The biggest change that the update introduces is how the Kindle software is actually displayed, with the top-mounted toolbar removed and a large search bar included in its place.

At the bottom of the UI, too, are now just two buttons, which include one for 'Home' and one for the user's digital reading 'Library'. There's also now a central icon that allows the reader to jump to their most recently read book and, in what will be music to many Kindle owner's ears, the quick-settings menu is now easily accessed as a new arrow has been placed on the UI that points to it – the days of randomly tapping around the top of the screen trying to find it are gone! All these changes have been made to make it easier and more streamlined to navigate on Kindles. //

The latest Amazon Kindle update is version 5.13.7,

As the pressure to evacuate people from Kabul airport grows, the US military has released updated figures for one of its flights. It reports that a C-17 Globemaster aircraft evacuated 823 Afghan citizens on August 15th. This is a new record for the type – by a long way – and gives some idea of the scale of the operation underway.

In a Twitter post on August 20th, US Air Mobility Command released confirmed and updated figures for one of its many evacuation flights from Kabul. We recently reported that a new record was set for a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft when it carried 640 Afghan citizens out of Hamid Karzai International Airport. This has now been increased to a massive 823.

Air Mobility Command
@AirMobilityCmd
CORRECTION: A @usairforce C-17 Globemaster III safely transported 823 Afghan citizens from Hamid Karzai International Airport Aug. 15, 2021. This is a record for this aircraft.

The initial count of 640 inadvertently included only adults. 183 children were also aboard. //

It is also not the first time this has happened. While it is a record for the C-17, it is not a record overall. In 1991, over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were evacuated from Ethiopia to Israel as part of Operation Solomon. This involved Boeing 707, Boeing 747, and Hercules C-130 aircraft. One El Al Boeing 747 aircraft is recorded as transporting 1,080 people (estimates vary, but even lower estimates are a record).

Sebastian Smith
@SebastianAFP
The 1 pm remarks by President Biden on Afghanistan are not happening at 1... No new time announced by White House.
1:05 PM · Aug 20, 2021

Curtis Houck
@CurtisHouck
Biden dismisses the State Department dissent cable, brushing it off as no big deal: "I have all kinds of cables. All kinds of advice."

Then there was this excellent question which asked Biden why we should trust his assessment of Afghanistan now after he was so wrong about the Taliban’s advance.

Curtis Houck
@CurtisHouck
This question from Bloomberg's Justin Sink is better than Zeke's about how can Biden say a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan going forward won't pose a serious terrorism threat.

Peter J. Hasson
@peterjhasson
Fox's @JenGriffinFNC responding to Biden's Afghanistan speech: "I couldn't fact check it fast enough because there are so many misrepresentations of what is happening on the ground."
2:21 PM · Aug 20, 2021

Skeptical Techie
3 hours ago edited
Is there anybody who can not understand that handing over multiple easily destroyed caches of some of our best and most technically advanced weapons to the CCP and Putin (our most dangerous enemies) should suffice as at least "Crimes and misdemeanors"?

There are two suspects Harris/Biden in the same class (and both in the direct chain of command), subject to the same laws and procedures. Impeach and prosecute them together. As for Harris's culpability, it should be argued that due to, at least, intermittent incapacity and/or absence of the President, she was in command or should have taken command and thus, just as culpable.

Indict and prosecute each civilian in the direct line of command from SecDef through to SecArmy, SecNav & SecAir.

Following UCMJ, do the equivalent to CJCS but add in dereliction of duty for not being even reasonably informed. Use his own recent statements as exhibit A through...

At the same time, make motions in the house to remove the Speaker and Senate to remove the Minority Leader. Consider motions to remove the Ranking Member of both Armed Forces Committees.

Maybe also set precedent in both chambers calling for a nonbinding vote of no confidence in all the above noted leadership, by title and name. //

Skeptical Techie DeeInFL
2 hours ago edited
The last 20 years are irrelevant!

The only relevant facts are how the President acted with the situation at hand. The same could be said for the Vice President whenever, over the last few days, the President was absent and/or incapacitated as she was in command or should have taken command.

The current situation is 98% the results of the actions taken in the last days back to a week or two at the most. At any point up to when those impetuous and derelict commands and actions were taken, this current situation could have been averted and then mitigated as much as reasonable.

All the latter impetuosity and dereliction were in the direct control of the President, Vice President, SecDef, SecNav/SecArmy/SecAir and CJCS and only to a moderate degree less further down the chain of command. Everyone below the President had opportunities to resist those precipitous actions, at the very least by protesting and resigning. By virtue of all the USA hardware, technology and sensitive information left behind for the Taliban to later be turned over to the CCP and Putin was, at the least, dereliction of duty. Then there are the enormous human costs, which are nowhere near their zenith.

