rowinxavier

@rowinxavier@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it completely impossible to do age verification without compromising privacy?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, there is a massive difference between a 9 year old and a 14 year old. Someone who is 17 is not necessarily significantly different from an 18 year old, yet we have to draw the line somewhere. I think if you own and pay for the service it should be up to you at a service level, not up to the government to demand a random third party company be accessed to verify ID and so on. That third party company stands to make money while also being a wonderful target for hackers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it completely impossible to do age verification without compromising privacy?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There are tonnes of ways but honestly, the easiest way is to do it at the ISP level. Have an internet connection you don’t want used for adult material? Have an opt in service at the ISP to block XXX rated sites and maybe social media. If you are old enough to pay for your own internet you should not be required to jump through hoops to access what you want, but kids should not be thrown onto the internet without guardrails. Some kids will get around it but it would be an active choice, so most kids would not. And to be clear, this would be done at the ISP level where you already have verification of age built in to billing, so no additional privacy concern. Honestly, the fact that this is not the solution is what tells me all of this filtering is not about protecting kids, it is about centralisation and control along with pork barrelling for age verification companies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How has there not yet been a leak of the Epstein files? Surely there is someone with access to them that could have been subject to worldwide pressure to let something out.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, but this is the mistake you make, you actually care about people. Sadly this is disqualifying for higher levels of power.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americium: How a small element could power the next century of space exploration⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not necessarily. You don’t actually need the fluid to be perfectly sealed out, just slowed down a lot. This means that you could run it open but with very close tolerances and there would be almost no leakage. You just need to make the gap small enough for the leakage to be trivial.

  As for magnetic alignment, that is all about maintaining smooth operation without losing efficiency to friction. Instead of a guide with friction you could use magnetic attraction to keep things aligned.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americium: How a small element could power the next century of space exploration⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, but there are many good options. Magnetic alignment can keep things from touching most of the time, maintaining very good movement without friction. Graphite is a great lubricant and works even in very cold environments, not to mention it will not be all that cold given the heat passing through the system. Redundancy is also a big part of the design, making failures much less impactful. And using sterling engines for the highest draw part of the lifetime of a probe with peltier style generators there for later would allow a failover to a solid state system at lower efficiency.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How has there not yet been a leak of the Epstein files? Surely there is someone with access to them that could have been subject to worldwide pressure to let something out.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Blackmail material is only powerful as a threat. Releasing material from it makes the remainder less powerful. If you raise the stakes a little by adding some small details, an association here, a plausibly deniable link there, you can enhance the fear of the person on the other end of the blackmail without ruining the value of what you have. So depending on what people want they can get better results by keeping that information hidden.

  On top of that most people who get dirt on one person get dirt on many people. You may want to take down one person but by if you release some stuff from the files then someone on the other side can burn people on your side. Mutually assured destruction will paralyse everyone.

  As an outside to everyone I want all of it released because in my mind anyone implicated is either an active predator or someone who tolerates predators. But if you have paid good money to have a specific member of congress get into office and they are able to act in your favour then it doesn’t matter if they have a D or an R, they are yours. It is very expensive to get someone who understands the game into office and under your thumb. Much better to prevent the whole system from becoming unpredictable due to lots of sudden new blood and to keep known actors in place. Members on both sides of the aisle want the files locked away forever, meaning they want to protect predators. The failure to act is a choice, not an accident.

  To be clear, I am including foreign actors, massive companies, all sorts of people. If you have an asset that can protect another asset without knowing then you generally would do so.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Maybe there was a cure for human cancer, but it didn't work at all in mice.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep, and surviving longer increases cancer rates. Cancer used to be a death sentence, now it is far less so. Many cancers which were a short time from death at diagnosis are now routine to remove or fix. Others that were soon fatal have 5 year survival over 90%, and some are even higher.

  We haven’t cured cancer just like we haven’t cured industrial accidents, but honestly, so few people are eaten by hungry machines and left disfigured that it is likely you know less than a handful. Not cured but reduced to a much more manageable level.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Maybe there was a cure for human cancer, but it didn't work at all in mice.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The crazy thing is we actually do have things that work in humans but not in mice. Mice are omnivores and are very different in terms of optimal energy state. They tend to run in glucose more easily than on fat and their whole biology is built to be small and fast, with short life spans.

  Checking how DNA repair works in an animal which lives for maybe 2 years is great for understanding DNA repair in short lived organisms, but we have tk repair damage for 50 times as long. It is just so much more complex and requires such different tools when you switch from maybe 2 years to maybe 80 years, it really isn’t sane to assume it will all carry over.

