jqubed @ jqubed @lemmy.world

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Joined

2 yr. ago

I remember my dad installed a switch with a little light in it decades ago. If the switch was off the little light would be on so you could find the switch. I wouldn’t want it everywhere, but certainly helpful in some locations.

Didn’t they get hacked pretty regularly in the past?

I’d say Facebook mothers group; a lot of the things they’re trying to illustrate seem like they’d only need a very minimal re-write to be placed on a picture of Minions.

Didn’t this used to happen all the time?

These are shockingly bad! It’s a bunch of “memes” they created themselves by putting some text on top of stock photos from Getty Images, but they really just seem more like normal captions or descriptions for the photos. Then it’s all presented as a BuzzFeed/Bored Panda-style listicle. It’s almost an anti-meme, like an anti-joke.

I remember as a child my cousin’s siblings would sometimes call her “lizard breath” instead of Elizabeth

I remember as a child my cousin’s siblings would sometimes call her “lizard breath” instead of Elizabeth

It was a website from The Onion that parodied crappy content sites like BuzzFeed, Bored Panda, etc. It was sold to Cards Against Humanity in 2020.

I don’t know if anyone still makes the pencils. IIRC they used a special formulation for the graphite that reduced the dust and risk of breakage, but I don’t think there’s much market for that outside the space program since that’s about the only place the dust would float and be hazardous. The pens were in development even before the space program because there’s a market for pens that can write in unusual orientations. I’m sure the marketing of it being a pen used in space helps expands that market some, but the market would exist regardless. It’s supposed to be a nice pen to write with also, although I don’t know how much of that is kind of a placebo to justify spending $10-20+ on a pen. I’m sure it’s nicer than a 50¢ pen, though.

Felt pens can be prone to leakage, especially in lower atmospheric pressure. This can be a problem even in airliners, and definitely not what you want in space. There’s nothing in the pen mechanism to seal the ink in when not in use. A properly made ballpoint pen actually seals the ink in when not in use. That was Bíró’s big selling point over earlier technologies like fountain pens; the pen still writes even if you leave it uncapped and the ink doesn’t dry out. The Bic pen was revolutionary for creating a manufacturing process that could produce them cheaply.

Fisher’s claim to fame before inventing the Space Pen was inventing a universal replacement ink cartridge. You can even put the space pen cartridge in pens from other manufacturers.

The Soviets were using grease pencils IIRC before also switching to the Fisher Space Pen around 1969. The grease pencil eliminated the risk of graphite floating around but the writing quality isn’t great.

Depending on your threat model

Your points about a cost-plus contract have merit but aren’t applicable here because the pens weren’t developed under a contract at all. Paul Fisher of the Fisher Pen Company had started developing a pressurized pen before the space program even began (to develop a pen that could write in other orientations than on a desk), although learning of the concerns from the program gave him renewed impetus to solve the design. Fisher patented the design in 1966 after ten years of development and about $1 million in cost. Prior to the pens NASA had been purchasing special pencils at $128.89/each. The original purchase order for the pens bought 400 at $2.95/each.

The Soviet space program bought the pens in 1969, and besides the Americans they’re still used today by the Russian and Chinese space programs. You can buy one yourself for as little as $7 if you don’t care about it being refillable. On the one hand that’s a lot for a disposable pen, on the other hand that’s not terribly expensive for a pen that writes upside-down if you need that, and might not feel too bad if you’re prone to losing pens.

USA here, my bank credit union does this. Much better than taking it to the Coinstar at the grocery store which is actually the same machine but charges a fee to use.

$31.77

Yeah, it would be easier to just fake being a delivery driver and drop off tainted food and act like somebody else ordered it. The odds of a driver being able to target someone specific with a legit order are very low.

That said, don’t eat random food you didn’t order!

Basically everywhere. Not always when pulling in my driveway if no one else is around, but I’ve certainly seen driveways where you might even use it pulling out. I don’t use it pulling out of my driveway. It’s rare that I not use it otherwise, though. Very occasionally I’ll think I’ve put it on but discover while turning that I didn’t have it on. Might be my ADHD causing that.

It’s a sketch about a real incident.

Would it even be realistic to know the right place to report it to? Just because the messages say Toronto doesn’t necessarily mean the victim is in Toronto, and reporting it to the wrong place at most probably just means wasting resources in one location and coming no closer to stopping the harassment. Is there anything from a national group like the RCMP, FBI, or INTERPOL to help in a case like this?

Actually I’ve done very well with girls who think I’m a dork, in an endearing way