Gravity is the weird, mysterious glue that binds the Universe together, but that's not the limit of its charms. We can also leverage the way it warps space-time to see distant objects that would be otherwise much more difficult to make out.

This is called gravitational lensing, an effect predicted by Einstein, and it's beautifully illustrated in a new release from the Hubble Space Telescope.

In the center in the image (below) is a shiny, near-perfect ring with what appear to be four bright spots threaded along it, looping around two more points with a golden glow.

This is called an Einstein ring, and those bright dots are not six galaxies, but three: the two in the middle of the ring, and one quasar behind it, its light distorted and magnified as it passes through the gravitational field of the two foreground galaxies.

Because the mass of the two foreground galaxies is so high, this causes a gravitational curvature of space-time around the pair. Any light that then travels through this space-time follows this curvature and enters our telescopes smeared and distorted – but also magnified.

(2)Activities described in paragraph (1) include—
(A)the evacuation when their lives are endangered by war, civil unrest, or natural disaster of—
(i)United States Government employees and their dependents; and
(ii)private United States citizens or third-country nationals, on a reimbursable basis to the maximum extent practicable, with such reimbursements to be credited to the applicable Department of State appropriation and to remain available until expended, except that no reimbursement under this clause shall be paid that is greater than the amount the person evacuated would have been charged for a reasonable commercial air fare immediately prior to the events giving rise to the evacuation;

Generally, individuals evacuated on a U.S. government-coordinated transport, including charter and military flights or ships, even if those transports are provided by another country’s government, must sign an Evacuee Manifest and Promissory Note (Form DS-5528) note prior to departure. The Department of State uses the Form DS-5528 to document who got on which transport, and it lets us know how to contact evacuees for billing purposes.

U.S. law requires that departure assistance to private U.S. citizens or third country nationals be provided “on a reimbursable basis to the maximum extent practicable.” By taking a U.S. government coordinated transport, evacuees are obligated to repay the cost of their transportation. The amount billed to evacuees is based on the cost of a full fare economy flight, or comparable alternate transportation, to the designated destination(s) that would have been charged immediately prior to the events giving rise to the evacuation.

https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2017-title22/USCODE-2017-title22-chap38-sec2671

Another widely peddled media hoax has been shot to pieces as Reuters reveals that the FBI has “scant evidence” that there was any forward planning to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6th. //

The news confirms The National Pulse’s reporting from January 11th, and raises questions about the government’s power grab and abuse of authority using January 6th as pretext. //

Reuters reported Friday morning:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-fbi-finds-scant-evidence-us-capitol-attack-was-coordinated-sources-2021-08-20/

The news blows apart the media’s narrative over the past eight months, and should refocus attention on the fact that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser refused support in advance of the peaceful Trump rally at the White House earlier that day.

President Trump is known to have cleared the way for 10,000 National Guard troops, in advance of the event, in order to keep the peace.

https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/capitol-authorities-knew-of-riot-on-jan-6th/

https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/trump-capitol-natl-guard-request/

What is already known about this topic?

Early observational studies among nursing home residents showed mRNA vaccines to be 53% to 92% effective against SARS-CoV-2 infection.

What is added by this report?

Two doses of mRNA vaccines were 74.7% effective against infection among nursing home residents early in the vaccination program (March–May 2021). During June–July 2021, when B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant circulation predominated, effectiveness declined significantly to 53.1%.

What are the implications for public health practice?

Multicomponent COVID-19 prevention strategies, including vaccination of nursing home staff members, residents, and visitors, are critical. An additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine might be considered for nursing home and long-term care facility residents to optimize a protective immune response.

Two Canadian doctors recently made the argument that the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine is effective enough to warrant a single-dose regimen when communities have a limited supply of the shots. Their letter, published in mid-February when Canada was experiencing a delay in vaccine shipments, states that the vaccine had an efficacy of 92.6% beginning two weeks after the first dose, and before the second was administered. The authors based their analysis on documents Pfizer submitted to the FDA.1 //

Research out of Israel published in The Lancet found that the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was 85% effective two to three weeks after a single dose.3 Another study found that after one dose of the vaccine, between days 14 to 20, it offered 57% effectiveness for symptomatic COVID-19, 74% for hospitalization, and 62% for severe disease.4

MPs and peers unite to condemn ‘dishonour’ of US president’s withdrawal and his criticism of Afghan troops left behind to face Taliban /

Joe Biden's handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal was condemned as "catastrophic" and "shameful" on Wednesday as the Houses of Parliament delivered an unprecedented rebuke to a US president.

MPs and peers from across the political spectrum, including Boris Johnson, put some blame for the Taliban's takeover and the chaos that followed on Britain's closest ally.

Mr Biden was accused of "throwing us and everybody else to the fire" by pulling out US troops, and was called "dishonourable" for criticising Afghan forces for not having the will to fight.