  Now for an accute toxin, say tobacco, sure, some things work just fine. There is not a huge difference between humans and mice when subjected to cyanide or arsenic. Being crushed by a falling piano is going to kill both of us. But a chronic poison? That will take decades to kill? That is very different. We can shed cells in a different way to how they can. We have more mass to store things. We have more energy storage. We have bigger kidneys with more opportunities for filtering. We are different.

  When we enter ketosis we have some fairly significant cancer responses. When we maintain fasting for 5+ days we have a fairly large bump in autophagy, a state where the body kills off and recycles damaged cells. This state can cause some types of cancer to be more obvious to our immune systems and allow the tumor to be attacked. In some cases otherwise inoperable tumors can be removed after shrinking them through fasting. This does not replicate in mice. So yes, some treatments (not cures because that doesn’t really apply) do work in humans and not in mice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China solves 'century-old problem' with new analog chip that is 1,000 times faster than high-end Nvidia GPUs⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  To be clear though, the two defined states are separated by a voltage gap, so either it is on or off regardless of how on or how off. For example, if the off is 0V and the on is 5V then 4V is neither of those but will be either considered as on. So if it is above thecriticam threshold it is on and therefore represents a 1, otherwise it is a 0.

  An analogue computer would be able to use all of the variable voltage range. This means that instead of having a whole bunch of gates working together to represent a number the voltage could be higher or lower. Something that takes 64 bits could be a single voltage. That would mean more processing in the same space and much less actual computation required.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that risks to exposure of nuclear radition are often over exaggerated by considering a Linear No Threshold (LNT), which does not match with many studies.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just a quick point on the cost of nuclear. A large part of the cost of nuclear is due to the very intense safety systems which have been added on a little at a time. Each small safety thing has increased the cost but nobody has taken all of the intentions of those changes and integrated them into a stable and safe system without the need for all the little safety features.

  The best example I can give is cars. Adding air bags, lane change detection, car in front detection, ABS, and so on each makes cars safer, but never questions the underlying adduction that cars are good. Why not trains?

  In rectors we can have passive safety systems where the moderator is a liquid which is blocked in by a solid plug. The solid plug is frozen moderator and sits at the bottom of the system. If the power is cut or fails the plug stops being cooled and melts, draining the moderator. Without the moderator the neutrons are going too fast to trigger the chain reactions and everything stops. No sensors or control systems are needed, it just passively stops and cools naturally, while also being way cheaper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's gluetun?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That is essentially what gluetun does. It is a little simpler to set up given that it is all preinstalled and you just select your provider and details and it is done. And again, you just specify the network for other containers to use the gluetun service and it is done. Very simple, easy for using many services through one VPN connection, and available on things like CasaOS with simple setup.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK tricks for one of the cheapest meals: beans and rice⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A quick point to add. Adding fat to your meal makes it more filling and for longer. The worst fats are trans fats, second worse are polyunsaturated fats, and mono seem to be fairly good along with most saturated fats. In terms of cost some of the vegetable fats are much cheaper but they often have trans fats which are essentially toxic and they also go rancid very easily.

  Saturated fats are generally solid at room temperature and don’t absolutely need to be refrigerated on cool to moderate weather days. If you would sweat the butter would too, so put it in the fridge.

  If you add a small amount of mince to your beans it will stretch really far and add tonnes of flavour and protein without breaking the bank. Cheaper mince comes with more fat but if you are making beans you want that, so get the cheaper mince, lean is not helpful.

  Beans on rice freezes well for weeks. Beans without rice is good for months frozen. Beans with rice and any cheese or sour cream is not OK frozen. Beans with cheese microwaves well, but add sour cream after heating.

  To make it more satisfying you can add a little bit of some chilli sauce. Hotter sauces go further, but the best is fermented sauces. The cheapest chilli sauces are full of sugar and water, so they just sweeten and dilute rather than flavour your dish.

  If your beans tastes sour add a small amount of sugar, stir for a minute, and test again. Sugar fixes the sourness quite well.

  For extra flavour a stock cube can be added. I would recommend beef stock for beans, but it will work with chicken or fish too. Most stocks are now vegan because they re synthetic, but they add a lot of flavour and are perfectly fine to eat.

