I was under the impression that Digital IDs are not a picture you bring up and hand to LE - it’s a RFID token transfer that you tap to authenticate on a reader. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be LE officers who will bully people, or that people won’t be smart enough to recognize that the picture on their phone isn’t their ID, but that not how digital IDs (are supposed to) work.

Something you have, something you are, something you know. Are you willing to give up proper security for your cause?

I’m an engineer. I use all of it. I use it whether I’m writing technically correct and accurate forensic reviews or doing math in my head (or on paper) to analyze a condition in real time or checking a complex finite element model to ensure that there are no improper assumptions or invalid boundary conditions. AI/ML is really useful for some things, and deadly for others.

Rote memorization may seem unnecessary, but a mental catalog - whether it be quotes, body parts and systems, equations of natural phenomena, or even manufactured parts and specifications - is the hallmark of someone who can work independently in a real time industry. It may not matter for some jobs, but it’s make or break in others.

On the contrary, it will raise the floor of required credentials. When everyone has a HS education, an undergrad degree is needed to stand out. Now that a bachelors is the de facto education level, a masters degree is necessary. If it gets easier to get a MS degree, we’ll be requiring a PhD for entry level positions.

Yet. Infrastructure on this scale moves slowly and the transparentness of pricing changes on short time lines in physical stores is hard to track. It exists in emergency economies - we call it price gouging - but that’s usually quite obvious. The idea of dynamic pricing has existed forever - hotels, airline flights, movie tickets, taxi rides, even electric rates. As technology advances it offers the opportunity to use the technology to shorten the time window for pricing changes more and more. An extra two tenths of a percent profit seems like a trivial amount. Amazon and Walmart combined for more than a trillion dollars in sales last year. 0.2% is a very non-trivial $2 Billion. If it becomes available, it will be exploited.

o7

Fly safe, cmdr

That was a nice term report by a precocious 5th grader or, more likely, an AI generated article.

“live and work and build and pay in that world in an ongoing basis”

There, that’s more what they’re envisioning.

I can tell if China is worried about current Russia or a future US under Trump.

They’d better not be playing all my free games before I get to them.

I’ve edited my post for accuracy, it was genuinely an honest mis-remembering of the attack; thank you for the clarification.

Picking a fight with a superpower is generally a poor idea. Killing military members - even in Jordan - might be considered a bit beyond mere commerce.

Edit: I did misremember the attackers in Jordan and thought that was part of the Houthi organization. The Houthi’s are attacking US warship(s) in the area, but haven’t directly killed an US service members that we know of/yet. The Jordan attack was (now that I’ve checked again) by one of the groups operating under the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

My only defense here is that all of these attacks on US and UK vessels (merchant and military) are in retribution for the US support of Israel. And, yes, there are a lot of groups backed by Iran and Iraq who are using the Israel-Hamas/Israel destruction of Gaza as an excuse to lash out at Western powers who (generally) provide support to Israel. My apologies for the error.

Funny - I’m going to be in Boston in three weeks. Unfortunately I think all my time is booked from the time my plane touches down to the time I head back to BOS.

Fascinating interview around the technology. As someone who is generally skeptical of wild “zero carbon” claims, this was interesting enough that I would definitely go out of my way to see the process in person, just to learn more about it.

One option would be to make the beam a flush condition. To get a 16’ span with rafters you’re going to be using at least 2x8s. That’s 7.25" deep. If you were set the top of the beam at the top of the rafters and hang them from the beam (simpson or USP hangers) that buys you some space. Now an 11.88" LVL would only stick down 5-5/8" below the bottom of the rafters. (okay, 5-3/4"-6" with the additional slope over the 5.25" of beam) I’m not saying that a 3 ply 11x88 LVL with a 2.1E, bearing in a BC6 cap on 6x6s would work for your application, but the height tolerance would seem to add up in your favor.

The advantage of LVLs are that

1. you can put them up 1 ply at a time
2. they hold nails/cut easily
3. the lumber yard will likely size them for you if you ask

The disadvantage is that the depth will be about 1/16th of the span when using 2-3 plies.

The advantage of steel is that an I beam (W shape is what you want, for “Wide Flange Beam”) will be about 2/3 the depth of an LVL. The disadvantages are

1. An engineer will likely charge you about $600-800 to size this beam, but will also tell you how to top connect it
2. It will be one piece (fwiw it will weigh about the same as the LVL)
3. You will have to buy a 40’ piece, or pay a premium to have it cut down from a 40’ piece. (stock lengths of steel are 20’/40’)

Note that nobody can properly answer your question from the data given (edit - just notice you mentioned 16’ rafters below). You would need to include the span of the rafters and (at least) your location to determine the snow loads and wind loads (edit: and seismic, though it’s unlikely to control for this design) for sizing the connections.

Disclaimer: I’m a structural engineer, but I’m not your structural engineer. For a long span like this I recommend contacting someone licensed in your jurisdiction to help you out.

Huh, I guess I’ve just adapted with the enshitification arc. It aways seems pretty clear when the publications are not specialized that the “reviews” are really just generated or copy/paste lists of devices with affiliate links - and are essentially just paid advertising (though paid by vendors and not manufacturers in this case). I will agree that it’s infuriating to have to sift through the ever-growing AI generated content to find something which has novel information.

T-mos general coverage outside of city centers and interstates is trash (they’re all pretty bad, but Tmo is very binary). I’d get it over xfinity, but it’s not even offered in my major university town due to coverage limitations. And it’s not like there aren’t big pipes nearby - the university consumes more than 100TB of data traffic a day; their Netflix traffic alone was so large just 3 years ago that they were on the edge of getting a co-located Netflix rack on campus.

And, ime, a lot of corporations are serving content through third party (or at least non-native) servers, which means that any blocker which touches any of those servers breaks content completely. I’ve experienced major Travel, banking, and retail sites which simply don’t work unless most blacklisted sites are allowed. That means either turning blocking off for that main site entirely, or spending an hour testing every one of their 30 off-site connections to see which ones break. I don’t have that kind of bullshit time, and the rest of my family don’t have the patience or skill to do that troubleshooting. PiHole turned out to be multiple hours a week of frustration so I gave up - I already have a full time job and full slate of hobbies. In-browser blockers are, at least, easier to toggle on and off.

Just to be clear, generally stock buy backs are not to increase revenue or dividends, but to increase the stock price by creating a false scarcity. Potential dividend increases from corporate stock ownership are a shell game as the corporation received the dividend and it is simply added to the cash on hand and book value.

Nearly all growth in stocks is capital based. Every corporation wants to increase revenue and profits because that forms the basis for valuation. Yes, there are young companies who are “forward looking” and trading on factors based on revenue and not net income, but most of the market is based on a net income multiplier (which varies by industry).

As much pressure as the boomers (and soon GenXers) will place on revenue, it will never be enough to support the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Rather, they will be selling capital to fund their retirements. This will lead to long term stagnation of stock prices (in the best scenario) or a collapse of market value as retirees try to sell their stock for the next 9 month round-the-world cruise. This is a negative feedback loop, too, as the more people sell, the lower the value of their stock, requiring they sell even more shares to get to a fixed value in cash. I think of this as just one more Fuck You (added to the collapse of public health and public retirement subsidies) the boomers will be handing Millennials and GenZ. Actually, I thought you might catch a break with housing, as the value of housing as they all move into retirement homes would drop with the glut of units coming to market. Alas, corporations have found they can buy those units and rent them back at exorbitant rates, so they’ll be tag teaming the boomers in fucking over the youth of today.