Former defence chiefs who led British troops in the Middle East were among those to speak out, while there were warnings that the West's withdrawal would embolden Russia and China.

The interventions mark a deterioration in UK-US relations almost exactly 20 years after Britain joined America in invading Afghanistan to root out terrorism after the September 11 attacks.

But it was not just Mr Biden who faced criticism, with Mr Johnson and his ministers told they had overseen the worst disaster in British foreign policy for 65 years.

The Prime Minister was accused of not doing enough to rally allies to support Afghanistan as the US departure became apparent, including by his predecessor, Theresa May.

A former soldier-turned-Conservative MP just lit up the House of Commons in an emotional speech about the failure in Afghanistan and the ‘shameful’ actions of Joe Biden.

As a veteran who served there, Tom Tugendhat said he was feeling a mixture of “anger, grief, and rage” over what has happened, given the sacrifices that people have made, including watching “good men go into the earth, taking with them a part of me and a part of all of us.” He noted how many who had served were “struggling” over the emotional reaction to this. //

“The Cold War was won with patience. Cypress is at peace with patience. South Korea with almost ten times the number of troops that America had in Afghanistan, is prosperous through patience. So let’s stop talking about forever wars. Let’s recognize that forever peace is bought not cheaply, but hard, through determination and the will to endure. And that the tragedy of Afghanistan is that we’re swapping that patient achievement for a second fire and a second war.”

Unfortunately, Biden has all but guaranteed we will be dealing with a terrorist state, supporting terrorism around the world — the very thing we went there to stop and confront. He’s made it so much worse now with the incompetence of the pullout. That’s a terrible thing to understand after 20 years of war and as we approach the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.

Tugendhat related a story from his fighting days:

“It is the image of a man whose name I never knew, carrying a child who had died hours earlier, carrying this child into our firebase and begging for help. There was nothing we could do. It was over.

Mr. Speaker, this is what defeat looks like — it’s when you no longer have the choice of how to help. This doesn’t need to be defeat. But at the moment, it damn well feels like it.” //

2buildit2
a day ago
That was worth watching.
There is some ironic overload that the shrill hysteria about DJT being erratic and Biden being the sane adult has resulted in Joe Biden making these United States seem an unreliable ally. Bidens glaring error and inability to respond to reality and the slavish ideologues in his cabinet have tarnished our good name.
I wrote here before the election that Joe Biden as president , the Neville Chamberlain of our time, would almost guarantee war with China. I was naive. He'll just surrender.

Alex Wickham
@alexwickham
Two remarkable lines in today’s papers from @Steven_Swinford @benrileysmith

— UK military left in the dark by the US about timings and pace of their withdrawal… UK official confirms this is the case
— Biden ignored Boris Johnson’s attempts to speak on the phone for 36+ hours //

Was Biden incapacitated? It’s not like this was a request from the president of Thailand. We are talking about our oldest and closest ally in the British. And Biden took almost two days to even return their phone call as Afghanistan descended into absolute chaos?

Further, the UK military was reportedly left completely in the dark about what the US was doing as far as pulling out. Timelines were not given, no preparations were made with NATO forces (which had more personnel on the ground than we did), and when the time came, pandemonium predictably broke out. Why was there no communication?

None of this makes any sense. As I asked yesterday, if Biden were trying to cause chaos in Afghanistan, what would he be doing differently? Is this incompetence or malice at this point? It’s hard to imagine a motive for the latter given this is going to hurt him politically, but we are at the junction where things are so haywire that all angles should be explored.

The United States is in a precarious position, disdained by our allies and unable to strike fear into our adversaries. Despite being assured that was going to be the result of Trump’s presidency by the same mediocre experts who never get anything right, the country came out of his four years stronger and more respected around the globe. It’s only taken seven months for Biden to tear all that down.

Q:

I have a NAS running FreeBSD 10.1 with 3 disks: ada2 is the boot device, ada0 and ada1 are a ZFS mirror.

dmesg shows this for the ZFS mirror:

GEOM: ada0: the primary GPT table is corrupt or invalid.

How can I recover the primary GPT tables for ada0 and ada1?

A:

Please post the output of zpool status. If ZFS uses the whole disks there won't be a GPT table (or any other partition scheme) at all.

A:

yes, ZFS uses the whole disks.

A:

In that case both ada0 and ada1 do not have a partition table.

You create a pool of directly to device ada0 ada1 - this led to the fact that the pool was created using the entire device (ignore partitions!) not the partition on it (to use every device possible! it is necessary for others to organize the loading of the OS!) and, of course, information about GPT was destroyed.

