thinkercharmercoderfarmer
@thinkercharmercoderfarmer@slrpnk.net
- Comment on How many containers are you all running? 1 hour ago:
It depends a lot on what you want to do and a little on what you’re used to. It’s some configuration overhead so it may not be worth the extra hassle if you’re only running a few services (and they don’t have dependency conflicts). IME once you pass a certain complexity level it becomes easier to run new services in containers, but if you’re not sure how they’d benefit your setup, you’re probably fine to not worry about it until it becomes a clear need.
- Comment on How many containers are you all running? 2 hours ago:
It’s fun in a way that defies comparison.
- Comment on One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years, GDC Study Reveals 5 hours ago:
As someone who was recently laid off if anyone wants to front the cash I’m currently available for cheap.
- Comment on How many containers are you all running? 1 day ago:
That’s why I have one host called
theBarreland it’s just 100 Chaos Monkeys and nothing else - Comment on The Trump administration has secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules 1 day ago:
They aren’t a waste of money if investors can assume that there won’t be party changes in the future.
- Comment on There should be smell museums 2 days ago:
When I went to buy fancy cologne for a wedding they had little bowls of coffee beans that were supposed to be palate cleansers. I cannot vouch for how well they worked, I felt like my nose was blown out after a few samples.
- Comment on It's barely a science. 3 days ago:
Ah, I’m glad you clarified. I think there are some magics that don’t have a specific requirement for belief, e.g. casting a spell on a non-believing target, or, depending on how broadly you define magic, gravity (in that, while we have robust theories about how gravity works, we still don’t have a broadly accepted theory about why gravity does what it does). But I do think it’s an interesting type of magic and it can absolutely be subjected to scientific testing. There are a lot of things in that category that aren’t traditionally called magic, like fiat currency, placebos, nation-states (for that matter, laws), human racial categorizations. The impact of belief on a fiat currency (or, belief in the value of that currency) is, I think, pretty well studied though I’m not enough of an economist to know what, if any, theoretical model predicts the fluctuation (or collapse) of a currency’s value.
I’m curious to know what your take is on behavioral economics. It essentially tries to incorporate human fallibility into classical economics. Thaler’s concept of “nudging” is the kind of sleight-of-hand trick that a magician might use to create the illusion of choice.
Also, I’m not a mathematician but they can’t be uniquely responsible for ignoring human fallibility with money. That’s a human problem and capitalists profit by exploiting that tendency, which is why econ (specifically, investments in economic research) tends to focus on research that enables capitalism. The same thing happens in chemistry, pharmaceuticals, anthropology, history, art. Any area of human endeavor can be distorted for personal gain. It just happens that the science of capital, particularly the jargon of economics, is useful for legitimizing and entrenching capitalistic nonsense. Mathematicians are (broadly speaking) more interested in scientific endeavor, at least as much as researchers in any other field.
- Comment on It's barely a science. 3 days ago:
I think magic does get called technology, once we construct a sufficiently rigorous way to test its predictions and those predictions are validated. The first thing that comes to mind is the old folk remedy of using willow bark to treat fever. I don’t know if that specific treatment was ever described as “magic” per se, but for a broad swath of human history it was a rule: if fever, then willow bark. It was also used in a bunch of other remedies that didn’t work, and there were (still are) a ton of folk remedies for fever that either didn’t work or actively worsened the situation, but the combination of willow bark and fevers was eventually validated, salicin was identified as the active agent, and it became a technological commodity. Some magics, like homeopathy, have been scientifically _in_validated, and therefore get relegated to outside the domain of scientific inquiry. Some, like phrenology, gain broad acceptance within a scientific establishment before they are convincingly invalidated and discarded. Some, like astrology, are broadly scientifically rejected but still have a broad lay appeal for non-scientific reasons.
I think the testing of any magical effect is the same as the testing of anything non-magical. The Chaos Magick Servitor sounds like a useful mental model for “learning a new thing”. If it is proven an effective therapy in clinical trials for apnea, is it no longer magic? I just don’t find the question of whether it’s magic an interesting one in that case. I still want to understand the underlying mechanisms, possibly by conducting trials on which skills can be taught via the “Chaos Magick Servitor” method vs. a control, call it the “Mundane Learning of a Brain Technique” method. You could control for faith by surveying participants before sorting them into groups and blinding testers until the test is complete. If faith in Chaos Magick, or the Servitor technique, is predictive of being able to control apnea via that method, I would expect strong believers in the “Chaos Magick Servitor” method to get better results than their non-believing cohorts, and relatively little difference between believers and non-believers in the control group. One potential downside is that I don’t really know of a good method for measuring “faith” other than self-reporting, but I think if the participant pool is large enough you could probably still get some convincing results as long as you’re content to measure effectiveness vs “self-reported faith” rather than “actual faith”. I don’t know that there’s a reliable way to know someone’s innermost heart so that might be the best you can do with our current technology.
