I could have guessed Liberia, but I remember being genuinely surprised when I first discovered that Belize spoke English. I’d have expected Spanish, given the geography.

Every time that radial border division map of Europe centered on Vienna comes up, now we’ve got an American answer in the form of a striped border division.

https://bostonraremaps.com/inventory/maas-utopian-european-union/

An extraordinary map of a proposed European Union … in 1920!

A striking, enigmatic and very rare map illustrating a complex utopian scheme for a prototype European Union after the First World War. It was produced by “P.A.M.,” an elusive figure, probably laid in loose to a 24-page pamphlet (not included here) describing his plan in elaborate detail.

https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/dc2da395-9cf6-4a84-9325-81f8d11bf032.jpeg

The man had been previously arrested on wildlife crimes in Sri Lanka in 2024, and had in the past tried to move wolves, meerkats, black cockatoos, sugar gliders, porcupines, ball pythons, iguanas, frogs, salamanders and turtles, officials said.

After the difficulties that arose in the porcupine attempt, it was pretty clear that pythons were the way to go for underwear smuggling.

Setting aside the specifics of the case, I do think that from a UI standpoint, cars either need to support being left in park without the climate control eventually cutting off or be so extremely clear that this will happen that it would be extremely difficult for a user to miss, as this is a legitimate example of a “fail-deadly” feature.

IIRC from reading comments from people who have slept in their car and very much want the ability to leave the climate control system active, at least some Toyota models do support leaving the climate control active for extended periods of time, but the car needs to be in “Ready” mode. It was not immediately obvious to users that this was the case.

Veterans before refugees

I’m reasonably confident that the UK isn’t preventing British military veterans from entering the UK.

Do you want the router to also be 10" rack-mountable? That seems like it’d be a big input into the hardware you get.

But it won’t make the water taste like it didn’t come from a pond.

They do make water filters that will pull larger stuff out.

I understand that the American Sawyer and the Swiss LifeStraw make popular small, portable devices.

https://www.sawyer.com/

https://lifestraw.com/

Anyone tried water purifying tablets yet, and would you recommend them?

They’ll kill bacteria in water, though obviously they can’t pull chemicals out of it.

I wouldn’t be worried about bottled water going bad after a year — I’ve kept distilled water for much longer than that — but if you want more capacity in a smaller package than by storing water, you can get a water still, distill water yourself as long as you have some source of water and some sort of sufficient heat (e.g. a fire).

kagis

https://www.amazon.com/Roots-Branches-VKP1208-Little-Distiller/dp/B07WSJ2H8C

If you don’t have access to a water source but have sufficient electrical power — which in the past I’d have said probably isn’t very likely if the government can’t get water to the public in 72 hours, but isn’t as crazy as it once might have been, what with people running around with beefy home solar setups and the like — it’s possible to run devices that condense water out of the air off the cold side of a heat pump, these sorts of things:

https://www.amazon.com/Solaris-WaterGen-A10-Atmospheric-Generator/dp/B0DL4N1PRG

I’d guess that for most people, the most-practical and cost-effective approach is probably just to estimate how much water one might need and store that much potable water in advance. That takes care of the “have a source of water”, “get any energy required to purify it”, and “purify it” points all at one go. Doesn’t require a lot of expertise, effort, or place constraints on your environment to open a bottle of water.

Earlier this year the European public was urged to stockpile enough food, water and essentials for 72 hours to cope with a military attack, natural disaster, power cut or major industrial accident.

Honestly, unless you have some sort of serious medical condition, most people should be just fine going 72 hours without food. We’ve a social convention of eating three meals a day, sure, but your body is quite able of running off stored energy for a long time. I’ve fasted for a week myself for the hell of it. I remember mentioning that to an aunt once, and she mentioned that she’d done two weeks.

This guy did over a year (though he was pretty heavy to begin with, had plenty of fat reserves).

Barbieri went from 456 pounds (207 kg) to 180 pounds (82 kg), losing 276 pounds (125 kg) and setting a record for the length of a fast.

There’s a whole class of controllers, often called “fightsticks”, which have a full-size arcade-style joystick and a ton of buttons, to reproduce the feel of arcade fighting games.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fightsticks/

!fightsticks@lemmy.world (not very active)

https://www.amazon.com/Arcade-Sticks/s?k=Arcade+Sticks

Honestly, I feel like Morrowind is the title least in need of a remaster, as unlike later 3D titles, it has an open-source fan reimplementation of the engine, OpenMW, plus the fan updates of content.

searches for video of content

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnvOy5Kw79Y

It looks like the OpenMW people are also working on a VR version.

