But of trivia about the first IBM hard drive: the heads weighed about 8g each and were glued to the actuator arms. The platters needed periodic cleaning, but the cleaning agent dissolved the glue holding the heads. The heads would break free from the arms and adhere to the platter. The rotation speed would accelerate the head outward, and the head would exit the housing with the approximate kinetic energy of a 9mm bullet.

our highly trained Canadian Geese

This explains so damned much of their behavior. I for one look forward to these operatives helping us out with our myriad domestic issues.

I’m not a hunter. But I do understand a lot about environmental conservation and the need for balance. We have eliminated enough of the animals that predate on deer such that some other means, ie hunters, are required to control deer populations. The other option is mass kills, which strike me as wasteful on so many levels.

When I lived in Vermont, there was a conservation movement to attract younger people to deer hunting because natural controls just aren’t there anymore. Where I live now, a distemper outbreak decimated the coyotes, and the deer are out of control. The coyotes are finally bouncing back, but it’s going to take a while. In my small city, the deer are so rampant, it’s common to see dozens on a short bike ride through town. Their food supply is depleted enough such that most deer here appear unhealthy and undernourished. The exploded deer population have follow-on effects: increased expense for deer control measures, collisions (one almost slammed into me on my bike two days ago; not the first time), destruction of plantings to control erosion, and spreading ticks.

I would like to see prospering wild animal populations, rather than this mess we made.

the DEA visited them last year and performed “accountability audits” that uncovered violations of the federal Controlled Substances Act, namely through inadequate record keeping, according to records obtained by The Baltimore Banner.

At the scale of prisons, these pharmacies are called institutional pharmacies. The size, operation, automation, and throughput of institutional pharmacies is mind-blowing. For example, the biggest Costco pharmacies might process 300 scrips a day; institutional pharmacies generally handle 15000 to 30000 per day, with some being even larger.

The “inadequate record keeping” part is just idiocy. There exists automation and auditing software for this. I know because I wrote the last-mile portion of a suite that manages end-to-end compliance automation for institutional pharmacies. A single failed audit generally costs more than most of the auditing and compliance suites licensing fees. And even in small pharmacies, there’s usually more than one failed C-2 audit when it happens. And let’s be clear; these audits are always for C-2 drugs (opioids and stimulants).

“Anything is a dildo if you’re brave enough.”

Well, clearly YOU didn’t learn your lesson! :D

Holy balls. I used to be an instructor in the career retraining field, so I believed your numbers. Trust, but verify: https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now

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But where is “Damn, I just suck at this game?” You know how some people are utterly amazing at games? That’s not me. At all.

The US really needs a replacement, for example a national digital ID based on PKI… you revoke their access to the account, and everything else that uses the account can keep working

There is already an open standard growing around exactly this concept, Web5 Distributed IDs (DID): https://dev.to/tbdevs/what-is-web5-233o

Disclosure: I worked on the implementation for an Open Banking company (does that need to be disclosed? <shrug> I’m including it lest someone think I’m a shill)

Okay, I just recorded some h.265 footage with a Pixel 7a. I haven’t had a chance to pull the video into Resolve (another Blackmagic product). Using Camera 2 is intuitive* and powerful. Quick, intuitive controls for focus, exposure, and white balance locks. Easy focus and exposure, easy access to the controls I need on the fly. I didn’t see a RAW video option, but the gamut looks reasonable enough to be able to apply a LUT and still get the final effect I want. YMMV, however I think this results in video that I can use when I’m shooting in situations where I don’t want to use my bigger video camera. This is now my go-to for quick shoots and conditions when I don’t want to use the bigger, more expensive cameras.

So, thanks OP for this post!

*Gawd, I hate that word for software, but it fits here.

Halo effect warning. I own/use some other Blackmagic camera, controls, and software; they’re industrial strength. I was irrationally avoiding them for reasons I can’t even recall now. Probably some BS “Who are they? They can’t possibly be any good.” So I’m excited to try this out, but my knee jerk reaction is: FINALLY! Blackmagic’s products IMO have so much attention to things pros need, that even if this is only so-so, it could easily evolve into making Android phones a semi-proper video camera competitor to iOS ProRes.

Yeah, that doesn’t really answer your question, but hopefully adds some context to something something cinnamon toast crunch.

Not to be confused with transcoding, which is important to viewing media.