chonglibloodsport
@chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
- Comment on Is anyone else not feeling that patriotic for July 4? 17 hours ago:
Canadian here. I spent most of July 1 in bed! Was not feeling patriotic! Did not watch any fireworks.
- Comment on Is there really anything stopping an evil government from just poisoning the water supply to commit a massacre/genocide/ethnic-clensing? 4 days ago:
Lots of people drink bottled water, soda, beer, or other drinks not immediately connected to the water supply. Furthermore, poisons are unlikely to remain undetected long enough to kill the entire population. While a strong dose of a deadly poison like cyanide can kill in minutes it’s likely to be detected quickly due to how rapidly its effects begin to show up.
A slower-acting, accumulating poison like dimethylmercury could potentially kill more people because its effects don’t show up immediately. On the other hand, the delayed effects of the poison would provide the victims a chance to retaliate against the poisoners.
Either way, it’s a very crude and unfocused attack against a population which is unlikely to achieve any political aim besides wanton destruction and outrage.
- Comment on In California, plans to move low-income neighborhoods off of gas advance 5 days ago:
Everyone says the transmission lines cause devastating wildfires but that’s the proximate cause. It’s like if we went to a gas station and there was an enormous leak with a giant pool of gasoline filling the parking lot and then we blamed a lady wearing a wool sweater for giving off the spark that starts the whole thing ablaze.
The problem with wildfires in California is twofold: 1) not enough controlled burning (due to underfunding and lack of staff) and 2) too many homes built in the highest risk areas.
I think part of this issue is the California government’s boneheaded fight with insurance companies which seeks to prevent them from appropriately pricing the risk for home insurance. One of the most valuable things insurance companies (as hated as they are) do for society is develop highly sophisticated risk models for wildfire and flood damage. When allowed to, they incorporate these models into the premiums they charge for home insurance in different areas. This would ordinarily make it extremely expensive to insure a home in the highest risk areas, creating a market disincentive to build there, but Californians insist on fighting this (shooting the messenger) through the political system.
- Comment on Is there a medieval equivalent of the youtube channel "Primative Technology" 1 week ago:
Medieval technology is vastly more complex, broader in scope, etc. compared to the Stone Age stuff on Primitive Technology. It’s actually extremely challenging to go from scratch like he does and then achieve medieval-level ironworking. He can barely make a few little iron pellets which are excessively-hard (too much carbon) and need further processing to become workable. He is a very long way from building a proper medieval smelter capable of producing pig iron or other cast iron products.
- Comment on Is flirting redundant? 1 week ago:
Same with any pair activity. Paddling a canoe is no fun if one person doesn’t like water and wants outta there ASAP!
- Comment on (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ 1 week ago:
So the entire point of my original comment was to give Indiana Jones a bit of vindication from the thinly veiled slander that he was nothing more than a tomb robber working for the colonialist west. How does your correction that Belloq was scamming the Hovitos, not paying them, make any difference to Jones’s character?
- Comment on (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ 1 week ago:
Scamming them is even worse, no?
- Comment on (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ 1 week ago:
He narrowly escapes with his life after having the idol stolen from him by his rival, Belloq, who works for the Nazis and actually hired that Peruvian tribe to be his little private army. Belloq is the one who orders the Peruvians to attack Jones.
- Comment on Putin declares ‘all of Ukraine is ours’ in latest blow to peace talks - and hints at nuclear threat 1 week ago:
Yeah that’s the thing. They may be more violent but are they able to maintain stable control over the country? Might dissolve into chaos anyway.
- Comment on Why is the manosphere on the rise? UN Women sounds the alarm over online misogyny 1 week ago:
Yes, it is a choice. However one of the biggest problems is that so many of the good choices are gone. I’m talking about the positive social institutions and community organizations people used to belong to. The third spaces.
Communities have fragmented. Neighbours hate each other. Both of my neighbours hate our family. One is a childless, alcoholic husband and wife who also hate each other (they used to be nice years ago) who also hate us and give us creepy looks all the time. The other is green lawn-obsessed neighbour who hates us for the pine trees we have growing on our property and refuse to cut down (at our own expense) to suit their tastes.