  The best option if you can manage it is to learn how to make a beef broth from bones. You boil the bones for hours, around 8 or so should do, and the bones will start to soften and become translucent. At this point all the nutritional goodness of the bones is in the broth. You can then use this as a base for making stew, beans, soup, etc, or you can reduce it by open top heating it and letting the steam leave. This will make a strong stock you can use to add flavour and nutrition to other meals for the cost of some energy and cheap bones.

  A slow cooker can make cooking all of this much easier and safer. Electric slow cookers are able to be set up in the morning and have dinner most of the way ready by dinner time. The slow steady heat is great for bones and for softening meat and the easy of use is just fantastic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should we treat environmental crime more like murder?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I am reminded of hospital acquired infections being treated like car crashes or plane crashes.

  Car crashes kill massive numbers of people each year, just under 5 per 100,000 people per year here in Australia. That is way down and we are quite low globally, with the EU overall around 9 and 14 for the USA. We have taken fairly agressive steps to curb road deaths and made real progress, but a certain number of deaths is accepted as necessary. A crash is investigated for fault attribution and insurance but not for preventing a repeat.

  Plane crashes are totally different. If something caused a plane crash we figure it out, make a mitigation, and make it never happen again. Flying is one of the safest modes of transport and it keeps getting safer.

  In hospitals most of them had the car crash mentality for hospital acquired infections. A hospital putting in a plane crash mentality investigator for their Infection Prevention chair will have very different outcomes, especially over time. Someone got an infection from bad clean technique? Make it a checklist item. Someone still got another infection? Change gloving technique so that you wear two layers and only touch the outer gloves with clean inner gloves. Another case? Have a second staff member assist with your donning of PPE and going through the checklist. Each step reduces the risk, each mitigation makes everyone safer. Eventually you have so few infections it is hard to test new processes.

  For anyone wondering edgydoc.com is the site for the aforementioned doctor and he is a blast. But yeah, if you treat a consequence as a cost of doing business nothing changes. If you make failure an existential risk you can eliminate problems. Corporations are run by people. Those people should be accountable for the crimes of the company.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I make pictures less blinding if I prefer dark apps?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Lots of options, but the simplest is to lower the contrast and brightness values for your monitor. That will work on everything including images and video. You could also consider something like the redmode features of your OS and maybe even look at colour balance settings. If you take the curves and lower the highest bits you will selectively reduce brightness at the highest end without messing with less intense stuff too much. It looks a little weird but is easy enough to get used to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anyone had any luck running Fusion 360 on Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep, very much improved. I recking it will turn out like Blender. It sucks right now compared to some other tools like Fusion360, but given time it will improve and at some point it will tip over into being the default. It all depends on buy in. If a few bigger players get behind it because they can avoid predatory fees and costs associated with using a proprietary piece of software they will switch, invest in their own mods, then drive the industry knowledge standard towards FreeCAD. That will break the hold the proprietary apps have as workers gain skills in the new context, leaving the old proprietary stuff to rot. I hope it is soon, but it will happen eventually.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a drink with taste of energy drink without caffeine?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Add citric acid powder to make it sour. It is in the ingredients of energy drinks as an acidity regulator but also controls sourness. Be aware it is strong, so only add a little at a time, and make sure it is fully mixed before fizzing it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep, it started going bad when Google took over it fully and started making changes that didn’t go through to the Chromium browser project. And killing ad blockers. And the telemetry.

  I would recommend trying a few of the Gecko engine based browsers. Zen is pretty cool and has become my desktop default recently but other people prefer different ones. In my opinion if you can’t read the code you can’t know what they are doing, so shouldn’t trust it. Not personally read the code, I mean I principle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How often do guys have a haircut?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Around 2004 for my last hairdresser haircut, and about twice a year I take a hand span off the end myself. I have my hair long and I eat a lot of protein so it grows quickly.

  Beard on the other hand is weekly or thereabouts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What strategy would you use to estimate the number of hazelnuts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Start with the bottom, count how many are visible on the lowest layer. This gives you half the circumference of the lower end.

  Repeat for the highest part of the cup that is still cup, not above the line.

  Multiply each of these by 2 and you have the circumferences of each end of the cut cone.

  Rearrange the circle area formula to get the radius from circumference and you have the radius of each end of the cone.

  Now use the cut cone formula to calculate the volume in terms of hazelnuts.

  Next, take the radius of the top circle and estimate how far above that the highest nut is. Use whatever formula seems more appropriate, in this case maybe just a right angle triangle formula with a full rotation, to estimate the volume of the top.

  Sum that together with the conic volume and you have a good estimate.

  Good luck

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I beat the roaches in this house?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  First, as an Aussie while I would welcome you to our hairy friends they are actually not doing too great at the moment, so hands off, mine!

