It’s also worth noting that switching from ANSI to ISO 216 paper would not be a substantial physical undertaking, as the short-side of even-numbered ISO 216 paper (eg A2, A4, A6, etc) is narrower than for ANSI equivalents. And for the odd-numbered sizes, I’ve seen Tabloid-size printers in America which generously accommodate A3.

For comparison, the standard “Letter” paper size (aka ANSI A) is 8.5 inches by 11 inches. (note: I’m sticking with American units because I hope Americans read this). Whereas the similar A4 paper size is 8.3 inches by 11.7 inches. Unless you have the rare, oddball printer which takes paper long-edge first, this means all domestic and small-business printers could start printing A4 today.

In fact, for businesses with an excess stock of company-labeled #10 envelopes – a common size of envelope, measuring 4.125 inches by 9.5 inches – a sheet of A4 folded into thirds will still (just barely) fit. Although this would require precision folding, that’s no problem for automated letter mailing systems. Note that the common #9 envelope (3.875 inches by 8.875 inches) used for return envelopes will not fit an A4 sheet folded in thirds. It would be advisable to switch entirely to A series paper and C series envelopes at the same time.

Confusingly, North America has an A-series of envelopes, which bear no relation to the ISO 216 paper series. Fortunately, the overlap is only for the less-common A2, A6, and A7.

TL;DR: bring reams of A4 to the USA and we can use it. And Tabloid-size printers often accept A3.

That book sounds very insightful. I hope my public library accepts my purchase suggestion.

I will admit that my familiarity with private law outside the USA is almost non-existent, except for what I skimmed from the Wikipedia article for the Inquisitorial system. So I had assumed that private law in European jurisdictions would follow the same judge-intensive approach. Rereading the article more closely, I do see that it really only talks about criminal proceedings.

But I did some more web searching, and found this – honestly, extremely convenient – article comparing civil litigation procedure in Germany and California (the jurisdiction I’m most familiar with; IANAL). The three most substantial differences I could identify were the judge’s involvement in: serving papers, discovery, and depositions.

Serving legal notice is the least consequential difference between California and Germany, but it seems that the former allows any qualified adult to chase down the respondent (ie person being sued) and deliver the notice of a lawsuit – hence the trope of yelling “you have been served” and then throwing a stack of papers at someone’s porch – on behalf of the complainant (person who filed the lawsuit). Whereas German courts take up the role themselves for notifying the complainant. Small difference, but notable.

In Germany, the court, and not the plaintiff, is required to serve the complaint on the defendant without undue delay, which is usually immediately after it has been filed with the court.

Next, discovery and pleadings in Germany appear to be different from the California custom. It seems that German courts require parties to thoroughly plead their positions first, and only afterwards will discovery begin, with the court deciding what topics can be investigated. Whereas California allows parties to make broad assertions that can later be proven or disproven during discovery. This is akin to throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, and a big reason this is done is because any argument that isn’t raised during trial cannot be reargued during a later appeal.

I believe that discovery in California and other US States can get rather invasive, as each party’s lawyers are on a fact-finding mission where the truth will out. The general limitation on the pleadings in California is that they still must be germane to the complaint and at least be colorable. This obviously leads to a lot of pre-trial motions, as the targeted party will naturally want to resist a fishing expedition during discovery.

Lastly, depositions in Germany involve the judge(s) a lot more than they would in California. Here, depositions are off-site from the court and conducted by the deposing party, usually video-taped and with all attorneys present, plus a privately hired stenographer, with the deposing attorney asking questions. Basically, after a deposition order is granted by the judge, the judge isn’t involved unless during the deposition, the process is interrupted in a way that would violate the judge’s order. But the solution to that is to simply phone the judge and ask for clarification or a new order to force the deposition to continue.

Whereas that article describes the German deposition process as always occuring in court, during trial, and with questions asked by the judge(s). The parties may suggest certain questions by way of constructing arguments which require the judge(s) to probe in a particular direction. But it’s not clear that the lawyers get to dictate the exact questions asked.

In contrast, depositions in Germany are conducted by the judge or the panel of judges and only during trial.

