Dark Arc

This took me longer than I would like to admit to process

I didn’t use mine a ton; I’ve mostly moved on to Bluetooth/AUX… But have driven both a 2001 Buick and 2012 Toyota with CD players in them and have no recollection of anything getting scratched up.

I read online that sometimes the insert/eject mechanism could scuff or scratch the CD. Any slot load CD player has this kind of risk.

Once it’s actually in the mechanism and playing though, it should be reasonably secure and there shouldn’t be much that would be able to scratch it.

Who knows, maybe I just got lucky.

They… Don’t though. At least, not in my experience.

CDs are read optically though

Thanks mate

I feel like I watched a documentary on this once and it was the safety bit… But I’d be curious if anyone comes in and tells me I’m wrong

Basically the only option is to use Google messages on Android and the messages app on iOS.

RCS is hypothetically open, but in practice those are the only two respected implementations. Neither Google nor Apple has given sufficient API access to make RCS work outside of their respective apps on their respective platforms.

Nutritionally, it’s terrible either way.

I think your body would have a better time with it spread out over the course of the entire day. However you’re still absorbing an insane amount of sugar in a single day.

There’s a chance all at once would result in more of it being pooped out and thus be better … but it’s so close to just eating sugar I expect you’d absorb it and then your body would go into overdrive producing insulin.

Fine every now and then, but regularly it would be insanely bad no matter which way you do it.

Kagi is more of a private search company than an AI search company, but you need AI in your marketing to get funding these days.

They have done a pretty decent job of actually making useful applications of AI though; their summarizer tool is actually quite useful. It normally at least gets the jist of the page or YouTube video you’re looking at.

They also have taken steps to protect user privacy with their privacy pass extension … and they’ve announced a Linux port of Orion is on the way.

I’d feel much better if Orion was open source; but Kagi does seem to be taking their privacy commitments seriously.

I don’t know for sure what we learned, but I remember my Spanish teacher talking about a girl from Spain that came to her class and didn’t do her work.

Apparently the girl wasn’t doing well in Spanish class and later accused the teacher of teaching “gutter Mexican.”

Which … honestly didn’t hit me as the flex my Spanish teacher seemed to be making it out to be.

0% have authority to stand against. Roughly 28% or something voted against.

The filibuster is a thing and that regularly prevents anything from getting done without 60 votes.

Obama in his book (A Promised Land) talks about this and how his biggest regret is not ending the filibuster as his first action because it proceeded to cripple his entire administration and agenda for the majority of his presidency.

sufficient majority

It’s a complicated issue in the United States because of the history. Lots of countries did slavery, but at the point the United States did it, science was starting to spark into its modern form and one idea that “seemed good at the time” was pursuing superior genes.

That … went really really really sideways and basically became a justification for continued slavery on the premise that white people were just better and they were doing the inferior black people a favor. Basically while the rest of the world was going “maybe slavery isn’t good” the US was like “slavery is the humane thing to do, because science!”

Even after shit like that gets disproven people still tend to believe some amount of it (look at the antivax movement). So, even after the slaves were freed, they and their children were looked down upon by the culture. Many black people remained uneducated, financially bankrupt, etc. The culture especially in the south fought really hard to keep it that way for a looonnngggggg time.

That kind of formed a counter culture of its own, the “gang” culture. Which isn’t all that different from the counter culture you see that came from prohibition and the moonshiners and such … basically outlaws fighting the man, looked down upon, etc

So basically there are several main US cultures, Northern East White, Midwestern White, West Coast White, Southern White, Black, and the Appalachian White/redneck culture that descends from a mix of the moonshine runners, rural farmers, coal miners, and white southern culture.

Black people of course have multiple cultures even within the US but it’s all kind of lumped into this messy “black culture” thing. Some black people I’ve met love the black gangster with the gold chains imagery and hold it up as something great and the “true black culture”, others see it as ridiculous and trashy.

