brianorca
@brianorca@lemmy.world
- Comment on Quantum Opinions 2 months ago:
There a whole branch of quantum mechanics research that’s trying increasingly complicated ways of not looking at the particles while trying to sneak a look.
- Comment on Reef Sharks 2 months ago:
Blacktip Reef sharks, like some others such as great white and hammerhead, are “obligate ram ventilators” because forward movement is the only way they can push water over their gills. Nurse sharks and some others are able to close their mouth and pump water to the gills while stationary.
- Comment on Cords 2 months ago:
In AC, diodes work half the time, every 1/60 second. The “good” LEDs will have circuitry to fully rectify the AC into DC, drop the voltage properly, and smooth the pals and valleys, so they will be continuously lit. So the cheap LED Christmas lights might have a slight flicker, and the good ones are steady. (Or get fancy with chasing colors, etc.)
All of that happens inside each of the “bulb” enclosures, or sometimes in a box at one end, so it technically doesn’t matter which end they are getting electricity from, since the socket at the far end is still just collected in parallel to the plug at the near end. (Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to link them together.)
It’s just a really bad dangerous idea to reverse them.
- Comment on Cords 2 months ago:
It would still work. But it is VERY dangerous. 1. The far end of the light string will now have exposed metal prongs that are energized at 120v, which can be fatal. 2. If the other end gets plugged into a socket, there is a 50% chance it will be a different circuit on a different phase, which can create a 240v direct short, across a wire that has no properly sized circuit breaker. 3. Using it to plug a generator into your house during a power outage can kill electrical workers trying to fix the outage if you fail to open your circuit breakers.
- Comment on Cords 2 months ago:
If someone can’t make the own cord, what’s the chance they know how vital it is to flip the breaker?
- Comment on Cords 2 months ago:
Two things: 1: there’s a high chance you do cross live and neutral, or even live and live on different phases. 2: using it to plug in a generator to power your house can kill electrical workers who are trying to restore a power outage. (If you fail to open your circuit breaker.)
- Comment on Wiz rejects Google’s $23 billion takeover in favor of IPO 3 months ago:
Why? I like my Wiz lights. Is there something I don’t know about?
- Comment on Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to lock down Windows 3 months ago:
It’s a third party kernel module, which Microsoft would love to be able to block, but legally can’t. It’s technically possible to write a virus scanner that runs in user space instead of the kernel, but it’s easier to make sure everything gets scanned if it’s in the kernel.
- Comment on Microsoft insiders worry the company has become just 'IT for OpenAI' 4 months ago:
I’m saying it’s happened before. AOL. Palm. Yahoo. Blackberry. A company with an effective monopoly gets complacent and fails to serve their users. They get replaced.
- Comment on Microsoft insiders worry the company has become just 'IT for OpenAI' 4 months ago:
But that’s also a path for them to no longer be a monopoly, if the right competitor makes the right moves.
- Comment on The Dangerous Rise of GPS Attacks 6 months ago:
They are cancelling flights because those specific airports don’t have the equipment to provide a precision landing (ILS) during low visibility weather. They only published a landing procedure with GPS. They will now spend a few months installing the ILS system to enable such landings so they can resume commercial flights.
Before GPS, all airports would be either VFR only or would have an ILS system installed. Since then, some airports were built without an expensive ILS but used a published GPS approach to allow low-vis landings.
They could have continued flights with only VFR navigation, but that would seriously restrict the weather they could operate in.
- Comment on kids are gowing up faster and faster 6 months ago:
And now here in California, they are starting “Transitional Kindergarten” or TK for the 4 year olds, before they go to Kindergarten at five. (More focus on reading and writing than a typical Preschool.) TK is offered at the normal public schools, and at most private schools that have K and up.
- Comment on epidemiology 6 months ago:
Prions wouldn’t work like that. They would have to be very similar, and the same chirality, as our own proteins, or else the misfold would not self-replicate like prion diseases do.
- Comment on 5.25-inch floppy disks expected to help run San Francisco trains until 2030 7 months ago:
Or there was documentation. You even remember reading it.(Or writing it) But since then we’ve changed from shared folders to SharePoint to something else, and reorganized folder hierarchy at least five times. I have no idea where to find it, or if it was purged in one of the cleanups.
