sxan

@sxan@midwest.social

       🅸 🅰🅼 🆃🅷🅴 🅻🅰🆆. 
 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍 𝖋𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖓𝖊𝖍𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍 

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please advise on this conversation we had over on c/Piracy. Transporters and replicators, basic operating principles?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah I think I see the confusion.

  I was saying that there’s nothing, within our current physics, that is not efficient than a matter/antimatter reaction. You get 100% of the energy. Whether or not it’s useful energy is another question, and I’m doing some hand-waving around the topics of containment, manipulation, etc. However, nothing we know of is a more efficient use of matter to generate electricity. Not fission; not fusion; not radioactive decay. If we could wrap a black hole in a Dyson sphere and capture Hawking radiation, it’d still be less efficient than M/AM annihilation.

  I was saying that - barring a magic technology such as capturing usable energy from quantum fluctuation, saying ST has a form of energy production that is a matter-based energy production that is more efficient than M/AM annihilation would violate our known laws of physics, because introducing a hydrogen atom to an anti-hydrogen atom is 100% efficient and costs nearly nothing to effect.

  ST is full of magic technologies, and carrying around a bunch of AM as part of a way to play Mozart in the ready room is really dangerous, so - maybe they use it a bit, but they rely on more stable, less dangerous energy sources like dilithium. Anyway, trying to mix hard science and Star Trek is a dangerous endeavor. ST is more hard-sciency than the Space Wizards in Star Wars, but there’s still a vast amount of speculation required to make things work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please advise on this conversation we had over on c/Piracy. Transporters and replicators, basic operating principles?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  So… and I’m in no way a Memory Alpha-level ST nerd, caveat lector:

  • transporters are matter-to-energy-to -matter transformers; which implies
  • they have both energy-to-matter conversion technology, and matter-to-energy technology; which means
  • assuming the conversion process itself isn’t using vast quantities of energy, they could easily be turning energy into matter, and powering it with matter to energy, losing some energy in the conversion tax; which means
  • they may as well be turning humanoid waste into food

  It would imply that transporter and replicator technology are, basically, the same thing.

  However, there are cannon issues.

  • Even assuming metaphysics beyond what we know, they’d have to be violating the laws of thermodynamics to get more efficient energy production than matter-to-energy conversion. Which would make dilithium crystals and such less efficient than the technology they use to create food… so, why use it? Well, because
  • The conversion process isn’t low cost. They can transport people, and produce from from energy, but it’s a super-expensive process. Like, you lose 90% of your energy in the matter:energy:matter cycle, out something. Which would mean
  • Transporter technology isn’t converting things to energy and back; it’s using some cheat that does the same thing effectively, but with constraints, such as limits on how much you can alter the source object to destination object in the process; and getting pure energy out of matter is really lossy. But if you go from baseball to baseball, but in a different place, you avoid the energy penalty.

  My head cannon is that this is how both replicators and transporters work. If you take a Riker and turn him into Riker somewhere else via a conversion loophole, it’s pretty cheap. If you take a 236g of lead and turn it into a cup of Earl Grey (hot), it costs you some energy loss but you’re using basically the same loophole. But if you try to turn Riker into pure energy to power the Enterprise because the warp core is offline, really you only get a couple of grams of usable energy because you can’t use the loophole and most went into the conversion process – which is why they still need an efficient fuel like dilithium.

  Like, matter-to-energy requires antimatter, which is expensive to produce; but the loophole lets you skip over the antimatter part as long as, in the end, you have basically the same sort of matter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lonely Mountain: Snow Riders has a new release date and it's next week⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Looks fun! I hope someday we have holodecks where you can ski a mountain with a never-ending run, with no crowds of people to navigate, and no snow-boarders.

  Not trying to dis snow-boarders – they’re fine; I just think everyone is better off when alpine skiers and snow boarders are segregated. Ideal conditions are different for each group, anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Honda says the Acura RSX will be the first original EV with the Asimo operating system⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, me too.