That’s basically what I’d expect. The US isn’t going to aim to compete with China by putting more riflemen in trenches than China — China has lower wages and more people, not the battlefield you want — but by aiming to maintain a tech and hardware advantage and leveraging that. That’s going to involve spending on military systems procurement.

new “socialist alternative” before next election

An ever-expanding category, that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Socialist_parties_in_the_United_Kingdom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Community_Labour_Alternative

Cross-Community Labour Alternative is a minor political party founded to contest the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election. It stood three candidates[3] in the East Belfast, South Belfast and East Antrim constituencies. It was initiated by the Socialist Party.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_(Ireland)

The Socialist Party (Irish: Páirtí Sóisialach) is a political party in Ireland, active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Internationally, it was affiliated to the Trotskyist International Socialist Alternative (previously the Committee for a Workers International) until 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Unity_(UK)

Left Unity is a left-wing political party in the United Kingdom founded in 2013 when film director and social campaigner Ken Loach appealed for a new party to replace the Labour Party (which according to him failed to oppose the United Kingdom government austerity programme and had shifted towards neoliberalism).[5][6][7] More than 10,000 people supported Loach’s appeal.[8]

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

The Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) is a minor unionist[6] political party in Northern Ireland. It was formed from the Independent Unionist Group operating in the Shankill area of Belfast, becoming the PUP in 1979. Linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Red Hand Commando (RHC), for a time it described itself as “the only left of centre unionist party” in Northern Ireland, with its main support base in the loyalist working class communities of Belfast.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Justice_Party_(UK)

The Social Justice Party (SJP) is a left-wing minor political party in the United Kingdom.[2] It was launched in August 2023 at a conference in Whitby,[2] and was officially registered with the Electoral Commission on 2 February 2024.[3][4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transform_(political_party)

The Transform Party (also known as Transform Politics, or simply Transform) is a political party active in Great Britain. A merger of two political groups, the Breakthrough Party and the People’s Alliance of the Left, Transform aims to build a new left-wing political party to challenge both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. The party is also associated with the Liverpool Community Independents and Left Unity, who remain independent parties.[1][2]

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

The Workers Party of Britain (WPB), also called the Workers Party of Great Britain (WPGB) or Workers Party GB,[16][17][18] is a socialist and socially conservative political party in the United Kingdom, strongly identified with its leader, former Labour and Respect MP George Galloway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Labour_Party_(UK)

The Socialist Labour Party (SLP) is a socialist political party in the United Kingdom. The party was established in 1996 and was led by Arthur Scargill, a former Labour Party member and the former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. The party’s name highlights its commitment to socialism and acknowledges Clause IV of the Labour Party’s former constitution, as fundamental to the party’s identity. As of 2024, it is led by Jim McDaid.[1]

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

The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a small socialist political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1904[2] as a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), it advocates using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes and opposes both Leninism and reformism. It holds that countries which claimed to have established socialism had only established “state capitalism” and was one of the first to describe the Soviet Union as state capitalist. The party’s political position has been described as a form of impossibilism.

Depends on the game.

I think that they have been used effectively in games like Starbound and Terraria or many roguelikes and roguelites.

I think that there have been some games where they do not work well.

Starfield has a beautiful terrain generator, but different terrain doesn’t really change gameplay, nor does combat really scale up to making use of very large maps, so you have the ability to explore infinite expanses of planets, but it doesn’t really provide much in gameplay terms. Aside from finding a cluster of useful resources near each other for an outpost, which isn’t that interesting from a gameplay standpoint and doesn’t need most of the terrain generator’s functionality, it’s mostly just cosmetic.

I think that they work best where how you play the game changes substantially based on the mix of features of the dungeon. Then throwing a new mix each time at the player helps keep things interesting.

The phone system doesn’t have a way to identify people other than Caller ID, and that’s vulnerable to various forms of spoofing.

“Fallout is the big one,” Middler claimed. “There are multiple Fallout projects in development, including, as far as I’m aware, that one that I’m sure you’re all wanting. It’s not far enough in along to say anything like ‘you’re going to be playing this game anytime soon’.”

Middler then joked, “Anyway, New Vegas 2, coming soon”. Is this the one we’re “all wanting”? Yes, but then also so is Fallout 3 Remastered, Fallout 5 and even a remake of Fallout 2. The fanbase is rabid, and hungry, and it’s been a long time since they’ve been fulfilled outside of Fallout 76 updates.

I mean, if Bethesda released all four of those, I’d buy all four.

I also don’t know what “Fallout 3 Remastered” entails, but if it means forward-porting the content to Starfield’s engine, that’d be pretty cool, though I do wonder how much effort will be required for mod-porting.

I guess Signal’s probably less-prone to letting attackers pose as other people than the phone system, but the phone system is abysmal.

Could probably benefit from some sort of trust system(s), like X.509 certs for organizations, or GPG keys for a distributed web of trust or something, and adoption of calling practices that aren’t vulnerable to this. Needs to be a few simple steps that people can be told to follow, not a constantly moving target that requires information security familiarity.

Acquiring F-35A jets is “part of NATO’s nuclear mission”;

By March 2026, the UK will add 27 more jets: 12 F-35A and 15 F-35B;

I hadn’t been following this closely recently, but if you go back far enough, the Royal Air Force had been planning to get F-35As and the Royal Navy F-35Bs. The A variant isn’t equipped for carrier operations, which makes it not really viable for the Royal Navy, but has longer range and more payload. Then there was some discussion at one point about maybe just having both use F-35Bs to help leverage commonality, which I imagine the Royal Air Force wasn’t too keen on. Sounds like they’re back to both the A and B model.

IPv4 has some other features too.

$ ping 0x8.02004010
PING 0x8.02004010 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=116 time=22.8 ms

That’ll be Google’s root DNS server, using hexadecimal and octal representations.

Maybe they don’t want to move to a cloud-based system.

I don’t want a cloud-based office package, and I can imagine that the same might apply to them.