B with the GRAVITY interferometer
and, separately, the CRIRES+ spectrograph at the Very Large
Telescope. Both sets of observations independently resolve
Gliese 229 B into two components, Gliese 229 Ba and Bb[.]
... They orbit each other every 12.1 days with a semimajor
axis of 0.042 astronomical units (au)."
10/14/2024 Self-reference to a variable during initialization in C:
https://microblog.ahti.space/nortti/self-referential-initialization-c/
10/14/2024 awktober:
https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2024-October/030963.html
10/11/2024 Regency horror story:
https://wronghands1.com/2024/10/11/regency-horror-story/
CSI - Regency Ball:
https://wronghands1.com/2023/06/09/csi-regency-ball/
Horror in the time of Austen:
https://wronghands1.com/2022/10/14/horror-in-the-time-of-austen/
10/11/2024 MacOS is still UNIX:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/11/macos_15_is_unix/
10/10/2024 Golden ellipse:
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2024/10/10/golden-ellipse/
10/10/2024 Digraphs in C:
https://www.deusinmachina.net/p/coding-without-braces-an-alternate
"C allows the use of digraphs (two letter combinations that
represent a single letter) like <% and %> as alternatives of
{ and } and <: and :> as substitutes for [ and ]."
See: https://www.gnu.org/software/c-intro-and-ref/manual/html_node/Digraphs.html
10/10/2024 Building dosbox-x on Debian:
https://darrengoossens.wordpress.com/2024/10/10/dosbox-x-build-on-debian/
1. Install build dependencies:
$ sudo apt install automake gcc g++ make libncurses-dev \
nasm libsdl-net1.2-dev libsdl2-net-dev libpcap-dev \
libslirp-dev fluidsynth libfluidsynth-dev libavdevice58 \
libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libavcodec-extra \
libavcodec-extra58 libswscale-dev libfreetype-dev \
libxkbfile-dev libxrandr-dev
2. If networking support is desired, install:
$ sudo apt install ncaptool libpcap-dev libpcap0.8-dev \
libslirp-dev libslirp0 slirp libxext-dev
3. Download and extract the latest source release from
GitHub:
https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/releases
4. Build dosbox-x:
$ cd dosbox-x-dosbox-x-v2024.10.01
$ ./build-debug
$ sudo make install
10/10/2024 Gurung v. MetaQuotes - forum selection clause in EULA enforced:
https://tlblog.org/a-troubling-decision-in-the-edny/
"The district court [] held ... that the phrase ['[a]ny legal
action or proceeding arising under this Agreement'] conveyed
an intent to cover non-contractual claims for three reasons.
First, it explained that Second Circuit precedent favored an
'expansive reading of the scope of forum selection clauses,
in keeping with the policy favoring their use.' Second, it
reasoned that Gurung's claims had 'grown out of' the
contractual relationship and that the 'gist' of her
non-contract claims involved a breach of the contract.
Third, the court concluded that the Gurung's non-contract
claims involved 'the same operative facts as a parallel
claim for breach of contract.'
The court also rejected the plaintiff's argument that
enforcing the clause would be unreasonable under the
circumstances. Although the plaintiff claimed that she could
not afford to litigate in Cyprus, the court held that this
argument was foreclosed by Effron v. Sun Line Cruises, Inc.
..., a 1995 decision by the Second Circuit, that [] enforced
a Greek forum selection clause against a woman who had
brought a slip-and-fall case against a cruise line
notwithstanding her claims that she could not afford to
litigate in Greece."
10/10/2024 GHQ - Kurt Vonnegut's lost board game:
https://www.openculture.com/2024/10/kurt-vonneguts-lost-board-game-is-finally-for-sale.html
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/kurt-vonneguts-ghq-the-lost-board-game-mars-international/1146300521
10/09/2024 How to identify left vs. right trunked elephants:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.240851
"Elephants use the distal third of their trunk to wrap food
or other objects and the whiskers are longer on the side
they prefer wrapping towards, designating [] 'trunkedness'
... [-] [w]hisker abrasion appears on the opposite side of
the one wrapped towards, as it is more often in contact with
the ground."
10/05/2024 Using AI to figure out paint composition:
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-ai-figure-chemical-composition-classical.html
10/05/2024 Ultracold positronium:
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v17/145
10/04/2024 Is HTTPS always necessary?
https://rubenerd.com/https-as-an-accessibility-issue/
"This gets us back to the value proposition of HTTPS. ...
[Is it] really necessary for a blog without a web-facing
admin portal, software downloads, or mission-critical
features? Have I shut people out for benefits that don't
really make sense in this context? Have a lot of us?"
10/04/2024 "Twiggy" Mac:
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/03/rare-apple-macintosh-prototype-from-1983/
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##/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/motd.txt
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