We’re a society of severely mentally ill, isolated, confused, and angry people. Our villages and communities are all gone. We’re all a bunch of islands unto ourselves.
- Comment on Why is the manosphere on the rise? UN Women sounds the alarm over online misogyny 1 week ago:
The manosphere is one symptom of a much larger problem. Look at it in isolation and you’ll miss the big picture. Authoritarianism is on the rise globally. Loneliness is reaching epidemic proportions. Society’s traditional institutions are a distant memory. All we have remaining are loose groups of people shouting at each other as the spectre of war lurks in the background.
- Comment on U.S. residential solar on the brink of collapse 1 week ago:
The dirty secret of any home reno tax credit is that the industry gobbles them up with markups. The price ends up being exactly the same as it would be without the tax credit, so it’s a subsidy for uncompetitive installation companies rather than families who want to invest in green energy.
- Comment on In this day and age is it possible to create a commune? With majority of vegetables coming from one acre and all put in to get wifi to our subdivision? So the bill is not that high? 2 weeks ago:
Yes, of course. Look at Amish communities. Largely self-sufficient and thriving.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Make sure you have a doctor monitor you with regular blood tests. Supplementing vitamin D can lead to dangerous levels of calcium in the blood.
- Comment on ChatGPT 'got absolutely wrecked' by Atari 2600 in beginner's chess match — OpenAI's newest model bamboozled by 1970s logic 3 weeks ago:
No, though there’s been plenty of marketing where they claim “we know how to build AGI.”
- Comment on ChatGPT 'got absolutely wrecked' by Atari 2600 in beginner's chess match — OpenAI's newest model bamboozled by 1970s logic 3 weeks ago:
I was very careful not to use the term AGI for this reason. General intelligence tool isn’t the same thing. It’s a much weaker claim, yet it’s also a far stronger claim than any purpose-built software. The ambiguity is part of their marketing strategy.
- Comment on ChatGPT 'got absolutely wrecked' by Atari 2600 in beginner's chess match — OpenAI's newest model bamboozled by 1970s logic 3 weeks ago:
If ChatGPT were marketed as a toaster nobody would bat an eye. The reason so many are laughing is because ChatGPT is marketed as a general intelligence tool.
- Comment on The Rogue Prince of Persia 1.0 is coming in August! 3 weeks ago:
Nothing like Prince of Persia. Has that overwrought modern platformer control scheme (with a zillion different things you can do in the air) that every single other modern platformer has. No thanks!
Anyone know of any modern platformer games without all that nonsense? The idea is to feel more like a human who actually needs to think before jumping. I want to feel the weight of my character, feel a strong sense of momentum, and be fully committed to jumps. Air jumps and mid-air momentum control are not my style.
- Comment on OpenAI's annualized revenue hits $10 billion, up from $5.5 billion in December 2024 3 weeks ago:
That’s a strange list. OpenAI doesn’t only offer SaaS for end users, it also offers API access which puts it into the infrastructure game with the likes of Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure (which actually offers OpenAI services and pushes them out to Windows users en masse).
- Comment on OpenAI's annualized revenue hits $10 billion, up from $5.5 billion in December 2024 3 weeks ago:
6 million units at $700 a pop is $4.2 billion in revenue. Much closer to 1/2 of $10 billion than you 1/10.
Apple has never made more money from the App Store than from iPhone hardware sales. When the iPhone launched the App Store didn’t exist yet. Over time, Apple’s revenue from services (including the App Store) has grown dramatically to around $26 billion per quarter today, though that is still less than what they earn in iPhone sales (a bit over $50 billion per quarter in 2024).
- Comment on where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues? 3 weeks ago:
People feel no social obligation because they no longer feel connected to anything. Membership in civic institutions and community organizations has fallen off a cliff. Urban planning has turned suburbs from walkable mixed-use communities into car-centric ghost towns. Rampant inflation and cost disease have destroyed affordability for many. Homeowners have become some of the worst ladder-pullers with extreme NIMBYism slowing housing construction to a crawl.
