prime_number_314159
@prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
- Comment on 2 days ago:
Slander is spoken, and libel is written, so this would be libel if it is either. “There’s libel in the library.”
- Comment on Can someone fact check this 2 days ago:
Owls don’t weigh 16 pounds (except for fat owls). 300 kilowatts is a rate of energy, not a total quantity of energy. 300 kilowatt hours (which is possibly what they meant?) Is only around 260,000 kilocalories (which is called “calories” on food labels because units of measure were made up by humans). According to an extremely naive google search, that would only take an owl 5 years to consume, rather than 10. If the original number were correct, that would mean this owl eats 8,000 calories per day. Which is not typical.
Onto the broader point, the efficiency of birds in flight is not as simple as this image suggests. There is no (useful) formula that takes the weight of a bird and the distance it will fly and tells you how many calories that takes. Birds can fly at different elevations, at different speeds. They can fly with or against the wind. They can change many things about how they fly to be more efficient or less efficient.
If you really want to know how many calories it takes for an owl to cross the ocean, first get the owl to the point of starvation, then bring it on a boat to the middle of the ocean. Feed it a fixed number of Tootsie pops, then sink the boat. With nowhere else to land, the owl will be forced to fly to shore. Based on how far the owl makes it, you can determine how far each tootsie pop allowed it to fly, and derive calories per mile from that.
- Comment on Can someone fact check this 2 days ago:
They would hit the mountains at that height, and the FAA requires them to be up above airplane traffic anyways. After that, it gets crowded right above the launch pads, and sometimes there’s shooting stars and stuff, so some satellites are forced to go even higher.
- Comment on IT'S A TRAP 5 days ago:
Two sets with infinitely many things are the same size when you can describe a one to one mapping from one set to the other.
For example, the counting numbers are the same size as the counting numbers except for 7. To go from the former set to the latter set, we can map 1-6 to themselves, and then for every counting number 7 or larger, add one. To reverse, just do the opposite.
Likewise, we can map the counting numbers to only the even counting numbers by doubling the value or each one as our mapping. There is a first even number, and a 73rd even number, and a 123,456,789,012th even number.
By contrast, imagine I claim to have a map from the counting numbers to all the real numbers between 0 and 1 (including 0 but not 1). You can find a number that isn’t in my mapping. Line all the numbers in my mapping up in the order they map from the counting numbers, so there’s a first real number, a second, a third, and so on. To find a number that doesn’t appear in my mapping anywhere, take the first digit to the right of the decimal from the first number, the second digit from the second number, the third digit from the third number, and so on. Once you have assembled this new (infinitely long) number, change every single digit to something different. You could add 1 to each digit, or change them at random, or anything else.
This new number can’t be the first number in my mapping because the first digit won’t match anymore. Nor can it be the second number, because the second digit doesn’t match the second number. It can’t be the third or the fourth, or any of them, because it is always different somewhere. You may also notice that this isn’t just one number you’ve constructed that isn’t anywhere in the mapping - in fact it’s a whole infinite family of numbers that are still missing, no matter what order I put any of the numbers in, and no matter how clever my mapping seems.
The set of real numbers between 0 and 1 truly is bigger than the set of counting numbers, and it isn’t close, despite both being infinitely large.
- Comment on Is anyone NOT steaming their Music? 6 days ago:
I’ve been buying and ripping CDs since 2007. I average 8 per year, and it limits my music discovery speed a fair bit - but that’s OK.
When someone suggests a new song/band, I listen on YouTube/Vevo, and put up with the ad. It’s fine. It convinces me whether I want to buy their CD or not most of the time.
- Comment on Everyone thinks the Deus Ex remaster looks awful and they're right: 'They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics' 1 week ago:
“AAA” gaming began as a reference to the “AAA” creditworthiness rating, meaning (essentially) “certain to repay the loan” // “certain to earn more than the development costs” (contrarespectively). AAA gaming has always been about the safe bet, the easy money, and the tailored to mass market design.
High budget games can only have so much ROI, so there’s kind of implicitly a limit on how much risk is tolerable for investors/publishers. Meanwhile, a game that costs a few million (or even less) could be the next big success, and rake in a massive sum - enough to justify its own budget in addition to many failed attempts to craft a star.
