Thankful Thursday

[mdlbear]

Today I am grateful for...

• Of all things, the US Supreme Court! And a Trump appointee who actually thinks like a judge. (Unlike the more recent one.)
• End-to-end encrypted communication. Callouts to Signal, Jami, and ssh. (Haven't actually tried Jami yet, but it looks promising. Maybe a little clumsy.)
• Linux Weekly News. I don't think I've ever thanked LWN before, but it's the source of many of my Linux (and other software) links.
• Fidgets. (My current favorite is 24 little cubical magnets arranged in a 2x2x6 block.)
• Not being sick.

Comments

[kengr]

Get 3 more magnets and you can have a 3x3x3 cube.

Though I'm not sure if the polarities will let you *put* them in that arrangement

[mdlbear]

I just tried this, and it worked. Pretty worthless as a fidget toy, though -- pushing on part of it causes it to rearrange itself into a more stable and less symmetrical form. (With a 2x2 stack you can slide two columns over the other two, and it's fairly stable even with only two rows overlapping.)

[jesse_the_k]

My fingers are itching to trouble that fidget -- was it a commercial score, or did you craft it from a pile of magnets yourself?

For $1.05 I got 144 16mm split rings in a bag. I've wasted many an hour putting them together in various combinations.

[mdlbear]

Just a pile of little magnets -- 5mm cubes. E.g. https://www.apexmagnets.com/magnets/4mm-x-4mm-x-4mm-cubes-neodymium-magnet

You wonderful enabler, you.

[jesse_the_k]

I'm so looking forward to twiddling this.

Do I have to be careful about getting these magnets near my iDevices, Mac, jump drives, or credit cards?

Re: You wonderful enabler, you.

[mdlbear]

Credit cards, only if they have a magnetic stripe that you want to keep using. Magnets have no effect at all on solid-state devices (jump drives, SSDs, etc.) and are way too weak to affect the data on a hard drive.