Spyke

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&

Do you mean & by itself, or as part of a thing like &? The latter is an HTML “character reference,” which is used to represent characters that clash with bits of HTML syntax. For example, HTML tags are wrapped in “angle brackets”, also known as the less-than and greater-than symbols, so if you want to write those symbols, you need to use < and > instead.

All this encoding crap is supposed to happen behind the scenes, but some software forgets to handle them correctly, and the character references “peek through” and get rendered as plain text.

Edit: this post is a good example of software being weird. It automatically converted the code for the greater than symbol into the symbol itself, but not the others.

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Who still has a rift in their family due to differing opinions over Covid?

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Intelligence doesn’t seem to have much correlation with belief in propaganda. In my experience, intelligent people can be more susceptible to being hoodwinked, since they assume they’re “smart enough not to fall for it.”

Once they adopt a belief, their conception of themselves as intelligent, rational actors causes them to invent all kinds of post-hoc rationalizations, and it’s extremely difficult to admit that they didn’t actually use the logical part of their brain at all when forming the belief.

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What is your machine naming scheme?

I usually go with characters from the Discworld series. So far I’ve had a Rincewind, Ridcully, Twoflower, Weatherwax, Ponder, Librarian, Luggage, and Hex, plus a router called “The Clacks”. Really ought to get Vimes and crew into the mix, now that I think of it… maybe the next one will be Angua or Carrot.

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Paying for free software

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The best example that comes to mind is Ardour, a FOSS digital audio workstation that charges for binaries. Their FAQ says

If you want the convenience of using our ready-to-run version and/or for support from Ardour developers and experienced users, we ask that you pay something for this.

If you don't want to pay for a ready-to-run version, then you'll need to get the source code and build it yourself. We do not provide assistance with this process and particularly on Windows and macOS this can be challenging and take a long time. Also, for Windows, there are no instructions.

It’s a bit mixed in with the “pay for support” model, since you’re basically on your own if you build it yourself. Which probably makes support a lot easier, since there are fewer supported configurations. This seems like a pretty workable model for something as complex as Ardour, but idk how well it would work for simpler projects.

think it also helps that Ardor is used directly by individual users, and its proprietary competitors are often quite expensive. If you’re making something that already has a lot of “free as in beer” competition, this may be harder to pull off.

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DIY Pellet Stove Control

Do you need to control the temperature remotely, or just switch it on? If the latter, could you just leave the existing potentiometer / power switch always in the on position and add a new zigbee relay to cut power to the whole works on & off?

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‘Romeo & Juliet’ Play Starring Tom Holland and Francesca Amewaduh-Rivers Faces ‘Barrage of Racial Abuse,’ Producer Says ‘This Must Stop’

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I guess what I’m getting at is that, when you watch John Wayne playing an Asian guy, do you spend the whole movie wondering why the other characters aren’t constantly asking about his skin color and facial features? Probably not, since we can easily accept that while the actor is white, the character is still Asian.

But when a black actor plays a white character in a historical piece, you want to know why everyone isn’t constantly asking about their skin color and facial features. The answer is exactly the same: the character hasn’t changed. The other characters in the film don’t see the actor, they see the character.