1Password wades into a right-wing mess after funding a Linux project https://www.theverge.com/tech/988536/1password-dhh-linux-controversy

🧱 The secret ingredient holding the Great Wall of China together is sticky rice.

Ming Dynasty masons (1368-1644) mixed boiled sticky rice soup into their lime mortar. The result was a tough, flexible, water-resistant binder that has held brick sections together for around 600 years.

The chemistry: sticky rice is packed with amylopectin, a complex starch. In 2010, chemists led by Bingjian Zhang at Zhejiang University found that amylopectin acts as a template, steering calcium carbonate crystals into a dense, interlocking structure instead of large brittle chunks.

That compact microstructure is why some wall sections have shrugged off earthquakes and still keep weeds out of the seams centuries later.

Read more:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar9001944
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/100608-sticky-rice-mortar-china-science
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100530093704.htm

#chemistry #history #engineering

Use linux. Accept the curse of the automatroid: most major distros are accepting AI commits. Accept that systemd has been a cancer for a very long time.

Use macOS. Accept the curse of the Walled garden: You may run only what we tell you to run, when we tell you to run it. The rules change with every major OS update. You will accept them or you will go elsewhere.

Use Windows. Accept the curse of the hunted: You are being watched. You cannot slip your pursuer, you cannot obfuscate yourself. Even if you think you've hidden yourself, because of how convoluted Windows is, you can't really be 100% sure that you are not being watched. And even if you aren't you won't know whether or not a critical update re-enables the watcher in the walls.

@daniel comments are oof, but yeah, slashdot moment i guess

Natixis Investment Managers has raised its allocation to Japanese equities, betting the nation's economic growth momentum will endure, its strategists said in a recent interview. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/09/03/markets/natixis-japan-stocks-allocation-up/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #business #markets #natixisinvestmentmanagers #stocks #japaneseeconomy

@marick I hope that historians have worked on these questions! I can only offer a guess:

Research environments changed completely after WWII, not just because of the atomic bomb. Governments started pouring money into research to encourage economic growth. Physics left its "natural philosophy" origins to become the research branch of engineering.

OH: you need to take the meat out of your purse

If a grocery store is doing dynamic pricing and you just sit there with a flipper zero recording whatever sub GHz or IR signal they are broadcasting to flip them, take the lowest real displayed price, replay it with idk something like this, is that illegal

@thegibson 💚

Building a thing.

Because people deserve better than what is out there.

Scientists announced today that you could use a hug

A crow casually removing several metal anti-bird spikes from a building ledge.

A couple of weeks ago I showed a preview of a new mode for Mines, in my puzzle collection. I'm pleased to say that the new Mines is now completed and live! You can now play Minesweeper on a wide range of tilings in your browser
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html
or download a desktop version from the parent page which supports the same set of grids.

As well as the support for lots of grid types, there's also a new user preference (off by default) to make it easier to play on them. When you click on a clue square to potentially clear around it, the existing flags adjacent to the square light up, to make it easier to count them and work out how many more mines you're still expecting. Particularly useful in the hat tiling, where it's easy to mistake exactly what is adjacent to what!

I expect different people will prefer different grids. Personally I think the triangular grid is particularly tricky and puzzly; the hexagonal honeycomb makes a gentle introduction; the Cairo, Floret and Kites tilings are a nice set in between those extremes; and of course the aperiodic tilings are there to keep you on your toes and ready for anything.

Many thanks to Anders Höglund for this excellent piece of work.

#notesArt #mastoArt #art #illustration #fediArt