Instructions unclear, now sitting in basement.

Welcome to everywhere. 3.5" disks in German are called “dreieinhalb Zoll Disketten”, and in Dutch “drie punt vijf inch floppys”. Both of those translate roughly to “three and a half inch disks/floppies”. Everyone borrowed US computer terms and translated them directly.

No country uses the metric system exclusively. None. You will find exceptions if you look for them. This isn’t some kind of moral failing, it’s just practicality. Look at how car tires are sold for one example that’s nearly universal due to industry standards.

This is why for retro computers, I tend to prefer CompactFlash. IDE->CF adapters are cheap, and the cards are much higher quality. They effectively become an SSD that works on old stuff. (Just because I like retro computing stuff doesn’t mean I want the whole experience, like waiting for disk heads to move, or worse, tape drives to finish reading. I’m old enough that I remember dealing with it and I don’t need to deal with it again.)

Not a lot of call for them otherwise, though. SD cards have gotten increasingly good bandwidth, which means they’re good enough for a lot of higher end cameras. CF is getting squeezed out.

Seems like every time the hype is about to die, there’s a big announcement about a model breakthrough. The breakthrough usually isn’t as revolutionary as it first appears, but it’s enough to keep funding going.

There is so much more context behind that. The two are not at all comparable.

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”

You’re completely ignoring what happens in the first paragraph of NATO Article 5. The Security Council only comes into play if they get off their ass. The Security Council rarely gets off its ass, because too many countries that hate each other have veto power. NATO will continue operations for the defense of its members regardless.

None of that is true of the Budapest Memorandum. They bring it up with the Security Council, and that’s it.

Are you going to keep digging this hole?

Nope, not at all comparable. The US does not puppet master the UN Security Council. It can bring the matter up, and it has. Russia has veto power on the same council. Nobody expects anything to come of that, but the requirements were met.

Not at all. You clearly haven’t read what’s actually in there.

Clinton didn’t think Congress would ratify strong guarantees. Ukraine itself wasn’t in a position to ask for much more, because it didn’t have the economy to afford to maintain nuclear weapons. The result is an agreement that aggression against Ukraine would be brought up with the UN security council, and that’s about it.

In providing military aid, the US has exceeded what was promised.

I did. The United States followed everything it says. It just doesn’t say to do very much.

What did the US promise to Ukraine?

The Mini EV is in the US, but its range is just adequate. Then there’s older models, like the Bolt or Leaf. Ford has an EV Transit van for commercial customers, but its range also sucks.

Hyundai Ioniq 6 is out there, at least.

Yeah, the US market for EVs is bad. Just SUVs and trucks with few exceptions. Not even a good (mini) van.

I take a different line entirely. If you have $100k household income, and that’s still not enough cover expenses for a family of four, then something is very wrong. By income distribution, 80% of the population makes $100k or less, and it’s completely untenable for them.

I’m having trouble finding a reference to median US living expenses, but you can cut the above number in half if you like. Multiplying it for a family of four won’t necessarily be 4x, but it’ll be more than 2x.

Those figures won’t be that far apart. It will somewhat, because higher incomes will have a bigger house and more luxurious car. However, they’re putting more of their money into investments, not cost of living.

And I’ll reiterate, that’s the average for one person, not a family.

As of 4th quarter 2024, average cost of living for a single person in the US is $4,948/month. Take that $8,333/month, chop off 20% for taxes, and you’re already getting uncomfortably close to that number. For a family of four, I really don’t see how those numbers work at all.

Despite the administration’s crackdown and Johnson’s suspicions, it’s not known whether the leak came from a member of Congress.

Given the clowns in charge, it’s more likely the leak came from inside the White House.

All by themselves, weather forecasting satellites justify every dollar put into space programs. The lives saved are incalculable. We are squandering that benefit for no reason whatsoever.

One of my favorite exchanges from the 2008 election:

Colbert: tell me about growing up with a silver spoon in your mouth on the south side of Chicago

Michelle Obama: we didn’t have silver spoons. We had four spoons.

Colbert: but there were spoons, right?

Origami can be used as a basis for geometry:

http://origametry.net/omfiles/geoconst.html

IIRC, you can do things that are impossible in standard Euclidean construction, such as squaring the circle. It also has more axioms than Euclidean construction, so maybe it’s not a completely fair comparison.

There are ways they can work around it, but their lead developer was drafted into their country’s military. Ultimately, they’re going to have to make their own phone, and it looks like they’re making plans to do that.

For now, it’s fine.

And they purposely hobbled certain things people want, like inline links and images. Some clients will do it anyway, but it’s against the collective wishes of the developers.

If I wanted to track people on Gemini, I could totally do it. It’d just be in a more server-to-server way than how its evolved on HTTP (pixel trackers and such).