You should have created a zfs pool:
(for striped) zpool create tank ada0p3 ada1p3
(for mirror) zpool create tank mirror ada0p3 ada1p3
If You set the label in the command gpart add ... -l zdisk0 ada0 , so:
(for mirror) zpool create tank mirror /dev/gpt/zdisk0 /dev/gpt/zdisk1

Should be you case:
zpool status -v

AA:

Because disks can vary in exact size, ZFS leaves some space unused at the end of the disk. (I don't know of an easy way to find out how much. Somebody pointed me at the source once, but I can't find that now. I think it would have to be at least a megabyte to allow for disk variance, but that is an estimate.)

The backup copy of the GPT is stored at the very end of the disk. The boot code tries to verify GPT tables, and is likely finding that leftover backup GPT at the end of the disk.

The trick is clearing that backup GPT without damaging the ZFS data. Do not attempt to do that without a full, verified backup of that ZFS mirror. After that, use diskinfo -v ada0 to get the mediasize in sectors. The standard backup GPT is 33 blocks long, so erasing the last 33 blocks on the disk with dd(1) should be enough to avoid the error without interfering with the ZFS data. dd(1) does not have a way to say "the last n blocks", so the seek= option has to be used to seek to (mediasize in blocks - 33).

WARNING: make a full, verified backup of everything on the disk first!
....
Repeat the procedure for ada1. Do not just reuse the same dd(1) command because the two disks might not have identical block counts.

In the future, the easy way is to erase GPT metadata before reusing the disk. That can be done with gpart destroy (see gpart(8)).

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/gpt-table-corrupt.52102/post-292341

At the very least make sure there's no partition scheme on the disks before adding them. If there is a gpart destroy adaX should clear it.

one would think General Milley, with several decades of experience, should have had the foresight to see this coming disaster. If he didn’t see the oncoming wreck, he should resign. If he did see it coming and testified to the contrary, he should resign.

If he truly didn’t see this disaster speeding toward him, he’s not fit for the position he holds and he should resign. //

My family has served in America’s military back to the Revolutionary War – the most recent being my eldest son who served as a SEAL for almost a decade. I don’t criticize the men and women in harm’s way, I am critical of those who lead them.

I am critical of politicians and inept generals. Milley is apparently both. In my estimation, he stopped being a “leader of men” when he testified about wanting to “understand white rage”, the “rage he claimed fueled the January 6th riot. That testimony barely 6 weeks ago focused wholly outside the charge of our military. His focus should be our enemies abroad. He should have been focused on a very real rage – that of the Taliban which would soon consume Afghanistan. He should have concentrated his “understanding on contingencies for getting Americans out of harm’s way before Afghanistan turned into a burning cauldron. Instead, we have thousands of Americans trapped outside the wire.

Chemicals used to prevent worms and rot seems to have changed the wood's structure. //

Some of the most sought-after violins on the planet may owe their sounds to deworming chemicals used by their Italian manufacturers 300 years ago. //

The authors are quick to note that they were working with wood shavings, not an entire instrument, so how a little sprinkle of metal changes, or even improves, sound remains to be seen. But what’s clear is that the violins are different from anything made since.

THE GRAND PORTUGUESE TRADITION OF azulejo, hand-painted, glazed ceramic tilework depicting scenes, dates back hundreds of years. Artwork made with these ornamental tiles can be found everywhere from churches and palaces to schools and train stations. These tiles have even become a part of the history of Pan-American World Airway (1927-1991) advertising. //

The Pan Am billboard is located in Reguengo do Fetal, Batalha, on a slope of the mountain by the EN356 road that connects Batalha to Fátima. It was created in the 1960s, Pan Am’s golden era, and it was made by the historic Fábrica Aleluia azulejo company. (The same company also made another Pan Am billboard located near Aveiro.)

The billboard is composed of around 4,000 azulejos that sit in a frame of 92 square meters. The background is Pan Am’s distinctive shade of blue, the company’s lettering is on the center in its traditional font. There is one logo on either side of the lettering, and a tagline at the bottom that reads, “TORNA A SUA VIAGEM MARAVILHOSA” (“Makes your journey wonderful”).

We spend too much time confined to a two-dimensional network of concrete and asphalt. The dream of futurists has always been a flying vehicle capable of efficiently moving passengers from A to B.

Opener is realizing this dream in a safe, easy-to-operate, electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle: BlackFly.

Opener's BlackFly heralds a new era of aviation. Time and money spent traveling and maintaining infrastructure will be reduced. People will go places they never thought possible.

ABC News
@ABC
“When push came to shove, they decided not to step up and fight for their country.”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan places blame for the speed of the Taliban takeover on the Afghan national security forces. https://abcn.ws/3jW8jvH

Marco Rubio
@marcorubio
What a bunch of crap

This administration was specifically told Afghan forces would surrender faster than our ability to exit.

They decided to ignore these warnings & smugly tell everyone how smart & brilliant they are. //

One intelligence official told ABC News that “no one listened” when they told the administration “it would take no time at all for the Taliban to take everything.”