Having worked in classified areas, both as an admin and an unprivileged user, CDs were normally the method of transferring data up the network. (Transferring down rarely occurred, and even then you’d be limited to plaintext files or printouts.)

I’ve seen more places use data diodes to perform one- or two-way transfers so that requests can be streamlined and there’s no loose media to worry about tracking. It’s not super fast and higher speeds mean more expensive equipment, but it covers 98% of software update needs, and most non-admin file transfers were under 20MB anyways.

Anything that did require a USB drive, like special test equipment (STE) or BIOS updates, had to use a FIPS-140-1 approved drive that offered a ready-only mode via PIN. This drive could only be written to from a specific workstation that was isolated from the rest of the machines (where data was transferred via CDs of course) and required two persons to perform the job to ensure accountability.

Not the most time-efficient way of doing things, and not completely bulletproof, but it works well enough to keep things moving forward.

I’ve jokingly said this before, but just wait until manufacturers start adding 4G/5G to TVs explicitly for ads and telemetry…

Oh most certainly. I attended BYU Provo and there was a lot of effort from students to allow the sale of caffeinated soda on campus, but the belief was that the university was holding out only because a large number of alumni might stop donating if it were to occur.

(This was more recent though.)

The culture amongst members can and often will have items that seem to go against or misinterpret official doctrine. I don’t disagree that the church would need to reiterate the doctrine to clear that up for people. What I personally don’t know is how often is appropriate for such corrections to take place. If you correct them too often they may choose to not seek out answers themselves but instead wait for a leader to explain it to them, which runs against the teaching of proactive scripture study.

Ok, I should stop there. Starting to nitpick human nature as though I’m any better (and we know that’s not fucking true in the slightest, lol)

One assumes that a god would be able to formulate a standard that can be applied cleanly, to everything, and communicate that clearly to his prophet.

The issue wouldn’t be the god in question, but instead the people.

Consider the fact that Moses was given the Ten Commandments for all the Israelites to follow. They’re incredibly simple and straightforward. Yet there still was a division in how these were observed, which was documented well in the New Testament.

The two most notable (outlined in the New Testament) are the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees can be summarized as a group which added man-made rules or guidelines on top of the established doctrines. Certain stories, such as Christ healing a man on the Sabbath, demonstrate that the intention of a commandment can be forgotten by people who choose to observe by the letter of the law. The Sadducees can be summarized as a group which chose to observe only doctrines that are written. Both groups, however, largely ignored the foundation behind the 10 Commandments.

Christ explains it as simply as can be. Love the Lord above all else, and love they neighbor as you do yourself. The 10 Commandments were already straightforward to begin with, but the two greater commandments set the standard you suggest such a deity should be capable of doing.

Even still, as simple as they can be, the issue often becomes that some people want to be told what exactly they can or cannot do, while others want to justify their actions on the basis of technicality.

All of this to say, the doctrine for the LDS church is based on the idea of obedience towards God. It doesn’t matter why He says to not drink coffee, just that He promises you’ll be blessed if you do. So by virtue of the two greater commandments, loving God means following His instructions. And that alone should be reason enough to do so.

(Mind you, I disagree with how this is often put into practice, as a lot of guilt-tripping occurs for those who choose not to follow these teachings. At its core, these actions are antithetical to Christ’s teachings and examples, which are to love all unconditionally as we are all sinners in the eyes of the Lord. But again, the issue lies with people, who aren’t perfect, rather than the doctrines put forth.)

Like with caffeine specifically they have a long history of forbidding its use and then suddenly they reinterpreted it the way you’re suggesting.

I had to think about this. I can’t seem to find any articles in a quick search where church leaders (a Prophet or Apostle) explicitly forbade its use. I have, however, found many excerpts where leaders who do not sit at the head (Quorum of the Seventy, BIshop, etc) have made statements warning against it or even flat out saying that members should not ingest it.

Given the structure and lack of corrective statements coming from above, I would attribute the confusion to local and regional leaders being overzealous by including caffeine explicitly in their teachings. Some have worded things in a manner I would find accurate, such as “high-dose caffeinated energy drinks” or “excessive soda consumption which results in high caffeine and sugar intake.” Others though explicitly call out caffeine as an “evil,” describing experiences with caffeine withdrawals or members deciding to not ingest alcohol, nicotine, nor caffeine. These mentions seem to have drummed up confusion primarily in the 80s (a lot of “Letter to the Editor” publications from this period seem to have been back-and-forth arguments among members, lol).

Initially I didn’t think the history is as “long” as you claimed, but then I realized that the 80s was just forty years ago, and with some results of the topic dating as far back as the 70s, it would mean it’s been an intra-member debate for almost half a century. And half a century is practically a lifetime 😖

Yeah… unfortunately, confusion about this particular subject exists because members often look for the underlying justification on things and then extrapolate from there.

(I’m going to paraphrase and shorten things a lot here so we don’t have to dive into definitions and technicalities. Bear with me.)

The doctrine brought forth about this is what’s referred to as “The Word of Wisdom,” which was a short outline of what things were deemed as “harmful” or otherwise “unsuitable” for the body. The idea being that the Lord was promising to people that if they didn’t ingest these things, they would live a healthier life as a result. “Hot drinks” was mentioned and clarified a century later to mean “tea and coffee.” Furthermore, “tea” refers to black and green tea, and not necessarily herbal tea.

People, by nature, want to understand the “why” behind things. You also have people who want to understand where the line begins and ends so they can tiptoe it. Enter the rumor that since the “hot drinks” referred to “tea and coffee,” they both have not-so-insignificant amounts of caffeine in them. Obviously that must mean drinks like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, plus foods such as chocolate, must also be in violation of this, right?

