What about VLC's own built-in versions of decoding libraries (I think, from the FFmpeg project)? Is there a scenario here where we may have to deal with malicious MP4 files?
Opposing counsel is also being called out by the judiciary for not recognizing that multiple citations counsel has put forth are not only not real, but actually counter to existing law.
Same score. The honesty check for 'Invidious' seemed to not provide a particularly appropriate definition option. I see it mostly used when paired with the word 'comparison' ('Invidious comparison') In the sense that it's kind of intentionally calculated to create an unfair/inaccurate comparison of some sort. 'Unfairly discriminatory' was the choice they apparently were looking for, because I see nothing was scored against me ('Answered word-meaning checks correctly (4/4)').
Expanding on your point, a while ago I read a great book on 747 development (by Joe Sutter, who was the lead engineer for the 747) and one surprising thing for me was that Boeing was very much into the supersonic race at the time. The SST project was Boeing's darling. As such it got the top-ranked technical talent assigned to the project, as well as the best tools, management oversight, etc. In contrast, the 747 dev teams got pretty much less of everything, including being dispersed over a large area of corporate buildings. Despite all of that, it still succeeded beyond anyone's expectations at the time.
It's hard to over-estimate the tectonic impact the idea of spreadsheet had on the microcomputer scene at the time. Overnight 'programming' came to the masses. Someone with a problem (almost any kind of problem, scientific, financial, statistical, etc) could sit down, and easily start describing sequential flow, numerical manipulation and a ton of other things. It was the second coming of the International Business Machine.
I am such a fan of Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander" series of books that I could not let myself even consider the possibility of listening to audio book narrated version. I felt O'Brian's prose voice on the page was so powerfully distinctive that any attempt at putting a real voice to his material would be awful. Imagine my surprise when I found Patrick Tull's work shockingly good.
The most shocking thing to me about Blue Origin's New Glenn launch is that it didn't blow up. This isn't commentary on my opinion concerning Blue Origin's engineering expertise, just that I was expecting anything that big and complicated, on its inaugural flight, to fail fairly spectacularly. The historical trajectory of such space things is fail, fail big, fail less big, kinda work, kinda work, work mostly, etc.
If the second launch vehicle performs similarly, I might have to start watching them. We could use a decent alternative.
I'm 66, and when I myself was 10 or 11 my friends on my street and I were completely obsessed with the Estes rocket and Cox .049 U-control scenes. Most of us were lucky enough to have engaged fathers and once the standard craft were assembled and flown, we all browbeat them mercilessly for more information for mods, shortcuts, hacks etc. My dad grew very wary of the 'Why can't we' type questions. I had modified a C-type engine Big Bertha rocket with an extra long transparent payload module which set the stage for various kidnappings of lizards, frogs, praying-mantises, eggs, multiple 1 and a quarter inch sockets, etc (all returned to earth unharmed, if not un-rattled). The nichrome wire igniters were troublesome for most of the kids. Bulky and expensive (for 4th graders) lantern batteries were hard to come by. We found we could steal D-cells from flashlights, hack cardboard tubes from paper towel rolls, reinforce with electrical tape, and make passable energy sources from that, etc. But all of that required questions from the closest available parent about voltage and series/parallel connections, as well as other questions about CG when modding the rockets themselves, etc. I think your STEM comment is very much on-point. None of my friends thought we were learning anything at the time. We were mostly just jazzed about doing fun stuff that had the potential for tearing itself apart in mid-air. I know the advent digital everything makes modeling systems for kids [Kerbal,etc] probably pretty trivial now, but actually crashing things in spectacular fashion IRL had/has it's own visceral rewards.
I'm not aware of how Eichenwald got access to the communications he uses in the book, but in addition to, yes, the highly complex, dare I say innovative structures they created to temporarily satisfy Wall Street's demands, he also cites example after example of Fastow and Skilling doing or approving actions and special projects that had fundamental flaws that were certain to eventually implode - it's not like they were playing 5 moves into a game and getting it wrong occasionally. They were playing 2 moves into the game, often getting it wrong, and then covering it up with some equally flawed fix that in turn itself would later become a grenade. It's easy to argue in reading the book that they definitely weren't the smartest guys in the game, just the most audacious.
