DomeGuy
@DomeGuy@lemmy.world
- Comment on Can you explain like I am a child terrorism without the whole good vs evil schtik? My sister in laws kid asked me about it. He is 9. 1 week ago:
By that definition, scolding a child who nearly walked into traffic is terrorism.
- Comment on Can you explain like I am a child terrorism without the whole good vs evil schtik? My sister in laws kid asked me about it. He is 9. 1 week ago:
Terrorism is a problematic word. Some adults use it to mean “violence I dont like”, but that’s just a kind of lying.
I dont like discarding words, however, so here are two workable definitions for you:
- An act of war against a civilian target without a formal government direction.
(Broadly covers most mainstream reporting and legal criminal enhancements)
- Any violent act against a stranger intended to change the political opinion of the attacked.
(Very specifically targets the action without regard for the actor.)
Also, while this may be obbious, my dislike for any definition of terrorism as just “bad violence” means I need to acknowledge that sometimes terrorism is a morally right action. Guy Fawkes, John Brown, and intentional riots would be plausible examples of the same.
- Comment on Ate there more galaxies in the universe, than stars that can be seen from Earth with the naked eye, or with a telescope? 1 week ago:
Our models do not specify a shape for the universe, because we have not seen any evidence for a spatial (as opposed to temporal) limit to how big the universe is.
In fact, we infer that since what we can see becomes homogenous on a surprisingly small scale, the whole infinite universe is similarly filled with galactic clusters, and thus there is an (unreachable) infinite number of galaxies.
This quickly gets into the weeds of “can we even say trees fall in the forests of planets no humans will ever observe”, possibly followed by an argument over if infinites are equal or comparable.
- Comment on Ate there more galaxies in the universe, than stars that can be seen from Earth with the naked eye, or with a telescope? 1 week ago:
The whole universe? Absolutely. Even the smallwst infinity is larger than any countable sum.
The visible universe, meaning those close enough that a photon could have passed from there to here since the “big bang” faded enough to allow such transmissal? I don’t know offhand.
A simple web search suggest that our galaxy has less than 10^11^ stars – 400,000,000,000 or so. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way )
Finding our other figure is a bit harder, since trusty Wikipedia doesn’t include a direct figure and the first few articles I could find was from the BBC and used number names instead of scientific notation, which is ambiguous at this scale. ( in the long scale we only have milliardaires, and Elon Musk’s brief paper fortune was a billion rather than trillion.)
Thankfully a NASA articke linked to what appears to be the underlying research paper, and gives us a helpful number of 2x10^12^. (2,000,000,000,000)
…nasa.gov/…/STScI-01EVSR313NHNAC17DF62MP9QV9.pdf
So, if the paper is right then, yes, there are more galaxies in the observable universe than stars in the Milky Way. But, the paper was an indirect measurement that increased the galaxy count by a whole order of magnitude, so there may be only 2x10^11^ galaxies. Except, of course, that the estimate of stars in the miky way was an estimate and could be as little as 1/4 of the number I cited above…
And if the paper is wrong and the truth of the estimate is in the middle, both of our numbers could be 2x10^11^, with approximately one star in our galaxy for every galaxy in the observable universe.
- Comment on Is a black hole spherical? How come it looks different each way you view it like on it's side or up and down? 2 weeks ago:
the event horizon of black holes is not universally spherical. Rather, it can vary from a perfect sphere due to rotation or other movement.
- Comment on Why is so difficult to organize a strike 3 weeks ago:
Living in Europe in a country where you are more or less protected against layouts, were unions are allowed to exist. Jet it is so difficult to get the people to get their head out of their butts to do some solidarity or even improve their own conditions.
It sounds like you’re in an anti-Union country that is only pretending to care about worker’s rights.
Here in the horrible individualistic pro-capitalism USA workers are struggling to get their unions recognized, largely because once a union is organized there is a whole industry of advocates and lawyers who will push for the bargains to be made, for those bargains to be (at least slightly) better than the law, and for the rights in law or bargain to be protected viciously. And even if you’re not in a union, there are sharp public and private mechanisms to respect labor rights.
Not all of the USA is anti-union, and the parts that arent can and do strike when they don’t get an honest and fair deal.
- Comment on Is there a way to make a recovery USB just in case shit happens? Will it still work without a recovery moment? 3 weeks ago:
More pedantic:
C: is just how windows refers to its boot partition. You can have a PC boot from one of several partitions on your fastest internal drive, a different internal drive, a local external drive, an optical disk or USB device, or even a seperate network location.
- Comment on Why do presidents *cough* Trump use the VA? When has a shit reputation in mental facilities and other things? 4 weeks ago:
If Trump were under care of a physician for his mental issues, he’d have been institutionalized back in 2015.
The data I heard included the VA actually having better patient satisfaction ratings than any other government medical system, falling short I think only of private concierge care for billionaires who employ their doctors directly.
Plus there’s a political upside to sharing facilities with the most “deserving” welfare recipients.
