Mixtape
There were quirks (mostly self-imposed ones) to getting the whole thing set up, but it ran like a champ for the better part of a year. Hardware transcoding really does make a world of difference, even in the worst of cases.
It's worth noting that GroupMe sticking around was honestly probably a byproduct of my own circles and the specific campus culture to a certain extent.
A few weeks ago, I needed some syntax information to help with building out a PowerShell script. The input and output parameter sections each included "{{ Fill in the Description }}"[1] in lieu of any meaningful content. There wasn't even a link to the data type's description elsewhere in the Learn database. I was ultimately able to get done what I needed to do, but it really irked me that whoever developed the article would publish it with such a glaring omission.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research
> IER is often described as a front group for the fossil fuel industry. It was initially formed by Charles Koch, receives donations from many large companies like Exxon, and publishes a stream of reports and position papers opposing any efforts to control greenhouse gasses. Thomas Pyle, president of the IER and its offshoot American Energy Alliance (AEA), was appointed to the US Department of Energy's transition team after the 2016 United States elections.
Regardless of whether or not the buses proved effective, it's pretty obvious to me that this isn't neutral journalism. It seems like the author approached it first as an opportunity to echo anti-EV talking points and second as a noteworthy story.
These usually sit in the corner of my screen through the day. Some are better than others for work purposes. The Verge could probably go, and 404 is a bit more socially-focused than the rest. In particular though, having rapid updates from BleepingComputer and El Reg is a great way for me to learn about new vulns, issues that might affect my users, etc.
That being said, having this in combination with PowerToys FancyZones has been fantastic. At any given time, I'm usually running 1-4 main working windows plus Signal, Outlook, and an RSS reader. This gives me more than enough real estate to keep them all available at a moment's notice. I have roughly 40% of the screen real estate dedicated to Signal, Outlook, and my RSS client, with the interior 60% being hotkey-mapped to divide in different proportions. Compared to my old setup (one ultrawide plus two verticals) it's been awesome.
The very unfortunate reality is that many (most?) users evaluate phishing attempts with the null hypothesis that "this is trustworthy". They are looking for evidence that something is wrong and assuming all is well if they don't find it. To that sort of user, the thinking goes something like:
* Some trustworthy sites use .com.
* My municipality is trustworthy.
* My municipality uses .com.
If you draw out the venn diagram, there's a clear gap in that line of thinking. That doesn't matter to someone's Great Aunt Linda though. She just knows that .com is what goes after Amazon and Google, so it must be good.
With that in mind, could using .gov help to protect those folks? To a certain extent. I can see the argument for keeping the more discerning few from getting scammed. For the broader group though, it won't change anything.
Offhand, the alternative solution that I'd offer would be providing clear communication standards to the public. Specifically, defining when, how, and from whom municipal notifications go out. Think of it like the IRS only sending physical letters; archaic as it seems, it makes it pretty obvious that an email "from them" is bogus. The clearer someone's understanding of where to find us is, the more optimistic I am that they'll get where they need to be.
A big part of why we haven't been able/bothered to migrate to a proper .gov domain boils down to the amount of technical debt we'd need to pay back in the process of doing so. Everything that we do uses our non-.gov domain, namely our Office 365 connectors. On top of that, end users' day-to-day communications with the public make use of the existing domain. Modifying that in any capacity could prove disruptive to ongoing communications and potentially render them liable for dropping the ball somewhere. Not to mention that every single internet account ever created by staff using the current domain would need to be migrated or risk being lost forever.
Additionally, we're a small team. Only myself and one other individual would really have the technical knowledge to migrate our infrastructure. The opportunity cost involved would be massive. There are grants available to help us with this, but obtaining/using those can get complicated at times.
Ultimately, the pros just don't outweigh the cons enough to make a huge difference. From a purely academic angle, should we have a .gov TLD? Absolutely. In practice though, the residents and staff are familiar enough with the current one to render it a non-issue. The average non-technical user doesn't "see" "[municipality].[state].gov". They aren't familiar with the concept of a domain hierarchy at all. They just memorize "[municipality_website]" and move on with their day.
This is an issue I ran into recently during my post-undergrad job hunt. Having exited college without an internship, it was difficult to distinguish myself in any meaningful way. In my opinion, major, career-defining work needs to be at least six months' worth of dedication to be of any importance on a resume. Most people don't have the savings to go that long between jobs.
I was fortunate enough to secure a well-paying internship over the next six months, but in all honesty I think I got lucky. It's tough out there if you don't have the existing background to set yourself apart.
I would be very interested to see a study on the relationship between time costs sunk into learning a concept through proofs and students' understanding of the concept as compared to when a proof is simply provided. I'd hypothesize that letting students discover the reasoning behind things on their own would be more likely to develop a deeper understanding, but I question whether there's enough time in a single semester to drive a curriculum that way.
