Yep. See? Private Johnson gets it.

As for the rest of you sad sacks! Drop and give me 20!

I don't think it was automatic. He posted in the login issues thread at the same time that this thread was resurrected so he was definitely here.

I was taught feet and inches. A ruler is 12 inches here. We don't carry around meter sticks...

Also, in 'Murica, the year is an afterthought. Everyone knows what year it is. They don't care. They don't want to see it. They mentally skip it unless it is strictly necessary.

1/17, 11:08AM -6 GMT

What's useful about YYYY-MM-DD is that it can be sorted alphanumerically without having to parse the components. Also, it's unambiguous. There are regions that do MM-DD-YYYY and DD-MM-YYYY. With many dates those are completely ambigious so if you discover data like that in the wild you can't know what it means. Fortunately, I haven't heard of any idiots doing YYYY-DD-MM yet. If anybody ever proposes it I suggest we burn them at the steak. That's probably the one scenario that would justify it.

Also, I can finally login again again.

How dare you burn a steak?

Steak is much better well done.

Why not use star date format?

A stardate is a five-digit number followed by a decimal point and one more digit. Example: "41254.7." The first two digits of the stardate are always "41." The 4 stands for 24th century, the 1 indicates first season. The additional three leading digits will progress unevenly during the course of the season from 000 to 999. The digit following the decimal point is generally regarded as a day counter.

Me too.

Just because Trump made a "Space Force", (complete with CAMO uniforms may I add), doesn't mean we should use star dates.

2020/01/24 1020hrs

I just find it funny that you need camouflage suits in space. ;/

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Looks familiar...

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You might as well be saying the same thing about submarines.

Imagine having a weapon, that cannot physically be reached by 99% of the countries on the planet.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Space_warfare

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Militarisation_of_space

Also the incredibly named "Rods from God" weapon aka "Project Thor":

https://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-rods-from-god-kinetic-weapon-hit-with-nuclear-weapon-force-2017-9

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kinetic_bombardment

A simple tungston rod floating in space, launched from a satelite, impacts with as much energy as a nuclear bomb, with zero radiation. Because all the energy is physical, it's also extremely hard to "stop it" because you can't just hit it before it "explodes" like a cruise missile. Imagine trying to "stop" a nuke once it already detonates. A Rod from God has all the energy from the fall itself (so your only chance is stopping or deflecting it very near launch before it gains energy).

China is also pioneering hypersonic missiles. Missiles that can launch from China and hit New York within like 20 minutes. They present an incredibly hard target to stop through any traditional anti-missile defenses. It's like trying to stop a cannon shell (almost impossible)... except >10x faster and carrying a nuclear warhead.

Another interesting one is that the US Navy has been seriously working on rail guns (Quake 3 fans I guess?) And made tons of progress. Like rods of god, the "payload" damage comes solely from the kinetic energy (the mass times speed squared), and they are not restrained to CHEMICAL speed limits (IIRC, typically the speed of sound) the way traditional bullets and cannons are. They're slated to fire like 200 KM in range, with no need for an expensive or complicated failable "warhead", and are also hypersonic in max speed.

I really pray we never use any of these new weapons. But they do represent pioneers of theoretical science combined with engineering applicability. There's also some "good" that comes out of mutually assured destruction... we think. Only time will tell, but there is evidence that the "big three" (USA, China, Russia) have refused to directly fight... even though they've been enemies since WW2 ended. Their only casualities are the numerous proxy wars. Which sucks for those countries citizens, but, at the same time, overall humanity as prospered immensely over the lack of a "real", "scorched earth", "total war" (complete industrial commitment to war effort) since WW2.

China wants to increase its influence for SURE. But hopefully, they enjoy their prosperity so much thanks to open global trade, that they value their cushy lives over that of any gain from warfare and that will keep humanity going. If China commited to total war, their (and our, and everyone else's) economy would completely collapse. We're all too intertwined. We all love music from all countries. We love furniture from around the world. We love art, BEEF, and everything else. To start a new, real war, means slicing the entire world back into "Soviet Union satellites Vs Westerners" at the very least, and at worst, complete isolationism (if we survive at all). So if China doesn't make sweet tasting tacos, they simply won't have them at all, or anything else they normally import.

The complete shock to their citizens daily lives would obliterate any political support they had and end with a revolution. You want to get people in the streets? F!@# with their daily lives.

e.g. War in Syria? Nobody knows. It doesn't really affect them. People say they "support" or "don't support" war or rebels or whatever. But 99% of people aren't in the streets in the USA. Meanwhile, look what happened when Virgina tried to take away their citizens constitutional right to bear arms. Within DAYS almost every single local city government declared they would not comply. Massive protests. Declaration of "gun sanctuary cities". Massive grass root campaigns. Plans to vote out every single member of Congress that approved of the measure. You don't !@$! with people's day-to-day lives. Expect the exact same kind of affect if someone tried to ban "Beef" or "soda" the next day.

If China, Russia, or USA started a real war that fractured the global economy, people would destroy their own governments to get it back. They want that cushy lifestyle over "conquest" of some other country. Everyone just wants to go to work, come home, and watch cat videos on YouTube with their family.

[edit] Also, looks like Matt finally paid the Amazon cloud bill. This sucker is fast!

Looks like the reason the website runs like buttsauce now is every time it tries to update our 6000 post thread.

Looks like someone has a O^2 algorithm.

That reminds me. One of my college friends was from "the newest nation in world". He would talk with glowing eyes, it was so cute. He was from South Sudan, which decided it would split off from "Sudan".

Unfortunately, in the years since, I've only heard of civil rights and corruption problems in South Sudan. They've had a lot of trouble setting up a "real" government for years to the point the UN is threatening them to get their crap together.

It really highlights how hard it is to start a new country and how lucky we are to be in a country that didn't explode into corruption the second a power vacuum was created by a new government.