All posts tagged: Solution

Mali crisis: Junta entrenches itself with no political solution in sight

Mali crisis: Junta entrenches itself with no political solution in sight

Published by Sam Flores

It has been more than a week since jihadist and separatist forces in Mali launched a major military campaign aimed at ousting the ruling junta. On the first day of the offensive, Mali’s defence minister was killed. Since then, rebels have seized a strategic military stronghold in the north and are now attempting to blockade the capital, Bamako. FRANCE 24 terrorism expert Wassim Nasr explains the latest developments. Source link

RAID isn’t a backup solution, please stop treating it like one

RAID isn’t a backup solution, please stop treating it like one

Published by skeptic

In the world of high-availability data storage, RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, has almost mythical status. It’s the go-to for everything from enterprise data centers to home labs housing media libraries. But it’s also wildly misunderstood, and that could cost you a huge amount of data and a lot of heartache. It’s a common misconception that data on a RAID array doesn’t need to be backed up. That’s not the case. And while it’s true that RAID arrays can offer redundancy should one of your hard drives fail, you still need a robust backup system in place. It’s the only way to make sure that your most important files are safe and sound should the worst happen, and that’s a lesson that’s worth learning right now — before it’s too late. Related Don’t use SSDs for long-term storage; do this instead They’re a terrible place to stash files you won’t touch for months. RAID can save the day in the right circumstances But it isn’t the safety net you think it is Image …

Contributor: Drug courts fail women, but there’s a solution

Contributor: Drug courts fail women, but there’s a solution

Published by Sam Flores

When Susan Burton lost her 5-year-old son after he was struck by a police vehicle in Los Angeles, her grief drove her into addiction. Crack cocaine became her way to cope, and California’s response was to lock her up again and again. Over two decades, she was incarcerated six times, released each time without treatment, housing or support. Exceptionally, she transformed her pain into purpose, founding A New Way of Life in South L.A., a re-entry program for formerly incarcerated women. Burton’s story reflects a system that can end up punishing survivors rather than helping them through trauma. As of 2020, 32% of unhoused people in L.A. County were women. Nearly half reported having experienced domestic violence, and many struggled with substance abuse and binge drinking. These intersecting vulnerabilities — trauma, addiction, poverty — create a dangerous feedback loop. All too often, this loop leads to petty crimes, what one might call crimes of survival — probation violations, petty theft, vagrancy, possession. Some of these women end up in L.A.’s drug courts, which were created …

Ibogaine: A Psychedelic Solution to the Opioid Epidemic?

Ibogaine: A Psychedelic Solution to the Opioid Epidemic?

Published by Jenni Sidey

Ibogaine is a psychoactive alkaloid found in the root bark of Tabernanthe iboga, a shrub native to Central and West Africa. For generations it has been used in Bwiti spiritual and initiation ceremonies in Gabon and neighboring regions. Ibogaine produces a profound long-lasting psychedelic state, potentially 24-48 hours. Many describe the dream-like experience as a personal “life review.” In the late 20th century, people began to notice something remarkable: some individuals who took ibogaine reported that their opioid or cocaine cravings dramatically decreased, and that withdrawal symptoms were blunted or even temporarily absent. This kicked off decades of underground use and small research programs looking at ibogaine as a potential “anti-addiction” medicine. In the United States, ibogaine is currently a Schedule I substance—classified as having “no accepted medical use” and a high potential for abuse. It is not FDA-approved for any indication. Most treatment with ibogaine today happens in clinics in Mexico, Canada, Brazil, and a few other countries with more permissive laws. Trump’s new executive order, passed April 18, 2026, is removing legal impediments …

Young adults struggle to break into housing market as Congress seeks solution

Young adults struggle to break into housing market as Congress seeks solution

Published by Sam Flores

Young adults are struggling to break into the housing market, facing historically high barriers to homeownership and falling behind previous generations. A survey released by real estate brokerage Redfin in January found that 38.3 percent of 28-year-olds owned their home last year, less than the 42.5 percent of Generation Xers and 44.4 percent of baby… Source link

A Chinese company’s novel solution to long EV charge times : NPR

A Chinese company’s novel solution to long EV charge times : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