- Comment on Difference 3 weeks ago:
Dunno how you get that. MSG has nothing to do with opium.
- Comment on We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink 3 weeks ago:
This is the same mistake everyone makes. They think Donald Trump is just a person. That he actually matters and we just have to get rid of him and everything will be okay.
It doesn’t work that way.
But as fascism didn’t die with Hitler, it’s not going to die with Trump either. All of the problems — all of the rifts in our society — will still be there when he’s gone.
- Comment on We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink 3 weeks ago:
So you want Donald Trump in charge of the telecom industry and any other industries that have received some sort of public subsidy?
- Comment on Ross Ulbricht Got a $31 Million Donation From a Dark Web Dealer, Crypto Tracers Suspect 3 weeks ago:
“To my friends, everything. To my enemies, the law.”
This is the only logic to it.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
I think after the younger partner reaches age 30 the rule doesn’t matter anymore.
If a 30 year old decides to get together with an 80 year old then nobody should be shaming either of them. If they’re both mature, consenting adults then we should celebrate their happiness. Of course if one or the other is unable to consent by reason of cognitive disability then that’s a different story altogether (and would be a problem even if their ages were very close).
- Comment on Microsoft Shifts Xbox Gaming Handheld Ambitions to Third-Party Windows Handhelds, Postpones 2027 Launch Plans 4 weeks ago:
My point here is that none of these cases feature Microsoft inventing a brand new product and trying to market it for the first time. Their whole strategy from the very beginning was to look for existing products with existing markets and try to conquer them. They even had a name for this strategy which the US DoJ famously discovered during the antitrust trial:
- Comment on Microsoft Shifts Xbox Gaming Handheld Ambitions to Third-Party Windows Handhelds, Postpones 2027 Launch Plans 4 weeks ago:
This is how Microsoft has operated since day 1:
- they let WordPerfect take the lead and followed up with Word
- they let VisiCalc and Lotus 123 take the lead and followed up with Excel
- they let Apple take the lead on GUI with the Mac and followed up with Windows
- they let Netscape take the lead and followed up with IE
- they let Sony take the lead with PlayStation and followed up with Xbox
- they let Apple take the lead with iPad and followed up with Surface
- now they’re letting Valve take the lead with SteamDeck and following up with their own handheld
- Comment on Microsoft Shifts Xbox Gaming Handheld Ambitions to Third-Party Windows Handhelds, Postpones 2027 Launch Plans 4 weeks ago:
That’s why they’re doing this. The sleeping dragon is waking up. They’re gonna pour all of their marketing effort into killing the Steam Deck because of the threat it represents for consumer Windows.
- Comment on Does noise from different nearby sources 'add up'? Or do the different sources cancel each other out? In any case, please provide a formula and an example 4 weeks ago:
Very nice, though one thing to note for readers is the pictures are of transverse waves like you’d see in a vibrating string. Sound waves are longitudinal pressure waves which propagate outward in expanding spheres from the source of the noise. The loudness of a sound you hear corresponds to the pressure and frequency it imparts on your eardrum at the point of intersection between that expanding sphere and your ear.
This pressure is directly proportional to the surface area of your eardrum on the surface of that sphere. As you may or may not recall from high school geometry, the surface area of a sphere is 4pi*r^2. If you consider the pressure of a sound wave as being evenly spread out over the surface of that expanding sphere (assuming an ideal gas), then doubling the distance from the sound source will quadruple the surface area of the sphere, thus decreasing the pressure your eardrum experiences by a factor of four! Sounds from very far away rapidly lose pressure (so are quieter) without the aid of constructive interference to boost them.
If you’ve ever heard an echo, you know that sounds can bounce off solid surfaces. Combined with the phenomenon of constructive interference, sound reflections can achieve a great deal of amplification. This is the principle upon which architectural acoustics is based.