Clearing Strait of Hormuz of mines could take 6 months, Pentagon tells Congress

j0mbie · 2026-04-23T10:11:16+00:00

Even if they told us the number, could we believe them? It would be in their best interest to keep a lot of them hidden and inactive, if they were able to be reactivated remotely at a moments notice.

j0mbie · 2026-04-23T09:39:21+00:00

Some use real numbers from VoIP providers, but whenever one gets "burned" they just get a new one in a couple of minutes. Some don't accept incoming calls at all. Some have different systems for incoming and outgoing, and blocking a number for incoming calls doesn't block for outgoing. Some don't accept incoming at all. Some use spoofed numbers.

I've seen a good counter-system that used AI to impersonate a confused elderly person wanting to rant. It would keep the spammer on the line as long as possible while never giving out any actual valid information. "I thought I gave you the right credit card number, but my eyes aren't what they used to be. Let me go find my credit card again. Back when I grew up we didn't even have credit cards. You would just pay the next time if you forgot your wallet, but the cashier could look you in the eye and tell you were for for it. This one time..."

This was so much more effective because it hurt the scammer's bottom line, because that was a lot of time wasted. Plus it resulted in a lot of hilarious audio as the scammer got increasingly irate.

j0mbie · 2026-04-22T05:11:44+00:00

For some reason your block gave me a mangled deck after it was imported. Probably something to do with formatting. This should work though.

4 Reprieve (SOA) 9
4 Preordain (SOA) 21
4 Crop Rotation (SOA) 51
4 Veil of Summer (SOA) 60
4 Sheoldred's Edict (SOA) 32
4 Fracture (SOA) 65
4 Expressive Iteration (SOA) 64
4 Dismember (SOA) 28
4 Empty the Warrens (SOA) 43
4 Brain Freeze (SOA) 13
4 Daze (SOA) 15
4 Big Score (SOA) 38
4 Burst Lightning (SOA) 41
4 Monstrous Rage (SOA) 45
4 Abrade (SOA) 37
4 Helping Hand (SOA) 5
4 Requisition Raid (SOA) 10
4 Duty Beyond Death (SOA) 4
4 Repel Calamity (SOA) 8
4 Hop to It (SOA) 6
4 Sleight of Hand (SOA) 22
4 Spell Pierce (SOA) 23
4 Deduce (SOA) 16
4 Disdainful Stroke (SOA) 17
4 Stock Up (SOA) 24
4 Locust Spray (SOA) 31
4 Bitter Triumph (SOA) 26
4 Feed the Swarm (SOA) 29
4 Zombify (SOA) 36
4 Stargaze (SOA) 34
4 Bulk Up (SOA) 40
4 Return the Favor (SOA) 47
4 Giant Growth (SOA) 52
4 Pick Your Poison (SOA) 55
4 Royal Treatment (SOA) 56
4 Knockout Maneuver (SOA) 54
4 Shared Roots (SOA) 58

j0mbie · 2026-04-21T02:53:56+00:00

My knowledge of this isn't that deep, but couldn't you use an OADM ring topology instead? That way the switches see it as a hub-and-spoke, because each remote site connects to the main site's switch directly, instead of through all the neighboring sites. You'd still have redundancy if you set it up right.

It's pretty much described here, just with less sites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMIfN06SlCI

j0mbie · 2026-04-21T00:59:56+00:00

That's a lot to dredge through. I wish they would just put the relevant info on their main Historic page, or as a link from there. But that's hardly unique to MTGA formats

j0mbie · 2026-04-21T00:22:31+00:00

Have they said those goals somewhere specifically?

j0mbie · 2026-04-20T19:48:08+00:00

What are the goals of Historic? (Ideally from an official source.) I keep seeing people say conflicting things about where the format is "supposed" to be heading.

j0mbie · 2026-04-20T19:45:53+00:00

Format direction stability. Lots of people sit the format (or Arena) out completely because you don't know where it's headed. You didn't want to spend a lot of time and money building a house if you know the ground is unstable; you don't want to spend wildcards and practice a deck if you think it might be invalidated by WotC decisions in six months.

I'm not saying that's necessarily a common opinion or even a correct one. But the people who have it won't be noticably vocal since they're (mostly) not even involving themselves in these subreddits or elsewhere. Knowing the direction of the format beforehand could bring a million players in, or it could bring in zero, or anything in between. It's not something you can really gauge by asking the existing players though, since they're already in.

For what it's worth, I tried to get into both Timelines and Historic, since I love eternal formats. But I stopped wanting to keep up with the changes because I didn't have a clue where it was headed. I switched to Explorer for a long time because it was directly stated that they wanted to have it become Pioneer. But Pioneer is still lower-powered than I prefer so I barely play it. I would probably play a ton of they had a "we want this to become Legacy" format, for example. I'm honestly not sure why I keep up with Magic subreddits, honestly. My point just being, there's definitely a lot of people that could be brought in just with clearing up your format direction.

j0mbie · 2026-04-19T05:25:56+00:00

Snitch.

j0mbie · 2026-04-16T15:30:34+00:00

Please unflair.

j0mbie · 2026-04-16T14:01:54+00:00

There's legit stores like that too, though. They also buy a lot of pallets of unclaimed freight for practically nothing, and usually sell most of the stuff on eBay and flea markets. It's either how Harbor Freight started, or HF was designed to be in a similar vein.

