lennivelkant
@lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
- Comment on HDMI 2.2 cranks the bandwidth to 96Gbps and aims to eliminate audio sync issues forever 3 weeks ago:
I’m not the smart person you replied to and I don’t know for sure, but given many modern circuits have become very fine and compact, I’m not optimistic about your chances to repair it. It would depend on the nature and extent of the damage, of course, but if you’re an amateur, I think you’re better off replacing (though you might get away with replacing just a part instead of the whole device).
- Comment on Self-Driving Waymo Cab Smashes Into Delivery Robot 3 weeks ago:
There should be an open communication standard that all robots use to communicate with each other.
Yes!
And it will only be used for good and nothing nefarious.
Oh no
- Comment on I still don’t think companies serve you ads based on spying through your microphone 3 weeks ago:
Ads is from advertisement, not adds
- Comment on Garter snakes 2 months ago:
That is a very sweet compliment, thank you very much!
I always aspire to be better than my teachers, who were as competent in their subjects as they were boring and hard to listen to. I may not have the same depth of knowledge, but I try to make it more approachable at least.
- Comment on Garter snakes 2 months ago:
Isn’t that why we’re all here? I assume the average layperson wouldn’t concern themselves enough with the different definitions of “venomous” to make a meme about it or respond with an apt explanation and commentary for how that could be communicated.
- Comment on Garter snakes 2 months ago:
Specialists in a specific subfield being pedantic about their subfield? Inconceivable!
Technically, both assertions are true - under the respective definitions of their field.
Formally, if the question is ambiguous as to which definition it’s aimed at, either answer without clarification is incorrect* because it assumes a premise that isn’t specified.
Practically, which answer is right for the question’s purpose is a coin toss between coincidentally useful and accidentally misleading.So really, both of them should respond that way.
* Note the difference between “(contextually) right”, “(factually) true” and “(formally) correct”:
I can make formally correct statements based on factually wrong premises like “All cats are blue. My dog is a cat. Thus, my dog is blue.”
Conversely, I can make factually true statements that happen to be right despite being formally incorrect: “Some cats are black. My dog is not a cat. Thus, my dog is not black.”Both of these assume the common context of the culture and vocabulary I am accustomed to: While some cats are blue and some are black, my dog is not a cat, falsifying both the second premise and the conclusion of the first example. The second example is formally incorrect, because the negative association of the minor term (my dog) with the middle term (cats) doesn’t imply any connection with the major term (black, meaning the category of black things).
However, a different context can alter the facts of the premises: Suppose I’m doing an exercise where I assign animals to groups, visually coded with colors, and cats belong in the blue group. Further, suppose I have only one pet, a cat I nicknamed “dog” (for example because it acts like a dog). That would alter the contextual premises: “blue” and “black” would refer to the respectively color-coded animal groups, while “My dog” would unambiguously refer to the cat of that nickname, since there is only one animal I own that fits that label. In that context, the first conclusion would be both formally and factually correct, while the second would be neither.
Take away the second premise of each example, however, and the implication becomes formally incorrect, no matter which definition I use for the first premise, because there is no established relationship between my dog and the category of colors it does or doesn’t belong to. The respective conclusion might still be factually true, but that would be a coincidence of context rather than a formally deducable result.
That has nothing to do with the topic at hand, I just felt like rambling about formal logic and its relation to reality and communication.
- Comment on EU disease agency considers quitting Elon Musk’s X over disinfo 2 months ago:
The (ideal) most reasonable approach for public information organs, in my opinion, would be to use all the channels that are available - Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, but also X for the share of people that can’t be arsed to move (or don’t want to, because the people and communities they care about haven’t). I’d even count Facebook, Instagram, Reddit among those channels, as much as I resent those companies, as well as Lemmy and the other fediverse services (I’m not super informed here), a blog, RSS feeds, maybe an email subscription service too, just to be sure.
In fact, I think diversifying your presence would be a great thing in general - platform exclusivity is turning out to be a quite toxic and disadvantageous concept. Well, it has been for a while, but it’s starting to become more visible.
