Personally I consider this good news. Software developers increasingly offer Discord as the only support option. I have no idea why. It has a horrible user interface and a huge barrier to entry / steep initial learning curve. About a year ago I actually got an account in order to get support with a Steam game I had bought. The process was terribly confusing due to a previous aborted attempt to make an account. The support threads were so chaotic that I got the impression it's hopeless to find anything. Someone tried to help me one on one, and kept insisting on using a voice call. I finally gave in and tried it. It didn't work because I was behind a university firewall.
In the end, I just managed to report the bug that made playing impossible for me, and haven't even looked at the game since then.
Maybe, with entire countries blocked from using Discord, developers will finally return to reasonable options. I am not sure why force is even required for this.

The meeting with the spaceship on the dark side of the moon is described in the (famously inaccurate) German prophetic documention series "Perry Rhodan", which has been published uninterrupted, one issue per week, since 1961. They originally expected the discovery of the Arkonites to happen in 1971 on occasion of the first manned moon flight. But then the first moon flight happened two years earlier and went to the visible side of the moon...
See https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

Yes, but that's not the main difference. The British version will be roughly three times the size and will contain a fuse and a switch. And of course the polarity will be reversed.

I have been working remotely for 2 years now, except that for the last 4 weeks cable Internet in my street in urban Berlin has been completely offline. So I currently spend a lot of time in my office. My work PC no longer works properly, so even in the office I use the Lenovo Tiny PC I bought 2 years ago for home office in changing locations.

The real issue here was leaving out the word "Fahrenheit" when applying this US-only(1) unit to a place in Europe. Sicily may just have had a temperature record of "nearly 120 degrees Fahrenheit", but in the last few million years no place in Europe ever had a temperature anywhere near "120 degrees", because in Europe, that's synonymous to "120 degrees Celsius" and is far beyond the boiling point of water.

(1) Talking about the situation today only, and ignoring a short list of very minor countries and territories that for some reason follow the US' lead: Belize, Palau, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands. Also, Canada hasn't fully completed its switch to Celsius yet, probably due to the dominance of its southern neighbour.

I have no idea what this is even about. And the submission doesn't help me to find out without going to the original article (which I am not motivated to do by it).

So Jobs allowed someone in Apple to do something, so long as he was fast enough? It's not only that I can't quite figure out what it was about. I also have no idea of whether this was supposedly successful or not.

I was actively following IT news at the time (just not particularly interested in Apple). So I am pretty sure I am not the only one who doesn't remotely get it.

> On an almost complete non sequitur, is it really that hard for a PhD to spell "its" (possessive) correctly, rather than using "it's" (contraction of "it is")?

If we ignore the issue of legasthenics, who nowadays are allowed to advance in society and even get PhDs despite what you probably consider a severely crippling disability, the rhetorical question whether it's hard to get the its/it's distinction right makes little sense because for a lot of people this isn't the problem at all. In my experience, what looks like its/it's confusion may well be a side effect of a _better_ command of English.

Of course it's just anecdotal evidence, but here is my personal story concerning its/it's as a native German speaker who learned English in school.

English grammar is significantly easier than German grammar, and I have never had any problem distinguishing between the two homophones. I learned both around the age of 11. As a reader, I normally spot every single typo in a text I haven't seen before, and this includes incorrect use of its/it's. I spotted this one when I first read the exchange on a different site, and had the same very light cringe reaction that I always have in this case.

With texts that I know it's different. I seem to be reading them in a different, faster mode that often prevents me from recognizing typos. This is relevant because at some point, when my command of English had reached near-native fluency and my daily output of English text began to be massive, I myself started to occasionally mix up it/it's when writing.

