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I'm out of town for a couple weeks and taking no tech with me except my phone and a USB drive with a bunch of SG-1 and my ssh keys on it. I may have time occasionally to rhetorically bitch-slap someone but not to hold up a serious conversation or to unfuck the servers if you folks break them while I'm gone. Which is basically to say that if you guys set the place on fire and want it put out, I hope you drank plenty of water beforehand.

It is quite helpful to list _all_ the locations for a few multinationals. It's even more helpful for each of those multinationals to be headquartered in a different country.

Once I've got all their locations listed, I will then put some effort into finding local tech companies. That is, once I've discovered that Sophia Antipolis is a tech hub it is straightforward to find lots of other firms that have shops there.

Now there's a page for the European Union. I do not yet list all of the EU countries, rather I currently list only those countries in which I have found at least one tech company.

However I intend to devote some work towards finding at least one such company in every EU member state. This so as to avoid insulting anyone's national pride.

I also have a page that lists African countries. So far I only list two different companies but I'll list a whole lot more by this time tomorrow.

The Wall Street Journal just published "The 25 Top Tech Firms To Pay Attention To". I've listed about 17 of them so far. When I'm done with 2018's Top 25 list, I'll move on to 2017's, 2016's and so on

About a third of the WSJ's Top 25 have more than one location. So far I've listed one multinational but likely there are more.

I'm in a pretty good mood this morning and you lot could very well make use of this, so I'm going to share with you the Old Indian Fire-Starting Trick as taught to me by my forefathers.

Setup: First you need a prepared fire ready to be set aflame. It can be your traditional fire of the tinder, kindling, wood type or it can even be charcoal doused in lighter fluid if you're in a bind. Next you need to announce that you'll be performing the "Old Indian Fire-starting Trick" to get it going.

Execution: Carefully inspect the prepared fire, making sure it is safely laid. Make visible note of any failed attempts to get it going. Wet a finger in your mouth and hold it up to test the wind. Affirm with a nod that conditions for the trick are suitable. Now pull a lighter* out of your pocket and use it to light the fire.

When called on your bullshit, recite the following, counting each off on a finger as you do: I tricked you, I started a fire, and I learned it from an old indian. Old indian. Fire-starting. Trick.

This trick is good for most any audience or occasion. Feel free to add any audience-appropriate cheese before you pull out the lighter. You're welcome.

* I advise a Bic for those of you not experienced in lighter selection. An overfilled Zippo will land you with a mild but annoying chemical burn on your leg and a Cricket will run out of fluid before it runs out of flint, leaving you looking at a lighter with fluid in it that can do nothing useful ever again.

A criminal complaint was unsealed today in the District of Columbia charging a Russian national with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States without prior notification to the Attorney General.

The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie K. Liu, and Nancy McNamara, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

Maria Butina, 29, a Russian citizen residing in Washington D.C., was arrested on July 15, 2018, in Washington, D.C., and made her initial appearance this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She was ordered held pending a hearing set for July 18, 2018.

According to the affidavit in support of the complaint, from as early as 2015 and continuing through at least February 2017, Butina worked at the direction of a high-level official in the Russian government who was previously a member of the legislature of the Russian Federation and later became a top official at the Russian Central Bank. This Russian official was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control in April 2018.

The court filings detail the Russian official’s and Butina’s efforts for Butina to act as an agent of Russia inside the United States by developing relationships with U.S. persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation. The filings also describe certain actions taken by Butina to further this effort during multiple visits from Russia and, later, when she entered and resided in the United States on a student visa. The filings allege that she undertook her activities without officially disclosing the fact that she was acting as an agent of Russian government, as required by law.

Russian National Charged in Conspiracy to Act as an Agent of the Russian Federation Within the United States

Congratulations to France, who played extraordinary soccer, on winning the 2018 World Cup. Additionally, congratulations to President Putin and Russia for putting on a truly great World Cup Tournament -- one of the best ever! breitbart.com/sports/2018/07/15/party-begins-as-delirious-french-revel-in-world-cup-victory

Looking forward to meeting with President Putin in Helsinki tomorrow! Unfortunately, no matter how well I do at the Summit, if I was given the great city of Moscow -- always so much fun -- as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia over the years, I would return to criticism that it wasn’t good enough -- that I should have gotten Saint Petersburg in addition! Much of our news media is indeed the enemy of the people and all the Dems know how to do is RESIST & OBSTRUCT! This is why there is such HATRED & DISSENSION in our Country -- but at some point, I will heal it! 💉😷💉

Joint Press Conference from Helsinki, Finland: pscp.tv/w/bhy5sDFvTlFs…

You may think you have many and varied reasons why some of the things I say boil your blood. You're wrong though, there's only really the one reason. Guilt.