Well, the issue with that is people think they’re applying “the spirit of the law” (meaning the larger picture behind it) when they’re actually applying “the word of the law” (taken at face value). The idea behind the Word of Wisdom is to take care of your body by having a balanced diet and not eating too much of a particular thing. Certain items were called out explicitly; if caffeine were the true issue, then it would’ve been called out instead. But it wasn’t, and there have been some clarifications to emphasize that caffeine itself is not the explicit reason behind it. (However the idea of “addiction” could extend to caffeine if someone were to consume large amounts of it regularly, but addiction or dependency can occur even to things like Tylenol when too much is consumed, so targeting it specifically is silly.)

So in short, it’s a mixture of misunderstanding and overzealous practice. Caffeine is perfectly fine. Just like anything else: make sure you’re not consuming too much of it.

They’ll instead argue that Trump didn’t say that (which is true) and ignore the fact that he agreed to it, possibly even claiming that his agreement wasn’t towards race but instead just being a “horrible” person.

I’m going to upvote you for providing the viewpoint that models which have the manual releases hide them to prevent damage occurring from someone who instinctively pull on it to open the door. In the case of young children, they won’t know enough to not do the same thing they would do in other vehicles to open the door.

However, obscuring them from view also means they’re at high risk in the event of an accident which kills the power. Trying to calmly walk a child through the steps may not work. I don’t know how much force is needed for some of the release latches (and I’ll assume not a lot is required).

Cybertruck also has manual releases but the rear doors hold it in the map pocket. Better but still not in a sensible place when someone is panicking.

Ok. So that’s the Model 3.

How about the Model Y?

Ok. Not all Model Ys have rear manual releases. I’ll assume the best and believe that only certain countries have this design.

How about the Model X?

So it’s behind the speaker grille. Uncertain if you need a screwdriver, but I’ll assume not. However it is hidden away from sight.

How about the Model S?

Oh, it’s under the carpet.

So yeah, turns out, I’m not making shit up, and there is indeed empirical evidence for it.

I was talking to a Tesla owner about this and they argued that if the window is electric then there’s no difference making the door electric. They couldn’t understand that the door itself can be operated independently of the rest of the vehicle.

Making windows electric causes a safety tradeoff. You get ease of operation while losing the ability to open the window in the event of an accident (where power cannot be supplied). However you can still unlock and open the door manually as an alternative escape option. This also applies in non-accident scenarios (dead battery).

Making doors electric is nothing more than a safety risk. From the inside you might have access to a manual release latch, but some doors require you to unscrew things first. Any emergency situation where you need to exit as soon as possible and the power is lost almost guarantees that you’ll be unable to safely escape.

Should’ve sold some copies of the Christmas Star Wars episode

I’m worried about the security of this. However looking past that and simply observing it as an implementation of AI, this is an idea that I think is actually a beneficial use. Protecting the elderly against fraud/scams is a major issue which gets increasingly complex as scammers improve their methods. Using AI to detect scams in calls could be helpful in protecting the elderly.

But before rolling it out, I would want to see proof of its efficiency through careful studies. Hell, incentivize Google to share the model with the government and other businesses so it can be improved upon. Fund it as a grant/program so smaller teams/companies can contribute and innovate.

I think it would’ve been funny if the title was “StackOverflow contributors are revolting” and the comment was “a little more than usual.”

But hey, gotta get whatever amount of humor in while you can.

No thanks, I prefer my hotdogs 🅱️ONELESS

And the Chamber of Commerce is undoubtedly going to sue in court this week to have it overturned while telling us that it’s actually pro-employee to not be able to work elsewhere because of overreaching NCAs.

Oh wait…

It’s not symmetrical yet though. Which is weird.

Eh, I would say it’s to be expected. A lot of infrastructure still relies on coax/DOCSIS which has its limitations in comparison to an all-fiber backbone. (This post has some good explanations.) However it wouldn’t surprise me if some ISPs argue that “nobody needs that much uplink” and “it helps restrict piracy” when really it’s just them holding out against performing upgrades.

Some of the jury candidate descriptions listed by the Washington Post seem to get a little too close to outlining some people’s identities.

For example:

The ninth prospective juror is a social media marketer for Fan Duel, a sports betting app. She watches sports and reality television and her father, brother and boyfriend work in finance. She uses Goole, Facebook, X, TikTok and Instagram.

(Emphasis mine)

It’s not incredibly specific but it’s enough information for motivated persons to use. I mean, it only takes her LinkedIn or Facebook profile to state she’s in New York and works for Fan Duel. Next thing you know, she’ll be getting death threats.

Oh 100% that’s what they meant. It’s just something that caught my attention as it almost appears to be an oxymoron.

In practice, “microtransaction” can mean many things. A small price, a purchase of non-unique content, or even a small quantity of unique (non-base) content. So yes, upgrading to the “deluxe” edition can fall under that description. But calling the “deluxe” content upgrade a “micro-transaction” almost appears contradictory. So I had a little chuckle while pondering this before becoming upset at how broad (and expensive) said “micro”transactions have become.

deluxe edition as a MTX

I spent a few minutes analyzing this sentence alone. Admittedly I read the rest of your argument and respect your opinion. It’s just that this is stuck in my head.

Buying the deluxe edition through a micro-transaction? My mind wants to classify this as an oxymoron. Admittedly a lot of microtransactions aren’t really micro by any stretch of the imagination but this just stands out.