- I can prevent this typo by making a conscious effort to write slower, but that seems a high price to pay for so little effect. It would be effective, but not at all efficient.
- I did get into the habit of (usually) rereading what I write at least once, but that is mostly to catch the typical grammar problems that arise from changing my mind on phrasing while I write, or from editing sentences incompletely. As I already know what I am reading, this process doesn't catch all instances of its/it's and similar typos.
- I never use any spell checking software, as I find it to be a nuisance that is simply not worth the effort of getting used to. I write in a wide range of contexts, and alternate between writing in German, in English (sometimes British spelling, sometimes American spelling), and occasionally in French (or even another language I am learning, such as Italian or Dutch). Maybe there are solutions that can deal with this properly and have excellent English grammar analysis that usually gets the its/it's distinction right. But how many full-time work weeks should I waste on trying to find them, learning to use them, and ensuring they run in all programs in which I write, on all computers and operating systems I use?

OK, the question was of course a rhetorical one and is really of the "Is that too much to ask for?" type. In my opinion, even as someone who does suffer a bit from every typo in someone else's text, this rephrased rhetorical question has an actual answer which is Yes, not the presumed No. Even for non-dyslexic academics like myself.

Ignoring the silly linguistic problem that English has with counting (pairs of) panties, some pedants like to wash their panties occasionally, making it useful to own a second pair. Or even more. All of which might be in a twist.

Even if you were to restrict it to the panties currently worn by the pedant: The occasional pedant may well be wearing more than one pair of panties at a time, possibly including a second pair for incontinence mitigation, and possibly including a second pair on the head.

Sure. You have the right to be a transgender person so long as you don't actually try to change your gender and always act in conformance with the gender that people think you have.

Sure. You have the right to be autistic so long as you hide in a basement or, if you can't avoid dealing with other people, make up for your autism by developing exceptional social skills and accepting group think without question.

Sure. You have the right to be whatever, so long as you hide the fact.

Sure. You have the right to be a bigot, so long as you don't actively participate in mobs trying to exclude minorities from public participation, or do other things typical for bigots.

Yes. It's a serious problem that people conflate totally broken people who penetrate babies in order to inflict pain on them, 18-year old young men with 17-year-old girlfriends, parents taking photos of their 4-year old child in the bathtub, middle-aged men grooming 6-year-old girls in order to use them sexually and discard them afterwards, adults whose mental development stopped at the age of 5 playing doctor with children their MENTAL age, and middle-aged men having sex with 17-year-olds. Apparently, all of these behaviors are pedophilia and therefore equally bad, and if you try to work out the differences you make yourself a target for a witch hunt because you are OBVIOUSLY a defender of pedophilia. And ditto if you are unwilling to participate in the witch hunt. And so on.

If it wasn't so serious for the victims of the resulting injustice, it would be ridiculous.

I am not sure what you are referring to, but I tried to google it. I could not find even a single comment defending pedophilia on his website. The closest thing I found was a statement of fact which, while being USABLE IN THE DEFENSE of pedophilia (absolutely not the same as actually defending pedophilia, unless you subscribe to the currently popular philosophy that there is a total war between groups going on which invalidates traditional principles of rational debate), appears to me to be offered in good faith, very likely factually correct, and just the kind of thing someone like RMS who feels very strongly about unjust prosecution would worry about. Which is absolutely legitimate.

I also feel very strongly about unjust prosecution, and I have worried about exactly the same things myself. I am European myself, but as an American, RMS is even closer to such unjust prosecution than I am. Such as young children getting life-destroying sentences for victimless or very minor 'crimes' such as taking photos of their own genitals or taking off their clothes in school. This is just the tip of the iceberg. For a lot of people, the rational part of their mind just shuts off as soon as the word pedophilia falls, and combined with stupidly drafted laws and the US' inane system of judges/prosecutors competing in public elections by showing how tough they are, it's a recipe for disaster.

> Sexual harassment is wrong, and right now the arguments from his supporters boils down, not to "He didn't do it" - because the accounts are too numerous and he himself isn't denying them - but "He lacks social cues because he has Asperger's".

