Microsoft’s store is broken. I have had a similar problem with Minecraft.

1. Want to buy DLC for my kid in Minecraft.

2. Get forwarded to the Microsoft Store to process the transaction.

3. For some reason the money goes into my Microsoft account balance rather than going toward the DLC I wanted to buy.

4. Cash balance in a Microsoft account cannot be used to buy Minecraft DLC, and cannot be transferred to a Minecraft account. (Why tf not? Minecraft is a Microsoft property.)

5. I now have money stuck in the Microsoft account that cannot be refunded, and I can’t get the DLC I wanted.

This sucks.

Looks like another case of private equity shenanigans.

Summarized from Wikipedia: A private equity firm bought the hospital chain in 2010 with borrowed money. They tried to flip the hospitals to a new buyer but failed. So instead they sold off the real estate and borrowed more money to pay dividends to stakeholders. Now the hospitals are deep in debt, plus they pay rent on land they used to own.

What a bunch of vultures.

Man that takes me back. Trout slapping was a huge thing on IRC in the 90’s. I never understood why.

Edit: Apparently from Monty Python. Of course.

Fat fingers. Thank you for catching that.

They had their phone with them.

Cool video. That’s an interesting demonstration of wave interaction. It’s just a phased array with all the sources pointed inward at each other. You could do the same thing in air with an array of speakers. I can’t imagine air would work to create the kinds of temperatures and pressures required to make diamonds, though.

There are engineering/physics software packages that can simulate wave interactions like this. Here are phased array examples using COMSOL, and MatLab. You might be able to approximate the behavior in a FEA or CFD tool, too. Setting up the model is not a trivial exercise, though.

Your idea of arranging energy sources in a sphere, focusing their energy inward toward the center, reminds me of implosion-type nuclear weapons. That’s basically how they work.

E

TheDude did some server maintenance on the 9th, but other than that I’m not aware of any issues. Everything works fine on my machine, so obviously there aren’t any problems (j/k).

Did you have issues at a particular time? Maybe we can find something in the logs and trace down the issue.

Edit: you can also catch us on our Matrix channel for more timely tech support.

Give Alberta and Saskatchewan to the US.

Let the US keep the eastern third of Washington and Oregon. Canada doesn’t really want those people anyway.

What a sweet kid. I hope the parent has a sense of humor about it and tells the kid he was good for trying to do something nice for a neighbor even though there was a misunderstanding.

Apparently Ukraine has gay super soldiers. Does anyone know where I can find one? Asking for a friend.

Here’s a zoomed-out version:

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/the-picture-show/2025/01/09/g-s1-41784/los-angeles-fire-photos

The British were so focused on whether they could, they didn’t stop to think about whether they should.

Joke’s on them, this whole thing was a clever ruse to get rid of LA and make it France’s fault. Operation Ænema is going exactly as planned!

Also possibly bad lighting, loud noise, or staring at a screen too long. Getting old is awesome!

This article led me to another about the Whiskey War border dispute on this island, which is interesting:

In 1984, Canadian soldiers visited the island and planted a Canadian flag, also leaving a bottle of Canadian whisky. The Danish Minister of Greenland Affairs came to the island himself later the same year with the Danish flag, a bottle of Schnapps, and a letter stating “Welcome to the Danish Island” (Velkommen til den danske ø). The two countries proceeded to take turns planting their flags on the island and exchanging alcoholic beverages. In 2005 a Canadian man and an unknown source on the Danish side also posted advertisements on Google to “promote their claims”.

The minor border dispute was often considered humorous between the two nations, with diplomats displaying good humour. Despite the serious official nature of the matter, the manner in which the conflict was prosecuted was light-hearted, demonstrated by the length of time taken to settle the dispute, if nothing else. Both nations are on friendly terms, and are also founding members of NATO.

You mean items that should be generic commodities, but which companies customize in order to lock you into their ecosystem, or otherwise restrict what you can do? Like printer ink cartridges or Keurig pods with ID chips, as you mentioned.

• DVD region codes

• Camera lenses back in the manual SLR days. I don’t think there’s any reason old manual-focus Nikon/Olympus/Pentax/etc. lenses needed to be brand-exclusive. The companies could have all used the same bayonet mount and all lenses would be interchangeable.

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Don’t forget half of them get jungle duty retaking the Panama Canal from * checks notes * a peaceful ally who has been doing a fine job of operating it.

God, every day feels less like reality and more like a fever dream.

When I was a kid we did sailboats instead of cars one year. To race we blew our boats along a trough filled with water. I’m amazed nobody passed out from hyperventilating! I still have my sailboat from 1989 tucked in a drawer somewhere.