I dunno—on the one hand, I can see where data consent that’s folded into a long user agreement might get overlooked and approved without thinking, and a second verification would be helpful; but on the other hand, the more times users are asked for consent, the more likely they are to agree reflexively to everything.

It seems like a user-configurable setting would be the best solution.

Orbán also revealed before Thursday’s EU summit that Putin had warned the Hungarian leader that Moscow would take countermeasures if the EU tapped Russian assets to help Ukraine. […] “So we Hungarians have protected ourselves,” Orbán said.

Submitting to extortion is a dubious policy; advertising your susceptibility to extortion is practically an invitation.

For a second I was hoping they’d bioengineered stromatolite.

@remindme@mstdn.social 14,000,000,000 years

Who picked the name “Vultr” for a hosting provider?

The study authors believe an eruption occurred around 1345, about two years before the start of the pandemic, from either a single volcano or a cluster of volcanoes of unknown location, likely in the tropics. The resulting haze from volcanic ash would have partially blocked sunlight across the Mediterranean region over multiple years, causing temperatures to drop and crops to fail.

Wow, that’s exactly what happened just before the Plague of Justinian (i.e., the volcanic winter of 536). I’m surprised they don’t mention that in the article.

That article reports that a drug targeted at clearing amyloid proteins didn’t suffice to restore the brain’s waste-clearing functionality; this article reports that a drug targeted at repairing the blood-brain barrier does restore waste-clearing functionality (including amyloid proteins). So they’re not completely contradictory.

It looks like the research was done by academic and government-sponsored institutions in Spain and China, so hopefully it won’t just become a profit-making tool for the biotech industry.

Because any putative simulation of the universe would itself be algorithmic, this framework also implies that the universe cannot be a simulation.

How do they conclude that any simulation would have to be (purely) algorithmic? (For a fictional counterexample, take Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex, which simulates a universe by extrapolating from a physical piece of cake.)

Beijing is actively cooperating with the international community. The Chinese authorities have confirmed their readiness to engage with all relevant parties to maintain the credibility of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

I assume this is a response to Trump’s decision to re-institute testing?

Syncthing uses a centralized discovery server to connect device IDs to IP addresses (although you can change this to point to your own discovery server, too).

I don’t know if Funkwhale has a similar option.

The study says they sourced their proteins from “Not Company LTDA”, which seems to be Chilean.

Don’t animals accumulate the heavy metals they consume from plants?

The way Linux treats many things as part of the file system (devices, sockets, etc.) that Windows doesn’t.

Have we mapped the Kuiper belt well enough to say whether or not there are any planet-sized clear paths inside it?

Edit: Actually, the method they’re using to detect its possible existence it is by looking at how it’s perturbing other Kuiper belt objects—so if they do detect something, it’s because it’s actively clearing its orbit.

The structures are kind of like Hermione’s charmed handbag in the Harry Potter series, said Nobel Committee for Chemistry member Olof Ramström … “Small on the outside, but very, very large on the inside.”

I feel like there’s a more-recognizable pop-culture reference he could have made there.

To be fair, the phrase apparently came from the Nobel committee rather than the journalist.

I can see the point: if I’d done potentially Nobel-worthy work, I’d rather be honored while I’m alive—after I’m dead, they might as well award it to someone who can still appreciate it.

To distract us from the other bots.

Solution: convince Trump to unilaterally rename the Jordan the “Charlie Kirk Memorial River”, and then the West Bank will no longer be west of the Jordan.