My wife got hers at 14 1/2. That was the legal age in Maine until the late 1980s.

This is exactly the first thing that popped into my mind when I heard what happened. I still clearly recall the WPRI news video of the fire mentioned in the Wikipedia article. That news crew had just shown up to report on the band that was playing, and they got clear footage of the nightmare. You could see bodies stacked up at the door as hundreds of people pushed to get out of the inferno… You can probably still find the video on smaller video sharing sites if you dare to go looking for it.

This article includes a picture of the ship that it claims shows the parts in question. However the picture isn’t the greatest resolution, and they also state the cargo was wrapped in tarps. So take what you will…

My grandparents had a summer home on a river that I don’t a lot of summers at when growing up, until I was about 20 or so. (I’m now knocking on the door of 60). The place was sold in my mid 20’s when my grandparents both passed away. I check it out on Google from time to time, and I’ve seen moderate changes over the years, but it still looks mostly the same. I’m a bit sentimental about it since I spent so many fun summers there.

Not true of their next door neighbors. The neighbors house no longer exists. It was apparently completely torn down and replaced. The biggest giveaway from the perspective of Google is that there is now a swimming pool between the house and the river that wasn’t there a few years ago, and the driveway is a completely new layout as well.

My employer uses Akamai as a CDN (and security) provider for their websites. Akamai has an optional tool called Image and Video Manager that, in a nutshell, optimizes images for better site performance.

Basically you put a high quality image on your website, and when Akamai retrieves it the first time it optimizes its color palette, compression, size, and format for multiple devices. Each derivative image is cached by Akamai for 30 days at a minimum.

So while you may put a 1000x1000 JPG with a quality of 95%, an Android user may be served a 200x200 image with 80% quality, and it may be a WEBP or PNG format instead of JPG. Exactly which derivative image is served is based on criteria like the web browser being used, the viewport size, etc.

All the black hats are going to have a field day uncovering all manner of zero-day exploits…

No kidding. If this happened in North Korea the trial would have lasted 15 minutes and the execution would have been a public spectacle.

I’m so glad my wife & I never got sucked into using things like Alexa.

I can recognize when a police officer is directing traffic at a dead traffic light. I can also recognize the intent of other drivers who may wave, flash their headlights, etc. I doubt any current self driving cars can accurately recognize any of those.

Exactly. Any such remote control would have to be trivial for a cop to use, and also need to directly control only the car(s) the cop is currently interacting with. Think of a situation like this where a traffic light is disabled and a cop is there directing traffic. If driverless cars are approaching from multiple directions then how does the cop direct his commands to only the one he’s focusing on at the given moment? Not all that easy when you think about it…

It wasn’t a cloud failure. The self driving cars are highly dependent on traffic lights being red/yellow/green. With the signals inoperative the cars don’t know what to do. Even if there were police officers directing traffic at intersections, the cars aren’t programmed to recognize & respond to them.

This is one of the many edge cases that I’ve been convinced will keep self driving cars from becoming mainstream unless/until true AGI is achieved.

A few years ago I stopped at a red light next to a construction site. I was watching the traffic light, so at first I didn’t notice a cop at the construction site trying to wave me through the red light. He finally took a few steps towards me and yelled to get my attention. Only then did I realize he was waving me through, so I did just that. I seriously doubt any current self driving car would recognize a police officer (and not just a random pedestrian) that’s overriding the traffic signal like that.

Another edge case, coincidentally at the same intersection a few years earlier was when there was a car fully engulfed in flames as I drove up. I could hear sirens in the distance, and the cars in every direction were making sure to safely get out of the way of the approaching fire trucks. At least one or two cars cautiously crossed on the red to get out of the way. Again, I doubt any current self driving car would have navigated that situation anywhere nearly as well as a human.

Not exactly 911, but somewhat similar. A few years ago my wife & I were in a rental SUV while on vacation. It was a fairly new car with only something like 2000 miles on it. We were in the third lane of a 4 lane highway when a drunk driver hit us from behind with almost no warning. It caused our car to spin 360 degrees across 3 lanes before coming to a stop in the breakdown lane.

Within about 5 seconds of the car coming to a stop we heard a voice asking if we’d been in an accident and were we ok. It turns out the rental car had one of those OnStar types of services. We were so pumped full of adrenaline that it was all just a blur as we tried to remember what highway we were on, near what exit, etc. We were so panicked… Luckily a state trooper on a routine patrol stopped maybe a minute later so we didn’t have to keep trying to figure out how to tell the OnStar person where we were.

Don’t forget that they are also reportedly squandering their gold reserves, and are losing a lot of revenue from Ukraines growing attacks on oil infrastructure. Russia isn’t going to be able to pay its soldiers or buy equipment if those two trends continue.

Came here to say this.

In response to a mass shooting in 1996 Australia passed strict gun regulations. Since then you can pretty much count the number of mass shootings in that country on one hand.

Compare that to Wikipedias list of mass shootings in the USA for just 2025. I stopped counting that list at 300.

Clearly some techbro wants to monetize buzzwords plus laptop.

IT professional for 20 years. C/C++ developer for 10 years prior to that.

My first job out of college was mostly luck. I took a job doing tech support but after a couple of years was able to transition into development work.

Virtually every job since that first one has been thanks to connections I made among coworkers. I got my current job because I knew two employees here. One of them was a co-founder of the company, and somebody I’ve known since the 1990’s and worked with at 3 other companies prior to this.

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Not to mention that it’s trivial to change your IP on most cloud providers. So if a VPN provider is using a cloud service for some of its gateways then it can quickly remember them if necessary.