Ridiculous. The problem is that the autistophobe mob is just throwing feces around in the hope that some will stick on RSM and nobody will examine it more closely. In this situation, examining ALL of it more closely is neither logically required for making a fair rational argument nor would it be remotely effective as a defense tactic against the mob's unfair tactics.

> but why on Earth you'd want Stallman in a leadership position at the FSF when he just isn't very good at it.

Again, ridiculous. Unless you actually have evidence for RSM being not very good AS A BOARD MEMBER (not a spokesman). In its statement, the FSF explained why he is so important AS A BOARD MEMBER. This apparent misrepresentation by you may have been unintentional, but it is part of the feces throwing I referred to.

> Before the trolls were demanding his return, they were posting snide comments about his personal hygiene to every Slashdot article mentioning him

Interesting statement. 1. Do you actually have evidence of some of the same trolls doing both things? I wouldn't be surprised, but taken purely as a statement of fact, it seems to me that it still needs evidence. 2. ... but you are evidently not saying it as a statement of fact but as a way to throw feces at those of RMS' defenders who are not actually trolls. (What would be the point of throwing feces at trolls? Unless you are one yourself, in which case I apologize to everyone for feeding you.)

To answer the rhetorical question at the end of that paragraph ("What the fuck is wrong with FOSS?"): What is 'wrong' with FOSS is that so long as it was a minority field in which you normally couldn't have a lucrative career, an extremely high percentage of those passionate for it were either on the autism spectrum or (like me) not quite neurotypical in other, somewhat autism-compatible ways. Which is why such people naturally became founders, then leaders of the movement. And why they actually were, and still are, particularly important in leadership positions. Not in externally facing positions such as spokespeople (unless they have exceptional social skills, which some do), but certainly as board members.

> What he doesn't deserve is a job he's not qualified for. If it truly is because he has Asperger's that he has these faults, then, well, I pity him, though find it hard to believe, but that doesn't mean he qualifies for a leadership position anymore than a blind person has a right to become an airline pilot.

Totally inept comparison. That's pretty close to saying no board members of an autism support organization may be on the spectrum. I realize that some people actually say that as well; it's just that in that case it's more openly autistophobe.

CASE 1:

Using any browser, I visit duckduckgo.com and search for "can i haz warez plz". The first hit is for warez.lol, and the site's favicon is used in the results list. This favicon comes from duckduckgo.com. That's actually a good thing and provides more privacy than downloading it from warez.lol.

There is nothing wrong with this.

CASE 2:

As the owner of warez.lol, I go to admin.warez.lol to use the site's administrative interface. This administrative interface is of course not indexed by any search engines. Because the site is illegal in most jurisdictions, I use DuckDuckGo's Android browser for a bit of extra anonymity. There is no favicon for admin.warez.lol, but the browser can't know this. Instead of asking admin.warez.lol for it, it asks duckduckgo.com. Instead of trusting myself that admin.warez.lol doesn't store my IP address, I have to trust DuckDuckGo.

This is the problematic case.

The former plane that is now the southern North Sea floor is generally known as Doggerland after the Dogger Bank. The Dogger Bank was once a mountain in this plane, then an island in the North Sea. Today it is a shallow area in the North Sea that is important because it is dangerous for shipping. It is named after the doggers, a Dutch type of fishing boats. The nets of these boats often scrape the North Sea floor and have been the source of interesting finds from various eras when the North Sea floor was dry. The last one was during and around the last Ice Age.

The following map shows a part of Europe centered around the North Sea:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommons.wikimedia.org%2F...
- On the left today's situation.
- On the right the situation during the last Ice Age, when all of the British Isles and Scandinavia were covered by ice and France and Central Europe were comparable to today's Siberia. Only the most southern parts of Europe had appreciable human populations.
- In the middle the situation at the time when the Doggerland plane still existed and was already warm enough to be suitable for extensive human habitation by hunter-gatherers. This was roughly from 16000 BCE till 7000 BCE, although the last remnant of Doggerland, in the shape of an island where we now have the Dogger Bank, didn't disappear before around 5500 BCE.

