Daily Shaarli
October 24, 2021
Intro to CS using MakeCode & Microbits Course Introduction This is an introduction to coding and computer science by way of making and design, using the revolutionary new micro:bit microcontroller board, and Microsoft’s easy and powerful MakeCode block-based coding environment. It is a project-based curriculum with a maker philosophy at its core; the idea is that by making physical objects, students create a context for learning the coding and computer science concepts.
there is no question that Elias played a key role in radically altering election rules and procedures in ways that benefited Democrats. In January 2020, long before anyone knew how COVID-19 might affect voting, Elias published a piece arguing that there was an ‘epidemic of uncounted ballots.’ He said that it was wrong not to count ballots that don’t have signature matches, even though signature matches are one of the very few security measures through which mail-in ballots can be verified.”
Elias then announced a four-part initiative to greatly expand mail-in balloting, including free postage, counting of ballots arriving long after Election Day, relaxed signature verification, and allowing ballot traffickers to visit people’s homes to collect ballots, and, if needed, pressure voters into giving up their ballots (it’s not coincidental that this process mimics union card check elections).
Like other Italian towns selling 1 euro houses, Pratola Peligna has a steadily declining population. While the town had approximately 13,000 residents in the 1930s, that number has fallen to today’s population of around 7,000 as many residents left looking for better and higher paying jobs.
Some of the abandoned houses are in relatively good condition. On the other hand, many are in need of significant restoration while others are, essentially, ruins. In fact, the municipality has issued more than 40 warnings to owners noting that the house is in imminent danger of collapse, according to 1eurohouses.com.
In response, some owners have deeded houses to local authorities to avoid the burden and cost of maintaining buildings. That’s why Pratola Peligna is now able to sell houses for 1 euro.
Other towns selling 1 euro houses typically require buyers to pay a deposit of thousands of dollars to guarantee they will actually renovate their new home. Pratola Peligna, however, will instead simply issue the new owner a fine of 10,000 euros (approximately $11,500) if they fail to register a detailed plan of restoration with the town within 6 months.
“This is really in a worst-case scenario,” Di Bacco told CNN. “We just want to make sure buyers actually follow through on their commitment and don’t simply purchase a house for 1 euro and then disappear.”
“This… Is CNN,”
People vaccinated against Covid-19 less likely to die from any cause, study finds
Glenn Kessler
@GlennKesslerWP
Biden’s critics hurl increasingly vulgar taunts
Biden’s critics hurl increasingly vulgar taunts
washingtonpost.com
8:35 AM · Oct 23, 2021 //
the hypocrisy is the point, and the media are exposing theirs in a big way here. Were they not alive during the Donald Trump years? Because I seem to remember a distinct lack of outrage at the many horrible things said about the former president, his supporters, and Republicans in general. //
At no point do I recall the media ever complaining about the gross things said during the Trump years. Now, a non-vulgar saying goes viral and they are deeply concerned? Consider my extremely skeptical there’s any actual care about decorum here. Further, the two signs cited in the Post’s article also didn’t include vulgarities.
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A 14 week Introduction to Computer Science course.
This course is targeted to middle school grades 6-8 (ages 11-14 years). It is also written for teachers who may not have a Computer Science background, or who may be teaching an “Intro to Computer Science” course for the first time.
This course takes approximately 14 weeks to complete, spending about 1 week on each of the first 11 lessons, and 3 weeks for students to complete the final project at the end. Of course, teachers should feel free to customize the curriculum to meet individual school or district resources and timeframe.
In the middle of the thousands of islands of the Croatian coast, Bavljenac, an islet of derisory size stands out for its large number of walls. These dry stone walls, typical of the Mediterranean, give the island a unique and singular aspect.
A fragmented territory
The Croatian coast is very fragmented along the Adriatic Sea. The country always seems to break up in the water into distinct sets of archipelagos. Indeed Croatia is the largest archipelago in the Adriatic Sea with 79 islands, 525 islets and 642 reefs or rocks (Rocks are defined as islets smaller than 0.1 km², islets are between 0.1 and 1.0 km² and islands proper are bigger than 1.0 km²). Of these 1246 islands, which represent a territory of 3,300 km2 , only 48 islands are inhabited. One of these uninhabited islands is the island of Baljenac (or Bavljenac) located in the center part of the Croatia coast. It is part of the Šibenik archipelago, 10 km from the coast.
Between the walls
Although it is of an insignificant size of 0,14km² it represents a historical interest for the mark that man has left there. The island is completely covered by walls built of stones piled one on top of the other. The ancient wall network is 23.357 km long on an island whose coastal perimeter does not exceed 1431m. These dry stone walls were built only by superimposing simple stones to delimit agricultural plots and protect the olive trees and vines from the wind. Farmers from the neighboring island of Kaprije are said to have started the agricultural colonization of the island in the 19th century, although some of the walls may have been built earlier. These networks of walls is indeed found in some neighboring islands, although the island of Baljenac is the largest concentration of these walls. However, it is estimated that 300 farmers would have built 106km of walls on a surface area of 12 km² in all the neighboring archipelago.