The real restriction is of course the technical infrastructure and personell to maintain all these presences. You could use of a content distribution system that takes a picture, a long text and a short summary to generate appropriate posts for all these platforms, but you’d still need people monitoring and responding on the various platforms, ideally people sufficiently familiar with the respective culture to communicate effectively.
- Comment on Frog's Gift 2 months ago:
Nah, there was another contender, but he was a fuckin nerd with big, scary words and headachy sentences and got bullied out of the race.
(The nerd is a general analogy to reasonable people, not any specific person or group)
- Comment on Frog's Gift 2 months ago:
Or the server move
- Comment on On bugs... 2 months ago:
The only cats I’ve got are con-cats, unfortunately, but they do put things in a row.
I’d love to work more with animals - pythons, anacondas, pandas, cats… Alas, I am stuck with SQL and Power BI, for better or for worse.
- Comment on On bugs... 2 months ago:
Data Analyst: So what do you want to measure? What question do you want to answer?
Customer: Can you do a column chart, where I can see how many Orders we have?
Data Analyst: Column chart? What’s the Axis? Per day?
Customer: No, per month.
Data Analyst: Right, so new Orders per month?
Customer: No, how many we have in general, new and old.
Data Analyst: Do you mean the old ones still open at the start of the month?
Customer: That’s a good idea, yeah. Actually, can you add the ones we complete in that month too?
Data Analyst: The amount of completed orders? That would double-count them.*shared moment of confusion*
Customer: Don’t make it so complicated, I just want to see how many orders we had.
Data Analyst: Let me ask again, what question do you want to answer?
Customer: I want to know how much our teams are working.
Data Analyst: As in, how many orders they’re completing?
Customer: I also want to see if we need more people.
Data Analyst: Like, if they can’t complete all their orders? So basically, the rate of completed versus new ones?
Customer: Ooooh, good idea, can you put that rate as a line over our chart of new, old and completed orders?Customer: Oh, and the warranty returns too! They need to be processed as well, that’s also work.
Customer: Actually, we have this task tracking for who does which work for the order or warranty return.
Data Analyst: Shouldn’t we use that to track how much work the teams are doing?
Customer: Yes, put it in the chart too.
Epilogue: The Customer got a separate chart for the tasks - turns out I’m not charging by the chart, so you don’t need to cram as much as possible into a single chart. They also were persuaded to stick with “Old” and “New” to show the total workload, with the “Old” bars providing an indicator for how much stayed open and whether the backlog was growing.
- Comment on Quantum 2 months ago:
I’m in a superposition of knowledgeable and ignorant until you ask me something, in which case I produce either a good or a stupid answer, depending on various random factors such as whether I’m versed in the general topic, happen to know the specific subject of the question or just get lucky with guessing.
(This analogy breaks apart if you consider the possibility of giving a mediocre answer that’s neither accurate nor entirely stupid, which probably makes it the perfect self-defeating counterexample)
- Comment on Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court. 2 months ago:
As a thin veil of excuse, the DCRI incident involved what they considered military secrets rather than defamation charges. Still dumb to do that extrajudicially, of course.
- Comment on Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court. 2 months ago:
The article on the lawsuit is blocked, which is standard procedure for participants of an ongoing lawsuit: Talk to your lawyer about it, and nobody else, because anything you say without your lawyer’s counsel might jeopardise your legal position. Even if it’s just people editing that article, the foundation will want to protect itself until the matter is settled.
Don’t forget that non-profits, too, are beholden to laws. If they want to continue offering their services in India, they don’t really want to be charged for contempt on top of the other case.
- Comment on Bluesky Announces Series A to Grow Network of 13M+ Users - Bluesky 2 months ago:
People here prefer the federation of Mastodon
- Comment on Baidu CEO warns AI is just an inevitable bubble — 99% of AI companies are at risk of failing when the bubble bursts 3 months ago:
Shouldn’t, definitely. But for a while, it will keep running, because that’s how a lot of speculative investment works.