The period depicted in the middle of the map is what the original article / news story is about. We are talking about the time when Britain and Ireland were last (not for the first time!) transformed from a single peninsula into two big islands and the Rhine-Thames river became the English Channel separating Britain from France.

Similar things happened elsewhere in the world at the same time. The world at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (the height of the last Ice Age) can be seen on this map: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommons.wikimedia.org%2F... . Notably, the area around Indonesia was a huge peninsula -- a subcontinent of Asia much larger than the Indian subcontinent. Just like Britain, Indonesia was turned from part of a huge peninsula into an island.

The global sea level rise can be seen on this graph: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommons.wikimedia.org%2F... . Note that the horizontal axis is labelled in 1000 years ago, not in years BCE, so the Doggerland period is in the range from 18 to 9 on the map, and the catastrophe that flooded the Dogger Bank island was near 7.5 -- at a point when sea levels were beginning to stabilise almost on today's level. As far as I know, global sea level changes alone do not fully explain what happened to Doggerland. If I remember correctly, the current theory is that in the relevant period the still massive Scandinavian ice shelf depressed the Scandinavian land mass by several metres, and that this made Doggerland rise a few metres. (Recall that the continents are floating on magma.)

I think nothing is known about the genetics of the hunter-gatherers of Doggerland yet, because no human bones have been found yet. We do however know that the earliest humans who left significant genetic traces in today's population were the Western Hunter-Gatherers. They were 'black'-skinned and blue-eyed and are responsible for roughly a third of the ancestry of today's Europeans. It seems natural to speculate that the inhabitants of Doggerland belonged to this group. (Since 'black' skin is a specific adaptation for the tropics that our earliest human ancestors in Africa developed when losing their fur, it was relatively easy for evoluton to return Europeans to 'white' skin, which is more advantageous in northern regions. This is about trade-offs betwen skin cancer prevention and vitamin production in the winter.) Many people in the Baltics have almost exclusively Western Hunter-Gatherer ancestry, so apart from skin colour they might be most similar to the Doggerlanders.

There is speculation that the flood myths that can be found world-wide are somehow related to the flooding of large inhabited land masses in general and the one around Indonesia in particular, that the spread of agriculture starting simultaneously in various centres arranged almost like a wreath around Indonesia was caused by refugees from that region, and that the Atlantis myth is really about the Dogger Bank island. We may never know, but I think these speculations are fun. No doubt they will soon begin to appear in literature and popular culture.

It is also interesting to note that as late as 2000 years ago, when the Romans under Julius Caesar reached the North Sea region, they reported that there was basically no difference between Belgian and British tribes. Both regions had several different tribes that spoke different languages, but apparently the major tribes existed both on the continent and in Britain. It sounds almost as if at that time, 5500 years after the flooding of the Dogger Bank island, the descendants of the Doggerlanders still had a common cross-North-Sea culture.

The last time Doggerland made it into the general media was in 2007, when a huge project to map the southern North Sea floor and translate it into a map of Doggerland culminated in this book: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2F19... . Since then, numerous documentaries have been made that you can easily find on YouTube by searching for "Doggerland". "Britain's Lost World" is one of the early and good ones. A good introduction with many pointers to scholarly literature is of course the Wikipedia article: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F... .

A number of studies have found that excessive mobile phone use over many years is positively correlated with both benign and malignant tumors on the side where the phone is held. If true, this is probably due simply to heat. Holding a teddy bear to one side of your face for hours every day could likely have the same effect.

Here is a metastudy from 2007 on the studies examining this phenomenon: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fp...

No doubt there are later studies and metastudies that contradict this one. This tells us precisely nothing due to the enormous amount of corruption in medical research, the methodical problems with studies of this nature, and the enormous incentives for mobile phone producers and telecommunication companies to cause confusion IF the result of the above metastudy is correct.