optional

It happens more often than you think. There’s an old German song about a bear who accidentally gets a job in a factory they built above his cave one winter. When he roams around the factory after waking up they mistake him for an unshaved, lazy worker and put him in front of a machine to do some tedious work.

It’s basically the opposite story to the one in this comic.

What’s the advantage of disk encryption if you don’t require a password to boot? Couldn’t you just boot the device and extract the data using Explorer anyway?

I mean, obviously people would be confused if you called February “spring” in Australia, but then again you celebrate Christmas in summer 😁

What do you mean when you say that the US uses this model and Australia uses that model? Who uses it and for what? In my country the government doesn’t tell us what season it is or what system to use. People just use whatever system they fancy and most likely it’s just based on gut feeling instead of a calendar day.

No one will look at you sceptically when you say “This is a cold winter” on a freezing November day, nor will the be confused if you say “What a nice spring day” on a sunny February afternoon.

There are (at least) four different definitions of winter:

• Astronomical seasons are what you describe, and these are obviously based on astronomical events, for which the equinoxes and solstices are the perfect fix points. That the seasons start at these days is purely conventional, and in some times (roman empire) and places (Celtic calendar) people used these days as the center point of the season instead (also known as “Solar seasons”). Why those don’t match up with the actual temperature has already been explained in countless other replies.
• Meteorological seasons use a simple, month based approach, where winter is just December, January and February. That makes it easier for statistical usage but obviously is also just a man-made convention.
• The energy sector defines winter as the time of extended energy needs due to heating. Where I live, that’s defined as 1. of October - 31. of March, but for obvious reasons that’s highly dependent on where you are.
• Phenological seasons are a bit more what you’re looking for: They are based on biological events in indicator plants and a lot more complex than just being four fixed periods and only ever the same for small regions. Where I live, there are ten phenological seasons, winter starts when the English Oaks drop their leafs and ends with the blooming of the Common Hazle.

In other cultures there might be vastly different seasons. In many tropical countries you’ll only have the dry season and the monsun season.

Use the drumset on speaker mode at 3am, sell silence to your neighbours for money and use the ransom to buy a pressure washer.

You can complete Factorio? How? Please tell me how! I’ve been trapped in this game for the last 2000 hours and I can’t find the exit-button.

I’m planning to upgrade my Linux system with a new graphics card soon, and the only reason I’m actually still considering Nvidia is CUDA. It just seems so much easier, and so much more broadly supported by software. But maybe that’s just because I’ve never tried it.

Is there anything else for me to do on the island? Is it big enough to go hiking, can you swim in the ocean, or is there just a desk and a chair and you have to play all day while not eating/sleeping? Because if that was the case, I’d choose some sports game, probably Nintendo’s Ring Fit Adventure, but I don’t know any alternatives. Sitting at the desk 16 hours a day would be quite uncomfortable after a while. Other than that my choices have already been named: Factorio (can I wait till October please, before you send me off to that island 🙏. I can’t wait 5 more years for the expansion!) and KSP.