Compare with the yearly release cycle on cars.

Coupled with secret ballots, that implies that all mail ballots must remain in the sealed individual envelopes they came in until the polls close.

Like any other convention, it’s not really a big deal either way. Fortran gets along just fine with 1-indexing.

To be fair, I think it’s more typical for these kinds of partisan poll observers to operate on a volunteer basis.

Here’s a nice YouTube that describes one experience representing the interests of Count Binface in the recent UK election.

Removed by mod

Kill -9 is a command on Unix and Linux to send signal 9 (SIGKILL) to a process. That’s the version of kill that is the most reliable and has immediate effect.

Taskkill is a Windows command line program. I believe that taskkill /f uses the TerminateProcess() API. This is more forceful than the End Task button on the Task Manager. There is a different End Process button on the Task Manager that does use TerminateProcess().

TerminateProcess() is pretty reliable, but it doesn’t form part of the C signals stack on Windows like kill -9. So for instance, if you’re doing process control on Python, you need to use a special Windows-only API to access TerminateProcess().

That is pretty insane. Opiates seem like they would make terrible chemical weapons.

It’s really racism. But if you want the legalistic explanation, here it is…

The United States started out with 13 states that were all ex-British territories on the Eastern seaboard of North America. There are now 50 states. Every state after the first 13 got its statehood by first being a territory, adopting a state Constitution at a constitutional convention, and then getting that Constitution approved by US Congress, and so being “admitted to the Union.”

Under the Constitution, only states (and Washington DC) participate in the electoral college. The concept of non-state “territory” did not necessarily exist when that part was written, because there were only the original 13, and the Louisiana purchase wasn’t done until later.

[Washington DC is a very special “district” that is not a state and not a territory.]

Puerto Rico has stayed at the territory stage since it was acquired in the Spanish-American war (started 1898). Why? Well, mostly racism. There have also been some popular votes in Puerto Rico, with very mixed results. In the currently evenly split political climate, getting any new state admitted is probably impossible (as it was before the civil war).

There’s also some undercurrent that maybe the US is kinda uncomfortable holding on to these overseas islands (which are mostly connected to the same Spanish-American war). Philippines became an independent country. On the other hand, Hawaii got statehood in 1959 (but there was a whole racist history there of white colonization).

The Constitution says that each state shall send electors to the electoral college. So Puerto Rico’s status as an unorganized territory is a bit of a blocker.

The District of Columbia is also not a part of any state, as specified in the Constitution. However, DC explicitly got some electors in the 23rd amendment, so they can vote for President.

Really, the idea that the United States might have overseas territories that are not on track to statehood is itself an invention of the twentieth century. (Owing to the 1898 Spanish-American war, which caused the US to take over several parts of the ex-Spanish empire).

Musk has a security clearance for the SpaceX contracts, right? Did he file the proper forms reporting the foreign contacts?

Would a fork be technically viable if Americans and American businesses can’t participate (because the fork works with SDN entities)? Maybe.

The reality is that the Linux Foundation is in the United States, and Linus is a naturalized US citizen who lives in Oregon (at least on Wikipedia). So they both will have to pay attention to avoid transacting business with individuals and companies on the SDN list. That is the law in the United States.

802.11ax, clients just… (essentially) wait for a random amount of time, listen for a break in the signal, and take a leap of faith.

Ethernet originally worked the same way, back when it competed directly against token ring. Ethernet won by being as reliable in real world scenarios while being cheaper to build out. Gigabit Ethernet was the first standard that insisted on full duplex only.

Half duplex mode with the collision avoidance is still actively supported for 10/100, but it is becoming very hard to find an unswitched hub. So you may have to write up your own twisted pair cables.

Congrats.

E. coli is a coliform bacteria. That means it’s found in, you guessed it …shit. So E. coli is a great topic for a shitpost.

How the E coli gets from the shit to the meat is left as an exercise to the reader.

Blitzkrieg was like the American football play of the same name. If you don’t win real fast, you tend to find out that your motorized units are beyond reach of your supply lines. Then they get cut off, and the whole thing can collapse rapidly.

The Ardennes offensive was pulled off in 72 hours by using the powers of methamphetamine. Seriously, the German army issued a lot of meth to the troops. Imagine what would happen to the combat effectiveness if they had to keep fighting at that pace for a while.

This was a serious mistake, yes. And Barbarossa was another serious mistake.

But I think that Germany was still destined to lose the war anyway, because they were running out of oil and getting out manufactured. And the United States was going to find a way to enter the European theater one way or another.

Some generals tried this. Other generals just kind of tried to survive and fight for their country. Still other generals were ideologically Nazis and they fought for the cause.

Like anything in the real world, it’s a mixed bag.

Germany mainly lost by losing the economics and resources games. A secondary factor was when Hitler started taking over strategic and tactical planning from the generals.

My take on the generals themselves is that they were at least not terrible.