- Comment on hard to argue with 3 months ago:
Poor lady, victim of a fucked up religion enforcing sexist bullshit, became an bullshitter in turn. I feel sorry for her.
Doesn’t mean I excuse the crap she’s dumping out there, of course.
- Comment on Baidu CEO warns AI is just an inevitable bubble — 99% of AI companies are at risk of failing when the bubble bursts 3 months ago:
It can! For a while. Isn’t that the nature of speculation and speculative bubbles? Sure, they may pop some day, because we don’t know for sure what’s a bubble and what is a promising market disruption. But a bunch of people make a bunch of money until then, and that’s all that matters.
- Comment on Honey 3 months ago:
Misunderstandings happen, I don’t think any malice was intended
- Comment on Proud globohomo 3 months ago:
Those evil leftists always pushing… checks notes corporate culture!
- Comment on Honey 3 months ago:
I think the point was that some numbskulls try to pull a “checkmate vegans” claiming that. You probably know the type, obnoxiously trying to butt in on vegan discussions and go “but if you’re fine with breastfeeding, you’re not really vegan”, misunderstanding (or misconstruing) the motivations in the same vein as mentioned before.
- Comment on Google asks 9th Circuit for emergency stay, says Epic ruling ‘is dangerous’ 3 months ago:
Cyberpunk, but without the cyber and the punk
- Comment on German politician calls for Greta Thunberg to be banned from attending pro-Palestinian protests 3 months ago:
Not fringe, no.
Definitely cringe tho.
- Comment on You'll have to use pto time to drown, but make sure it's approved first 3 months ago:
I believe it’s a parody of the people that will gab any nonsense to rail against taxes.
Besides, from the income of putting prisoners to work obviously.
- Comment on "Would U.S. tech workers join a union?" survey average: 67% likely 3 months ago:
That’s the other option, of course: If your employees are happy, they don’t need to form a union to press complaints.
- Comment on Jazz hands 3 months ago:
It would be Musical Roulette essentially
- Comment on "Would U.S. tech workers join a union?" survey average: 67% likely 3 months ago:
Maybe they just forgot to brainwash them with anti-union propaganda
- Comment on Horse archers ruin every game they are in. 3 months ago:
Skirmishers as in “Light Cavalry”, designed to catch closing archery and ride them down? I’m not big on RTS (I suck at multitasking), but I’m always fascinated by gamified implementations of historical dynamics.
I don’t suppose they also support “recruit auxiliary specialists” as option?
- Comment on Horse archers ruin every game they are in. 3 months ago:
Announcing the new “Royal Stables” DLC: “Marauders & Massacres” is sure to spice up your medieval farm simulation!
- Comment on Horse archers ruin every game they are in. 3 months ago:
They were also rare. To effectively pull off horse archery, you needed good horses, good riders that also happened to be good archers (both of which weren’t trivial on their own, let alone combined) and good coordination. Bows are more effective the closer you are, so to get the most out of your arrows, you’ll want to close in, but then you also need to wheel off again without your riders getting in each other’s way, so you needed to drill maneuvers for that.
So you either need to have a sufficiently large body of soldiers with the leisure to train both archery and riding instead of working the fields, or you needed a society that treats them as basic skills anyway and only needed training in the military application. Nomadic peoples like the Scythians or Mongols often had the former, so they were notable sources of dangerous mounted archery, particularly where the raising and support of a professional army wasn’t feasible. Rome had the Equites Sagitarii, but they were part of the distinct social class we would call Knights, so not your rank-and-file soldier (and those were already more professional than later levy- or retinue-based militaries).
So if we were concerned about accuracy*, these units should be expensive and require good management to make the most of them, but be very dangerous too. The point about open / closed terrain certainly fits as well.
What’s a bit more foggy is how games usually handle bow effectiveness at range, but that’s its own topic.
*I do care about accuracy, but not at any cost - games need to be fun too, and that’s worth sacrificing some accuracy for.