Mark

Take your card number and starting from the second-to-last digit, double every second digit moving left. If doubling a digit produces a number greater than nine, subtract nine from the result. Then add all the digits together, the doubled ones and the untouched ones. If the total is divisible by ten, the number is valid. If it isn’t, the number is mathematically impossible as a card number and the form rejects it on the spot. This is the Luhn algorithm written in 1954 by a computer scientist at IBM named Hans Peter Luhn. It still runs inside every payment form on the internet today. And it turns out that valid card numbers are not random. They follow this mathematical rule, and any number that breaks it is immediately disqualified without ever touching a bank’s systems. No server contacted. No database checked. No network request made. The validation happens entirely on your device, in milliseconds. The first six digits do additional work before the Luhn check even runs. They are called the Issuer Identification Number; the first digit identifies the card network (4 means Visa, 5 means Mastercard, 3 means Amex), and the following digits identify the specific bank that issued the card. This is why payment forms show you the Visa or Mastercard logo the moment you type the first digit. No server needed. The network is encoded in the number itself. The last digit of every card number is called the check digit it exists for no other purpose than to make the entire number pass the Luhn algorithm. When a bank generates a new card number, it calculates what the last digit must be to make the sequence valid, then stamps it on the card. It is a built-in mathematical fingerprint.

This has to be one of the funniest responses to an FCC filing of all time 🤣🤣🤣

Mission complete. After three months in orbit and 49 tests completed validating critical systems, components, and processes, we have successfully performed a controlled deorbit of Haven Demo, our in-space testbed for Haven-1 technologies. Read more. vastspace.com/updates/haven-…

Irene Cara (d.2022) would’ve turned 67 today. "Flashdance...What a Feeling" was released 43 years ago this month and became a massive Billboard success, spending six consecutive weeks at #1 on Hot 💯 . It was the longest-running top-10 single of 1983 (14 weeks) and ranked as the #3 song of the year.

INSANE: This RC F-35 flies just like the real fighter jet—every maneuver, every turn, exactly like the real deal. ✈️💥

stop spending money on Claude Code. Chipotle's support bot is free:

@joshwoodtx @XMoney @WilliamShatner @elonmusk It says it’s a Visa card on the back. So whats the point?

Recorded for posterity: the first ever @XMoney Buc-ee’s transactions. Yes, that’s the beautiful new X Money debit card. God bless America. 🇺🇸 (Thanks for beta access @WilliamShatner @elonmusk !)

Proof that money has in many cases no correlation with any kind of intelligence. In fact I encountered a number of such cases over the years where random people got lucky on huge bets and generated $ 50M+ but lost 90% or more just as quickly. They played with derivatives and didn’t truly understand the investment. My advice: when you have truly outlier returns (100x) assume you got lucky and secure the bag. Do not assume it was brilliance. Only after an abundance of evidence one should consider that possibility.

The head of the FCC responds to Amazon’s petition against SpaceX’s proposed 1 million AI satellite constellation 🔥🔥

It was only a matter of time!! Continue to be great Mattie!! 🫡💯 @Madison28185042

@BellikOzan The difference?

Built different

Starlink Mobile is partnering with @deutschetelekom to support over 140M subscribers across 10 European countries. The service will be the first in the region to launch V2 next-gen technology using our new Mobile Satellite Service spectrum, which will deliver 5G speeds to cell phones in remote areas. → starlink.com/mobile

SpaceX has released an updated @Starlink Mobile website, along with a new video and coverage map that shows where the service is currently available and where it's coming soon. Starlink Mobile: • Available on 40+ apps and on 100+ devices. Future service will offer video calls, streaming, emails and more. • 32+ countries (covering 1.7+ billion people) • The next generation of Starlink Mobile satellites - V2 - will deliver full cellular coverage to "places never thought possible via the highest performing satellite-to-mobile network ever built." • V2 Starlink Mobile satellites will use custom SpaceX-designed silicon and phased array antennas. The satellites will support thousands of spatial beams and higher bandwidth capability, enabling around 20x the throughput capability as compared to a first-generation satellite. • V2 will enable full 5G cellular connectivity with a comparable experience to current terrestrial service. Site: starlink.com/business/mobile

@KettlebellDan Great minds, think alike!

an immediate improvement 🔥

This is the original teaser trailer for STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE 1979 Special effects and music are temp, but Orson Welles is doing the voiceover!

Unfortunately the diagrams that are crucial for understanding the implications for loss of 6 DoF control are redacted. But... "Without the precise actions of the crew and flight control team, this event could have resulted in a loss of the Starliner crew." Yikes yikes yikes. NASA is extremely protective of the ISS. SpaceX cargo Dragon had to jump through many hoops to prevent any possibility of damaging it, and Russia has managed to crash into space stations a few times over the years. If Starliner had been uncrewed, NASA would have noped out of that docking instantly. But with crew aboard, they spent a few hours desperately keeping the guidance system on life support and got just enough thrusters working just well enough to limp to the docking - probably saving the crews' lives. And yet, at the time, the "managed narrative" emerging from Boeing and their mouthpieces all over NASA was "this is fine, don't worry about it" as though NASA could expect Butch and Suni to voluntarily crawl back into that death trap and attempt to ride it back to Earth. This is early Soyuz program level failures, where everything went wrong, and a couple of the crews died. We got so damn lucky. I read through 100 pages of recommendations. Not one errant manager is named. Not one recommendation mentions personnel as a potential issue. What are the odds, that of the hundreds or thousands of people working on this program, every single one just happens to be the best person for the job? All they need is for a few dotted lines to be drawn on the org chart and a quick pep talk and their organizational efficacy will magically shift from F to A+? Boeing already spent >$6b on this turkey. That's $3.5m for every day between now and the ISS splashing somewhere in the Pacific - if it manages to last until 2031 without the cracked Russian node letting go. The Administrator stated that post-ISS orbital activity will still require capsules. Right. I'm *sure* Vast and Axiom are positively begging Boeing to let them use Starliner to fail and/or kill their customers on their commercial space stations. There is a path forward here for Boeing, and it isn't performative mickey mouse tweaks around the edges.

@jeff_foust So findings in a single report(card) drive cultural changes at Boeing? That is nonsensical reasoning.

The Boeing statement:

@cryptopunk7213 Sure, they manufacture memory holes and we all know memory is in high demand right now.

this is fucking hilarious. a $7B japanese toilet company just discovered its ceramics tool can be used to make bleeding-edge AI chips. thats a $60 Billion market. their stock is up 60% on the news.

NEWS: Tesla has shared a new photo of the first Cybercab off the Giga Texas production line. Volume production is on track to start in April. Just 6-9 weeks away!