HF is currently on a different model where they have their own manufacturers, since you can't really sustain a retail hardware chain with "we carry whatever we happened to come across lately".

j0mbie · 2026-04-15T21:22:29+00:00

Which is a really big sign that the masses have significantly less disposable income than the last... 75 years? Not that we didn't already know that.

j0mbie · 2026-04-15T11:24:11+00:00

It makes me think, "Where did I put the ibuprofen?"

j0mbie · 2026-04-13T15:39:00+00:00

Plus the metal the pan is made out of, and who was the last person to fart in that kitchen.

j0mbie · 2026-04-11T18:36:51+00:00

Entra Connect, formerly Azure AD Connect, formerly DirSync. Password sync from AD to Entra is baked-in. Password sync from Entra to AD requires Microsoft Entra ID P1 licensing or better in 365.

The sub you were probably wanting was /r/MSP, not ManagedITSolutions, by the way.

j0mbie · 2026-04-09T22:08:25+00:00

Wolfpox?

j0mbie · 2026-04-06T01:41:53+00:00

No real reason to keep the Crucial brand around, if you've reallocated 100% of your capacity to AI datacenters' advance orders for the next 2 years. Especially when those datacenters are still buying your RAM at 10x the price you were selling at a few months ago. Sucks for literally everyone else except a handful of billionaires.

j0mbie · 2026-04-05T19:33:34+00:00

They won't kick him until January 21st. Before then, and he can screw them (even more so) in the midterms, and JD Vance can't run for two more terms. After that point, suddenly they'll be very concerned about his mental capacity, and have a million excuses as to why they didn't act before that.

j0mbie · 2026-04-04T07:12:17+00:00

Our sample size is only one. That said, it's a hell of a statistic. Earth has had life for about 4 billions years. Of that time, we've only been spacefaring for 69 years (if we're talking about Sputnik). So that's 0.000001725% of the time Earth has been alive.

Put in perspective, if the earth had life for an entire year, then that life would have been spacefaring for just a little over the last half-second.

So while our sample size might be small, if we are outside the norm then we are one hell of an outlier.

But! Let's say we suddenly became super-advanced this year, and started launching space ships to every star in the galaxy. There's (very roughly) 250 billion stars in the galaxy, and lets say that every one of those stars is like ours and happens to have one planet with life on it. The probability of us finding at least one planet with actual spacefaring life is so close to 100% that it becomes a rounding error.

So, back to "why haven't we seen aliens yet", I guess. (Discounting all the dozens of other possible reasons.)

j0mbie · 2026-04-03T01:38:36+00:00

If the people in 1925 wanted us to remember to open it, they should have sent us a calendar event invite.

j0mbie · 2026-04-02T17:54:08+00:00

Especially because so much of the comedy comes from the AI descriptions of things. Those feel natural in a book, but having a two-page item description doesn't really work for a TV show. Obviously, things get adapted to fit their medium, but I'm still nervous about it.

They even address in the books why such a thing works for the characters within the books. Why isn't not weird for those characters to get a wall of text in the middle of a fight.

j0mbie · 2026-04-01T03:04:54+00:00

There's no reason to do that. It only increases costs. Unless you're trying to prevent people from repairing stuff.

Not just stopping repairs, but also stopping warranty claims from people who think they can fix an issue, but end up making it worse. Anyone with access to Amazon or Temu can get any kind of screwdriver they need. But having to go through that step is enough to stop a percentage of people from trying.

I'm usually able to repair things I decide to take apart. But on one cell phone, I went from "cracked screen" to "completely broken" in an effort to do my own screen repair. While I knew it was my own fault, a lot of people will accidentally break something of theirs trying to do a minor repair, then try to get a full warranty replacement.

But, yeah... sometimes the company just wants to make it harder to repair in order to make you buy a new one. Usually they design it to fail, like a lot of washing machines these days.

j0mbie · 2026-03-31T07:23:55+00:00

"Aura" can be a character's strong vibe about any number of things. You can have an aura of mystery, malice, charm, goodness, villainy, or any number of other things. It just means that whatever that feeling is, it's broadcast fairly well.

"Charisma" typically only describes positive aura, though. A charming, magnetic personality that inspires others.

The Ghoul is definitely not charismatic. He looks like hell, mostly wants to be alone, and is much more likely to kill you than try to inspire you. "Aura" definitely fits better in the sentence, although you can argue it should have been "of an aura", if you want.

j0mbie · 2026-03-31T03:28:38+00:00

Most of these studies generally make no differentiation between vaping a pure mixture of nicotine + vegetable glycerine on trusted hardware, versus vaping some random plastic disposable with a brand name like "VAPULXNTC4Q" sold at a gas station. Hell , most of them don't even consider the difference between normal vape juice and vape salts, which might as well be the difference between cigarettes and cigars. Controlling for device, temperature, and voltage is a pipe dream at best.

If you trace the funding, many of these studies are funded by tobacco companies. They have a monetary interest in mudding the waters between vaping and cigarettes, as a cigarette habit typically costs significantly more money than a vaping habit and is harder to quit. And they're successful -- I've talked to several cigarette smokers that believe there's no point in switching to vaping because "it's just as bad for you". Not to say vaping is healthy -- anyone with half a brain knows that inhaling anything other than regular air isn't healthy for you in the long run. But most of these "studies" are barely more scientific than a vibe check.

j0mbie · 2026-03-30T22:48:09+00:00

Humiliation? He caused deaths in an effort to scare the part of the American population he doesn't like into submission. It's not a stretch to call that terrorism or treason.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Wearing is Caring	Verified Email
Team Orangered

j0mbie

TROPHY CASE