Even more risky is indie gaming, where the cost of development is provided by crazy people that want to produce “fun”, and gain money as some kind of (important) side effect. That’s where you get the wild “no one (in the know) would expect this to work” ideas, and most of them do fail, just as expected. The ones that are good enough to make it are by nature surprisingly good - indeed, this surprise is why publishers won’t go after the same concept under most conditions.
- Comment on Can you think of any now? 1 week ago:
It’s not just about slavery. There was also state’s rights (to slavery), and the economic disparity (turns out free men work harder than slaves?!), and a clash of religious ideals (people that interpret the Bible as pro-slavery vs people that believe benevolence requires abolition). There were even one or two spots where water usage rights and federal funding were in controversy.
- Comment on proof of wormholes 2 weeks ago:
I only buy generic brand medications, so my kids are at risk of generic brand autism. Is this going to be a signifier of a low income upbringing when they reach adulthood?
Should I switch to name brand Tylenol for their future?
- Comment on '3d-printing a screw' is a way to describe how AI integration is stupid most of the time 5 weeks ago:
A 1.5" long number 8 wood screw has slightly more than half the holding strength when it is driven by a hammer into 2 3/4" pine boards, relative to the traditional rotating the workpiece approach, but takes only about 1% of the time to install. You can very easily add a second screw to achieve the desired strength, while often gaining resistance to torque in the workpiece.
Meanwhile, 3D printed screws usually break when struck with a hammer, so they’re no good for this approach.
- Comment on A cat/sheep hybrid 5 weeks ago:
A keep
- Comment on Macaroni and cheese 1 month ago:
I suspect it started with self censorship (“as f”) rather than abbreviation.
- Comment on I have tomorrow off :) 1 month ago:
That’s Anthony Daniels, playing the role of the god of the Ewoks.
- Comment on Is it wrong that i would like to start a small 3d print business? 2 months ago:
I was thinking of JLC3DP, PCBWay, Shapeways, and Slant3D. I’ve only bought from PCBWay and JLC3DP from among those.
- Comment on Is it wrong that i would like to start a small 3d print business? 2 months ago:
I’m not in this business, but I have purchased prints from a print farm before. There are already at least 4 large, high quality printing companies that offer to print any model in any material. I think most of the competition is now on speed and price. There are also many smaller printers I have purchased from. Most offer ~10 products, have them already printed, and sell those items to fulfill a specific need. As far as I can tell, those smaller printers either design their own models, or paid for models that are not readily available. Once model files are available, the general purpose printing companies can deliver the same part.
Unless you have ideas for models no one has made before, and you want to try to profit as much as possible off those, I don’t see the upside to a small print farm.
- Comment on Do you still remember? 2 months ago:
I was going to take it in a 1987 Toyota Camry, manual transmission, but the clutch burned up (not my fault… Maybe), and my parents didn’t want to get it fixed. I took the test in the driving school’s only manual transmission car, which was… A gray sedan, with a second brake pedal for the passenger.
- Comment on Do you still remember? 2 months ago:
Which mass transit vehicle did you pass your test in? How did parallel parking go?
- Comment on investment 2 months ago:
You do not need to objectively benefit from a positive outcome in order to enjoy it. My local sports team wins at least once per blue moon, and I feel good despite neither profiting from, nor contributing to their successes.
I can understand if it doesn’t do it for you, but I’ve found a great deal of joy in things that do not materially benefit me. I like it better that way.
- Comment on Unmatched power 4 months ago:
The text on a Twix wrapper runs in the same direction as the Twix inside, so it’s better to say they’re top and bottom Twix - otherwise it’s ambiguous based on the direction of the packaging.
Also, for double blind experimentation, she shouldn’t know whether it’s a left or a right.
- Comment on Really Who watch it? 5 months ago:
You should get hyped for my upcoming light novel:
I Wrote a Light Novel on my Smart Phone About an OP Protagonist, and I Teleported Into the World of my Novel, but Because I was Someone Other Than the Protagonist, I Died Immediately.
