onfocus

"Scientists think that millions of years ago, Venus actually had oceans of liquid water like Earth. At some point, however, a runaway greenhouse effect turned Venus into the inhospitable world it is today, with a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead."

Hey, no Earth spoilers! AND: I, for one, welcome our phosphine belching neighbors.

"When she asked the company to do more in terms of finding and stopping malicious activity related to elections and political activity, she said she was told that “human resources are limited.” And when she was ordered to stop focusing on civic work, “I was told that Facebook would no longer have further need for my services if I refused.”"

Facebook the company is coordinated inauthentic behavior.

"The rise in conspiratorial thinking is the product of several interrelated trends: declining trust in institutions; demise of local news; a social-media environment that makes rumor easy to spread and difficult to debunk; a President who latches onto anything and anyone he thinks will help his political fortunes."

Saying that conspiracy believers are inoculated from new information is a terrifying way to put it. But yeah, it’s a cult.

"More than a half dozen of the worst fires in the state will continue burning and requiring active firefighting “until winter rains fall,” the state’s expert cautioned."

The fires here aren’t something that will be done quickly.

"Apple’s tracking permission dialog is something no sane person would agree to because this sort of tracking is something no sane person would agree to."

We agree to it every time we use the Internet with default settings. Changing defaults will cause some pain but it’s necessary.

With The West on fire, you might need a good visualization of where fires are and where smoke is headed.

“What you write about is not a fossilized bit of commentary for a blog post. When you learn more, you add to it. It’s less about shock and rage; it’s more connective.”

Just entering this link into the fossil record. But seriously, anything that gets people excited about indie publishing is exciting! The gardening metaphor reminds me of my favorite Gary Snyder line I think about all the time: “Sweep the garden. Any size.”

The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don’t pursue riches are “losers.”

Unfit for command.

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"...by telling people to put sensitive data (such as credentials, configuration files, etc) it's a really dangerous lesson for our teams. We're teaching people to blindly trust arbitrary websites that they don't have any relationship with, nor have fully audited the source code, when posting potentially sensitive data."

This is an excellent reminder that I can take a little extra time and make my own validator and make sure my processes don’t rely on external tools like these.

"The comments represent one of the most explicit acknowledgments to date that the White House’s aggressive push to bring students back to campus this fall has created serious risks for increased COVID transmission. It also underscores just how fragile the current situation is at college campuses across the country."

Seems like something they could have predicted. It’s almost like the push to open campuses was motivated by something other than public health concerns.