This is a tangent from OPs point, but I would push back on this idea slightly. To be clear, there is absolutely a large number of people in the US who use coffee as a tool more than an experience and treat it as such. A frightening majority will shell out a few bucks on the daily for coffee from gas stations or chain restaurants, all of which will serve you the sort of over sweetened, watered-down coffee experience you'd expect in the US.
However, I'm of the belief that there are undercurrents of a strong coffee culture in the states as long as you're willing to look for it. I recently took a trip along the east coast and, while searching for souvenirs, found a bag of locally roasted beans that I decided to take home. They weren't necessarily my favorite roast that I've tried, but the fact of the matter was that I was able to taste a local cultural staple and identify what made it unique for relatively low effort. Likewise, there are a growing number of locally owned and run coffee shops popping up across the country using machines similar to those you described above (my local favorite uses a Slayer [1]). The Starbucks-ification of coffee and inflation have unfortunately normalized $5 16oz house blends at many of these places, but the experience is still far more authentic and feels like a deliberate choice rather than a passive act.
I apologize in advance for taking a "not all Americans" stance on this, but coffee is something that I'm genuinely passionate about despite living somewhere that tries not to be. I want other people who care to share these experiences too, but many just assume that every stateside coffee shop is the same. Hopefully this will help illuminate some other options.
There are occasionally some arguments put forth about environmentalism and saving the trees, but given the environmental costs of battery production, I really don't see it as a good reason.
As for my thoughts on the matter, I've honestly always thought that investing in a high-end iPad for college alone is (for me) a massive waste of money. My campus has plenty of computers available through their AD, so finding somewhere to get online is rarely an issue and is often easier than depending on our subpar mesh network. That's also how I access my textbooks, all of which are either online or (conveniently) located on my OneDrive. (Side note: I was also the idiot that didn't consider the combined weight of my gaming laptop and its massive charger when buying it at 18, so not having to carry it around campus on 95% of days does wonders for my back health.) Pen-and-paper has always worked fine for me, and the two little journals and pens that I carry around are plenty functional for my two in-person lectures. I have a huge problem with staying focused during lectures, so not having another device to yell at me or send me notifications in the middle of when I'm taking notes is a huge perk. If I really need to check an old set of slides or look something up, I have my phone for that. Finally, there's always the fact that not having another $1k+ device in my bag to break when I fall off of my skateboard, get stolen, etc. keeps a lot of pressure off of my day-to-day activities.
That being said, it really comes down to how the individual student uses it. If it's the main hub for all of your notes, assignments, meetings, calendar, etc. and that's all you need to get through the day, all the more to you. $1k over the course of a 120 credit degree is around $8.33 for every 3 credit class, so as long as it's providing that value, it's well worth it. I take issue with people suggesting that it can revolutionize your classroom experience because I find that with education the system that works best is the one you know. If I were to try to make the switch, I know it would end up being another source of distraction more than anything else. I may not be the norm though, and that's perfectly fine.
TikTok, by nature of its scale, has completely changed how the music industry works. If you want to prove this, check the top 40 chart of your favorite music streaming service or listen to your local top 40 station for a bit. Both of these were originally designed to provide a good metric on what songs people enjoy listening to from beginning to end. However, they're now almost entirely populated with songs made popular by 30 seconds to a minute of their content rather than the entire work.
TikTok has created a fundamental shift in the metrics by which people collectively evaluate music's popularity. Forty years ago, what was most "safe" for radio (in the sense that it was palatable enough for most people) was what got played. Now, the shareability of even a single segment of a song is its entry point into the feedback loop of exposure that creates viral hits.
Whether this is a good or bad thing is honestly subjective (and likely polarizing to some) but the article's failure to recognize it feels significant. In a system where the extent to which people get bored of listening to a song in its entirety is no longer a concern, people are revisiting old releases and finding that they perform extremely well under the current metrics. That's why we have Kate Bush and Metallica in the top 40. Their songs performed well under the previous system before fading into irrelevance, and they just happen to perform well under this new system as well. Stranger Things may have given them the push they needed to re-enter the public conscience, but what followed was the same process that would have happened if their music was released, say, ten years ago rather than 40. Age itself is secondary when shareability is king.
Personally, I'm of the belief that this will stabilize in the long term if short-form shareability remains the dominant metric of a song's popularity. In the same way that radio stations stop playing songs as people get bored of them, so too do older songs fade from popularity on TikTok as they begin to become tiresome to enough people. Combined with the fact that this happens at an extremely fast pace and that the amount of legacy pop music is finite, this means that TikTok users are bound to run out of sufficiently popular legacy content to use eventually.
All of this is to say that the idea of pirated books proliferating on Amazon is entirely feasible if electronic devices can be so successfully faked. However, what's not lost on me is the irony of Amazon, a marketplace whose initial success was anchored by trust in its ability to deliver books, falling victim to such schemes in this specific market space.