For January, the most recent month for which data is available, the TCI came in at -1.71, a significant improvement over December’s -6.1 and November’s -7.94. That was preceded by October’s -11.25, its lowest level since the April 2020 all-time low, at -28.66. The September TCI reading came in at -2.35.

Ready to welcome a steady incoming flow of conference attendees, introduce the world to a host of new industry innovations and provide a full lineup of fun events all week long, ProMat 2023 opened its doors to the world at 10 a.m. CST this morning.

Four finalists were chosen as the most innovative products in each of their respective categories: Best New Innovation, Best Innovation of an Existing Product, and Best IT Innovation based on concept, value, and impact.

New materials would help the cars of the future survive cold snaps and other climate disruptions

Despite being some six billion kilometers away, the sun from Pluto would be a dazzling sight to behold—carefully, that is

TikTok’s “sleepy girl mocktails” remind us how important magnesium is for sleep and health

Physicists found that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach contains mathematical patterns that help convey information

Rod-shaped fragments of RNA called “obelisks” were discovered in gut and mouth bacteria for the first time

More than 500 fires have burned across Colombia, including in its delicate and unique highland wetlands, one of the fastest evolving ecosystems on Earth

The release of Apple’s mixed-reality headset raises questions about hours spent in a virtual replacement of our world

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope are exposing the pathways that water takes to reach terrestrial planets

Snakes saw a burst of adaptation about 128 million years ago that led to them exploding in diversity and evolving up to three times faster than lizards

Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks will make its closest approach to the sun this April—right after North America is treated to a total solar eclipse

Она сыграла больше 70 ролей в кино и сериалах и перестала сниматься всего пару лет назад. Впервые она появилась на экранах в 1965 году в фильме «Первый учитель», за роль в котором получила Золотой кубок Вольпи на Венецианском кинофестивале. Никто даже не догадывался поначалу, что в кино она попала по ошибке. За время съёмок она успела выйти замуж за Андрона Кончаловского, который после развода уверял, будто ему было скучно с женой, слишком уж она покладистая. Сама Наталия Аринбасарова позже уверяла, будто маму Кончаловского любила даже больше, чем мужа.

Подробнее..

No obvious pattern fell out of last week's submissions for Error'd, but I did especially like Caleb Su's example.

Michael R. , apparently still job hunting, reports "I have signed up to outlier.ai to make some $$$ on the side. No instructions necessary."

Peter G. repeats a recurring theme of lost packages, saying "(Insert obligatory snark about Americans and geography. No, New Zealand isn't located in Washington DC)." A very odd coincidence, since neither the lat/long nor the zip code are particularly interesting.

"The Past Is Mutable," declares Caleb Su , explaining "In the race to compete with Gmail feature scheduling emails to send in the *future*, Outlook now lets you send emails in the past! Clearly, someone at Microsoft deserves a Nobel Prize for defying the basic laws of unidirectional time." That's thinking different.

Explorer xOneca explains this snapshot: "Was going to watch a Youtube video in DuckDuckGo, and while diagnosing why it wasn't playing I found this. It seems that youtube-nocookie.com actually *sets* cookies..?"

Morgan either found or made a funny. But it is a funny. "Now when I think about it I do like Option 3 more…" I rate this question a ????

Horror movies, as of late, have gone to great lengths to solve the key obstacle to horror movies- cell phones. When we live in a world where help is a phone call away, it's hard to imagine the characters not doing that. So screenwriters put them in situations where this is impossible: in Midsommar they isolate them in rural Sweden, in Get Out calling the police is only going to put our protagonist in more danger. But what's possibly more common is making the film a period piece- like the X/Pearl/Maxxxine trilogy, Late Night with the Devil, or Netflix's continuing series of R.L. Stine adaptations.

I bring this up, because today's horror starts in 1993. A Norwegian software company launched its software product to mild acclaim. Like every company, it had its ups and downs, its successes and missteps. On the surface, it was a decent enough place to work.

Over the years, the company tried to stay up to date with technology. In 1993, the major languages one might use for launching a major software product, your options are largely C or Pascal. Languages like Python existed, but weren't widely used or even supported on most systems. But the company stayed in business and needed to update their technology as time passed, which meant the program gradually grew and migrated to new languages.

