First Herculaneum scroll decoded

Now this is cool:

Newly deciphered passages from a papyrus scroll that was buried beneath layers of volcanic ash after the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius may have shed light on the final hours of Plato, a key figure in the history of western philosophy.

In a groundbreaking discovery, the ancient scroll was found to contain a previously unknown narrative detailing how the Greek philosopher spent his last evening, describing how he listened to music played on a flute by a Thracian slave girl.

What's even cooler is that this is one of the carbonized scrolls that people tried to unroll decades ago, causing enormous damage to the scroll.  They were still able to scan it and put it back in order.

 

Happy "Punch A Commie In The Face" Day!

Well, it is.

Starlink grossing $3B a year

Starlink is the satellite Internet service from SpaceX.  You get high speed (200 Mbps) pretty much anywhere on Mother Earth.

Starlink costs $100/month.  They claim that they have 2.4 million subscribers.  The process of Higher Math tells us that they are taking in a quarter Billion dollars a month.

And they're only getting started.

First ships leave port of Baltimore

Still a lot of work to do and restrictions on size and weather conditions, but good news from Baltimore.  

Ring doorbell company fined millions of dollars for privacy violations

Well knock me over with a feather:

The FTC today announced it would be sending refunds totaling $5.6 million to Ring customers, paid from the Amazon subsidiary's coffers.

The windfall stems from allegations made by the US watchdog that folks could have been, and were, spied upon by cybercriminals and rogue Ring workers via their Ring home security cameras.

The regulator last year accused Ring of sloppy privacy protections that allowed the aforementioned spying to occur or potentially occur.

...
 

In the most egregious case, one employee went out of his way to view "thousands of video recordings belonging to at least 81 unique female users," according to the FTC. A coworker reported this behavior to her supervisor, who it's alleged initially said this snooping wasn't that strange until he realized the rogue employee was only reviewing videos of "pretty girls."

The fines work out to $50 per effected Ring customer.  Don't spend it all in one place.

Brave New World

 A Maryland High School principal was suspended several months ago when an audio recording of him making disparaging remarks about black students academic performance was released to the public.

Except, as he consistently claimed, he never made the remarks.

The school's athletic director had made the recording, using samples of the principal's voice and A.I. software. He then emailed the audio to people at the school from a throwaway account and let events take their course. His purpose was to get the principal removed the school because the principal was investigating the A.D. for misusing school funds.

The A.D. was arrested at the airport while trying to flee the state. The principal has been vindicated. This makes him a very lucky man, it could have easily gone undiscovered.

LOLOL

Well played, Chris.

The Queen Of The World and I are huge fans of that movie.

Dad Joke CCCXX

Tuna sends in another:

Why did the Mexican guy take anxiety meds?  For Hispanic attacks.