I grant you that this is just an examination of the German court proceedings for private law. And perhaps Germany may be an outlier, with other European counterparts adopting civil law but with a more adversarial flavor for private law. But I would say that for Germany, these differences indicate that their private law is more inquisitorial overall, in stark contrast to the California or USA adversarial procedure for private litigation.

You are absolutely correct: this fragile experiment called democracy will not survive if the citizenry becomes ambivalent about its institutions, allowing corrupt officials and other enablers of authoritarianism to take root.

If you are an American and that prospect disturbs you, then you need to help strengthen and guard the institutions that protect the core American values. Nobody owes you a democracy.

For some ideas of what to do, this post by Teri Kanefield has a list of concrete actions that you can take: https://terikanefield.com/things-to-do/

I am usually not wont to defend the dysfunction presently found in the USA federal (and state-level) judiciary, but I think this comparison to the German courts requires a bit more context. Generally speaking, the USA federal courts and US States adopt the adversarial system, originally following the English practice in both common law and equity. This means the judge takes on a referee role, and a plaintiff and a defendant will make their best, most convincing arguments.

I should clarify that “common law” in this context refers to the criminal matters (akin to public law), and “equity” refers to person-versus-person disputes (akin to private law), such as contracts.

For the adversarial system to work, the plaintiff and defendant need to be sufficiently motivated (and nowadays, well-monied) to put on good arguments, or else they’re just wasting the court’s time. Hence, there is a requirement (known as “standing”) where – grossly oversimplifying – the plaintiff must be the person with the most to gain, and the defendant must be the person with the most to lose. They are interested parties who will argue vigorously.

Of course, that’s legal fiction, because oftentimes, a defendant might be unable to able to afford excellent legal counsel. Or plaintiffs will half-ass or drag out a lawsuit, so that it’s more an annoyance to the opposite party.

In an adversarial system, it is each party’s responsibility to obtain subject-matter experts and their opinions to present to the court. The judge is just there to listen and evaluate the evidence – exception: criminal trials leave the evaluation of evidence to the jury.

Why is the USA like this? For the USA federal courts, it’s because it’s part of our constitution, in the Case or Controversy Clause. One of the key driving forces for drafters of the USA Constitution was to restrict the powers of government officials and bureaucrats, after seeing the abuses committed during the Colonial Era. The Clause above is meant to constrain the unelected judiciary – which otherwise has awe-inducing powers such as jailing people, undoing legislation, and assigning wardship or custody of children – from doing anything unless some controversy actually needed addressing.

With all that history in mind, if the judiciary kept their own in-house subject-matter experts, then that could be viewed as more unelected officials trying to tip the scale in matters of science, medicine, computer science, or any other field. Suddenly, landing a position as the judiciary’s go-to expert could have broad reaching impacts, despite no one in the federal judiciary being elected.

In a sense, because of the fear of officials potentially running amok, the USA essentially “privatizes” subject matter experts, to be paid by the plaintiff or defendant, rather than employed by the judiciary. The adversarial system is thus an intentional value judgement, rather than “whoopsie” type of thing that we walked into.

Small note: the federal executive (the US President and all the agencies) do keep subject matter experts, for the limited purpose of implementing regulations (aka secondary legislation). But at least they all report indirectly to the US President, who is term-limited and only stays 4 years at a time.

This system isn’t perfect, but it’s also not totally insane.

Can you please kindly link to that article, if it’s publicly available?

This is an interesting application of so-called AI, where the result is actually desirable and isn’t some sort of frivolity or grift. The memory-safety guarantees offered by native Rust code would be a very welcome improvement over C code that guarantees very little. So a translation of legacy code into Rust would either attain memory safety, or wouldn’t compile. If AI somehow (very unlikely) manages to produce valid Rust that ends up being memory-unsafe, then it’s still an advancement as the compiler folks would have a new scenario to solve for.

Lots of current uses of AI have focused on what the output could enable, but here, I think it’s worth appreciating that in this application, we don’t need the AI to always complete every translation. After all, some C code will be so hardware-specific that it becomes unwieldy to rewrite in Rust, without also doing a larger refactor. DARPA readily admits that their goal is simply to improve the translation accuracy, rather than achieve perfection. Ideally, this means the result of their research is an AI which knows its own limits and just declines to proceed.

