balsoft
@balsoft@lemmy.ml
- Comment on How accurate is this? 1 day ago:
TBH like a half of those questions is something I could ask when I was younger, and the other half might have been asked by my friends when they were high. I hope I didn’t upset the retail workers too much…
- Comment on Anon is a nice guy 2 days ago:
We need to get rid of cars, the sooner the better. Whether self-driving, electric, or a combination of those, they are the worst transportation method for most use-cases, only used because they are the most profitable for the capitalist and seem immediately convenient for the user, resulting in a double tragedy-of-commons situation.
- Comment on Anon is a nice guy 2 days ago:
The whole thing seemed to be engineered for drama, and the “results” are an exceptionally clickbaity oversimplification of what’s going on. It’s like that numberphile thing with 1 + 2 + 3 + …
It’s also more complicated than the lightbulb just “turning on faster than the electric field could travel through the wire”, in fact (depending on the exact circumstances) the current would ramp up very slowly, probably not enough to even meaningfully “light” the lightbulb, and only after the light-speed delay one-way would it ramp up to full-brightness.
Electric field obviously travels in all directions, but the electrons which produce fluctuations in the electric field are constrained to the wire, hence unless your wires are so close together as to basically be connected to each other, air attenuates the electric field wave propagation. This is an actually good-faith reproduction of the experiment and an in-depth explanation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vrhk5OjBP8 .
- Comment on 6 days ago:
Honestly it’s not the worst idea, the french have tried something like that during one of their revolutions.
Semi-relatedly, I’m salty they didn’t push for duodecimal numbers and base metric on that, it would incorporate the only good part of imperial system & 12-based time system, not only into measurements but also all other aspects of life.
Then they could make time consistent too, maybe have like 10000 (20736 in decimal) “metric seconds” in a day (which would mean 1 “metric second” ≈ 4 “normal” seconds) and derive stuff from there (e.g. 100 “metric seconds” in a “metric minute”, 10 “metric minutes” in a “metric hour”, 10 “metric hours” in a “metric day”). Would be really quite neat.
- Comment on 6 days ago:
Of the two, Celsius is less arbitrary because it is based on actual measurable reproducible things and not “we threw in some salts in water, and guesstimated a human body temperature”. It also makes a lot of sense in our post-industrial society because we do/don’t want to freeze/boil water almost every day for a variety of uses. Water is both an extremely important substance for humans and its freezing/boiling points occur in everyday life (unlike air or common metals).
- Comment on 6 days ago:
To be fair, it’s the other way around. Kelvin scale is Celsius scale shifted by -273.16 ℃.
- Comment on Exploding 🌳🌲🌴🌳🌲🌴🌳🌲🌴🌳 1 week ago:
It’s not just about the temperature, it’s also about how quickly the temperature is dropping. Usually when the temperature goes down, trees do some “clever” shit with the sap inside them, specifically so that there’s less moisture in them and when it freezes and expands the tree doesn’t crack. However if it drops too quickly the trees can’t do their magic quickly enough, too much water freezes, puts too much stress on the tree and it may crack.
- Comment on Tips 2 weeks ago:
It didn’t last because the will of bureaucracy was placed before the will of the people, it was a long decline of democratic rights of the working class started under Stalin and continued by all following leaders. It was not due to socialism per se, more due to the specifics of CPSU politics. China seems to have figured out a better way to do democratic dictatorship of proletariat and is successfully combining aspects of capitalism and socialism, to both make the country appealing to capitalist investors and also build up a socialist economy to bring the living standards up. It’s not perfect (and is definitely not “the end of history” by any means), but it is doing fine as an interim solution.
- Comment on Tips 2 weeks ago:
A soviet era russian also had access to free healthcare, free childcare, free higher education, cheap (sometimes free) housing, excellent (for the time) public transit, and a safety net for unemployment or old age. Oh and there was ample opportunities to build community ties so that if something did go horribly wrong and you needed that help. Capitalism in decline will give you none of that.
- Comment on purely basedbon vibes 2 weeks ago:
Given this is all going to be stolen and slightly modified code anyways, I don’t see why not. 64 sessions sounds like a lot.
- Comment on [meme] choochoo 3 weeks ago:
comprehensive public transport is impractical or next to impossible
That’s how we used to do transit before cars were invented. The US had a railway line to even the most remote farms. USSR had amazing railways that interconnected almost everything despite being the biggest country on earth by a wide margin.