- Comment on CFCs 8 months ago:
Starship, as it is right now, is already a better rocket than SLS. It can already carry more mass and be cheaper (even fully expended) than the SLS’s 4 billion cost per launch.
It will get better. Falcon 9 didn’t land the first time either, but now it has successfully landed more consecutive times than any other rocket has flown.
There’s nothing wrong with saying this is a test. This is only a test, and we don’t expect it to be perfect yet. Each time they learn from the data. And SpaceX hasn’t repeated the same mistake twice.
- Comment on CFCs 8 months ago:
That’s a pretty good description. And most software back then didn’t use nice date utilities, they each had their own inline implementation. So sometimes you had to figure out what they were trying to do in the original code, which was usually written by someone who’s not there anymore. But other times it was the most mundane doing the same fix you already did in 200 other programs.
- Comment on Cory Doctorow gets scammed 8 months ago:
My bank has called me a few times. Each time they ask about specific transactions, so it’s mostly yes/no answers. (Occasionally I’ve asked for additional clarifying info, but they never asked about card numbers or the like.) Usually it’s been abnormal transactions that i know about, but a few times it was a cloned card number being used elsewhere, (before chip became standard) and then I had the card shut down.
- Comment on Finland detects more GPS jammers as drivers increasingly try to hide their tracks | Yle News | Yle 8 months ago:
Tape some foil over the GPS antenna.
- Comment on Suboptimal 8 months ago:
The skin of that cowling doesn’t look thick enough to do more than streamlining. You’re thinking of the containment ring found in jet engines.
- Comment on Without fail 8 months ago:
Works great as long as you’re not the one on mute.
- Comment on OpenAI's GPT Trademark Request Has Been Denied 9 months ago:
iPhone is like ChatGPT. But trying to trademark GPT would be like trademarking “Phone”
- Comment on Americans are asleep, post European windows 9 months ago:
There are plenty of options in the US for adjustable pressure. Mine has pressure on the big lever, and temperature on a smaller level. It even has pressure compensation when somebody flushes a toilet, so there’s no temperature change. But the type you show there does seem to be the default selection for new construction.
- Comment on What’s Usenet and how can I access it with modern hardware (phones/laptops)? 9 months ago:
They weren’t always premium. Your local ISP or college often ran a server for their users in the old days.
- Comment on Researcher uncovers one of the biggest password dumps in recent history 9 months ago:
A lot of ISPs provide email, too. So getting an ISP password lets them reset your other passwords which used that email address for the “forgot email” prompt. (I’m guessing you don’t use your ISP provided email, but you’re not “most people”.)
- Comment on Discord Servers asking for Phone Numbers and 'Verification Levels' 10 months ago:
What does the “5 minute” rule even do? Any bot can be programmed to wait that long, or have a few accounts lined up to use in sequence.
- Comment on Discord Servers asking for Phone Numbers and 'Verification Levels' 10 months ago:
Which means when they ask to verify your number again in 6 months, or after a computer upgrade, you are SOL without that specific phone number.
- Comment on Alaska flight incident reveals another feature Boeing didn’t inform pilots about - Federal investigators said that Boeing didn’t make pilots aware that when a plane rapidly depressurizes, the cockp... 10 months ago:
There are surely some vents that could handle a slower decompression, but a sudden event that reduced the pressure by half in a single second would be too much. 6 tons of a lot of force for a door to take, especially when it is in the opposite direction of most threats the door is supposed to stop.
- Comment on I hope this ship holds together! 10 months ago:
Many more recent cars will do this automatically at high throttle conditions, such as acceleration to pass.
- Comment on If you begin Star Trek: Voyager episode Spirit Folk at exactly 11:49:35 on New Year's Eve, Ensign Harry Kim will kiss a cow as the clock strikes midnight 10 months ago:
You can set up a command line to start VLC using the OS’s built in task scheduler.
- Comment on The Epic question: How Google lost when Apple won | How is Google running an illegal monopoly with the Play store — while Apple’s App Store is in the clear? 10 months ago:
It could also be how the Apple trial was just in front of the judge, but the Google trial went to a my jury. Could Epic have had a different result if they requested a jury trial the first time?