In this world you either take the position that it is okay to do what you know is evil for $reasons or you do not. You do, I do not. You rationalize it away with as many layers of camouflage as necessary to obscure this from your conscious mind but your unconscious mind is not fooled. It knows you've chosen evil and it is not placated by your excuses. This is where the rage comes from inside you when I unashamedly speak the truth.

Only when you reject all rationalizations and excuses will you ever have the chance to be at peace with yourselves. A good fishing spot wouldn't hurt either, mind you.

You may now commence the guilt-fueled rejections of the truth I have just spoken.

I sometimes write small programs over Christmas. I published a rotating torus and a fractal animation. A previous effort was a sudoku puzzle solver. This type of puzzle involves completing a 9×9 numerical grid (or a 16×16 hexadecimal grid for the particularly ambitious) while meeting the constraints that a digit may not be repeated in a row, column or box. While some people find this type of puzzle to be fun, I find it rather tedious and contrived. I also like to solve the general case. People have used many techniques to solve sudoku puzzles and perhaps the most ambitious was a spread-sheet with multiple layers and a very large number of conditional operators. (This is more akin to a Kohonen network or a deeper neural network.)

My technique is rather blunt: 81 levels of recursion. Superficially, this would appear to require an infeasible maximum of 9^81 attempts. However, the constraints of the puzzle bound this to something more akin to 9×8×7×6×5×4×3×2×1 attempts and it often takes far less attempts. Indeed, solving an empty grid requires relatively little computation.

Input (via stdin) is nine lines of text with any non-numerical string as a separator between digits. Use digit zero for unknown inputs. Output (via stdout) is nine lines of text followed by a count of the recursion calls:-

begin 644 sudoku-solver.pl.gz
M'XL(`/4*0EL"`YV3SV^;,!3'[_XKW(:F$+<!$DT-(IXF=9===DFE'9(<\L-I
MK+F`;-,13?SO>S8.(5%6:;L`[_F]S_=];=.["4LEPS7/PH))@1]_(-3#LW*;
M_RSQ+!?O3$+L/P>C*!X_3O#+GN'G/%.YU+Q\&Z(>K)JE>#3ZA)5>2=TD)M%3
M%&.U>F<([7+I>X)&J2>FDQB>A"8!_HTP]C1[*^AT]O+UV_?/*22^")XQJ@K!
MM1_.%]E"+C1^6)+PP98&IL;B*H.KI@D\"&E@@'N5?#L'OE<MJ6=0<_@R/36J
M$5+E&F^Y*FRUI1P,Y6"'.K1#?:2`<2%YIO$]OA\ZM0-Q&D;E5'&[R&[/E"7;
ME%(Q"Q+Y9B5\;\L*O0^HVO.=3D]I$70"F?_JAIO\;'6=5S:$?)EI0LPWWSDR
MI9/X.'C?&/>#M#MATX0!)-30C8LQJ[AN!F]0C4L+7-[0J`4Z/TZ+Q)9=8R:<
M1Q@*9J>@Y$K"Q,D;$[3)W24N!4::4N@)Q\%@]$1L"*4F'*<M<4!=C[M6YD)-
M(0?'WCDF;R=6K[#FPH].U-H\^@0!<Y[&:+]_D:1PIX)NWU$F2MM4?0T*)J!_
MD%Q@V_1_@V'7"/BZ&P?-;E5FKRYE_E+T+Z+'M[D/MH;&W<ZS.P+8$^#Z+;G6
7U:K6[:]D?YV6$$$K0G\`U/.'`+`$````
`
end

(Usual instructions for uudecode process.)

I may finish writing a web interface for this script so that I can spoil more enjoyment save more tedium among non-technical people. I planned to implement a stateful script which uses an HTML form. However, if anyone wants to extract digits from an image, that would be greatly appreciated. This would allow a sudoku puzzle to be solved by selecting an app on a smartphone and pointing the smartphone's camera at the puzzle. Or uploading an image via an HTML form. I like to solve the general case.

A friend suggested a solitaire card game solver. I give this serious consideration.

Begin the test by looking at this picture. When you're finished looking, read the spoiler below.

A guy i know makes socks geared towards bicyclers (geared! get it?). His business is Sneaky Socks.

He was telling us about making socks (more interesting than you'd think) and he says it's hard to produce socks like China at their price because they have ENTIRE CITIES based on making things for your body:
Sock city: an entire city based on the production (and support) of socks.
They also have entire cities doing sweaters, shirts, pants, etc.

Imagine trying to compete with that.

He also says that they use cheap wool and nylon and the fibers are run between ropes drenched with kerosene in order to keep the 'fuzzing' down: better socks are made with better fibers and this is not needed.

It was, really, more interesting than i thought.

Two quick searches led me to these:
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/24/business/worldbusiness/in-roaring-china-sweaters-are-west-of-socks-city.html/

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/sep/09/sock-city-decline-china-economy

Today on this 214th anniversary of the historic duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton I have but one thing to say.

Ham shot first.