- Comment on What's the difference between socialism and communism? Is there one? Or are the terms interchangeable? 4 weeks ago:
Talking about “socalism” in a language beset by capitalist oligarchs applying the label to things as mundane as “feeding children” really does require we draw a distinction between the numerous resultant definitions.
Some people use “socialism” to mean the anti-capitalist ideal you describe, while others mean either “thing I dont want my taxes to provide” or “the things those guys keep blocking.”
- Comment on Is the moon tied up in the earth's gravitational pull at the very least? Or do both pulls match at some point to circle the earth? 4 weeks ago:
You’re thinking about lagrange points – the places in a (dissimilar?) two-body system where the gravitational pull (and kinetic energy?) from both is equal and thus relatively stable.
Not a physicist, obviously.
Also, be aware that the effect of gravity diminishes with distance. We’re pulled towards the earth at about 9.8m/s/s here on the surface, but as you get further away that 9.8 drops off on an exponential curve.
This gives me a chance to repeat the best argument for why Star Wars is higher tech than Star Trek. When the enterprise gets to a planet they orbit, and the artificial gravity is only an internal issue. In star wars we see gravity shift as ships list due to damage or even fall towards planets, because they aren’t orbiting; they’re just hovering above the planet, presumably with their artificial gravity just working enough to stop the ship itself from falling.
- Comment on How do I get the damn cat to understand I can feed myself? 5 weeks ago:
Cats are apex predators, and your friend is subsidizing their pet far past what the local bird population can support. (Plus indoor cats live longer.)
Unless you’re on an actual working farm, household cats belong indoors.
- Comment on How come Nurses are not bound by the same rule is a lawyer is to a defendant or a wife to a husband or a priest? If someone says something on their death bed why are we suppose to report? 5 weeks ago:
Because nurses and doctors aren’t lawyers, and have different concerns that justify and limit anti-testimonial privilege.
To illustrate, consider who should do what if a person approaches them while covered in someone else’s blood and viscera.
- the spouse and should be free to offer comfort and advice in what was definitely a traumatic situation.
- the priest should be able to take confession without regard to temporal concern.
- the lawyer will need to start preparing a criminal defense
- the doctor and nurse should be able to heal their wounds, but also really should wonder if there’s someone else out there in need
I absolutely won’t defend the current system where patients need to be lawyers to know when they should lie to their doctors. Or where the CDC can’t say *warning, DomeGuy has COVID!" but the DA can demand my doctor tattle on my prescriptions.
- Comment on Why does most of the US blame Saudi Arabia for the 9/11 attacks? Al-Qaeda may have been trained there but that doesn't makes Saudi's responsible does it? 1 month ago:
A good part of the right-wing anti-muslim bigots in our country blame the kingdom of Saudi Arabia for what a criminal group led by a (distant) cousin of the king did.
Most Americans were 13 or younger when 9/11 happened, and only know what their parents, schools, and friends said.
- Comment on Is all Hollywood Casting all the same? From like just a side character up to like James Bond or Superman? Or are big names like those is casting different? 1 month ago:
From the outside, it looks like there are at least three levels of actor.
- Everyone starts as a “nobody” – no credits, no SAG card, and no agent. Most films hire a bunch of these folk to act as living backgrounds or “extras”, but now and again they’ll give a nobody a role and they’ll move on to the next step.
- “Credited actors” are those who have credits and agents and whatnot, but still need to audition and may very well work a separate job for when they don’t get cast enough to pay the bills.
- Very successful actors eventually reach a point where they stop auditioning, and are instead reached out to directly with script ideas and roles essentially written with them in mind.
The distinctions between the second and third groups are very soft and will change with the speed of fashion and rumor, while the gap between the first and the other two is so dramatic that I’m sure someone out there doesn’t even consider extras to be actors.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
Sure!
It’s just either app-walled (AOL and IE could do things without JavaScript), essentially static (turn off JavaScript and browse around. Many pages won’t work anymore, but many will be seamless) or functionally equivalent (modern browsers support web Assembly, meaning the stuff that JavaScript is used for would instead be in C or java or something.)
- Comment on How tf do people who work 8-5 M-F get any life done? 1 month ago:
That’s a weird way to pronounce “we’re an abusive workplace and I advise you to form a union.”
- Comment on What was the internet like before Y2K happened ? 1 month ago:
It wasn’t that computers would crash. Its that they might treat midnight Jan 1 as a hundred years before almist-midnight Dec 31, instead of one minute later.
Really critical things like airplanes would probably be OK, but your savings account would suddenly be drained thanks to 100 years of negative interest, while your credit card would sudddy go from owing $1000 to having $60,000 in available credit.
Y2K, if no one had done anything, might have ended capitalism. Assong that there were no nuclear launch systems with a date-based “don’t shoot” dead-king switch.
- Comment on What’s your favorite video game that most people didn’t like ?? 1 month ago:
Starfield is “fine” if you compare it to stock Skyrim or fallout 4.
It continues the aggravating tradition of being a rubber-banded pseudo-sandbox with just enough randomness to make you realize how little randomness there is in the game.
