People sign up to app intended to share personal information about others without their permission, end up having their own personal information shared without permission - the irony is impressive.

I remember one time when I was a kid and had read something mentioning spark gap transmitters. I of course found a bit of wire (tie wire because that's what came to hand, not anything insulated) and a radio and was playing around with a 9v battery making little sparks by shorting it with the wire and hearing the radio crackle in response. What I then thought was that if the little battery was making a noticeable effect then a bigger battery would obviously be better.

I got one of the drill batteries and shorted that out with my bit of wire to make a better spark and proceeded to discover that resistive heating is a thing and thin tie wire connected even briefly to a high discharge battery will get very hot very quickly. I ended up with a nice blister line across my fingers and a scar for a few years showing the position I'd been holding the wire...

A blue ringed octopus - they're a cute looking tiny octopus but quite capable of killing a human.

What's worst is that after getting bitten by one you will be mentally alert but completely unable to do anything as you feel your body just stop doing things that keep you alive (like breathing)...

People without pocket knives when they want to get into a box:

All cars could last a lot longer if people kept maintaining them and - importantly - didn't damage them. Electric cars are not going to be immune to this, I can't see them lasting much longer on average than ICE cars.

Keep in mind that even when you change out the engine for something with less parts the rest of the car still remains and contains things which will eventually cause issues. For example I bought a cheap van a few months ago and here's some of the reasons it was cheap that are not ICE specific:

• Steering wheel lock mechanism sticking
• Air distribution flap cables kinked/binding so A/C only blew at feet
• Central locking on side door sticking
• Rear shocks leaking
• Front strut mount bushings worn
• Head unit not functioning

Presumably the previous owner just didn't want to spend the money on fixing these issues as they arose, and eventually it added up into a lot of potential expense (if you have to pay someone to fix it for you) and more reasons to sell the car. Such behaviour seems pretty common in my experience and I fully expect it to continue with EVs. It'll be hard enough to get people to even maintain their brakes and change the motor coolant considering the natural reluctance of people to spend money on maintenance and this unfortunately prevalent idea that EVs don't need it.

Funnily enough the main ICE specific problem with that van was just as much an electrical issue as part of the petrol engine - an intermittent secondary air injection error code which ended up being down to a combination of a sticking valve and a fuse with a hairline crack causing an intermittent connection.

Won't be much, the usual price near me for plain old iron/steel is around $100 (AUD) per tonne. With small amounts like this the main benefits are the fuzzy feeling of recycling rather than creating landfill along with avoiding the cost of paying to dispose of a heavy pile of stuff.

Can't say I saw that coming, particularly after Microsoft bought them. Nice to have a surprise be pleasant once in a while.

I find it a bit amusing that the sepia toning effectively colourised the image.

The cover art is real, but the words have been changed. The real book is The Sword of Bheleu.

The hunter gatherer lifestyle works nicely until you get injured, have teeth problems, get sick, or get pregnant. It also helps to be male and both physically and mentally able, so if you aren't good luck with that.

As someone who's had wisdom teeth issues I'm quite happy to have modern medicine rather than being in the stone age and just having to deal with a broken tooth section rubbing against a nerve...

Finally, someone with a good grasp of the proper ratios when comes to house space vs garage/workshop space. Chuck in a few exterior windows and I would be fine with something like this.

I would be checking how much weight above the living space can handle though - I suspect it might not be up to suitable floor loadings for workshop usage.

I never had a problem with walking around cows as a kid and I did it pretty often. Visitors would get spooked occasionally because cows love to follow you and see what you're up to, but I never got chased or anything. That was beef cattle country though so these cows were mainly cows (female) and steers (castrated males). I've heard that some bulls could be territorial however so your mileage may vary if one is around - the couple I've walked around were fine but your chances of issues are higher with them.

I actually have wrestled a bit with a pelican and can say that if you're prepared to take a few scratches you'll be able to hold one down. You just have to hold the beak and wings, once you've got it pinned their legs are too short to really get at you.

Admittedly the pelican in question wasn't operating at full potential (recovering from a wound) but I was in my early teens at the time so wasn't exactly an example of peak physical performance myself.

Electric cars do have oil that will ultimately need changing but it's less exposed to contaminants than the engine oil in a internal combustion engine and therefore will last a lot longer. EVs typically have a reduction gearbox and differential and these will require oil changes in a similar fashion to a manual gearbox or differential in a ICE vehicle - i.e. barring exceptional circumstances it will last long enough to get out of warranty but don't believe it will never need changing.

The real shift patterns are like this:

They look complicated but it's not too bad when you get used to the idea. In normal use it's basically a four speed H pattern with two different ways to increase the number of gears. You have a range selector to give you 8 main gears (you shift 1 through four in low range then flip to high range and move back to 1 position to give 5 through 8) and then you have a splitter that gives every gear a high and low ratio (in order you'd go 1st low -> 1st high -> 2nd low -> 2nd high -> etc). Normally you don't need to use all the gears so you can skip some of the sequence - particularly when lightly loaded. Lo position is a particularly low ratio, and reverse is as per normal except you can split it to have a somewhat faster or slower reverse gear.

I'll admit I haven't driven a full 18 speed but I've driven 9 speeds with a range selector and a 10 speed with a splitter and both were easy enough to learn so combining the two doesn't seem as daunting as it might be to those who haven't tried either.

Presumably a reference to the town, or more specifically the road sign for it.

Looks pretty thin to me:

The narrow point is about as wide as driving to my nearest beach and that's a reasonable day trip distance.

Electricity is a hard ask to even attempt to do in ancient times. Luckily there's a variety of other simpler things to establish yourself as a genius inventor - strirrups, wheelbarrows, magnetic compasses, the idea of a crank handle, and how to use triangular bracing to make a strong truss would be good options.

All the sounds get mixed together as they approach you (as they compress the same air), by the time it gets to your ear it can be represented by one complex wave.

I'm quite happy to not see emojis spammed everywhere, I can deal with an emoticon or two - more so if actually useful for setting tone - but much more than that and you're pushing it.

I tend to associate posts peppered with emojis with either immaturity or those out of their depth when it comes to technology. I'm sure it's not always true but it does seem to correlate well with either kids or those whose typing method includes just tapping on the emoji whenever their phone keyboard suggests it.