Which meant, by the time Niklas F joined the company, they were on C#. Even though they'd completely changed languages, the codebase still derived from the original C codebase. And that meant that the codebase had many secrets, dark corners, and places a developer should never look.

Like every good horror movie protagonist, Niklas heard the "don't go in there!" and immediately went in there. And lurking in those shadows was the thing every developer fears the most: homebrew date handling code.

/// <summary>
/// 
/// </summary>
/// <param name="dt"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static DateTime LastDayInMonth(DateTime dt)
{
	int day = 30;
	switch (dt.Month)
	{
		case 1:
			day = 31;
			break;
		case 2:
			if (IsLeapYear(dt))
				day = 29;
			else
				day = 28;
			break;
		case 3:
			day = 31;
			break;
		case 4:
			day = 30;
			break;
		case 5:
			day = 31;
			break;
		case 6:
			day = 30;
			break;
		case 7:
			day = 31;
			break;
		case 8:
			day = 31;
			break;
		case 9:
			day = 30;
			break;
		case 10:
			day = 31;
			break;
		case 11:
			day = 30;
			break;
		case 12:
			day = 31;
			break;
	}
	return new DateTime(dt.Year, dt.Month, day, 0, 0, 0);
}

/// <summary>
/// 
/// </summary>
/// <param name="dt"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static bool IsLeapYear(DateTime dt)
{
	bool ret = (((dt.Year % 4) == 0) && ((dt.Year % 100) != 0) || ((dt.Year % 400) == 0));
	return ret;
}

For a nice change of pace, this code isn't incorrect. Even the leap year calculation is actually correct (though my preference would be to just return the expression instead of using a local variable). But that's what makes this horror all the more insidious: there are built-in functions to handle all of this, but this code works and will likely continue to work, just sitting there, like a demon that we've made a pact with. And suddenly we realize this isn't Midsommar but Ari Aster's other hit film, Hereditary, and we're trapped being in a lineage of monsters, and can't escape our inheritance.

"Check out Visual Studio optimizing their rating system to only include the ratings used," shared Fiorenzo R. Imagine the performance gain!

"This sounds about right," says Colin A.

"Wow! Must snap up some sweet Anker kit with this amazing offer; but less than four days to go!" exclaims Dave L., who then goes on to explain
"The actual WTF is this though. I sent this image to Anker with this email: But only 3days left? I hope this offer continues!
Anker replied: Thank you for your feedback! I understand that you appreciate the savings on the Anker SOLIX PS100 Portable Solar Panel and wish the offer could be extended beyond the current 3-day limit. Your suggestion is valuable and will be considered for future promotions to enhance customer satisfaction. If you have any other requests or need further assistance, please let me know.
I for one welcome our new AI overlords. "

Graham F. almost stashed this away for later. "Looks like Dropbox could use a few lessons in how to do Maths! Although maybe their definition of 'almost' differs from mine."

Finally Joshua found time to report a brand-new date-handling bug. "Teams is so buggy; this one just takes the cake. I had to check with the unix cal program to make sure I wasn't completely bonkers." For the readers, November 8 this year is supposed to be a Friday. I suppose things could change after the US election.

Amateur physicist B.J. is going on vacation, but he likes to plan things right down to the zeptosecond. "Assume the flight accelerates at a constant speed for the first half of the flight, and decelerates at the same rate for the second half. 1) What speed does the plane need to reach to have that level of time dilation? 2) What is the distance between the airports?"

Contrarily, Eddie R. was tired of vacation so got a new job, but right away he's having second thoughts. "Doing my onboarding, but they seem to have trouble with the idea of optional."

"Forget UTF-8! Have you heard about the new, hot encoding standard for 2024?!" exclaimed Daniel , kvetching "Well, if you haven't then Gravity Forms co. is going to change your mind: URLEncode everything now! Specially if you need to display some diacritics on your website. Throw away the old, forgotten UTF-8. Be a cool guy, just use that urlencode!"

Immediately afterward, Daniel also sent us another good example, this time from Hetzner. He complains "Hetzner says the value is invalid. Of course they won't say what is or isn't allowed. It wasn't the slash character, it was... a character with diacritics! Hetzner is clearly using US-ASCII created in 1960's."

