Yes to all that. I'll add: loved ones often have the idea that they will take care of the afflicted one until the very end.
What they don't realize is that caring for an Alzheimer's sufferer, in the later stages, can take years off the loved one's life. It is a hard, depressing, 24-hour job to take care of all the physical needs of someone who is no longer mentally there. Even worse if the caregiver is old or has health issues.
So do your family a favor, if finances allow, and urge them, while you still are able, to plan put you in an appropriate living arrangement (in an institution, or with full-time paid caregivers) when the time comes.
The email service luxsci.com scrubs a lot of information from your headers, if you wish [1].
Another well-known email provider allows you to scrub the IP address, but it isn't clear whether they mean to publicize it. So Google the name of your favorite email provider along with "hide ip address", and see what you can find.
Note that Twilio numbers (in the US, anyway) cannot receive SMS messages from short codes [1]. This means that you may not be able to receive SMS 2FA messages from your bank.
A facetious/serious question: If "Sold by Amazon" had too high a rate of reported counterfeits, could it be kicked off the Amazon platform?
But seriously, my point is that "Sold by Amazon" should have a counterfeit rate of near zero. I'm willing to help QC third-party sellers. But "Sold by Amazon" should do its own QC. Just as "Sold by Walmart" does (for now).
> ...so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in.
Since (according to others in this thread) the Amazon "Reason for return" menu does not provide the option "Item is counterfeit", it does not sound like Amazon is very interested in receiving these sorts of complaints. So I have to wonder how interested Amazon is in punishing the sellers of counterfeit items. If you close your ears to bad news, you won't hear any.
> You are correct that customers could themselves choose better sellers...
That's right. For items where genuineness really matters, I choose the seller "Sold by Walmart" at walmart.com. There are no reliable sellers at amazon.com, not even "Sold by Amazon". Which is a shame.
P.S. Reply to msbarnett, since I can't reply directly: Amazon does not literally put all identical items into a single physical bin, so it is at least feasible for them to keep track of which item came from which seller, if they choose to. I recommend that you (and other readers) take a tour of an Amazon fulfillment center: https://www.aboutamazon.com/amazon-fulfillment-center-tours/
It's pretty interesting.
The OP suggests bn.com (Barnes and Noble) for books. I haven't tried them myself. Yet.
For household goods I like walmart.com (the sold-by-Walmart items, not the ones from 3rd-party sellers). Free 2-day shipping (in the US) for orders over $35. A supply chain that (I hope and assume) does not allow 3rd party sellers to introduce counterfeits, unlike the so-called "sold by Amazon" items that are promiscuously commingled with items supplied by 3rd-party sellers.
So for anything where a counterfeit product could pose a health risk, I check walmart.com first.
(I feel a bit strange touting Walmart as the underdog, since it certainly comes with its own set of baggage, but it does seem to be one of the few companies big enough to keep Amazon from gaining a complete monopoly).
A handy website [1] notes at least a couple of B-52 nuclear incidents. In 1961, a B-52 carrying nuclear weapons broke up in mid-air over North Carolina; the bombs did not detonate [2]. In 1966, a B-52 crashed due to a mid-air collision with a refueling tanker over Spain. In this case, the non-nuclear explosives in two of the nuclear weapons detonated, scattering radioactive material [3].
So I would not say "zero nuke detonations". And your .00001% failure rate (I didn't check your math) is not meaningful unless compared to the failure rate of other aircraft. The B-52 is impressive, but not flawless.
In this discussion, I've explicitly (and quite off topic) expressed support for the Union side in the US Civil War, and I've implicitly supported Ukraine's side in the Crimean dispute. I don't think that gives you enough data points to deduce whether I choose sides on the basis of ethnicity, or because of a liking for the letter U, or (most probable?) a curmudgeonly dislike of change.
Are you asking me? I would find it hard to be consistent: Kosovo, Abkhazia, Palestine, Chechnya, Crimea, so many choices to make, so many fine differences, so much tangled history.
I do (retrospectively) support the US decision in 1861 to prevent the Confederate states from seceding, despite the expressed will of the white, property-owning part of the local population, so there's that.
The US has in fact sanctioned Russian officials associated with the annexation of Crimea. [1]
You might also spare some sympathy for those residents of Crimea who did not wish to join the Russian Federation, for example, many Crimean Tatars. Not only have they suffered the loss of access to github, they also have to contend with a campaign of political repression. [2]
I think your numbers are probably correct. I don't happen to know another number: how many people in Chechnya would rather be independent than part of Russia. But it doesn't matter; the Russian government is very selective about how it applies the "right to self-determination".
The Russian government is likewise selective in its interpretation of the Budapest agreement (1994) [1], in which Russia guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in return for Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons.
Edit: I incorrectly wrote "Bucharest agreement"; fixed it (thanks jotm)
A quick Google search on "Chinese grad student restrictions" yielded an article [1] from December 2018 with the headline "US Considers New Restrictions on Chinese Students". The source is the US government's own news outlet, Voice of America.
According to the official website [1] (which is linked to from TFA), the images were processed using PixInsight, a program popular among amateur astronomers. This page: [2] explains how PixInsight performs image alignment; it turns out to be a pretty complex (and interesting) process. The same page also explains the process of merging images.
Indeed from "The Nine Billion Names of God", but this classic of SF was by Arthur C. Clarke, not Isaac Asimov.
However, Isaac Asimov did write "Nightfall", another classic, which describes what happens when, as the result of an eclipse, the stars come out, rather than go out...
A pitfall not mentioned in the article: a private-industry member of the standard-setting body may fail to disclose that they are applying for a patent on an essential component of the standard.
For instance, in the 1990s, the oil company Unocal managed to insert a patented technology into the mandatory Reformulated Gasoline standards in California [1]. Eventually Unocal was hit by a class-action lawsuit and an FTC action, but that took years, and in the meantime all refiners in California had to pay royalties to Unocal in order to comply with the state mandate.
> The new bill, SB 208, was introduced by Senator Ben Hueso (D.-San Diego) earlier this week. It effectively sets a deadline of July 1, 2020 as the date by which phone companies must "take the steps necessary to stop these illegal scams."
> ...
> The FCC had previously suggested phone companies utilize a system called the Secure Telephony Identity Revisited and Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (STIR/SHAKEN), which helps law enforcement identify numbers attached to robocall efforts. However, no deadline has yet been legally set for these companies to take any official action.
Can a telephony expert comment on whether the California law is technically and/or economically feasible?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos