The Tragedy of systemd

Lump

Barring actual manufacturing defects, the cheapest quartz crystal timing circuit on the market will be far more accurate than the very best Swiss watch movement, by orders of magnitude. A mechanical watch depends on a spring whose behavior is highly environmentally dependent - it will gain or lose multiple seconds per day, being affected by the orientation, vibration and temperature changes it experiences. A quartz watch will drift a few seconds per month.

The banning will continue until morale improves!

So there's this radio editorial from 1973 called "America: The Good Neighbor", written by George Sinclair. I think a lot of what Sinclair described has been lost, unfortunately, but this line always pops into my head:

You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at.

I feel like this part is still true. For better or worse, as a nation even when we feel shame due to the behavior of our politicians we don't try to hide it, pretend like it doesn't exist. Our politics is theater and we all know it. It's on display for everyone to see.

You can read the whole thing here: https://thinkingagain.com/html/american_tribute.php

It is an artifact of history, and just... keep in mind that it needs to be read and understood in the context of the time it was written. The Apollo program had just ended the year before, and US troops had just withdrawn from Vietnam. The Watergate scandal was current news and is specifically what Sinclair was referring to in the quoted line above. Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered only 5 years prior, and the civil rights movement of the 1960s was a recent memory. It had been only a decade since John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

And there was video and live discussion of all of it just on display for everyone to see on the still quite new platform of broadcast television.

Things haven't changed much.

Oh no, it's worse than that... we use the metric system to measure the customary system...

The Mendenhall Order marked a decision to change the fundamental standards of length and mass of the United States from the customary standards based on those of England to metric standards. It was issued on April 5, 1893, by Thomas Corwin Mendenhall.
[...]
Mendenhall ordered that the standards used for the most accurate length and mass comparison change from certain yard and pound objects to certain meter and kilogram objects, but did not require anyone outside of the Office of Weights and Measures to change from the customary units to the metric system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendenhall_Order

Technically every unit in the US customary measurement system is just a weird conversion factor of an equivalent metric unit. At this point 1 yard was defined as 3600/3937 meter, which means 1 inch = 2.54000508 cm. By 1959 everyone finally agreed that this was stupid and redefined it as 1 yard = 0.9144 m (1 inch = 2.54 cm).

All measurements in the US are based on standard reference objects provided by BIPM.

And it tells the same time as a $5 Casio

Assuming the fancy watch is mechanical, your $5 Casio keeps better time with a quartz chip.

If it's not mechanical then it's basically the same device with an expensive shell.

Right, ok, so the problem with having a debate on this subject is that there's no reason for this risk to exist at all. There's no good reason to have a .zip TLD, there was no need for it, it should not have been created and no one should use it.

If you're weighing pros and cons, there are exactly 0 pros. Therefore no matter how minor you think the cons are, they outweigh 0 pros by 100%.

Also, "nothing bad has happened yet" is not a valid argument and is a terrible basis for making risk decisions.

I'm still not convinced this whole feud thing isn't just theater. These chucklefucks have proven remarkably capable of deceiving and manipulating people.

Aida said the new material is as strong as petroleum-based plastics but breaks down into its original components when exposed to salt.

If this means that it does not break down when exposed to just water, that's a pretty big deal. Water solubility has been the major issue making biodegradable plastics useless for food packaging (typically you want to either keep the food wet and water in, or dry and water out - either way water permeability is a problem).

Of course most foods also contain salt, so... I guess that's why the article talks about coatings. If the material has to be coated to keep it from breaking down too fast, what is the point? either the coating will prevent it from breaking down, or it just moves the problem to the coating not breaking down.

The problem is that .zip conflicts with the very commonly used zip archive format which has caused user confusion - a user might click on what appears to be a URL to www.fakewebsite.zip and instead end up downloading a malicious .zip file. This creates an unnecessary and entirely avoidable security risk.

Google opened registration for the .zip and .mov top-level domains to the general public on May 3, 2023. Its release was immediately met with condemnation from cyber security experts as a result of its similarity with the file format of the same name. Malwarebytes warned against the use of already recognizable filenames and their confusion with top-level domains, as "plenty of users already have a clear idea that .zip means something completely different". Experts cautioned against their use, and noted that the use of .zip filetypes in cybercrime had had "an explosion" in recent years. Cisco warned against the potential for leaks for personal identifying information. Researchers also registered similar concern about Google's .mov domain.

Surveys by security researchers immediately following public release of domain registration found numerous examples of links and domains registered under .zip being used in phishing attempts, and the ICSS recommended disabling access to .zip domains until "the dust settles and risks can be assessed".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.zip_(top-level_domain)#Security_concerns

Choosing to use this TLD basically just screams ignorance, and should be causing users to question the competence of the person who made that choice.