That might have been a reference to a very old Slashdot meme, ca. 2002. Sometimes those words were combined; there was a movie with the words + “from outer space”; and there was a trolling group GNAA.

Now, is that what they were going for? Only you can answer that. It’s a pretty deep cut into a pretty nerdy corner of the Internet.

You are comparing it to a hash, following some extra rules on what the data could be. You have exactly the length of hash before you can reliably count on duplicates (and collisions happen much sooner). In torrent v1, this is SHA-1, which has a 160-bit (or 20 byte) hash. Which means for every single additional random bit, you have doubled the number of possible matches.

If your torrent has an uncommonly small chunk size of 256KiB, that’s 261,144 bytes. Minus the 20 from above, and you have a likely 256^261124 chunks that match your hash. That’s a number so large that Google calls it infinity. It would take you forever just to generate these chunks by brute force, since each would need to be created, then hashed, then the results stored somewhere. Many years ago, I remember someone doing this on CRC32 (32 bits/4 bytes) and 6 byte files. It took all night, and produced dozens of hash-matching files. You’re talking many orders of magnitude bigger.

But then what? You’d still need to apply the other rules on what the data could be. Rules that are probably more CPU-intensive than the hash algorithm.

The one trick that AI might be able to use to save the day is that it may contain in its corpus the original file. In effect, that would make the AI an unlikely seeder.

SuprNova was the big one for me. Everything else was either redundant (Like RARBG) or just faded away (like my Usenet sources). I didn’t have any replacement lined up when SuprNova died.

Jesus the comments are bad…

You need drivers. Specifically, you need the drivers for your internal disk (probably an NVMe), and/or the USB drivers. You also need to have them in a location where you can reach with Windows Setup. If it’s the USB drivers you need, having them placed loose on the USB install drive won’t help.

It’s not a laptop thing, nor an Acer thing per se. But it is a hardware thing. Microsoft didn’t include the drivers for your exact chips for whatever reason, probably because they were never submitted for approval.

In the end, you’ll probably need to mount boot.wim (and likely install.wim) using DISM, add the drivers, then update the USB drive. I don’t think you can do this without a functional Windows machine.

You might be about to get around some of this by trying different USB ports. Some might have different controllers, and thus need different drivers. This was very common when USB3 was new (e.g. USB2 were Intel and connected to the chipset, while USB3 was an add-on from Marvell and the like)

All of the consumer lines are pretty bad these days. Acer has a reputation for being unreliable (backed by some data from SquareTrade ~10 years ago). HP is just as bad, in mostly the same ways, but has avoided the reputation.

Reliable laptops are the enterprise lines - Dell Latitude/Precision, HP Elite Book, and Lenovo Thinkpad. But they are significantly more expensive when buying new.

Shrinkflation is smaller quantities and/or higher prices. This is actually tracked in a variety of places.

Changing to a cheaper recipe/supplier is very hard to put metrics on, and isn’t tracked anywhere that I know of

How close are these surrounding towns? What’s the population, particularly for the demographics you would appeal to?

Often, it’s not worthwhile to bring your favorite culture to your home. Just go to the culture where it already exists. Often, these quiet, boring places are populated by people that WANT to live in a place that’s quiet and boring. It doesn’t make much sense for anyone to move there if they don’t.

If the locals - as a whole, not just some prominent extremists - dislike Starbucks being there, then the location will fail.

Even at stores that have this feature, I rarely see people use it. It’s clearly not an experience that people flock to.

OTOH, on the rare occasion I’ve visited a Walmart in the past 10 years, I have a 100% rate of checkout taking an absurdly long time. Everyone there just seems to accept it like they have no choice.

As long as it’s advertised openly, I don’t see a big problem with it. It would probably be sold as a discount for shopping at slower times, though. It’s a tried-and-true method of smoothing congestion.

Assuming a store with 9a-9p hours (every day), a 9-5 worker can shop 44 hours in a week, vs 40 they cannot. But that doesn’t particularly line up with the busy hours. Around here, after 7 on weekdays and 5 on weekends tend to get pretty slow.

To extend this, consider your own safety throughout. Unless the police arrest them and they remain in custody, you have a potential serious threat. Avoid situations where you/others could be vulnerable, such as alone or at night. You may want to setup visible surveillance cameras, alter your routines, etc.

The police will be there after anything happens, but that may be too late for you.

I really doubt he will agree to another debate. But the best way for it to begin would be at the beginning, when they thank everyone for making it happen, if she thanked Trump for his donations to her previous campaigns. She wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for donors like him.

It would immediately piss him off for the entire event.

“Hackers” (rather, malicious actors) rarely look to take down IT resources as their goal. Instead, they want to access it for their own purposes. The closest example would be ransomware, where it gets taken down as part of the threat/punishment. But if the victim pays, their resources must be restored.

Plus, I would be surprised if Crowd Strike doesn’t have any protections on its own files. I also expect there will be additional verification checks (hash/etc) on their updates going forward.

From the article:

“…nearly $1.1 billion in grants to convert existing plants to build electric vehicles and components…”

“…grants to help fund the conversion of 11 “at risk” plants in eight states to enable the production of 1 million EVs annually, help retain 15,000 existing jobs, and create 3,000 new positions…”

These are grants to upgrade specific factories in the US.

Most people are on multiple platforms. Find them now, while you still can. Save whatever contact info you can for them. You don’t know when you’ll need it, nor why.

Oh I agree about that part. I even agree in the schadenfreude about his (direct) suffering, and he absolutely deserves it (and more).

Please be better than this. It’s the mirrored version of ‘owning the libs’, and it hurts us all in the end.

That said, I am very pleased that justice has been served. We need to hold more politicians accountable, both at the polls and in the courts.

Adding onto this, these are just the US federal requirements. Different states, particularly California, restrict that even further.

ETA: Many other countries have stronger worker protections than the US. They also have the same levels of greed, and sometimes the same level of abuse. Don’t assume it’s legal just because they put it on paper; research your area’s employment laws.

Depending on where you are, it still may not be legal. Law overrides contracts.

You have to keep in mind the scenarios where it will be used. While truly fast charging does exist today (20 minutes or so for 80% charge), that is not widespread, nor is that the way it’s typically done. Level 3 (DC fast charging) is expensive (moreso than gas), potentially detrimental to the battery, and still usually not very fast (an hour at least). As such, you aren’t going to charge at your local gas station the same way you get a fill up today.

Most people use a level 2 charger, either at home or at work. This means it can sit for 8 hours to refuel. Many parking garages have this as well. Level 2 chargers deliver AC directly to the vehicle, meaning you don’t need a lot of infrastructure- just a 240v line and a billing system. This in turn means it’s cheap and relatively easy to install. Sometimes you’ll see these outside of Starbucks or a grocery store, but not especially often. You’ll get ~25 miles of range per hour charging using level 2. But even if you spend 2 hours drinking coffee, or buying groceries, you’ve only added 50 miles of range.

This is where level 3 comes in. It requires some pretty significant equipment (which is part of why they’re always broken), because it has to convert AC into high voltage DC. It also has to chill the cables internally, otherwise they’d quickly overheat from the electricity passing through. But this takes up space that’s probably not really available in the lot.

I am seeing fast chargers now being installed at travel centers/truck stops along major highways. It fits in nicely with regular stops on a road trip for food. I’m also seeing them being installed at most Walmarts, since that’s perfect for grocery shopping.

Around here, that last group has been from Electrify America, which does NOT require an app. They have a standard credit card reader.