  Here’s Honda’s speil about it. Light on technical details.

  One thing I took away from reading it, though, is they’re doing the usual “disguising monitoring and collecting information about everything you do as some sort of desirable benefit.”

  “We track your peeing habits to conveniently show you where rest stops are!” They don’t say the “and sell it to third parties” part out loud.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨HDMI 2.2 will require new “Ultra96” cables, whenever we have 8K TVs and content⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I was going to ask, but I just looked it up: it looks as if USB-4 has enough bandwidth to drive dual 4k monitors at 120Hz (and docks exist that support this).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨HDMI 2.2 will require new “Ultra96” cables, whenever we have 8K TVs and content⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s one I hadn’t encountered. At those distances I start contemplating wireless solutions.

  Got myself a nice outdoor POE camera, a bunch of appropriate CAT and power adapter… and then realized that since the previous owners had put in a sheet-rock ceiling (not complaining; drop ceilings make me fell like I’m living in a warehouse), I had no easy way to run the ethernet all the way crosswise across the house from where the switch was to where I wanted the camera. I’d been thinking since the utility room wasn’t finished I’d figure a way to thread it with a flashlight and a “step 3: ???”. The moral is that running long wires is not my favorite thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨HDMI 2.2 will require new “Ultra96” cables, whenever we have 8K TVs and content⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, the DRM baked into the specification is such bullshit.

  That’s the one thing they have absolutely no interest in getting rid of. They’ll change everything about the spec, including the connector, but that part’s staying in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨HDMI 2.2 will require new “Ultra96” cables, whenever we have 8K TVs and content⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Is DVI completely out of the picture? I hate the connector, but I’ve had a lot of issues with DP, mainly around Linux support and multi-monitor setups.

  I was kinda hoping USB-C/4/Thunderbolt would step into this space and normalize chaining and small connectors, but all of those monitors are stupidly expensive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside Trump hotel in Las Vegas kills one⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Trump? Was it Trump? Pleasepleaseplease…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tempo – An open source music client for Subsonic with Android Auto support, now with continuous playback, new codec support and more!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There is a project to standardize (and document) the API, called OpenSubsonic. It includes extensions, but the main value is that it tries to consistently document expected behavior. It’s an uphill battle, because the Subsonic API is a schizophrenic mess, and no two servers interpret API responses the same way, but it’s still a decent project. I contribute to a client, and we try to adhere to the OpenSubsonic documentation.

  My only criticism about the API is that it’s focused on streaming, which means we can’t consolidate server control (e.g. mpd) and streaming, which would make writing versatile clients easier, but still.

  Tempo is a fantastic client, BTW, and has largely replaced my local offline client use.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI in Mobile Phones: The Era of Smart App-less Interfaces⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the most egregious instance of this practice. I hate icons being shuffled.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI in Mobile Phones: The Era of Smart App-less Interfaces⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  No.

  I hate adaptive UIs. MS ribbon made it so hard to find what you were looking for, and UIs that change menus situationally suck. A UI that “predicts” what I want and constantly dicks with my content, so that when it’s wrong I have to search around for what I really want because it’s now buried in some random location… sounds like hell.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Every mosquito you kill with your hands makes them evolve to be better at avoiding you.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the ideal outcome: mosquitoes avoid me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why some book fans are leaving Amazon-owned Goodreads in wake of the U.S. election⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Have you tried Bookwyrm? It’s also available self-hosted, if you want to ignore or limit the social media part.

  Someone else said, Openreads is a good, entirely local, app, with CSV in/export, and written in Flutter so you should be able to run it on your desktop, too.

  Or, if you read e-books and don’t want the social media part, use Calibre. My only issue is that it doesn’t sync all of the information my Kobo obviously tracks, like read times and star-rating.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For cats, the carrot and stick approach is reversed, because they hate carrots and the stick is a Churu.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Plus, they’re just darned contrarian by nature.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mob of Hundreds Of Monkeys Riot In Thai Town⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Apes together strong.