Assuming that the resulting Rust is: 1) native code, and 2) idiomatic, so humans can still understand and maintain it, this is a project worth pursuing. Meanwhile, I have no doubt grifters will also try to hitch their trailer on DARPA’s wagon, with insane suggestions that proprietary AI can somehow replace whole teams of Rust engineers, or some such nonsense.

Edit: is my disdain for current commercial applications of AI too obvious? Is my desire for less commercialization and more research-based LLM development too subtle? :)

A commenter already provided a fairly comprehensive description of low-level computer security positions. But I also want to note that a firm foundation in low-level implementations is also useful for designing embedded software and firmware.

As in, writing or deploying against custom BIOS/UEFI images, or for real-time devices where timing is of the essence. Most anyone dealing with an RTOS or kernel drivers or protocol buses will necessarily require an understanding of both the hardware architecture plus the programming language available to them. And if that appeals to you, you might consider looking into embedded software development.

The field spans anything from writing the control loop for washing machines, to managing data exchange between multiple video co-processors onboard a flying drone to identify and avoid collisions, to negotiating the protocol to set up a 400 Gbps optical transceiver to shoot a laser down 40 km of fibre.

If something “thinks” but doesn’t have a monitor and keyboard, it’s likely to have one or more processors running embedded software. Look around the room you’re in and see what this field has enabled.

For videos, I would recommend a PeerTube instance – since this is the Fediverse after all – but I don’t know of any that are taking users.

Also, the video did play for me in Firefox on Android.

I don’t have an immediate suggestion, but some questions to gather context so that others can make suggestions.

• What is your current program, as in: which days are back squats? How many sets and reps? What is your current objective (eg hypertrophy, functional strength, etc)?
• How much weight is on the bar now and when did it last increase for back squats?
• Which part of the motion fatigues you the most afterwards?
• Do you have access to other equipment to isolate legs? Eg: leg press, hack squat
• Are fractional or change plates available, and in what weights?

The link seems to work now. Is it still being problematic somehow?

Is that a direct link? It seems to redirect to a login page.

I have to ask: does your server switch to storing PDT during daylight savings? Either way, I’m so sorry you have to deal with that.

2. The return value of time.time() is actually a floating-point number … It’s also not guaranteed to be monotonically increasing, which is a whole other thing that can trip people up, but that will have to be a separate blog post.

Oh god, I didn’t realize that about Python and the POSIX spec. Cautiously, I’m going to guess that GPS seconds are one of the few reliable ways to uniformly convey a monotonically-increasing time reference.

Python has long since deprecated the datetime.datetime.utcnow() function, because it produces a naive object that is ostensibly in UTC.

Ok, this is just a plainly bad decision then and now by the datetime library people. What possible reason could have existed to produce a TZ-naive object from a library call that only returns a reference to UTC?

True, and I don’t see a problem. :)

Station wagons and utes (a la Hyundai Santa Cruz) should be a thing in the USA.

I should have clarified that the Mazda 5 is no longer in production. I’ve seen them from time to time here in California.

I’ll be upfront: IMO, hatchbacks > SUVs. That said, a number of manufacturers make “uplifted” versions of their sedans/hatchbacks, such as the Mazda CX-3 which is the bigger version of the Mazda 3 sedan/hatchback. The same applies for the Mazda CX-5 which is a bigger Mazda 5 (not in production anymore).

But directly answering the question, AWD is typically an extra weight penalty (200-300 lbs, 90-130 kg) with attendant fuel economy impact (usually around 1 MPG lower), a bit more maintenance due to having to keep the wheels equally worn, and in rare cases, gets you into trouble where a 2WD car wouldn’t.

To elaborate on that last point, in snowy weather, an AWD car can get moving better than a 2WD car, but the number of braked wheels is unchanged. So some people end up getting stuck further along on an impassable road or down in a ditch in their AWD car, in places where tow trucks have to wait for the weather to calm down. Meanwhile, the 2WD car would have already detoured when first encountering the unplowed snow. An experienced driver can make better use of AWD, but can doom a novice driver in the same situation.