If you can build an asphalt road wider than 2 lanes, chances are you can also build a small commuter railway there eventually. It would also be cheaper overall, if you consider externalities like everyone having to own a car, car crashes being a lot more common than rail crashes, and of course CO₂ emissions and the climate change that comes along with them. And that’s besides the socioeconomic benefits of letting everyone have a way to travel, rather than only those with financial means to maintain a car and the ability to drive.
Cars are sometimes necessary, but it’s like 1% of what they are used for currently.
- Comment on [meme] choochoo 3 weeks ago:
This one is actually a pretty good idea. Eventually we get rid of the parking garages too and cover everything with railways.
- Comment on We're going backwards 1 month ago:
To me, it’s simple.
Crash our in the evening, be gone in the morning? A bed in the dormitory will do fine.
Stay for a few nights, go out every day to see the city/hike/etc? Gimme a cheap hotel room with a shared bathroom.
A longer stay for a workation/etc? Get a cheap apartment (at least a studio with a bathroom and a kitchet), because going out to eat fucking sucks.
- Comment on Holy Fu*k 1 month ago:
F**k. You added two, so I have to censor one to keep the world balanced.
- Comment on The existence of billionaires is a policy failure 2 months ago:
Capitalism can create innovation, but capitalism is not necessary for it. The very same innovation could have happened if the state spent a fraction of this money on R&D, without all the insane Terraform Mars T-shirts and 3 companies wasting resources to do pretty much exactly the same thing three times.
- Comment on The existence of billionaires is a policy failure 2 months ago:
Leftists are the first to laud innovation when it benefits regular people. This is just a dick measuring contest by some asshats, financed by stealing billions of dollars from their workers.
- Comment on Aeroplane 2 months ago:
if the autopilot is engaged, you can’t physically move the wheels, because it is moving them for you.
I’m pretty sure on newer 737s the autopilot disconnects when it detects a sufficient physical force on the yoke. But yeah the button is easier and safer.
- Comment on Aeroplane 2 months ago:
It’s more as a reminder to NOT engage reverse thrust while in the air.
- Comment on Aeroplane 2 months ago:
Chill, it’s just a shitpost.
BTW, a regular person can likely fly and land a 737 with some basic ATC instructions, there have been multiple experiments demonstrating this (in a simulator). A guide like this would be immensely helpful in that situation.
- Comment on Aeroplane 2 months ago:
Yeah, the foot pedals and IAS indicator are glaring omissions. I guess they really just want you to fly with autopilot and autothrust, but good fucking luck setting up autoland without prior experience.
- Comment on Aeroplane 2 months ago:
Few additions:
- “reverse thrust” → “slow down (after you land)”
- “go fast” → “go fast (keep levers together)”
- “keep it above the ground” → “keep it above the ground, but not too high”
- (at IAS indiciator) “how fast you’re going”, “keep between 170 and 400, lower to 140 when landing”
- “make wings bigger” → “make wings bigger, required when taking off or landing”
- Comment on Billionaire opinion is not news 2 months ago:
This aint a shitpost, this is just a fact
- Comment on NHS makes morning-after pill available for free across pharmacies in England 2 months ago:
Good. That said: check the side-effects and compatibility first!
- Comment on We gotta be more encouraging 3 months ago:
- Comment on Carrot 3 months ago:
The approximation is because it’s technically not exactly proportional due to curvature.
- Comment on Carrot 3 months ago:
- Comment on Carrot 3 months ago:
By “ratio of carrot to carrot skin” I mean “volume of carrot / volume of carrot skin”. Volume of carrot is ~ length³, while volume of carrot skin is approximately ~ length², assuming a similar shape of carrot, because the skin is a constant thickness (determined by your vegetable peeler). This basically means the bigger the carrot the less money you waste on carrot skin.
- Comment on Carrot 3 months ago:
I don’t think there’s a comma needed there. And in any case, both of those mean the same thing.
- Comment on Carrot 3 months ago:
Sounds like you got a deal. Geometrically speaking, you got a way higher ratio of carrot to carrot skin.
- Comment on Anon finds a plot hole 3 months ago:
I mean, this is the premise of the original comment here. That there still are backwards-ass places where people have to own a car and drive, when much better forms of transportation exist.