Under the CMB method, it sounds like the calculation gives the same expansion rate everywhere. Under the Cepheid method, they get a different expansion rate, but it’s the same in every direction. Apparently, this isn’t the first time it’s been seen. What’s new here is that they did the calculation for 1000 Cepheid variable stars. So, they’ve confirmed an already known discrepancy isn’t down to something weird on the few they’ve looked at in the past.

So, the conflict here is likely down to our understanding of ether the CMB or Cepheid variables.

Except it’s not that they are finding the expansion rate is different in some directions. Instead they have two completely different ways of calculating the rate of expansion. One uses the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang. The other uses Cepheid stars.

The problem is that the Cepheid calculation is much higher than the CMB one. Both show the universe is expanding, but both give radically different number for that rate of expansion.

So, it’s not that the expansion’s not spherical. It’s that we fundamentally don’t understand something to be able to nail down what that expansion rate is.

As a first book, I think Children of Time is much better than Shards of Earth. I enjoyed both series but would say the third book in each was the weakest. The Final Architecture series had a slightly stronger third entry.

Thanks. Very interesting. I’m not sure I see such a stark contrast pre/post 9-11. However, the idea that the US public’s approach to the post-9-11 conflict would have an influence makes sense and isn’t something I’d ever have considered on my own.

Me too, but I’d put Usenet in there before Slashdot.

The South. Just below Indiana, the middle finger of the South. And I say this as a Hoosier for much of my life.

As a guy responsible for a 1,000 employee O365 tenant, I’ve been watching this with concern.

I don’t think I’m a target of state actors. I also don’t have any E5 licenses.

I’m disturbed at the opaqueness of MS’ response. From what they have explained, it sounds like the bad actors could self-sign a valid token to access cloud resources. That’s obviously a huge concern. It also sounds like the bad actors only accessed Exchange Online resources. My understanding is they could have done more, if they had a valid token. I feel like the fact that they didn’t means something’s not yet public.

I’m very disturbed by the fact that it sounds like I’d have no way to know this sort of breach was even occurring.

Compared to decades ago, I have a generally positive view of MS and security. It bothers me that this breach was a month in before the US government notified MS of it. It also bothers me that MS hasn’t been terribly forthcoming about what happened. Likely, there’s no need to mention I’m bothered that I’m so deep into the O365 environment that I can’t pull out.

Kids these days with their containers and their pipelines and their devops. Back in my day…

Don’t get me started about the internal devs at work. You’ve already got me triggered.

And, I can just imagine the posts they’re making about how the internal IT slows them down and causes issues with the development cycle.

Yep. I’ve hosted my own mail server since the early oughts. One additional hurdle I’d add to you list is rDNS. If you can’t get that set up, you’ll have a hard time reaching many mail servers. Besides port blocking, that’s one of the many reason it’s a non-starter on consumer ISP.

I actually started on a static ISDN line when rDNS wasn’t an issue for running a mail server. Moved to business class dsl, and Ameritech actually delegated rDNS to me for my /29. When I moved to Comcast business, they wouldn’t delegate the rDNS for the IPv4. They did create rDNS entries for me, and they did delegate the rDNS for the IPv6 block. Though the way they deal with the /56 IPv6 block means only the first /64 is useable for rDNS.

But, everything you list has been things I’ve needed to deal with over the years.

Thanks. Based on some of the other answers, particularly in https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12511, I know understand better.

I appreciate everyone helping to explain some pretty basic questions in such detail.