Thursday 2/22/24
Celebrate:
Be Humble Day
George Washington's Birthday
Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day
National Chili Day
National Cook a Sweet Potato Day
National Margarita Day
National Wildlife Day
Play More Cards Day
Recreational Sports & Fitness Day
Scouts Founder's Day
Supermarket Employee Day
The Great American Spit Out - raises awareness about the harmful effects of smokeless tobacco
Walking the Dog Day
World Thinking Day
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How would you like to drop out of the normal world for a year? (It's an election year so that's tempting.)
Nasa is seeking four volunteers to spend a year living on Mars – or at least a 3D-printed replica of the red planet. Isolation is pretty much guaranteed.
It is designed to help develop and evaluate the systems that will be used by the first generation of astronauts to visit Mars, on missions ambitiously slated for the 2030s.
The agency says the volunteers will be living in a 1,700 sq ft habitat called Mars Dune Alpha, which will simulate the challenges of a Mars mission, “including resource limitations, equipment failures, communication delays, and other environmental stressors”.
You must have a university degree in engineering, mathematics, or biological, physical or computer science, and subsequent experience in those fields, or 1,000 hours as a pilot.
There is already a crew in there and leave in August.
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iPhone users and Android users, do you close your background apps? We've always been told to do it once in a while since they are still pulling on the battery.
Stop!
Closing background apps does nothing because those apps aren’t actually “running.”
In 2016, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, confirmed that closing your background apps does nothing for your battery life, in response to a customer’s email shared with 9to5Mac. On a technical level, most of your background apps are essentially frozen, and your system just displays a screenshot of them for consistency. The impact on your battery life is negligible.
It actually uses more battery than just leaving them open. That’s because shutting down and initializing an app requires more energy than restoring it from its suspended state in your “background.”
This myth, like others, is pervasive because it feels like it should be true. On a computer, having too many tabs or applications open can make it run slower. That much is true, but an iPhone’s operating system is fundamentally different. Apps on your iPhone are meant to permanently stay open, able to be called up in an instant at any time. This distinction was never made clear by Apple.
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You've probably heard the "hack" about putting wet cell phones in rice . . . especially if you've panicked after dropping your phone in the toilet.
But Apple is warning you NOT to do it. iPhones are more sophisticated than they used to be, and some can handle certain levels of water. They now have a "liquid detection" warning that tells you if your USB-C port gets wet.
There are things you CAN do: Dry the phone with a cloth, and tap the phone gently to "drain" water from the ports. Leave the phone in a dry area with airflow, and avoid putting cables inside until it's completely dry.
But they say, "Don't insert a foreign object, such as a cotton swab or a paper towel, into the connector. And don't put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone."
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A new study found you can skip working out Monday through Friday and still get in shape, if you go REALLY hard on the weekends.
It looked at "weekend warriors" . . . people who like to cram all their exercise into a few days . . . and found that's fine too. The goal just needs to be at least 150 minutes of exercise a week.
That means you could work out 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Or 1 hour and 15 minutes, two days a week.
The Weekend Warriours did have to have a really intense workout though, so it might be better if you can spread it out.
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Microsoft Network put together a list of seven movies that are DEBATABLY so terrible, they're great.
Here they are, in no particular order:
1. "The Room" (2003)
2. "Mac and Me" (1988)
3. "Fateful Findings" (2013)
4. "Cats" (2019) No...nothing can make this movie worth watching...NOTHING!!!!)
5. "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1959)
6. "Troll 2" (1990)
7. "The Happening" (2008) Terrible...Terrible..Awful!
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18-year-old Anna Harycki works at a place near Indianapolis called Prime Car Wash. And she had a run-in this month with a customer who was very rude for no good reason.
The woman had just pulled her car into the tunnel to get it washed. And Anna was pressure-washing the driver's side doors when the lady rolled down her window . . . and threw a cup of lemonade at her.
It's not clear why the woman was upset, but Anna didn't skip a beat. While the window was still down, she took the pressure-washer and blasted the woman in the FACE.
The whole thing only lasted a few seconds before the lady rolled her window up, and Anna went back to washing her car. But a security camera got it all on video.
The car wash sided with Anna. The woman and her boyfriend are now banned from coming back.
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Today’s Useless Fact of the Day - From 1935 to 1937, restaurants in Wisconsin were legally required to serve cheese and butter with every meal.
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