An electric vehicle is seen at NIO battery swap station on March 9, 2025 in Yantai, Shandong Province of China. Tang Ke/VCG via Getty Images/Visual China Group hide caption toggle caption Tang Ke/VCG via Getty Images/Visual China Group BEIJING – Take a road trip in an electric car, and you know the juicing up routine. You pull off the highway, park at a charging station, plug in the car … and wait. If you’re lucky, it’s about half an hour. Sometimes, it’s longer. In China, one company can get you back on the road in minutes. I had the opportunity to see how, with Jason Wu, an executive at NIO Power, an EV maker. A few weeks ago, I sat in a roomy SUV, while Wu, in the driver’s seat, spoke to the vehicle. “Hi Nomi.” “I’m here,” the car responds in a cute, child-like voice. Wu asks the car to initiate a battery swap, and the car takes over. We drive into a small structure that looks like a one car garage without front …

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records (2026): Vacuum, Ultrasonic, Solution, Brush

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records (2026): Vacuum, Ultrasonic, Solution, Brush

Published by skeptic

With the ultrasonic cleaning machine, you don’t need to vacuum out the grime for each record you clean, because the machine shakes all the gunk off for you. It collects at the bottom of the basin, so you just need to make sure it all gets dumped out when you empty the liquid from the machine between uses. Once your records have taken their bath in the diluted cleaning solution mixture, place them on the drying rack. If a record (or, more realistically, stack of records) is especially dirty, I clean them two times with either method in progressively cleaner fluid. In my ultrasonic machine, I do all my records once, then change the fluid and do them again. Be sure to have a clean microfiber towel ($5) handy so that the record is fully dry before returning it to its packaging. Some people prefer to also rinse the clean records in distilled water at the end of the cleaning cycle to remove any remaining solution. If you do that, just dry them the same …

The green solution to climate change isn’t happening – and that’s good

The green solution to climate change isn’t happening – and that’s good

Published by skeptic

The Drax Power Station in the north of England Ian Lamond/Alamy You’ve probably seen those nice graphs showing carbon dioxide levels and temperatures falling towards the end of the century. How is this miracle meant to be achieved? The idea is that we harvest plants, burn them for energy and then capture and store the CO2. Voila, problem solved! Except bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS, as this idea is known, is turning out to be an unmitigated disaster. It isn’t being rolled out on anything like the scale required, in part because it’s ridiculously expensive, would be catastrophic for biodiversity if it was done on this scale and, last but far from least, it doesn’t even work. It actually increases CO2 emissions rather than reducing them on the timescales that matter. As Leo Hickman at CarbonBrief has documented, BECCS was first proposed in 2001 by researchers in Sweden thinking about how paper mills there might be able to earn carbon credits. In 2005, a few climate modellers seized on this entirely theoretical …

The green solution to climate change isn’t happening – and that’s good

A key solution to climate change isn’t happening – and that’s good

Published by skeptic

The Drax Power Station in the north of England Ian Lamond/Alamy You’ve probably seen those nice graphs showing carbon dioxide levels and temperatures falling towards the end of the century. How is this miracle meant to be achieved? The idea is that we harvest plants, burn them for energy and then capture and store the CO2. Voila, problem solved! Except bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS, as this idea is known, is turning out to be an unmitigated disaster. It isn’t being rolled out on anything like the scale required, in part because it’s ridiculously expensive, would be catastrophic for biodiversity if it was done on this scale and, last but far from least, it doesn’t even work. It actually increases CO2 emissions rather than reducing them on the timescales that matter. As Leo Hickman at CarbonBrief has documented, BECCS was first proposed in 2001 by researchers in Sweden thinking about how paper mills there might be able to earn carbon credits. In 2005, a few climate modellers seized on this entirely theoretical …

The solution to creeping technofacism? Be annoying

The solution to creeping technofacism? Be annoying

Published by Sam Flores

It began as a way to tell a better story. A small, semi-transparent rectangle floating in midair above home plate, first rolled out by ESPN in 2001, showed something approaching the strike zone of a Major League Baseball player. As a flat, rigid representation of a fluctuating and notional three-dimensional space, it wasn’t perfect. But it gave viewers some sense of what players, pitchers and umpires were figuring out in real time: What counts as a ball and a strike in the most subjective of all spectator sports? Armed with footage of strike calls that sailed wide of the supposed mark, supplemented by cameras wedged into the masks of umps and catchers, commentators had proof of umpires’ tendencies to expand or contract the plate. To be sure, it was an improvement. Compared to the cheesy comet-tails that NBC began editing into slo-mo pitch replays in the ‘80s, ESPN’s ghostly “K-Zone” felt deadly serious: a technological marvel for an objective, computer-assisted age. Anyone reading this on an internet-connected device in 2026 already knows the trajectory of …