For many US motorists, updating their license at the DMV can be a herculean feat with lengthy wait times.

If you’re an AAA member, you can already just go there for a lot of DMV services and have them done there. They’re considerably faster.

Last time I checked in California, they couldn’t do driver’s license renewals, though AAA can in some other states.

A more-practical “provide a faster alternative” change than abolishing the DMV might be just letting California AAA do driver’s license renewals.

The European Commission unveiled on Wednesday a legislative proposal allowing EU public authorities to favour European companies in public procurement for key public services such as energy, water, railways, ports, airports and postal services.

So…let’s say that a company based in Europe obtains a contract to provide, say, port service. Ten years down the line, say, can they be acquired by a company based elsewhere?

What about obtaining a de facto controlling interest via one mechanism or another?

Thank you!

For Android F-Droid users, as of this writing, it looks like it’s not yet out on F-Droid, but one can pull and update the releases directly from the GitHub release page using Obtanium.

EDIT: Aw yeah, the new item graphics look nice.

I’m okay with the comic, though I’m not a fan of The New Yorker’s articles.

But the spacing on the typeface in the caption around those right-hand quote marks, both the single and double, is killing me.

looks more

I guess maybe when they made the italic font, they had to move the quote marks to avoid colliding with slanted letters, like the capital T—the left-hand quote marks next to it look fine to me. But then, maybe they didn’t add kerning information so that if an adjacent character didn’t require shifting, the right-hand quotes didn’t shift all the way over, so they’re always left hanging out there to make space for potentially-problematic characters.

You’d think that an entity like The New Yorker, with a long history of printed output, would have selected solid typefaces.

The Tates’ legal team said in a statement that the decision to keep them in custody creates a legal contradiction. The brothers are being detained in the United States because of a British extradition request while simultaneously being required to defend themselves against charges in Romania, the statement said.

“They are now facing an extraordinary situation in which they are being held thousands of miles from Romania while Romanian proceedings continue, deadlines approach, an additional indictment is said to be imminent and their own Romanian lawyer says he cannot properly prepare,” the lawyers said.

Isn’t the reason that you were in the US to get arrested while there are Romanian charges because you fled Romania to avoid the law there?

searches

https://fortune.com/2026/07/19/tate-brothers-andrew-tristan-private-jet-miami-arrest/

Tate brothers fled Romania — and rape allegations — on a private jet. Now they’re in a Miami jail cell

Yeah. I mean, that doesn’t exactly seem like the best thing to use in trying to argue that you’re not a flight risk and should be out on bail.

Yeah, honestly, you could go way further back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine

A Venus figurine is any Upper Palaeolithic statue portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.[1] Most have been unearthed in Europe, but others have been found as far away as Siberia and distributed across much of Eurasia.

Most date from the Gravettian period (26,000–21,000 years ago).[1] However, findings are not limited to this period; for example, the Venus of Hohle Fels dates back at least 35,000 years…

For context, we figured out agriculture and started to move away from hunter-gatherer life about 12,000 years ago.

These figurines are recognised as some of the earliest works of prehistoric art.

Most have wide hips and legs that taper to a point. Arms and feet are often absent, and the head is usually small and faceless. Various figurines exaggerate the abdomen, hips, breasts, thighs, or vulva, although many found examples do not reflect these typical characteristics. Depictions of hairstyles can be detailed, and clothing or tattoos may be indicated.[5]

The original cultural meaning and purpose of these artefacts is not known. It has frequently been suggested that they may have served a ritual or symbolic function.

I have a guess.

Three fingers is typically—I mean, you can potentially rig a touchpad up for whatever—a middle-click, which isn’t a terribly-common operation in Windows, but is in Linux (to insert whatever is in the PRIMARY selection, which is typically text that one has selected), or to scroll something while dragging.

EDIT: IMHO, a touchpad with three physical buttons is preferable to multi-touch, though it costs slightly more. However, aside from some Thinkbook models that have a Synaptics touchpad, it’s uncommon as an integrated option in a laptop.

You can get external, USB-connected touchpads that have three physical buttons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

The demon core was a sphere of plutonium–gallium alloy that was involved in two fatal radiation accidents when scientists tested it as a fissile core of an early atomic bomb.

Scientists referred to this flirtation with a nuclear chain reaction as “tickling the dragon’s tail”, based on a remark by physicist Richard Feynman.[12][13]

It was a case of an unfortunate mistranslation due to the lack of awareness among historians about the thriving scalie scene at the Manhattan Project.

If you’d rather stay on the command line, a compromise might be to use something like Midnight Commander. Back in my DOS days I used to use an equivalent there on a regular basis, but that’s because I hadn’t launched Windows and didn’t feel like it was necessary to do what I wanted.

Note that this class of file managers (two-pane, Norton Commander-alike) are called “orthodox file managers”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Orthodox_file_managers

https://softpanorama.org/OFM/index.shtml

My experience is that people out of Eastern Europe in particular seem to have a history of using these.

There are also some non-OFM console file managers, like ranger, which might appeal to vim-folk:

https://github.com/ranger/ranger

Ranger is a console file manager with VI key bindings. It provides a minimalistic and nice curses interface with a view on the directory hierarchy.

I use dired in emacs, which does a number of things similarly to an OFM if you have two panes open (though dired is not itself an OFM, and emacs does have Sunrise Commander, which is an OFM).

Generally, I live in bash, but I find that file managers are handy when you want to manually mark a set of files to run an operation on (like, you can’t programmatically identify them).

Well…Control-C is treated by bash differently than in emacs. It basically cancels the existing line and gives you a fresh line.

And IIRC, Control-V is also different, used to input literal control characters. Like, the terminal will handle that if it’s in cooked mode.

checks

$ od -x

hits Control-V Control-C Enter Control-D

^C

0000000 0a03
0000002
$

Yeah.