  That said, cockroach population is almost entirely a matter of the neighbourhood you are in, not the house you are in. If you have a neighbour who’s house is suitable for roaches they will live and breed there and then reinfest your home.

  That leads to two main options. Move somewhere without the issue or make your house the most hostile possible place for them.

  I don’t know what options you could try that have not already been tried, but I will list a few I have seen work. Roach motels work well. Flypaper under the fridge works well. Some chemical treatments work well.

  That said, being diligent and keeping the food for them to a minimum may be the best adjunct. By this I mean making sure food is eaten, dishes are done, surfaces are wiped, and nothing left behind as soon as possible after making meals. Emptying the rubbish bin daily, maybe even switching to a much smaller bench top one so you can have smaller bags. Adding a seal to your rubbish bins in the form of some rubber or silicone around where the lid fits, though this differs depending on your local waste management systems.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do Australians in the northern hemisphere celebrate Christmas in July to have a Christmas that reminds them of home?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When I lived in the UK we just did British Christmas, so it was during winter. That said, my family was pretty limited in terms of Christmas engagement.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hey Mickey7,

  Stonetoss is a Nazi propagandist. The fact that a single comic does not contain a clear Nazi propaganda idea does not mean it is reasonable to share it. Anything from that source is suspect and the source itself should be considered dodgy. If storm front had a great breakdown of a current event it would still be a Nazi website and should not be shared.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The sheer amount of acronyms used to explain my behavior is beginning to look like the eye-chart at the vision clinic.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Or dexamphetamine, the other primary stimulant for ADHD.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam controller was ahead of its time⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the availability of AA batteries is higher, 18650 is much less standard than AA in most people’s homes. I would rather have options, so saying AA but having a swappable battery tray is how I would go, but I like kludgey stuff anyway.

  That said, I just did a battery replacement for a lithium pouch on some TWS headphones and it was a fairly simple process. Making it a port rather than soldered wires would make it much easier and would make battery replacement a quick and routine task. Hopefully more companies will more towards ports for batteries and maybe even a standard port that is the same for a given voltage/amperage combination so swapping out can be done with confidence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time travel doesn't work unless you also have teleportation. If you travel to the past/future, Earth will be in a different position in its orbit, and you'll die in space.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep, and he had to also solve the problem of the week given everything they could figure out in the 7 days following it happening. A cool set of limitations for the writers, the execution was a little sloppy, but overall a cool idea.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time travel doesn't work unless you also have teleportation. If you travel to the past/future, Earth will be in a different position in its orbit, and you'll die in space.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep, and not to mention the position of our solar system in the Milky Way or our galaxy in the local cluster. In fact, without a specific reference frame you would have to make corrections very rapidly for even a tiny jump in time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are animals right or left 'handed'?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Handedness is not constant over the animal kingdom.

  Kangaroos and wallabies tend to be left handed, though wallabies seem to be right handed for strength tasks. In dogs, horses, and cats females have been shown to be left handed, while males are right handed. All of these are tendencies and not at all strict, so specific inviduals may be left or right handed with no regard to their sex or species, but the trend is there.

  The level of handedness that humans have is really white extreme compared to our closest cousins. Other primates are far less handed and one of the things that drives this may be tool use and associated teaching. If you are teaching someone how to do something and they have opposite handedness to you it is harder to teach, and also shared tools are easier to manage if they are not in two different versions.

  The causes seem to be a mix of genetics, developmental cues, and maybe brain structure, though the exact amounts of each and whether there are other factors are unclear.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I think I will get Windwaker going soon and beat it. I love the cell shading look and the world is interesting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have played a bunch of them, Twilight Princess was an absolute no for me for some reason, but I liked Ocarina and Majora when I was younger. I plan to play a decompilation of both of those soon, native resolution and performance etc. I enjoyed Link’s Awakening as well, finished that on my original Gameboy back in the 90s, and Windwaker looks fun though I have only recently gotten onto a computer able to render it nicely, so that is on my play list.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Robotaxi Freaks Out and Drives into Oncoming Traffic on First Day⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, it is absolutely insane to think that as a person with a literal disability in attentional regulation I have had fewer collisions than most people who are not disabled. It seems like if it is too easy people stop trying and don’t take it seriously, so they text or change the music or reach over the back. I know I can’t do that without risking a major issue and I actively have to maintain focus, so I simply do not ever “let it slide” or “just this once”. Rules can save lives if followed, but do nothing if ignored.