vgivanovic

It depends.

My indoor-outdoor cat only catches small animals if they run between her paws. But she did chase a rather large raccoon around the house once, as I did.

In my suburban neighborhood, we occasionally have coyotes. They are known to prey on fat cats (the feline kind).

My feeling is that predation by domesticated outdoor cats is overblown.

I also feel that small wild cats were likely native everywhere. Birds were probably not their primary prey; small reptiles and mammals, i.e. animals that don't fly, nest in trees, or live in flocks.

Huh? I'm a native English speaker and the sentence looks OK.

Advances have demonstrated... The NLLB part is an adjectival(sic) phrase that modifies the noun "Advances".

Hopefully I'm not wrong...

Actually faking the existence of billions of people would require a global conspiracy orders of magnitude more complex than anything in human history.

No true. All that is required is for incentives to be roughly aligned for people to tend in a similar direction.

I've used Nova Launcher for years (don't know if I'm paid), but I'll be happy to pay for an ad free version.

I know there is a long history of companies buying another company for a product and then killing it after a period of time. I'm willing to give Instabridge the benefit of doubt... for a while. If they do decide that Nova Launcher is not a fit, I hope they open source it so that current users are not left on the lurch.

I am very happy with the software that powers my Hyundai Tuscon hybrid. (It's a massive system that runs the gas and electric engines, recharging, shifting gears, braking, object detection, and a host of information and entertainment systems.) After 2 years, 0 crashes and no observable errors. Of course, nothing is perfect: maps suck. The navigation is fine; it's the display that is at least 2 decades behind the times.

Why was this post flagged?

You get what you pay for, one way or another. I prefer to pay in cash rather than in eyeballs, so I use Kagi. No regrets.

Hmmm. What about the pencil shavings? Makes me wonder if the story is true.

Requires login.

The demofox.org page I see has blue text against a black background - unreadable. No other web page I can recall has this color combination.

I bought a Hyundai Tucson plugin hybrid after a Toyota dealer wanted $8000 over list for an equivalent RAV4.

Massachusetts is #20 in total tax burden by state in 2023.

Funny how people are willing to deny benefits to others while claiming different benefits for themselves. Me thinks you'd feel differently if, say, a fund were created to compensate people for consuming PFASs (which you undoubtedly have). Or, maybe not.

Regardless, I think it's important to be consistent: If you deny benefits to others, then don't accept them yourself.

California is #12 in total tax burden in 2023. (https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur...)

Maine, Vermont, Iowa all havae higher total tax burdens than California. New York, however is #1. On the other hand, New York City is THE place to be to find fame and fortune in any number of professions. Finance, the arts, fashion all come to mind immediately.

This bill is a gift to the Russians and the Chinese! Now they will be able to read anyone's communications, and do you think they are going to stop encrypting their communications?

I love this advice! I know it works. Just as George Santos.

\begin{rant}

Immanuel Kant (I paraphrase liberally) said the Golden Rule was not enough to decide if an action was ethical or not. One also had to answer in a positive way the question, "What would happen if everyone behaved this way?" So, Sam Altman, what if everyone lived by your 13 lessons?

There is not a shred of humanity here. It's all about money, money, and more money. Think about what the world would be like if everyone, and I mean everyone, only valued money. (Ironically, money in and of itself has no value.) I don't think cutthroat would begin to describe that world.

Interestingly, native Americans disparaged Europeans because they were addicted to money. For native Americans, time spent with friends and family was more important than money. Almost all the native Americans who went to Europe returned to native America, and likewise the Europeans who had once lived among native Americans, then went back to Europe, returned to native America.

Colin Shaw said, "Every generation has something they regret. The generation before me was smoking. My generation is obesity. I worry that this generation is about the lack of social interaction and having your head down at a screen rather than talking." I think he's wrong: it's artificial intelligence that we will regret.

Personally, I don't care one way or the other. I don't expect to live much beyond a decade. I do feel immensely sorry for my kids, though, and I do hope the world will hold Sam Altman personally responsible for the harm I think he has unleashed.

The AI revolution is not going to end well, starting with the AI-powered hatred that will be spewed before the 2024 election and then continuing with AI-powered monitoring of every microsecond of a person's life. 1984 will be paradise by comparison.

All that might be true, but, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." -- Yogi Berra (unlikely; Niels Bohr is more likely).

