It’s probably because TLS uses your system clock to validate certificates. If your clock doesn’t match the server you’re connecting to, TLS fails and you get an “https failed/connection is insecure” error. And Windows likely uses https in the store to ensure MITM attacks can’t replace valid downloads with malicious ones.

Microsoft: “Let’s fire our QA teams. We’ll force our dev team to use AI in coding. Then we’ll have the public test it.”
Also Microsoft:

Tired of those annoying cookie banners? They’re not just frustrating—they're a lazy response to GDPR.

They’re not lazy, they’re maliciously compliant. The sites know how to comply with GDPR, but wanted to throw a fit instead. So they came up with the annoying cookie banners, to make users hate GDPR instead of hating the sites that were stealing and selling all of their data. And the worst part is that it worked. Many people wholly equate GDPR with the cookie banners, instead of the massive leap in privacy rights that it represented when it was passed.

Exactly. Math has historically relied on rote memory for most mental math. Kids would have to fill out their times tables, addition tables, etc until they memorized them. I still remember getting pop quizzes in elementary school that looked like this:

You only had two minutes to fill out the entire thing, which meant you only had 1.2 seconds per answer. You didn’t have time to actually calculate them. The point was that you were expected to have them memorized ahead of time instead of calculating each one.

But rote memory is laughably bad at actually teaching concepts. You may know that 12x5 is 60, but you don’t have any understanding on why, or other ways to do that same calculation without rote memory. And rote memory is only decently reliable up to ~12x12. Anything past that, and it becomes too much info to track; kids simply start forgetting answers.

The kids who were good at math (and I mean actually good at math, not just good at memorizing things) quickly devised methods to do this shit in our heads easily. Keeping track of multiple numbers in your head gets confusing. So “line them all up, add straight down, and carry 1’s” sort of falls apart if you’re doing it in your head. Especially if you’re trying to keep track of more than three or four numbers at a time.

Essentially, 127+248+30 is the same as 105+250+50, but the latter is much easier to parse in your head. But yeah, the parents (who primarily relied on rote memory) didn’t understand why the new method would be more effective, because they didn’t understand the concepts surrounding the math.

Even worse, many data agencies will use the Do Not Track flag as an additional datapoint to add to your fingerprint.

This shit should be mandated, with strict “the company has been burned to the ground and the ashes have been salted” levels of penalties for violating it.

If it exists, it is better than American public transit. Here is my daily commute to work, as estimated by Google Maps:

Even Google goes “lmao use a fucking car, peasant.”

It’s technically possible for me to take public transit, but it would be about the same as walking. Here is a quick sketch of the route I’d need to take, compared to my drive:

That route is because there are no east/west lines between me and my job. It starts by walking/riding my bike the wrong direction to get to the nearest bus stop. Then it takes me south-west through two cities, then north-west through two more cities. Then I’d have a ~20 minute walk to transfer rail lines, because my job is serviced by a different rail system than the one that my bus service touches. After that walk (and waiting for the next train) I take it north and then have to walk another 10-15 minutes to finally get to work.

Not counting wait times, it would take me nearly 2.5 hours to use public transit. When you consider the fact that some busses and trains only run once every 20-45 minutes, it actually stretches closer to 3-4 hours, if the schedules don’t line up. Or I could just fucking drive 10 minutes. Yeah, it’s no wonder Americans use cars for everything.

Swalwell was incorrect to say that Padilla was arrested. As the senator clarified at his own press conference, he was handcuffed but not arrested or detained.

My brother in Christ, what do you think detainment is? You were pinned to the ground and handcuffed by federal officers. That’s the textbook definition of “detained”.

He’s a MAGA senator, who recently posted something along the lines of “I hope Greta and her friends can swim” in response to a post about Greta Thunberg joining an attempt at breaking the Israeli blockade of Palestine. The implication being “I hope your ship sinks.”

No wonder Americans don't use public transit, even when the system exists it's ridiculously difficult and expensive to use.

Here is my daily commute to work:
The Public Transit option is literally greyed out, and Google goes “lmao get a fucking car, peasant.”

If I were going to minimize my car usage and strictly use public transit, it would be a ~20 minute bike ride (in the opposite direction of where I work) to the nearest bus station, to get to a public transit service that doesn’t even cover where I work. Then I’d take a bus to a train station, and ride it south through two cities. Then I’d make a transfer to a northern line, and ride it back north through those same two cities (and a third additional city) in order to get near another rail line. Then it would be another ~20 minute bike ride to transfer from one rail system to another, because the public transit in the southern cities doesn’t service the city where I work. Once I’m transferred to the service that covers where I work, it’s another ~20 minute rail ride, followed by a ~10 minute bike ride after getting off the train.

All in all, it would be about 2.5 hours of public transit riding, (and about an hour of riding my bike in +100°F/38°C weather), just to avoid driving 10 minutes. It would also require maintaining two separate transit passes, because the southern and northern transit systems don’t work with one another. Yeah, it’s no wonder I take my car to work.

Yup, it’s the typical conservative playbook: If you don’t like something, redefine it as something unpopular. Then target the unpopular thing, so democrats can’t oppose it without inciting “this democrat voted against a bill to protect/stop {sympathetic demographic} from {unpopular thing}” smear campaigns.

Step 1 was equating trans people with sexual predators. You keep that messaging consistent and constant. Find stories of trans people doing normal things, but spin it as if they’re dangerous. Invent stories if you need to, because debunking them takes a lot more time than inventing them…

They weren’t jogging in a neighborhood; they were casing the neighborhood. They weren’t using a public restroom; they were looking for people to sexually assault. They weren’t trying on clothes to see if they fit; they were looking to assault women and children in the changing rooms. They weren’t volunteering for the local women’s shelter; They were looking for defenseless victims. They weren’t writing a book for other trans people; They were indoctrinating kids and trying to turn them trans. Et cetera, et cetera…

Once conservative voters have started to accept that messaging, you move onto step 2:
“This bill will protect children from sexual predators” means it bans trans people from being able to pee.
“This bill will protect children from being exposed to dangerous sexual material” means it bans any kind of trans iconography by labeling it as porn.
“This bill will stop sexual predators from hiding in your neighborhood” means it requires trans people to register in a public database/wear a {pink triangle} badge.
“This bill will ensure sexual predators are kept away from the rest of the population” means it rounds trans people up into camps.

And if anybody ever tries to point out what the bill is really doing, put them on blast with the “radical left is trying to let sexual predators steal your kids and assault your women” messaging.

One of the most difficult parts of veterinary medicine is the fact that your patients can’t directly communicate. Oftentimes, issues go unnoticed simply because the animal masks things like pain. Luckily, the vet immediately knew this hedgehog had something wrong, because it kept exploding into a bunch of golden rings.

Those are hazardous chemical markers. You commonly see them on tanker trucks as well.

The numbers range from 0 to 4, with higher numbers indicating more risk. The red top corner is flammability. The right yellow corner is instability; How likely it is to react with other things around it. The left blue corner is risk to health; Even if a chemical isn’t unstable or flammable, it can still be hazardous. The bottom white is for special markings. In this case, one of those chemicals is marked with a W, meaning it reacts to water.

So if there’s a fire at the warehouse, this tells the responding crew “hey just so you know, there’s some nasty shit in here. One presents a severe health hazard, becomes potentially explosive when heated, and reacts with water… But at least it isn’t flammable. The other is flammable and can present a moderate health risk. Because of the one on the left, it would be a bad idea to use water to fight this fire.”