In addition to surveying for current faith strength, you could additionally poll for faith-adjacent wants or beliefs, e.g. “In general, do you want your faith in Chaos Magick to be stronger, weaker, or stay the same?” This would give you an additional dimension: instead of just having high faith and low faith, you could have six groups: high-aspirational, high-avoidant, high-content, low-aspirational, low-avoidant, and low-content. If these groups show significant variation in how well they use the Chaos Magick Servitor method, that could illuminate how one’s current faith and their belief about what their faith “should” be affect the treatment. I’d also be curious to see if there would be any differences among the different faith groups in the control group. It could well be that low faith individuals show no benefit, or that they show more improvement with a more scientific sounding presentation of the same concept.
- Comment on It's barely a science. 3 days ago:
I’m not sure what realness has to do with it. Magic tends to have some kind of theoretical framework to explain observable phenomena (god(s), the planets, “energies”, etc.) the same way scientific theories do, they even have some experimental frameworks (e.g. my church growing up had a cadre of old ladies who were touted as “good at praying” because they apparently had a good track record with the man upstairs. To my knowledge these claims were never validated in a properly controlled laboratory environment against a random sample of similar parishioners. They also happened to be voracious gossips who wielded private information as a weapon, which is a funny coincidence.) The phenomena that magic explains are “real” insofar as they are experiences that humans have, but the underpinning theories are often unfalsifiable and/or contradictory (“prayer works” and “god’s plan is unknowable and perfect, eternal and unchanging”). That’s what I mean about coherent theories and predictable results. I guess you could say that theories that make accurate predictions are “more real” but I don’t think it makes sense to think about the realness of a scientific theory. It’s either proven false or not proven false so far.
- Comment on It's barely a science. 3 days ago:
I mean, yeah. We don’t have a unified theory of quantum gravity because at least one of our assumptions is off. Science is just figuring out precisely which assumptions are wrong and how wrong our they are.
- Comment on Humans on average get 2 hours of battery life for every hour they charge 3 days ago:
oh yeah if your engine timing is off it can make the whole system run really rough, even if it’s in otherwise superb condition. That throws a lot of newbies who don’t understand why none of their performance tuning seems to have any effect.
- Comment on Humans on average get 2 hours of battery life for every hour they charge 3 days ago:
I ran above 3/1 for several years and I can’t recommend it, I spent most of that extra time trying to hack myself into charging mode, and the rest of it wishing I were properly charged and/or yearning for the deepest cycle charge. Now that I’m closer to 2/1 performance is significantly improved and the CPU sends deepest cycle charge requests a lot less frequently.
- Comment on Humans on average get 2 hours of battery life for every hour they charge 3 days ago:
Most fast charging modes aren’t really fast charging anyway, it just distorts the meter so it reads as “fully charged” and ends the charging cycle when the battery is still at 50% or less. That’s where most of the performance issues come from IMO, people thinking they’re on a full charge when they’re in power saving mode.
- Comment on Humans on average get 2 hours of battery life for every hour they charge 3 days ago:
There are also some fuel adjuvants that will increase your duty cycle in the short and mid term, but be careful because they can damage your filters and fuel lines and those are very expensive to replace if you can even find compatible hardware, which is a longshot.
- Comment on It's barely a science. 3 days ago:
Don’t all scientific fields rest on fundamental assumptions? I mean, just to pull an example at random, astronomers were hung up on the geocentric model of the universe for a long time before we came up with the heliocentric model, which in turn was ditched for the “no true frame of reference” model we now use. Having flawed assumptions doesn’t make it non-scientific, just incorrect.
- Comment on It's barely a science. 3 days ago:
Magic is just science without the burden of coherent theories that predict reliable experimental outcomes, which covers a lot more than psychology. I’d say it’s more like humanity spitballing science-ish ideas and seeing which ones pan out, than any one branch of science specifically.
- Comment on "Microwave Math" is a specific instance of a type of numbering system where place value doesn't necessarily correspond to the number of symbols 1 week ago:
it’s clunky for sure. at least in microwave math all the place values are essentially interchangeable (you can easily convert
nseconds ton/60minutes,n/3600hours, etc.) It gets weirder if you have place values that are not interchangeable, like if you have ann+_i_nplace. - Comment on "Microwave Math" is a specific instance of a type of numbering system where place value doesn't necessarily correspond to the number of symbols 1 week ago:
That is the perfect analogy for what this turned into, I was just sitting here musing on it as I wrote for a while. Thanks!
- Comment on "Microwave Math" is a specific instance of a type of numbering system where place value doesn't necessarily correspond to the number of symbols 1 week ago:
Time intervals, yeah. It’s called “microwave math” in the sidebar and I just followed that convention.
- Comment on "Microwave Math" is a specific instance of a type of numbering system where place value doesn't necessarily correspond to the number of symbols 1 week ago:
Yeah fair. The idea seemed pretty self contained when I started writing (oh if you decouple the number system from the place value system you get multiple representations of the same value, neat), as I got going I had to keep editing it as I thought more about it. I was just trying to explain the showerthought and it spiraled from there.