Calling these other cultures white is also intellectually dishonest as the entire US is a melting pot and the cultures of those regions were not formed by a single skin color … but I’m using “white” for the purposes of the contrast …

Anyways, black people just kind of stand out so they’re an easy target… and they have been targeted for a very long time fueled (at least in part) by that long ruled scientifically ridiculous idea that they’re inferior.

Add in the extra spice that the Appalachian subculture is angry about being tied in with the other white cultures despite being screwed over by the government a lot (not to the extent black people were, but still badly) … and you’ve basically got the mess that is America in 2025.

There’s a mix of justifiably mad people on both sides, outright racists, and people that serve to benefit from the conflict never ending politically.

(Perspective of a white guy originally from Appalachia that has seen a fair bit of the country and world now … and largely no longer agrees with the Appalachians politically … but is trying his best to explain a very complicated and touchy subject without writing a novel or making a bunch of people angry … your collective grace is appreciated)

Obama did it (kind of); he moved the party line to be policy oriented instead of stunts and cutthroat politics.

At the same time, he never gained a sufficient majority to enact his platform (in truth we’re lucky we got the affordable care act). Biden ran into similar issues with what was technically a majority but that had weak votes (e.g. Manchin).

Honestly the problem is the Senate; Democrats just can’t get past the threshold that would let them actually govern. So we get Democratic presidents that appear ineffective … when really we just have a Senate that’s broadly ineffective at doing anything that isn’t center right.

A Promised Land by Obama is an extremely good book if you want to understand the modern democratic party. Obama did a lot to get the spark back but also was in a very difficult position.

I think that’s a characterization of what happened but not necessarily a good representation of what actually happened.

Yes, some researchers in Zurich found vulnerabilities. Yes they down played them … because you still couldn’t read anything. They were also already working on a new protocol before those researches wrote their paper and yes I’m sure they made some tweaks based on their findings.

This is their response; I’d hardly call it “insulting” https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/news-alleged-weaknesses-statement

You could say the same thing about Signal’s response to their “desktop security scandal” earlier this year (of which Threema wasn’t vulnerable and Signal repeatedly refused to acknowledge as a problem).

yet it still doesn’t support critical features like full forward secrecy

They do support PFS (perfect forward secrecy) though their new multi-device solution doesn’t yet support it.

https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/ibex

This is the same protocol they were already working on when the “researches they insulted” released their research finding issues with the old protocol.

Threema is also far more active with third-party audits than any other group: https://threema.ch/en/faq/code_audit

They severely mishandled vulnerabilities by insulting the security researchers, then introduced a new protocol they built with the advice given to them for free from the SAME researchers before that, and yet it still doesn’t support critical features like full forward secrecy.

IMO this entire sentence is just wrong.

I’d also recommend taking a look at Threema.

I think their product direction is a bit better. Particularly as Signal still shows a message that they don’t back sync messages before you paired devices “for your security” … Threema also doesn’t back sync messages in their beta multi device setup, but that seems to be more less of a product stance and more of a “we just don’t do it yet.”

Threema is definitely missing some features like emoji reactions, stories, and a builtin cryptocurrency (which depending on your stances might be pros or cons).

Both apps have definitely gotten better over the years; I think Threema’s multi device support has really drained resources on their side so there hasn’t been as much outward feature work. I’m hoping it won’t be terribly long until that changes.

Then not to be aggressive about it, but go get qualified or stop spreading FUD honestly…

I remember it being explained as the twin towers “hung” somehow, so the central spine makes sense.

The older buildings were basically just steel beams like you see in cartoons. Lots and lots and lots of steel basically in cubes from what I recall. So there was just a lot more to catch the load. In some sense they were overbuilt.

Very very different crashes.

The planes that hit the twin towers were bigger, going faster, and had more fuel.

The twin towers themselves were also built with a different skyscraper design at well that used fewer steel beams. I don’t remember what the names of the skyscraper design types were but I remember a 9-11 history channel program going into it.