I'm in the middle of reading Kurt Eichenwald's 'Conspiracy of Fools'. When Enron management described all the innovative ways they were 'making money' they weren't kidding. They were creating it out of thin air with complex, mirrored in and out transactions of all types in every utility sector they could find, and no one (except Arthur-Andersen only occasionally) was there to call them out on it until it was too late. Reading about it, it almost feels like a .9 release of Theranos, where management was complicit and clueless at the same time.
Star Trek's McCoy delivers a grim description in "The City on the Edge of Forever", about how primitive 20th century medicine once relied on crude and bloody procedures. I think once lab-grown proteins are common in markets across the world, ethicists and historians will be more free to point to these last 50 years as the most horrific, in terms of inhumane treatment of animals on an amazing scale (I just looked this cheery tidbit up, 166,000 pigs are slaughtered per hour, year round, worldwide.) I'm 100% complicit in this. I eat meat, but for some reason as I get older it's harder for me to keep a comfortable distance from this issue.
I immediately got it. Understanding that the typical reader in this space is generally atypical “find the next best thing” would likely mean "look here to find the thing that's better than the current best." I guess it largely depends on who your audience is.
Indeed, one of the more memorable set pieces in chapter 1:
"He traveled to a city, which was located, he would only say, somewhere in America. He walked into a building, just as though he belonged there, went down a hallway, and let himself quietly into a windowless room. The floor was torn up; a sort of trench filled with fat power cables traversed it. Along the far wall, at the end of the trench, stood a brand-new example of DEC’s VAX, enclosed in several large cabinets that vaguely resembled refrigerators. But to West’s surprise, one of the cabinets stood open and a man with tools was standing in front of it. A technician from DEC, still installing the machine, West figured.
Although West’s purposes were not illegal, they were sly, and he had no intention of embarrassing the friend who had given him permission to visit this room. If the technician had asked West to identify himself, West would not have lied, and he wouldn’t have answered the question either. But the moment went by. The technician didn’t inquire. West stood around and watched him work, and in a little while, the technician packed up his tools and left.
Then West closed the door, went back across the room to the computer, which was now all but fully assembled, and began to take it apart.
The cabinet he opened contained the VAX’s Central Processing Unit, known as the CPU—the heart of the physical machine. In the VAX, twenty-seven printed-circuit boards, arranged like books on a shelf, made up this thing of things. West spent most of the rest of the morning pulling out boards; he’d examine each one, then put it back.
..He examined the outside of the VAX’s chips—some had numbers on them that were like familiar names to him—and he counted the various types and the quantities of each. Later on, he looked at other pieces of the machine. He identified them generally too. He did more counting. And when he was all done, he added everything together and decided that it probably cost $22,500 to manufacture the essential hardware that comprised a VAX (which DEC was selling for somewhat more than $100,000). He left the machine exactly as he had found it."
“I am going to a commune in Vermont and will [In my mind I've always heard a 'henceforth' inserted here for some reason] deal with no unit of time shorter than a season”
One of my favorite quotes in the book - when an overworked engineer resigns from his job at DG. The engineer, coming off a death march, leaves behind a note on his terminal as his letter of resignation. The incident occurs during a period when the microcode and logic were glitching at the nanosecond level.
Highly efficient Mini-split heatpumps are becoming simpler for the moderately technical homeowner to install everyday. 5-6 years ago installation typically involved a vacuum pump, a gauge set, sometimes a flaring tool to re-dress factory terminated line fittings, etc. Fairly inexpensive new 4th gen Mini-split heatpumps are drop-shipped from Amazon, have pre-evacuated line-sets that just bolt up to the inside head and pre-charged outside compressor units. I wonder how wide availability of these relatively cheap units are going to impact the bullish picture described in the WSJ article.
"Smartphones are substitutes for a lot of things: playing football with a friend; human ad-hoc conversation at a bus stop; playing Candy Crush instead of reading newspapers on your morning commute; entertaining yourself and your date at a romantic dinner."
It's a treacherous slide from Visceral to vicarious, to finally virtual.