Finally this week, we pulled something out of the archive from Boule de Berlin who wrote "Telekom, the biggest German ISP, shows email address validation is hard. They use a regex that limits the TLD part of an email address to 4 chars." Old but timeless.

If you’ve ever wished for “precioussss” versions of Gollum & Sméagol figures that capture every conflicted, crawling moment, look no further! Asmus and Sideshow have just dropped two stunning sixth scale figures, bringing The Lord of the Rings’ most tragic character to life. And thanks to Asmus, this marks an epic return to Middle-earth collectibles after a dark pandemic pause. In the words of Andy Hsu, Director of Asmus Toys: “Characters that were promised, were anticipated, that were wished for, are now back on the menu!”

Starting with Gollum: this 20 cm figure has over 22 points of articulation for all those sinister, slinking poses we know and love. With a smirking expression, rotatable eyeballs, and haired hobbit feet, Gollum is ready to stir up trouble on your shelf. And no Middle-earth journey is complete without provisions – this little guy even comes with wrapped and unwrapped Lembas bread accessories.

Then there’s Sméagol — the tortured soul behind the sneer. Sméagol’s innocent, haunted expression captures the side of him that Tolkien fans cherish. He has the same exclusive Gollum body by Asmus, complete with seamless limbs and multiple hands and legs to bring his story to life.

So, if you’re ready to give these two a home, both Gollum and Sméagol are up for grabs, allowing fans to continue this adventure together with Asmus and Sideshow. And by purchasing through our links, you’ll support TheOneRing.net.

Here's the letter posted by Asmus Director Andy Hsu on Facebook

The following event(s) took place in Middle-earth on November 3,

• Battle of Bywater, and Passing of Saruman. End of the War of the Ring (1419)
• [Join us on the Discussion Boards here]
• .

 November 3, 3019 (S.R. 1419)

1. Battle of Bywater, and Passing of Saruman. End of the War of the Ring.

(from the appendices)

"...a messenger from the Tookland rode in. He was in high spirits. 'The Thain has raised all our country,' he said, 'and the news is going like fire all ways.…"

(Tolkien, 1965 Ballantine, p. 363-371 RotK)

Christmas gift guide by Louis Vuitton...

Winners from around the world, check it now...

Amazing showreel as always...

ЭССЕ 1. см. ЗДЕСЬ 3. ЖЕНЩИНА ТРАНСГУМАНИЗМА Как бывают тургеневские девушки или девушки Гиббса, женщины Боттичелли и Рафаэля, или прерафаэлитов, женщины Феллини или Антониони. Мой интерес скорее эстетический, но без этической составляющей никакая эстетика невозможна. Оскар Уайльд без мизантропии не стал бы Уайльдом. А мизантропия входит в область этических понятий. Известная, но ныне самими трансгуманистами […]

A climate-cooling La Niña pattern was expected to develop in the Pacific Ocean months ago, but forecasters now say it won't appear until November

Researchers have managed to encode enormous amounts of information, including images, into DNA at a rate hundreds of times faster than was previously possible

The Sverris saga describes how castle invaders “took a dead man and cast him unto the well, and then filled it up with stones”, in what may have been an early act of biological warfare - and now researchers believe they have found the skeleton of the man in question

A typically fragile quantum superposition has been made to last exceptionally long, and could eventually be used as a probe for discovering new physics

The Renaissance artist Michelangelo had carried out human dissections, which may have led him to include women with breast cancer in some of his pieces

Inside a hunk of a material called a semimetal, scientists have uncovered signatures of bizarre particles that sometimes move like they have no mass, but at other times move just like a very massive particle

DNA analysis suggests Pando, a quaking aspen in Utah with thousands of stems connected by their roots, is between 16,000 and 81,000 years old

One day, doctors might be able to 3D print copies of your organs in order to test a variety of drugs, thanks to a new technique that uses light and sound for rapid printing

The earliest evidence of livestock with modified horns has been discovered in ancient Egypt – sheep skulls with horns that point in unnatural directions suggest humans forced them to grow that way

Allowing for moves that create quantum superpositions makes a quantum version of a Rubik’s cube incredibly complex, but not impossible to solve

Eurasian reed warblers don’t just get a sense of direction from Earth’s magnetic field – they can also calculate their coordinates on a mental map