@ptz
@dubvee.orgAnd when anyone (correctly this time) calls out election fraud, they're going to act like they were vindicated for their 2020 lies.
What if he could be fine with more support and money, should I give him back to animal rescue?
That's as tough a call to make as "the call" about his life. When I was in that spot with my last dog, it was during COVID so I was working from home and could be there for him. Thankfully, I got to go full time WFH after that, and I'm here for my senior dog currently as well (though she's got several good years ahead of her, and the puppy she wanted 2 years ago keeps her plenty active lol).
My only hesitation about surrendering to animal rescue is that sometimes senior dogs are hard to re-home. Whoever adopts them has to expect medical bills for their care and have time to care for them. Or, worse, they end up in a "bad" home where the new owner doesn't treat them as well or punishes them for things that have been fine all their life. Sadly, a lot of senior dogs can and do spend the rest of their days in a kennel at the rescue center which breaks my heart to think about (especially if they're currently in a loving home).
I don't know your situation well enough to give any advice (merely things to think about), but if at all possible, I'd say he's better off in your care than going back through the rescue system. If for no other reason than the shock of re-homing and losing what he considers his best friend (you). Personally, I would only consider surrendering as a last resort if I'm completely unable to care for him financially or otherwise.
Seriously, we need the less carbon-emitting plants to replace the dirty coal ones, not come online just to power the AI hype :smh:
It just converts the raw binary data into character encoding, so it doesn't matter what the source is (image, video, database file, etc). The source binary data is taken 6 bits at a time, then this group of 6 bits is mapped to one of 64 unique characters.
The decoding process is just the reverse of that: mapping the data back to binary form.
If you're on Linux, you can convert that to something more human readable by piping it to base64. It works with any file, but I'll use an image here:
cat image.webp | base64
Which yields: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Copy that into a text file and pass it to base64 with the decode flag, and you'll get the original binary:
cat data.txt | base64 -d > data.bin
Inspect it to see what kind of file it is:
file data.bin
-> data.bin: RIFF (little-endian) data, Web/P image
Rename it so you can just double-click it to open it:
mv data.bin data.webp
Enjoy the surprise.
You can also print files like that, scan them using OCR, and then restore them. A very inefficient way to do backups, but it works.
I've read it once a few years ago, but don't remember a lot of the key points, so I'm doing a second read through. That's usually a good sign since I don't often go back and re-read a series.
Like most of his books, the hard sci-fi is there in excellent detail. There are two protagonists, sisters, and the reader's viewpoint switches between them in each book. The action is a lot like a sea pirate story but in space (their ships use solar sails for propulsion, so the analogy actually works quite well).
The first book (Revenger) is excellent and concludes like a self-contained story, so you could just read that and be satisfied. There are some unanswered questions, but even Reynold's standalone books leave some conclusions ambiguous. It is through the viewpoint of the younger sister.
The second, (Shadow Captain) is good, in and of itself, but definitely feels like it's just treading water to set up and get you to the third book. I'm on the last chapter of it. It is from the viewpoint of the older sister. Definitely the weakest of the series, though it sets up a lot of elements that pay off in the last book.
The third (Bone Silence) is back on track and explores the mysteries that were set up in the first two books. I still have a lot of gaps from the first read through, but I definitely remember it being pretty good. Will be starting on that one probably this evening.
"But we're selling the hardware at a loss, so letting you own what you paid for would break our crappy business model" /s
I would love if device makers were forced to open up their hardware to other OSs. Unlockable bootloaders for all as well as allowing users to install their own signing keys so secure boot can remain enabled.
Granted, there would still be black box firmware required to use half the components inside, but that's another battle.