Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted News

[Mongrel]

POST WAS NOT SERIOUS. STOP. SOMETHING SOMETHING. STOP.

[Brantly B.]

Fuck this.

[Mongrel]

???

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

[Upthorn]

Via Silversong on IRC:
Three Judge Panel Unanimously Rules that Bees Are 'Fish' (for the purposes of California's Endangered Species Act, which specifically enumerates that it protects birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and plants.)

They reached this ruling by way of the fact that shrimp, which are invertebrate arthropods, get legally classified as fish for wildlife purposes, a ruling in 1980 which classified an endangered type of terrestrial snail as fish, and that the statute has been amended since 1980, without including anything which would invalidate the "snail is fish" decision.

[Mongrel]

(loud)

[Thad]

iPhones will be required to use USB-C charging by 2024 under EU policy

This is one of those things that would have been a great idea 15-20 years ago when every phone had a different proprietary connector, but which I think is a bad idea precisely because (1) it took 15-20 years to get it done and (2) the industry's pretty much solved this issue on its own, except for Apple, and Apple gonna Apple.

Now, USB-C is a perfectly good connector. In fact it's far and away the best connector the industry's produced yet.

And before that, you'd have said the same thing about microUSB.

And before that...well, okay, nobody ever said that about miniUSB.

Standards are good! Compatibility is good! But -- again, with the exception of Apple -- we already have those things. And limiting the adoption of technical standards to the speed of legislation is gonna introduce some problems.

[Brantly B.]

Very interested to see how this one is written and enforced because it seems like it would have the (maybe) undesirable side effect of locking devices to what happens to be the current power throughput standard.

[Thad]

As I understand EU rulemaking, implementation is handled by individual member states; each member writes its own legislation that complies with the policy.

There do appear to be some voltage/throughput requirements, such as standardizing the definition of "fast charging". I can see that causing some problems later on.

[Mongrel]

[Büge]

#justcanadianthings

[Mongrel]

Someone came up with an idea so terrible that you could pitch it to Muskie and he might actually pause to think about rejecting it as too absurd (before running another capital scam with it anyway).



I mean, it has to be complete bullshit. But I can appreciate "too excessive for Howard Hughes" levels of bullshit.

[Mongrel]

'Mystery rocket' that crashed into the Moon baffles NASA scientists, leaving odd double crater.

So far, no space exploring nations have claimed responsibility for the rocket.

It's from earth (obv), as the rocket was observed by NASA prior to impact (though not in detail), but uh, I'm not really sure ruling out aliens actually makes this story any less... uh, concerning.

[Grath]

'Mystery rocket' that crashed into the Moon baffles NASA scientists, leaving odd double crater.

So far, no space exploring nations have claimed responsibility for the rocket.

(snip)

It's from earth (obv), as the rocket was observed by NASA prior to impact (though not in detail), but uh, I'm not really sure ruling out aliens actually makes this story any less... uh, concerning.

I'm choosing to believe that this is directly related to Elon Musk not tweeting in over a week and he just cratered himself into the moon.

[Mongrel]

Don't get my hopes up like that!

[nosimpleway]

Somebody bet Muskie he could solo Proto-Babil and he couldn't pass up a wager like that

[Brantly B.]

Nah it was a different guy having a meltdown with access to a fleet.

[Mongrel]

I was wondering if anyone had heard from Muskie recently, but it turns out he was meeting the Pope?!

Anyway...

Chilean man accidentally paid 300 times his normal salary, takes the money and runs (hoo hoo hooo ♫).

[Mongrel]