The Death of the Mind

Enlarge / No, those donut tracks aren’t mine, officer. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
The Perseverance rover landed in Mars’ Jezero Crater largely because of extensive evidence that the crater once hosted a lake, meaning the presence of liquid water that might once have hosted Martian life. And the landing was a success, placing the rover at the edge of a structure that appeared to be a river delta where the nearby highlands drained into the crater.
But a summary of the first year of data from the rover, published in three different papers being released today, suggests that Perseverance has yet to stumble across any evidence of a watery paradise. Instead, all indications are that water…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899919

To save the children, we must destroy everything. That’s the reality of the EARN IT Act. I mean, you can get some sort of sense of what you’re in store for just by reading the actual words behind the extremely labored acronym: Eliminating Abuse and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act. Whew. It’s a mouthful. And, given the name, it seems like this would be Congress putting funding towards supporting moderation efforts that target abusive content.
But it’s nothing like that. It’s all about punishing tech companies for the acts of their users. Like FOSTA before it, the bill has zero interest in actually targeting the creators and distributors of illegal content, like child sexual abuse…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/23/earn-it-act-will-make-the-internet-worse-for-everyone-by-undermining-privacy-and-security/

At the November 8, 2022 election, Nevada voters passed Question Three, the top-five initiative, with 52.5% of the vote. It does not go into effect unless the voters pass it again in November 2024.

If it had been in effect in 2022, it is almost certain that no minor party candidates would have been on the November ballot for either Governor or U.S. Senator. At the 2022 primaries, there were ten major party candidates for Governor, and twelve for U.S. Senator. Based on what has happened in California 2012-2022, and Washington 2008-2022, the only choices for those two offices in November 2022 would have been five major party members for each office.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2022/11/19/if-nevada-had-top-five-in-place-in-2022-minor-parties-would-have-almost-surely-been-off-the-ballot-for-governor-and-u-s-senator/

NORILSK, RUSSIA—In response to complaints of skyrocketing ticket prices caused by excessive fees, live-entertainment monolith Ticketmaster has opened a new workhouse where Taylor Swift fans can labor to earn tickets for her forthcoming Eras Tour, sources within the music industry confirmed Friday. “Whenever I feel…

Read more…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/ticketmaster-opens-new-workhouse-where-taylor-swift-fan-1849797023

In almost every case, proportional fonts are superior. They look better and they’re easier to read. One obvious exception is when programming but, even there, not everyone agrees. Still, most programmers are pretty firm in their preference for monospaced fonts when programming.
Some writers also like monospaced fonts when preparing their manuscripts, probably for atavistic reasons involving typewriters. I thought that was silly when I read it but then I realized I do all my writing in a monospaced font even though Emacs would allow me to easily use a proportional font if I wished.
All of that notwithstanding, it remains true that monospaced fonts are a bit harder to read. Blake Watson has a very interesting post…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://irreal.org/blog/?p=10941

Reducing replication lag with IO concurrency in Postgres 15 PostgreSQL 15 improves crash recovery and physical replication performance of some large and very busy databases by trying to minimise I/O stalls. A standby server might now have an easier time keeping up with the primary. How? The change in PostgreSQL15 is that recovery now uses the maintenance_io_concurrency setting (default is 10, but you can increase it) to decide how many concurrent I/Os to try to initiate, rather than doing random read I/Os one at a time. With big and busy databases, when I/O concurrency increases, replication lag can be reduced. In this blog post, you’ll learn how recovery prefetching minimises I/O stalls and reduces replication…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/5s1

Law enforcement needs probable cause to effect arrests and engage in searches. In most cases, a warrant is also required. It’s a bit of paperwork that allows the government to bypass Fourth Amendment protections to serve the greater good, i.e., the invasion of privacy (a search) or the removal of personal freedom (an arrest).
For far too many cops, obtaining a warrant is a hassle they’d rather not deal with, even if it’s rarely an actual hassle. So, they find ways to route around this rights-related roadblock. Drug dogs are called to scenes so an animal can tell cops it’s ok to engage in a search. Pretextual stops use real or perceived traffic infractions as fishing licenses…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/08/appeals-court-says-st-louis-countys-warrantless-arrests-are-likely-unconstitutional-but-somehow-still-pretty-much-ok/