Control-U is also a notable difference I know off-the-cuff. In emacs, it’s the universal-argument prefix, which is an important way to pass arguments to functions. In readline, it’s kill-to-beginning-of-line.

Legend has it that every new technology is first used for something related to sex or pornography. That seems to be the way of humankind.

—Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of HTTP and HTML

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/mar/03/internetnews.observerfocus

The dirty secret that drives new technology: it’s porn

The Guardian, 24 years ago

If you’re using bash and haven’t modified the readline default, which is to use emacs keystrokes:

$ ls foo/bar/baz

Just what I wanted!

Control-P Control-A Alt-D cd Enter

Intel is reportedly giving its own fab capacity priority to higher-margin server processors, which is putting additional pressure on PC CPU capacity.

By reducing low-margin products, Intel CEO Chen Li-wu is improving overall profitability. These are all strategic adjustments.

— DIGITIMES (translation)

It was a whole lot of datacenter being built out.

Go away, Elon.

My understanding is that paint is only very rarely stripped out of existing houses. It’s normally just painted over.

In the US, lead paint prohibitions went into place in 1978.

So unless you’ve avoided being in buildings constructed prior to 1978, you have probably been in buildings with lead paint.

That’s not to say that there aren’t benefits to painting over lead paint. I’m sure that it reduces the amount of leaded paint dust and such. But a chip can still contain paint from an earlier coat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-based_paint_in_the_United_States

In 1971, Congress banned the use of lead-based paint in residential projects (including residential structures and environments) constructed by, or with the assistance of, the federal government.[3] The Consumer Product Safety Commission followed with implementing regulations, effective in 1978.[4] Additional regulations regarding lead abatement, testing and related issues have been issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

It looks like Linux users don’t have to miss out on said ad!

https://github.com/keshavbhatt/BingWall

Bing wallpaper of the day application for Gnome desktop

There are legitimately locations that have gotten a tourism bump from being present in media.

https://vegasspecialtytours.com/goodsprings-fallout-tour/

Step into the world of Fallout: New Vegas on our Goodsprings Fallout Tour. This immersive tour takes you to the historic town of Goodsprings, Nevada, the real-life inspiration behind the beloved video game. Experience the rich history and unique charm of this iconic location as you explore its fascinating past and connection to the Fallout universe.

I think that the idea of Miami doing it is pretty nuts, though, content aside. Miami isn’t some kind of obscure backwater from a tourism standpoint.

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/greater-miami-convention-visitors-bureau-193400956.html

The numbers are in and Greater Miami and Miami Beach continues to deliver by charting new records in visitation. At the GMCVB’s annual State of the Travel & Tourism Industry event, tourism leaders gathered to herald a milestone 2025: 28.3 million visitors, $32.2 billion in total economic impact and a globally competitive destination that continues to bolster employment, drives commerce to local businesses and delivers quality-of-life benefits for every Miami-Dade County resident.

I do see people online talking about using Excel to do knitting patterns.

I don’t know if his grandma just “accidentally opened it”—maybe she heard about it from someone else—but it does look like it’s a thing.

I’d probably suggest using a pixel art app or something instead, but, well, Microsoft Office is pretty much everywhere.

Reddit, 5 months ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/knitting/comments/1rz5udj/creating_patterns_on_excel/

Knitting website, 15 years ago:

https://anniebeeknits.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/charting-in-excel/

Charting knitting patterns in Excel

I do all my charting in Excel, personally. Mostly this is sheer laziness, since it’s the software I know best from my day job, and I can’t be bothered to purchase or learn another program! Anyway, I had some tips and tricks to share with Glenna, and I promised I’d make her a proper tutorial. I’m hardly an expert (at Excel OR at designing) but maybe this will prompt some others to share their tips and tricks too. Here goes!

Knitting website, 16 years back:

https://www.chemknits.com/2010/01/how-to-make-knitting-chart-in-excel_9394.html?m=1

How to Make a Knitting Chart in Excel (Part 1 - Setting up the Chart)

A comment on my peptide beer cozy pattern page inquired how I was able to make the chart look so good. You can go to an office supply store and purchase graph paper. You can download graph paper online. But how can you easily make a chart of your own design and share it on the web? In this article, I will give you a tutorial for using Microsoft Excel to generate your knitting charts. In Part 2, I will discuss how to draw your chart and in Part 3, how to save and share your chart.

It looks like people have developed a set of conventions using Excel functionality to colorize cells based on the characters in them, so they can rapidly input patterns using the keyboard.

Textile patterns are one of the earliest commercial computer uses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine

The Jacquard machine (French: [ʒakaʁ]) is a device fitted to a loom that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask and matelassé.[3] The resulting ensemble of the loom and Jacquard machine is then called a Jacquard loom. The machine was patented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804,[4][5][6][7] based on earlier inventions by the Frenchmen Basile Bouchon (1725), Jean Baptiste Falcon (1728), and Jacques Vaucanson (1740).[8] The machine was controlled by a “chain of cards”; a number of punched cards laced together into a continuous sequence.[9] Multiple rows of holes were punched on each card, with one complete card corresponding to one row of the design.

The Jacquard head used replaceable punched cards to control a sequence of operations. It is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware.[26] The ability to change the pattern of the loom’s weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming and data entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wright

In 2011, he founded Liberty Energy, then known as Liberty Oilfield Services.[15] As of February 2023, the company was valued at $2.8 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.[16] As the CEO of Liberty Energy, Wright earned $5.6 million in 2023.[11]

Despite Herculean efforts on his part, Chris Wright was ultimately unable to live up to voter expectations of delivering lower fuel prices.