- Comment on Do you think that these CBS employees should unionize and go on strike? 2 months ago:
None of the issues with police in America would be fixed by taking away their unions. Nor do any of the fixes require doing so.
ACAB, but even class-betraying bastards are workers who deserve a collective voice in how they are managed.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
You wrote something. Ergo, you are a writer.
Whether or not anyone ever pays you for your art, that you choose to make something yourself is enough to earn the same title as Shakespeare, King, Rowling, Shatner, Stallone, or Myer. ~Selection chosen deliberately to have a range of quality.~
Keep writing until you have finished a story. Then revise it until you can read it without hating it. Then write something else.
- Comment on Wouldn’t it make more sense for Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Foggy Nelson to be prosecutors or civil rights lawyers instead of defense attorneys? 2 months ago:
Ignoring the very useful themes of contrast and all, the idea that those accused of wrongdoing are accurately accused “more often than not” is internalized copraganda.
For every actually guilty person accused of a crime they actually and entirely committed there is someone who wasn’t – either because they didn’t do anything, didn’t do what they were accused of, or didn’t do all the parts of the crime they’re accused of.
When the system works we don’t see these people in statistics because the prosecutor drops the case as soon as a defense is raised. And when the system doesn’t work we dont see them in statistics because we can’t distinguish them from the actually guilty.
And Matt Murdock’s character, like most comic book vigilantes, is less about justice and more about the fantasy of righteous violence. If he was a prosecutor there’d be no reason to ever put on the costume.
- Comment on What's with black superheroes and lightning powers? 2 months ago:
The question may be better phrased as the complimentary of what you asked.
Not why do all these black superfolk have lightning powers, but instead why are so many superfolk with lightning powers black?
I suspect the answer is kin to why so many characters with fire-themed powers have red hair, or why so many superheroes with facial hair are wizards.
- Comment on How come it seems the transfer rate from an hard drive to usb is noticably slower? But a usb to usb is incredibly fast? 2 months ago:
There are four things that matter for transfer speed between storage devices.
- How fast the source reads
- How fast the target writes
- How fast the bits can be moved between them
- What post-write nonsense is done.
USB sticks tend to be flash memory with relatively equal read and write speeds, but the spinning disks in a hard disk drive are noticeably unequal. So, unless the USB is very slow, you’d expect a USB to HDD copy to be slower than either USB to USB or HDD to USB.
You can also be slowed down by antivirus scans, on-disk encryption, search indexing, or even the need to move bits from the USB bus to the HDD controller.
- Comment on Looking for some advice please single father 2 months ago:
Assuming you’re in New York, pick up a phone and call 211.
Any civilized area of the world will have similar avenue of at least temporary support available for the newly unemployed with children to feed.
Unfortunately, a lot of the world isnt civilized, including much of the United States.
- Comment on Why would a drug dealer kill their rich "client"? 2 months ago:
Because drug dealers are people who couldn’t get better jobs. Which suggests they aren’t quite as competent as the lawyers and plumbers and bodyguards who also on occasion kill their rich clients, leading to having a higher rate of the economically unsound activity.
Plus growing up rich is apparently a disability that can get you off a rape charge, so the rich kids are more likely to do the things that you’d kill them over, and drug dealers are more likely to be armed and willing to kill than pizza dealers.
- Comment on American workers are tired of waiting. 2 months ago:
For a real revolution we also need 218 house members and 67 senators (out of the current totals of 435 and 100).
Could possibly get by with 50 senators plus the VP if all could be counted on to pass the necessary court reform.
- Comment on American workers are tired of waiting. 2 months ago:
Regardless of your politics, you need to vote for the best result in the system we have.
In the “first past the post” single-ballot-plurality-wins contests that dominate in America, anything but a vote for the runner up is an endorsement of the eventual winner.
For most Americans, the only real choices in the general elections are “R”, “D”, and “either”.
- Comment on “I genuinely feel GameNative could replace handheld PCs like the Steam Deck” — Inside Android’s Fastest-Moving Gaming Project, GameNative (my article!) 3 months ago:
Trying to push the narrative to focus on 2010 games feels a bit like moving the goalposts,
Why? Isn’t the comparable expectation for consideration of what high-end phones ten years from now could do with a six-year old game to ask what today’s high-end phones can do with sixteen year old games?
Moore’s Law was always a marketing gimmick, but progression of information technology has been a rather steady cycle of “next year’s model will be even better” that it strikes me as a good starting point.
- Comment on Possibility of translating the messages of dogs, cats, and other pets 3 months ago:
I’m very confident that when my cats meow they are always saying a variant of “hooomaaaan!”
They’re like little eternally drunk roommates who walk around naked and are way too touchy for a household with children.
- Comment on “I genuinely feel GameNative could replace handheld PCs like the Steam Deck” — Inside Android’s Fastest-Moving Gaming Project, GameNative (my article!) 3 months ago:
Cyberpunk came out in 2020. Are there games from 2010 that you would be surprised to see running af full speed on a high-end smartphone?