CaptainPedantic
@CaptainPedantic@lemmy.world
- Comment on Venom vs Poison 2 months ago:
You called?
- Comment on Burning Up 2 months ago:
And Rankine would be even better than Kelvin in terms of “big number go brrr.” Water boils at 671 R.
Of course, Rankine is the most obnoxious unit I’ve ever had to deal with, but those numbers sure are big!
- Comment on Burning Up 2 months ago:
The only good thing about Fahrenheit is that 69 degrees (20.5 C) is a nice temperature.
- Comment on As He Realized His Mistake, Elon Musk Begged Twitter Staff to Turn Off the New Feature He'd Pushed For 2 months ago:
An! Thank you for the explanation
- Comment on As He Realized His Mistake, Elon Musk Begged Twitter Staff to Turn Off the New Feature He'd Pushed For 2 months ago:
If Tesla’s stock crashes, then the value the banks could get from selling it is much lower.
If Twitter and Tesla go bankrupt, the banks will have loaned out billions to own something worthless.
At least I would assume that’s how it works.
- Comment on Oh no! I dropped (5£ to) Anna's Archives. Beware the mess, people. 2 months ago:
One of my professors wrote the textbook we were using. Before the first day of class, he sent out a greeting email. Attached to that email was a .PDF of the textbook. Hell yeah.
- Comment on Any love for the Honda Odyssey? 3 months ago:
I thought it was the four speed that was the biggest problem, but I guess both were bad. I have one in a 2000 Accord V6. The damn transmission doesn’t have a fucking filter. No wonder they crap out.
- Comment on What has he done to deserve this? 3 months ago:
It has nothing to do with disliking learning. Trying to learn and use a system of measurement without being immersed in it is really hard. For years, I’ve set all my temperature measurements on my phone and thermometers to Celsius, but because I’m surrounded by people and systems that don’t use metric, I have to convert back and forth between the two. It’s a lot of mental effort for basically no gain.
Every day, customary speed and distance units and my intuitive understanding of them are reinforced when driving and seeing street signs. I know how long a kilometer is, but if you say “My brother lives 45 kilometers away”, I’d have a difficult time truly understanding that. I wouldn’t be able to estimate how long it would take to drive there, for example.
Another issue is cost. In my job, it would take weeks or months to update all of the documentation and code to metric. Then customers would have to approve of all those changes. A whole bunch of machinery still uses customary units too, so they would have to be replaced or updated.
I say all of this as a metric lover and evangelist. It’s not trivial to convert an entire massive country to metric. Countries that have converted already should be hugely proud of themselves for accomplishing a difficult task.
- Comment on Loyalty 4 months ago:
For something slow moving and sticky like fake maple syrup, a plastic bottle will let you squeeze the syrup out instead of waiting for it to slowly drip down to the nozzle.
- Comment on 😎😎😎 5 months ago:
There’s one of these in the middle of a painting from 1533
Obligatory Lemmino video
- Comment on acceptable screws 7 months ago:
Philips screws are awful. They strip if you look at them wrong. Flatheads should only be used on thumbscrews just in case you need a little extra torque from a screwdriver.
Torx and Hex are excellent.
- Comment on Feds Have Warned Medicare Insurers That ‘AI’ Can’t Be Used To (Incompetently And Cruelly) Deny Patient Care 9 months ago:
Who needs “AI” when the simple algorithm they already use works perfectly well?
while 1==1: deny_coverage = True - Comment on Elon Musk demands another huge payday from Tesla 10 months ago:
The lidar removal really pissed me off. At best, a Tesla can “see” as well as the human driver. It seems to me that half of the point of using a computer to drive a vehicle should be that it can easily access sensors that us meat bags don’t have access to.
Plus the stupid central instrument cluster in Model 3s and Model Ys is beyond idiotic.
- Comment on Apple Starts Sending 'Batterygate' Settlement Payments to iPhone Users 10 months ago:
Yeah. I did want to reiterate that usability of the phone was the primary driver of the change, not necessarily battery life.
I got no indication of a dying battery other than needing to charge frequently until Apple implemented a battery health feature. That was after they fixed the shutdown issues.
- Comment on Apple Starts Sending 'Batterygate' Settlement Payments to iPhone Users 10 months ago:
My iPhone 6 was nearly unusable until they added in CPU throttling. It would try to draw more current than the battery could provide, which caused the phone to shutdown. Sometimes I would get the same issue during the boot process, which effectively created a boot loop. Resolving this issue was Apple’s stated reasoning for implementing the throttling.
I am no Apple fan, but in this case, I think the only thing they did wrong was not communicate what they were doing and not give the user an option to turn throttling on or off.
Honestly, this whole episode screams “Well meaning engineering team fixed a problem, but didn’t consider the optics of such a change.”
- Comment on Even the Tesla Cybertruck's Brake Lights Don't Make Sense 1 year ago:
Thankfully it’s changing a bit. I’ve noticed that newer Ford and Dodge full sized pickups use amber turn signals. I assume that these vehicles don’t sell very well in places that require amber turn signals (Europe).