  And so it begins. See you all in the human pens!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  All of the silos are in rural areas; those are mostly known and definitely first-strike targets. Cities need very few nukes to take out individually. Nowhere will anyone be rebuilding from the ashes. If the war is limited and nuclear winter doesn’t make the entire planet uninhabitable, the only places with a chance of surviving are the undeveloped countries. No developed country will be habitable.

  Nuclear fallout is a bitch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How screwed would one be if their email provider shuts down?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I haven’t tried it yet, and I haven’t had a reason to look into it. My experience with Fi was that you pay $10 per Gb - it didn’t come out of your normal bank - and per-minute charges. When I was traveling, I used my company phone, or if on vacation, purely data with heavy up front-caching as much as I could at the hotel. I really don’t like surprise bill sizes.

  But to be honest, I haven’t tried Mint internationally, so I can’t say.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How screwed would one be if their email provider shuts down?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not so bad. I use gmail as a backup for some accounts in case something happens to my VPS or domain, and my Amazon account is still linked to it out of laziness, but otherwise I never use it.

  Oh. Except that I have an Android phone, and that’s linked to my gmail, although I don’t use any Google apps or services beyond Play. So I suppose my phone would stop working. Everything’s backed up, though, so maybe it’d be a good thing; maybe it’d motivate me to pull the trigger on a Light Phone. I kinda want a Minimal Phone because my F&F uses Jami, but that’d still be an Android phone, so it wouldn’t work either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How screwed would one be if their email provider shuts down?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fi isn’t that great. We were on Fi for years; I switched to Mint, my wife stayed on Fi until I was sure it was going to work. So far, I pay less for more, no gotchas.

  It was amazing when it first came out; now it has a lot of competition that beats it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Boner" is a good word for a reanimated skeleton or a decoration of such.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “Boner” would be a fantastic name for a TV series about a grumpy orthopedist with a drug problem who’s always right. “It’s always osteoporosis” could be the tag line.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How long do you think we'll keep seeing "formerly Twitter"?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I never stopped calling it Twitter. X is a window manager, a letter of the alphabet, or the most algebraic variable name. It’s not a name for a company.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fitness app Strava gives away location of Biden, Trump and other leaders, French newspaper says⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fitness app Strava gives away location of Biden, Trump and other leaders, French newspaper says⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Trump? Uses a fitness app?

  That makes me suspect the whole claim.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Static site generator for an idiot who doesn't want to learn a new templating language just to have a blog?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Seconded. OP, if you can write Markdown, Hugo will turn it into a website.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the point of a long-distance friendship?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  To maximize the number of people who show up at your funeral.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A fair proportion of the suffering in the world can be laid at the feet of binary thinking.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are grammar Nazis, and fashion Nazis; PC Nazis, and good ol’ fashioned fascist Nazis; but my favorite Nazis are logic Nazis!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What I learned from 3 years of running Windows 11 on “unsupported” PCs⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Go ahead… you can whisper it to me

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Star Trek: Lower Decks cast call for more seasons: "Until we're dust in the ground"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Who do I write?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Death of the Junior Developer⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Opening an office is a completely different thing; there is an enormous difference between offshore contractors and offshore employees. That much, I’ll agree with.

  In the US, though, it’s usually cost-driven. When offshore mandates come down, it’s always in terms of getting more people for less cost. However, in most cases, you don’t get more quality code faster by throwing more people at it. It’s very much a case of “9 women making a baby in one month.” Rarely are software problems solved with larger teams; usually, a single, highly skilled programmer will do more for a software project than 5 junior developers.

  Not an projects are the same. Sometimes what you do need is a bunch of people. But it’s by far more the exception than the rule, and yet Management (especially in companies where software isn’t the core competency) almost always assumes the opposite.

  If you performed a survey in the US, I would bet good money that in the majority of cases the decision to offshore was not made by line managers, but by someone higher in the chain who did not have a software engineering degree.