I’m done writing all two chapters, now I just need to find a publisher that recognizes genius when I stare them in the face.
- Comment on When you are ruining your day ranting about something remember THIS 5 months ago:
It takes way longer than that for me to share my opinions. The Earth should be rotated at least 30-40 degrees.
- Comment on Rocky rock rocking 6 months ago:
Pretty sure stones have to weigh 14 pounds…
- Comment on Hey, do americans just want to take a break from normal politics for a bit and focus all our efforts solely on the wild boar problem? 6 months ago:
That’s my favorite kind of conservation.
- Comment on Why Great Engineering Orgs Thrive on "Normal" Engineers 6 months ago:
I’m bragging when I say this: A decade ago, I rewrote an indecipherable mess of code into an elegant and transparent procedure, nestled comfortably inside every sanity/insanity check I could think of for the situation. Today, that code (aside from an update for a vulnerable dependency) is still running just the way I wrote it.
Releases should be fast and rare.
- Comment on "Americans can't coo-" 6 months ago:
According to my brief googling, there are 131.43 million households in America, and either 79 or 80 million American households own dishwashers. I could not find a breakdown by state, but I suspect they’re predominantly popular in wealthier areas, and less popular in poorer areas.
- Comment on Do tell!!! 6 months ago:
In order to make sourkraut, you need cabbage, salt, a knife, a cutting board, a big bowl, a scale, and an appropriate storage container for fermentation.
Start by rinsing the outside of the cabbage. Peel off any leaves that are damaged badly, cut out any smaller bad spots, then quarter each head, remove the core, and cut small strips. Weight the cabbage you have remaining, divide the weight by 50, and put that much salt together with the cabbage strips in the large bowl. Mix the salt and cabbage occasionally, and either punch it, or squeeze it. After 2 - 4 hours, there should be a good bit of liquid at the bottom of the bowl.
Transfer the cabbage and the liquid to your fermentation vessel. Use weights or a plastic bag full of water to make sure the cabbage is below the salty water. Wait for 6-12 weeks, checking on it at least once per week.
Lots of things can be used for fermenting, but the best is a stone crock with a lid that has a water seal around the outside, and a gas release valve on top. The cabbage can smell strongly during fermentation, so get approval from anyone you live with before attempting this recipe.
- Comment on Do tell!!! 6 months ago:
If you start with the laces correctly run through the eyelets along the tongue, and with each end roughly the same length, you can pull the lace ends directly up, cross them in an X shape, then pass one end below the x, and pull the slack out of that. Then make a loop on each lace tail, but with opposite chirality. Reach your thumb and index finger through each loop, and grab the edge of the opposing loop which is further from the end of the lace. Now pull each loop through the other, tighten up the knot, and dress it until it looks presentable. If the resulting knot is 90 degrees from the intended direction, use the alternate chirality on each of the loops next time to fix that.
A bonus of this approach is that it’s the same on your shoe as it is on someone else’s, so you can help children with their shoes more easily.
- Comment on How would a stateless society handle serious threats such as mass murder and terrorism? 7 months ago:
Neighborhood defense crabs, yes.
- Comment on Can I still consider myself a “young woman” after I turn 24? I turn 24 in March (next month). 7 months ago:
My grandmother said that old is always 3 years away, but IMO, the end of being a “young woman” is somewhere around 32.
- Comment on USA President term limits 10 months ago:
You can only be elected as president twice. You can probably hack the system by getting multiple other presidents to select you as vice president, then resign. If you serve more than 2 years of the term they were elected to, that reduces the number of times you can be elected as president to one.
The 22nd amendment doesn’t say that someone that serves 3.99 years of another president’s term multiple times can’t still be elected, and it doesn’t say that someone not qualified to be elected as president can’t be elected as vice president, but the 12th amendment might. Either of those could be an interesting legal fight.
- Comment on Pants 10 months ago:
The belt and belt loops go all along the top row. If there’s only one row, the matrix can only wear a short-shorts version. There’s a crotch in each space between columns, and a leg on every column of length greater than 1.
Sparse matrices have their own special pants that are more efficient, of course.