This uninhabited island has a physiognomy totally transformed by man. These agricultural plots give it a physical and totally improvised plot plan, almost random. Seen from the sky the island looks like a maze, a puzzle or a fingerprint, the hundreds of walls giving the island a unique and singular identity.
"They are a wonderful driving experience. But at the same time, they're an enormous burden in time and in energy in finding chargers and getting them charged," Anderson said. "And you’re not really saving much in terms of charging costs ... you may be paying more.”
Costs to drive an EV compared with a gasoline car are detailed in a report Anderson Economic released Thursday called "Comparison: Real World Cost of Fueling EVs and ICE Vehicles."
The study has four major findings:
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There are four additional costs to powering EVs beyond electricity: cost of a home charger, commercial charging, the EV tax and "deadhead" miles.
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For now, EVs cost more to power than gasoline costs to fuel an internal combustion car that gets reasonable gas mileage.
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Charging costs vary more widely than gasoline prices.
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There are significant time costs to finding reliable public chargers — even then a charger could take 30 minutes to go from 20% to an 80% charge. //
A mid-priced internal combustion car that gets 33 miles per gallon would cost $8.58 in overall costs to drive 100 miles at $2.81 a gallon, the study found. But a mid-priced EV, such as Chevrolet Bolt, Nissan Leaf or a Tesla Model 3, would cost $12.95 to drive 100 miles in terms of costs that include recharging the vehicle using mostly a commercial charger. //
“That’s apples to apples and includes the extra EV taxes, the commercial charging and the home charging and the allowance of driving to a gas station, which, for most Americans, is very short compared to driving to a commercial charger for an EV owner," Anderson said. //
The study differs from some reports that show it's cheaper to drive an EV than a conventional car. For example, a 2018 study from the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute found the average cost to operate an EV in the U.S. was $485 per year compared with a gasoline-powered vehicle at $1,117. Anderson said most studies include only the cost of residential electricity and don't factor in the four other costs that this study does.
Unfortunately, the 0.74 stable PuTTY release does not safely guard plain-text passwords provided to it via the -pw command line option for the psftp, pscp, and plink utilities as the documentation clearly warns. There is evidence within the source code that the authors are aware of the problem, but the exposure is confirmed on Microsoft Windows, Oracle Linux, and the package prepared by the OpenBSD project.
After discussions with the original author of PuTTY, Simon Tatham developed a new -pwfile option, which will read an SSH password from a file, removing it from the command line. This feature can be backported into the current 0.76 stable release. Full instructions for applying the backport and a .netrc wrapper for psftp are presented, also implemented in Windows under Busybox.
While the -pw option is attractive for SSH users who are required to use passwords (and forbidden from using keys) for scripting activities, the exposure risk should be understood for any use of the feature. Users with security concerns should obtain the -pwfile functionality, either by applying a patch to the 0.76 stable release, or using a snapshot release found on the PuTTY website.
00:03
I'm a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call "the danger of the single story." I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four is probably close to the truth. So I was an early reader, and what I read were British and American children's books.
NASA has previously discussed how nuclear propulsion technology could allow the agency to send humans to Mars more quickly than by using traditional chemical rockets.
"Nuclear electric propulsion systems use propellants much more efficiently than chemical rockets but provide a low amount of thrust," NASA has said. "Nuclear electric propulsion systems accelerate spacecraft for extended periods and can propel a Mars mission for a fraction of the propellant of high-thrust systems."
There are multiple types of nuclear propulsion that could be used in space technology. With nuclear electric propulsion, thermal energy from a nuclear reactor is turned into electric energy that powers whatever type of electrical thruster or propulsion tech that a spacecraft uses. With nuclear thermal propulsion, reactors heat up propellants like hydrogen and then the gas from that reaction is ejected, creating thrust. This can create a lot more thrust than electric propulsion systems.
CCTV went to China’s first compressed-air energy storage facility to show what it proposes to do. Instead of using increasingly precious and expensive lithium-ion batteries, the plant uses cheap energy to compress air in huge tanks. Its official name is quite long: National Energy Large-Scale Physical Energy Storage Technology Research and Development Center.
When there’s peak demand for electricity, and prices get higher, the unusual energy storage facility uses that air to propel turbines and generate power. According to CCTV, the facility can deliver up to 40 MWh of energy per day, enough to power 3,000 houses. //
CCTV describes this strategy as if the plan was to use it with any means of producing electricity and eventually mentions that it can avoid wasting electricity produced by renewable energy sources. Ironically, this may be the main application of such a solution instead of the mega batteries used in Australia and California.
A 14 week Introduction to Computer Science course.
This course is targeted to middle school grades 6-8 (ages 11-14 years). It is also written for teachers who may not have a Computer Science background, or who may be teaching an “Intro to Computer Science” course for the first time.
This course takes approximately 14 weeks to complete, spending about 1 week on each of the first 11 lessons, and 3 weeks for students to complete the final project at the end. Of course, teachers should feel free to customize the curriculum to meet individual school or district resources and timeframe.