swansont

All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. Bourbon has requirements, like corn content, how it’s aged, what’s added. Each classification requires a minimum percentage of the characteristic grain - e.g. rye, wheat.

Some of the redaction mess might be Musk’s fault https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/epstein-files-redactions-failed-after-funding-cuts-forced-doj-use-basic-adobe-tools-1766051 “as it turns out, failing to redact the Epstein files is not due to incompetence in using Adobe tools. The same user who suggested the feature in Adobe Acrobat found that they were never in the premium subscription in the first place. … a screenshot claiming that the DOJ's contractor, DOGE, had cancelled a £3.3 million ($4.1 million) GSA contract for Adobe Acrobat.“

One can possibly look at recent actions to assess how it would be received. “Sandwich guy” was acquitted. Several malicious prosecution attempts have been no-billed. Ethics are one issue but juries might find it justifiable. If the new signage on the Kennedy center came down via some vigilante tactics, they might not be able to prosecute

Light passing through light does nothing (photons at very high energy can scatter off of each other, but it’s rare)

Oil sitting in the oil pan isn’t doing the job it’s meant to do - that’s just the reservoir. When it’s running, the oil is actually lubricating parts.

We’re not denying its presence, but we can opt not to use it in certain situations, like where it’s unreliable or unethical. I don’t see how that would comply with the rules. We want the thoughts of people. If we have questions or critiques we want the person whose idea it is to engage with us

Seems to me this has happened before. They put down a new layer with the blackout, which is how it works with physical documents but not digital ones. There was also some conjecture that some of it was done on purpose by agents who weren’t keen on participating in the coverup.

Disappointing to be kicked off because of something you’d expect the host to be protecting against. Thanks for getting us back online.

Sure, blame it on others, rather than considering the possibility that you aren’t being clear or that what you feel is subjective opinion and not some objective truth.

You should also see lots of moderator notes telling them it’s against the rules, if it was used to make content, and lots of such posts in the trash. Read the rules. 2.13, in particular

GPS time is UTC(USNO) and is used a lot of places, so while the mandate is for DoD, it leaks into a lot of places. There’s a memorandum of understanding that NIST and USNO time agree to some level (IIRC it’s under 100 ns but usually are within 10 ns or so) and they both steer to agree with the international standard, BIPM.

It never seems to, but it plays on the narrative that government is incompetent, and somehow private enterprise is incredibly efficient. One thing the escapades of DOGE in the US showed was that this is far from true, even though you can cherry-pick individual instances of problems. They imply that these are typical rather than being outliers. As Phi’s example showed, sometimes the “efficiency” is cutting preventative maintenance or similar necessary tasks, which initially shows up as savings but always ends up costing more. Services are cut, costs go up.

https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/power-outage-boulder-atomic-clock-nist/ “As a result of that lapse, NIST UTC drifted by about 4 microseconds” Usually their error with respect to the BIPM is measured in nanoseconds. If GPS had this error, positioning uncertainty would be more than a kilometer. Before I retired, there was a meeting with NIST folks about them looking at USNO’s power backup systems, because they wanted to upgrade. Looks like that didn’t happen, but the problem is finding the money. Beancounters don’t always appreciate the importance, and everybody is making their case, so someone decides what the priorities are. This would be a very unsatisfying “We told you so.” The blame game might get ugly.

The fact that it would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics is independent of the actual mechanism. It’s not an issue of being dismissive when there’s no reason to accept the premise that it could work. But I recall there being discussion of the mechanism, which you insisted would work, and were dismissive of any objections.

Privatization is just a dodge to funnel money to people, usually friends of the advocates of the proposal. I’d be interested to find any examples where privatization has resulted in better service and lower (or even steady) costs. This is apparently the first domino NIST faced that cascaded to the failure of their timescale.