- Submitted 1 week ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 10 comments
- Comment on Lead acid battery reconditioning question 3 weeks ago:
I’ll read up on those. I want to have a trickle charger attached to my main power anyway for the known-good batteries in my array to keep them from discharging too far in low production times, so if they hold a charge they’ll probably live on one permanently
- Comment on Lead acid battery reconditioning question 3 weeks ago:
good note, I’ll keep a lookout for that.
- Comment on Lead acid battery reconditioning question 4 weeks ago:
A few of them are sealed, some have pop tops. The few I have opened are completely dry. My plan for the ones with removable caps I’m planning to fill with distilled water and test, then try to recondition them with a desulfator and see if I can detect any difference. never reconditioned batteries before so it’s going to be a learning process. Not sure what, if anything, I can do with the sealed ones, I’m focusing on the ones with caps first.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to fixing@slrpnk.net | 6 comments
- Comment on Do people know what the Streisand effect was about? 1 month ago:
I see what you mean. In my experience of the internet it’s called “The Streisand Effect” only when the person complaining about something (and therefore giving an issue attention that it otherwise wouldn’t have received) is generally considered to be “in the wrong” on the issue. I can’t think of a case where someone received blowback for speaking up about an issue (professional repercussions, exclusion from social circles, “cancelling” by various parties, w/e) but was considered to be in the right by the the people calling it “The Streisand Effect”. It feels like there’s a necessary component of “you complained about something you shouldn’t have and were justly punished for it” schadenfreude attached to the term that differentiates it: if you don’t have that you’re just bravely and correctly shining a light on an injustice and it’s not called “The Streisand Effect”, it’s just raising awareness or something.
I think you’re being downvoted because the victim of the alleged injustice complaining about that injustice and then deserving the backlash is baked into the term, and calling it “victim blaming” feels off, but it technically is, it’s just that calling something “The Streisand Effect” implies that the “victim” in the situation deserved what they got because they complained about something trivial, or an effect of privilege, or some other thing that, in the eyes of the public, makes them unworthy of sympathy. But I think carrying that implication of guilt means that it is, technically, victim blaming, and the person using the term “The Streisand Effect” implicitly agrees that the victim deserves blame for their actions. And knowing the internet, I doubt this assessment is correct 100% of the time.
I’m curious to see if other people agree with this assessment. I haven’t done any research on whether my experience of the term is shared by other people, so this may not be a strong theory. Just a thought that spawned off your comment. But it is an interesting perspective.
- Comment on Meanwhile, on Facebook 2 months ago:
Messed up teeth can wreak havoc on your health, they just make you constantly sick all the time. It sucks. If I ever get my teeth fixed and it involves removing a bunch of them I probably won’t go this route, but I kinda get it. The dental equivalent of mounting your nemesis’ head on a pike.
- Comment on EA insists it will "maintain creative control" and "creative freedom" if sale to consortium goes ahead 2 months ago:
Lmao they are way ahead of you
Electronic Arts confirmed it was entering an agreement to be acquired by a group of investors comprised Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners at the end of September. The PIF is run by Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, and the investment firm Affinity Partners was formed by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
- Comment on EA insists it will "maintain creative control" and "creative freedom" if sale to consortium goes ahead 2 months ago:
Considering the new owners are famed journalist murderer and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman and Presidential nepo-in-law Jared Kushner, I’m doubtful that respect for the creative process is high on the list of priorities. And yeah, EA already sucks but I imagine they’ll find lots of innovative ways to drive EA to new heights of terribleness.
- Comment on "Fans"who don’t want Bruce Wayne to have "normal" friends or see Peter Parker financially stable don't want to see these character grow 2 months ago:
I think it has to do with the kinds of stories these characters are used to tell. Batman is a tortured billionaire who tries to use his vast resources to solve the problem of crime single-handedly, and he keeps people at arm’s length because he’s afraid that personal ties will endanger the mission he’s given himself (or something like that, Batman scholars feel free to chime in if I got it wrong.). Spiderman is a story about a broke kid trying to make a difference in the world with the limited resources he has. Similar goals for both characters, but different preconditions make the stories meaningfully different.
I think these flaws are what endear fans to a particular character because they struggle with the same problems (overly self-reliant, broke as hell) and if you have a character grow past them, you’re now telling a meaningfully different story. Might still be an interesting story, but I get why people who love these characters would consider some changes to be dealbreakers.
This is kind of a foundational feature of serialized character stories: if you want to keep telling stories about the same characters over and over again, they can’t fundamentally learn or grow or change meaningfully, not permanently anyway, because then the appeal of the character fundamentally changes, so you get characters like Batman who are stuck in this sitcom-y eternal purgatory of constantly slamming their heads against their own limitations, and still failing to grasp the root issue. And really I think, it’s not for them to figure out. Their stories are there so that we can see our own flaws in them, and learn from them. And once we have, Batman will still be out there, being a lonely nerd for other lonely nerds to identify with.