The old school Rainbow Six games were my gateway drug to the book.

The plot is essentially “what if tree huggers went batshit and weaponized a virus” so take that for what you will but the training and operations in that book were facinating to me. I saw it as world building for one of my favorite games of the time

If you want a “cheaper” option to try I’d give Minus 33 a chance. If it works for you great! If not it’s not as expensive as it could have been.

I do share other commenter’s concerns about overheating. The line I’ve heard is “be bold start cold”

Lemon and orange are the easiest scents to achieve from a chemistry standpoint. It probably complements the base smell of a product easier.

Fun fact A professor once told us that a molecule’s chirality can make a diffeence. For example Limonene can either smell like pine or oranges depending on what way the molecule is mirrored.

I like X.com only because I like X-Com

Follower? Fan? Enjoyer? lol

It’s called 10 tap. So quickly half press (not clicking) the button 10 times, then press and hold. It goes to the next mode preset.

For normal use clicking the button is the first mode (low) and half press then click for the second (high)

like this (skip about halfway)

My go to light for work is a Streamlight Protac 2L-X. It has a few modes to set it up how you prefer. Plain bright. Low, bright. Bright, strobe. Rechargable 18650 but you have to take the battery out to plug a usb into it but it lasts a loong time between charges so I don’t mind

Strobe is great for raves, self defense and epilepsy tests! (jk)

I mean to explain the current longer wait times

This is uneducated speculation but what if more people are going to vote as elections get crazier and voting centers aren’t used to the higher volume?

seahorse intensifies

OG Planet of the Apes, Horizon Zero Dawn is too in a way

I work with a K9 search and rescue team now and then. The team is very good at going deep into the woods looking for missing and/or dead people on scent trails that are sometimes over 24h old.

One of the ladies used a black tactical rig full of pouches. But instead of gun stuff it held gps devices, radios, dog treats, toys, water, collapsible bowls and a dozen other things for her and her dog.

So we geeked out for like five minutes over how useful it was. It’s a Condor Ronin Rig if anyone is curious

I’m sorry for your loss

Doritos are triangles so sure

The heads up display isn’t something you see in front of you like most planes. The helmets are the heads up display, like augmented reality.

There are cameras all over the plane to help you see through the aircraft (see ground targets through the floor, nearby aircraft through your wing). Think of the resolution and bitrate needed to make it useful!

Just like how an apache gunner can simply look at a target to aim the gun at them you can do the same thing to get missile lock. And if you can’t hit it it’s still marked for every allied plane in the airspace to see. If you are out of missiles but you are tracking an enemy plane miles ahead, you can send the data to an F-15 miles behind you and let their missiles lock and fire from farther than they can engage alone.

With that in mind the radar is awesome letting it see threats from greater distances than the opposition, with the stealth capabilities good enough to keep them from easily doing the same.

I’m sure there are other surprises too, but the military obviously wants to keep those a secret

I genuinely think the best practical use of AI, especially language models is malicious manipulation. Propaganda/advertising bots. There’s a joke that reddit is mostly bots. I know there’s some countermeasures to sniff them out but think about it.

I’ll keep reddit as the example because I know it best. Comments are simple puns, one liner jokes, or flawed/edgy opinions. But people also go to reddit for advice/recommendations that you can’t really get elsewhere.

Using an LLM AI I could in theory make tons of convincing recommendations. I get payed by a corporation or state entity to convince lurkers to choose brand A over brand B, to support or disown a political stance or to make it seem like tons of people support it when really few do.

And if it’s factually incorrect so what? It was just some kind stranger™ on the internet

There’s something to that I think.

I ride a mountain bike. Not because I do hardcore mountain biking but because the flat country roads I ride are so full of potholes or simply unpaved it might as well be a trail. So I ride a bike that I know can handle the works parts of my riding. But I know I’m not riding the best bike for the majority of my use case.

Kinda (note I’m saying kinda) the same thing with trucks. People want potential capability wether or not they actually use it like it was supposed to. They use it for the same shitty roads, bad weather, and every so often actually moving things from place to place.

But they are way overkill for most people and most of them know it. There is a market for small trucks that is being ignored and I hope that changes in the future.

My area’s mall is pretty nice and like most malls it’s got plenty of area to walk, stores to explore, enough security to deter people from doing anything too crazy. It’s a great spot for middle school and high school kids! But if you don’t have a car how do you even get there?

There’s suburbs all around so it should be in easy biking distance and moderate walking distance. But it’s surrounded by 4 lane roads without a single crosswalk or even sidewalks. Busses don’t run there either.

So thanks to decades of car only design best non motorized way to get there is to take a kayak…yes a kayak…and use a creek to get to the area behind the mall and walk in from there. I only know that because my parents did it once to see if it could be done.

Yeah plastic is great for a lot of stuff. Car parts, backpack clips, buttons, trash cans etc. But one time use plastic is EVERYWHERE.