Meanwhile, VW, Audi, BMW, Land Rover, and Mercedes all modify their amber European turn signals to red to sell in the US. For some reason, they go out of their way to make 2 parts instead of 1 for many of their models.
I think it’s a styling thing rather than a cost thing now. Back when taillights in the US were a single bulb on each side, cost was a driving factor. Now with complex LED taillights, I think it’s something else keeping amber out of our indicators.
- Comment on Even the Tesla Cybertruck's Brake Lights Don't Make Sense 1 year ago:
Is it though? Presumably they’re making 2 separate parts. One with red indicators and one with amber. I can’t imagine that’s somehow cheaper than making one part.
- Comment on Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech 1 year ago:
Tangentially related, but are job fairs even worth it? In my limited experience, you wait in a long line for someone to tell you to apply online. I was better off getting a list of employers who were attending, and then looking through each of their websites.
- Comment on FBI indicts three in insider trading scheme that utilized Xbox 360 chat to hide comms | Ringleader could be looking at as much as 165 years in prison 1 year ago:
Skilling got 24 years which was reduced to 14 in 2013. Lay was convicted of crimes that have a max sentence of 45 years, but died before sentencing.
- Comment on ‘Thursday Night Football’ will use AI to help viewers better understand the action on the field 1 year ago:
Yeah, on TV it’s typically between the short segments with the dudes walking around and then running into each other.
In person it’s usually when the marching band shows up and some jets fly overhead.
Still not as bad as
amateur statistics and beerbaseball. - Comment on Apple’s new USB-C iPhone cables and dongles are predictably expensive 1 year ago:
When I had a MacBook Pro with the 1st generation Magsafe, I went through 2 legit Apple chargers and 3 off brand ones in the 9 years I had the laptop. One of the off brand chargers even exploded! Well, a capacitor inside it exploded, but it was designed well enough that it didn’t damage anything else or catch fire.
I’ve only ever had that one laptop, and I was using it in college so I was constantly plugging and unplugging it, so I have no idea how abnormal that cable use is.
Magsafe is super cool, and it definitely saved my computer from certain death several times, but damn it sucked buying those expensive chargers. It would’ve been nice just to buy the cable, not the whole damn charger.
- Comment on The iPhone 13 mini is dead, leaving small phone lovers in a lurch 1 year ago:
You and me both.
- Comment on The iPhone 13 mini is dead, leaving small phone lovers in a lurch 1 year ago:
I had to look it up. A scutum is a type of Roman shield.
- Comment on Roku lays off 300 workers and removes streaming content to save money 1 year ago:
Yar matey! Sailin’ the Seas always be an option for ye!
- Comment on Carmakers are failing the privacy test. Owners have little to no control of the data they hand over 1 year ago:
To be specific my car is actually 23 years old. To be really pedantic, it was manufactured in 1999.
- Comment on Carmakers are failing the privacy test. Owners have little to no control of the data they hand over 1 year ago:
Safe from a privacy perspective. Otherwise they’re very unsafe by modern standards. Minimal airbags. Often no ABS. What ABS that is there is less sophisticated than modern systems. Worse structures for crash protection. No stability control. No traction control.
Plus they’re just old. Last year, I spent more on my 20 year old car than I did on my 2 year old car, that includes loan payments on the new car, fuel, tires, insurance, and maintenance.
Get something from this century at least.
- Comment on India just landed on the Moon for less than it cost to make Interstellar | The Independent 1 year ago:
Cool.
The average income in India is 25x ish less than that of the US. If we scale the $75 million cost to land on the moon by 25 times, we get $1.8 billion. The Perseverance rover’s cost is estimated at $2.75 billion and that thing landed on Mars.
It’s incredibly impressive that India has landed on the moon on their 2nd try. Nothing should take away from that, and India should be very proud of their achievement. But geez this is a braindead article. Yes, poorer countries can pay people less do the same amount of work as someone in another country.
- Comment on Oil companies are hiring TikTok influencers to court young people 1 year ago:
Dude, I’ll bash Enron Muskrat for free.
- Comment on Internet Archive’s legal woes mount as record labels sue for $400M 1 year ago:
One would think, but no.
According to Wikipedia specifically about music
recordings published before 1923 expired on January 1, 2022; recordings published between 1923 and 1946 will be protected for 100 years after release; recordings published between 1947 and 1956 will be protected for 110 years; and all recordings published after 1956 that were fixed prior to February 15, 1972, will have their protection terminate on February 15, 2067.
- Comment on College professors are going back to paper exams and handwritten essays to fight students using ChatGPT 1 year ago:
I’m in the weird in between gen z and millennial. I only use cursive to sign my name and read grandma’s Christmas card. Frankly, it’s not useful for me. I’m glad we spent the time in school taking typing classes instead of cursive.
What is crazy to me is that my youngest cousins (in their early teens) use the hunt and peck method to type. Despite that, they’re not super slow. I was absolutely shocked when I found that out. I think it was all the years of using a phone or tablet instead of an actual keyboard that created a habit.