\end{rant}

Thank you.

What is pfsync and why do I care?

Examples, examples, examples!

Just today I failed to find an example of mounting multiple drives as one Btrfs filesystem. Plenty of how to create Btrfs filesystem examples. But how to mount them? Crickets. I eventually figured it out, but at a large cost in time.

If gravitational waves come from several sources, then are there rogue gravitational waves like in the ocean?

Another source described the ordinary gravitational waves as "deafening", so the rogue gravitational waves should be even louder.

"Understanding How We Learn" by two cognitive scientists.

https://www.learningscientists.org/books

Use a Japanese-style toilet bidet. Bolt-on, cold water ones are less than $50. (You get used to the cold water, surprisingly.) Warm water ones, less than $100. Top-of-the-line (entire) toilets, $4000.

WFM, YMMV

"Only original data are stored in the vault; no copies are allowed anywhere" means no backups. As a user, I don't want that; I want my data to be available independently of the physical medium it is stored on.

Even more problematic is: What about data stored on disk, for example, and in memory? That's two copies. Is that allowed? If so, how does that meet the requirement of "no copies allowed"?

I taught (ahem) data structures and algorithms from a book I really liked (T. Standish, Data Structure Techniques, 1980) which emphasized the mathematical aspects of the subject. (It's still available on Amazon for the bargain price of $6.40.) My students hated it. I told them that it can't be read like a novel; that every line has to be studied and understood, individually, in order. I failed as a teacher, either because they didn't follow my advice, or it was the wrong advice. My suspicion was that Standish's approach required too much effort; that the reward was not instantaneous.

I was taught high school "new math" from an English (O-level?) text that started with sets and was not divided into algebra, trig, geometry, etc. but provided an integrated approach that covered topics as they naturally arose. My teacher (Eric Turner, now deceased, so I was unable to let him know how much he affected my life) probably had much to do with it. He also taught physics, so perhaps he really understood both the abstract and the practical.

I have two only complaints about my mathematics education: the knowledge of how to construct and deconstruct proofs, and no statistics (too much calculus).

My kids, 17 and 15, don't grok mathematics the way I think they should. Tis a pity since underneath it all is mathematics.

By the way, there are some really excellent mathematics video channels on YouTube: 3 Blue 1 Brown comes to mind.

Linux on Framework i7-1280P

As a senior in college, I figured out how to earn a B in almost any class:

1. Read the assigned material before class. 2. Attend the lecture and any recitations; listen and take notes. 3. Do the homework.

Note that the material is read, heard, written, and used. It worked so well (for me) that I basically didn't have to study for finals.

A lecture or a book by itself is useless, but when used in combination with other forms of learning, can be powerful.

I agree with the comment that constructivism and transmission is a false dichotomy. We use both all the time, together.

The NPR headline is catchy but the underlying study is dogged by questions.

The cited study (https://doi.org/10.1111/acv.12563; sci-hub.tw has a copy) has some methodological flaws:

* The cat studied were were not randomly selected; they were chosen by "local volunteers". There may be confounding variables that explain part of the effect and so turn the observed effects from being statistically significant to not being statistically significant.

* The data on kills was self-reported, allowing bias to creep in.

* All the cats were English-speaking.

* Only 10 un-neutered pet cats were studied. I don't know if being neutered would increase, decrease, or have no effect on the kill rate, but the subject is not discussed.

I also question the conclusion that cats have a significant impact on local fauna.

* The average kill rate for a pet cat was (roughly) less than two animals per week, which doesn't seem very high. I'm left with the feeling that the authors had to resort to killings/area to make the results impressive.

* The authors did not report on the total size of the home ranges of cats compared to total area. So, for example, if the ratio was 1:1000, then so what? If the ratio was 1:20, then house cat might have a significant affect on local fauna.

Finally, I have a question about the presentation of the data: Figure 2b does not indicate that "75% of cats spent 90% of their time in disturbed habitats". The graph indicates that 500+ (out of 875 cats) spent between 95% and 100% of their time in developed habitats. Perhaps the y-axis is mislabeled, but even if it is, the graph does not match what the authors say.

The GNOME project has a standalone calendar cleverly named 'Calendar' [https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Calendar] and mail-calendar application called Evolution [https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/.] Both are open-source and free (as in beer).