That is poorly applied makeup on the hand of the most powerful person on the planet. When this happened last time, his spokesman said his hand was bruised from “shaking so many hands”.

They insist it’s totally not a bruise from an IV drop, even though that’s exactly where they would put one if they decided to put it in your hand.

(And this post is a Rule 2 violation, so expect it to get removed soon.)

Since so many people are here because they consider the other platforms to be too enshittified, I like calling Lemmy “Antisocial Media”

Every organized sport has some sort of governing body, and that body is concerned with making sure competition is fair. (And taking bribes, right, FIFA?) The people who organize the sport should be able to determine what is fair for their sport. Often, there will be some scientific basis for allowing some people and not allowing others, based on hormones or something like that.

The decisions should be made by people who know the sport and decide what fair competition might look like, not by asshole politicians looking to push an agenda.

Is your dad elderly and needs care because of his age? In the US, depending on the state you live in, you could be considered a “family caregiver” and might be able to collect additional benefits. Some states give out a bit of money to these family caregivers if it keeps those elderly people out of the care of the state.

There will be elections. There have to be, in order for the new Congress to be seated.

The only question is how ratfucked they will be…

Why not? There are other Trumps who are eligible. If Junior runs, they don’t even need to change the banners or the hats much. They dont even need to hide it, they can have big “Donald Trump _jr for President” banners still. Dad can go campaigning, and they can make perfectly clear who will make the decisions.

Maybe that cat is the Mayor

It’s a scam. Do not engage. If a billionaire really wanted to send you money, they can pay for the lawyers and accountants to make sure it is all above board. Maybe they make a foundation and give you a cushy job there. That’s how actual billionaires do it. What you do with after is up to you (and your countries’ tax authorities, no doubt.)

Ironically, if it weren’t a scam, then crypto can be the safest way to receive any funds. If you securely generated your own crypto wallet, and sent him an address on a reputable blockchain to send funds to, and he actually sent them, then the money is yours, forever, no backsies.

Of course, that’s not how crypto scams work, either. They always guide you to use a wallet that they control (and can drain funds out of easily), or tell you to send crypto to them first to unlock something.

Looks like you want a brush with super hard bristles. I guess some places sell wild boar bristle brushes, I wonder what the boars think of that…

VISA handles 65,000 transactions per second. That’s one of the major reasons we’re not seeing more widespread adoption.

I thought they were gonna fix that by running a bunch of bar tabs

The US President is not subject to laws, when acting in his official capacity, unless at least 1/2 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate vote to impeach him. So winning the election is a license to do illegal things, if you have enough political support.

I collect old stuff too. There are only a handful of things that have been useful over the years, mainly USB devices. People who work with hobby embedded devices can also make use of RS232 serial equipment. It might be worth holding on to a single old monitor that can also do VGA. Or a single SATA DVD drive in case you find some old discs you need to read. I have a box of C-64 stuff I am never getting rid of. The kids will have to figure out what to do with that when I am gone.

But all those old ISA cards? Parallel printer port cables? Zip drives? Yeah, nobody wants them. Maybe you can list those old Apple talk dongles on eBay and make a hundred bucks, but you also have to deal with shipping them and stuff.

Just be careful when disposing old drives. I have a stack of busted drives that I won’t get rid of because I don’t know if anyone will be able to pull the data with the right equipment. Every now and then if I get too bored I take one apart to play with the magnets, I figure it’s safe to discard the platters if I scratch them up good.

You may want to look for local “electronics recycling” places. They might charge a fee, and if they find something they can refurbish and sell they will do it (and keep the profit). But then you have more space to accumulate new stuff.

I bet the local energy provider is owned by a large conglomerate, and they want you to think that the company is locally managed and any profits they make go back into the community, instead of to the Corporate Overlords…

This can be particularly important for heavily regulated industries, as their profits are contingent on the local politicians continuing to like them. So while I am sure a significant portion of their budget goes to greasing palms to make sure politicians like them, they also need to make sure the voting population is not hostile to them, so that they don’t get some grass roots movement going that elects hostile politicians.

Then that’s more feasible. It also means that it doesn’t have to try to operate while safely stowed. The contestant can remove it and then turn it on. They might even be able to strategically bury it somewhere. The small amount of dirt above it will attenuate the signal, but if buried in a place with an open view of the sky they will get a much stronger signal than they would in a building.

We are spoiled with how quickly the GPS in our phones work, but they already have a good idea where they are from the cell towers, and they can also get information on which satellites are in view from the Internet. If the GPS receiver had to work without access to those resources, it may take minutes to get a fix.

Then, it also has to communicate the position data: if there is no cell service, that would have to be some sort of satellite communication or other long-range thing.

Many of the trackers that would easily fit (like AirTags) don’t actually have their own GPS receivers, they piggy-back on the receivers in iPhones that are in bluetooth range (and also use those iPhones for the cell communication back to Apple).

You may be surprised to find that GPS signals are quite low power by the time they get to Earth. Receivers employ a bunch of tricks to extract the signal out of noise. It does not take much in the way to attenuate them to the point where they are useless. If a receiver is embedded in a body cavity it is unlikely to work well unless it has a direct full-sky view – which is especially troublesome for that particular body cavity.

It might be easier to embed a tiny receiver in someone’s skin: in their shoulder, or the nape of their neck, with less bodily tissue between them and the sky. A strategically-placed tattoo could help cover it up. The receiver would also need power so you would either need to embed a power source in it (which may be larger than the receiver itself) or work out some RF power source nearby. (But if you didn’t know where in the world they were, how would you know where to place the power source?)

My (flawed and amateur) understanding is that they create new elements by smashing together atoms on particle accelerators to see if their nuclei stick. If you can create an atom with a new number of protons in its nucleus, in a manner which can be repeated, then you have created a new element.

The last new element that was created with a natural process was found sometime in the 1930s. Many of the artificially generated elements are extremely unstable. Our labs may be the only place in the universe they are made, that aren’t inside stars.

Asking about “return” is kinda useless in this context. AI is frequently being integrated into things that people didn’t ask for, and making them more shitty.

And while Bitcoin mining does generate a return, there is nothing inherent in cryptocurrency that says it must consume electricity to generate these returns. Ethereum transitioned to an algorithm which secures its network just as well for a fraction of the energy cost. Bitcoin only consumes so much energy because its developers are stubborn.

But to answer your question, people think that AI applications will consume fully half of all datacenter power by the end of this year, and if it does it will likely have a higher energy footprint than BTC.

She might be conflating it with a wet t-shirt contest

Well, what is it?