If you don’t have snow, then you’re not really getting much of the benefits of AWD but have all the downsides and it costs more. AWD doesn’t shine in the rain either, since moving faster is rarely desirable in wet conditions.

If you do have snow, snow tires on a FWD is generally superior to all-season tires on a AWD or 4WD. This is because snow tires improve braking as well as acceleration in packed or slippery snow, for all cars. But you can always add snow tires to an AWD or 4WD.

So for light winters or places where it snows so badly that driving at all is ill-advised, a FWD with snow tires may be perfectly suitable. Since you’ve been happy with your Nissan Versa, I assume you don’t have the steep, slippery driveway which would tip the equation in favor of AWD/4WD.

TL;DR: it depends, but go AWD only if you need it.

From your description, this sounds a lot like how double/triple pane windows work, or like a Trombe wall. Although a Trombe wall is meant to heat a home, vents could be used to take advantage of convection currents that shed the heat away from the house.

That said, this wouldn’t necessarily be cooling per-se, but would be avoiding heat gain. And at that point, any material that’s loosely coupled to then house would be equally effective, like a wall with studs 24" (60 cm) apart rather than the USA standard of 16" (40 cm).

In fact, this is how some homes with massively overhanging roofs manage to passively keep themselves manageable in the summer, since the overhang blocks direct sunlight from reaching the walls and windows at summer’s high noon, but lets light in when the sun is lower in winter. Soffit vents let convection currents flow up the inside of the roof, exiting at a ridge vent. So the idea is sound and already deployed in relevant climates.

There is also amateur radio (aka ham radio), which can legally and practically operate at higher output powers if necessary, and on far more frequencies than CB. Although doomsday people often say to just buy a ham radio and use it without a license, I don’t advise that, simply because having the radio is only half the challenge.

The other half is the ability to competently operate the radio to effectively communicate and organize aid. And this only comes with practice by talking to others, in the form of regular participation in radio nets and/or emcomm activities. Emergency radio isn’t even limited to voice transmissions, with digital modes and even fax modes being an option that can transmit quicker and farther. Having a legit call sign will make it easier for rescuers to identify your transmissions, as well as figuring out if you’ve been located.

While some people will make ham radio a lifelong hobby, others obtain their license simply for small-talk, or for a SHTF scenario, or as longer-distance walkie-talkies when camping in heavily wooded forests. The possibilities are endless, but it all starts with a first radio and some basic training on radio handling.

Ham radio clubs across the USA and the world are generally very welcoming of new folks, so it’s worth looking up your nearby club or dropping in on an in-person club meeting.

No problem! This is a topic which I’ve been strangely fascinated for years about, although we’ll might not know if it actually answers the case that OP described.

This kinda all started when I was learning how to drive, and kept seeing people online talking about how “in California, no one has the right of way, but can only yield it”. This was puzzling to me as a student driver, because obviously I have the right to the street if I’m in it… right? No.

It all made sense when I finally determined after some research that “right-of-way” meant the property that the state/county/city owns, meaning that all the drivers are temporary guests upon the right-of-way, and thus have to yield it to each other in an orderly fashion, like passing around a can of Axe body spray in the high school locker rooms.

Indeed, driving in California doesn’t really have any absolute rights whatsoever, since no situation affords anyone an absolute ability to do something. A green light doesn’t mean blindly drive into an intersection, since the Anti-Gridlock Act of 1987 prohibits causing actual gridlock, and pedestrians can still cross if they entered lawfully, among other things. Even an ambulance or fire-truck cannot blindly drive waywardly into the street, expecting everyone to get out of the way. There are enough rules that it’s easier to just say no rights really exist, and everyone just has to calmly and fairly cooperate so that everyone makes it home alive.

Suffice it to say, there are zero absolutes. And that’s probably for the best, since if there were absolutes, so-called self-driving cars would probably be mowing down pedestrians, cyclists, and other motorists with full force of law.

There’s also the whole topic about property and property rights that could put first-year law students to sleep, about how a separated property right can in-fact be a property unto itself, with its own rights about how it can be disposed of, and with whose permission. It’s rights all the way down lol