sbeak
@sbeak@sopuli.xyz
Hi, I’m sbird! I like programming and am interested in Physics. I also have a hobby of photography.
- Comment on What does non-gui mean ? 3 hours ago:
Just of note, TUI stands for terminal user interface, not text!
- Comment on What does non-gui mean ? 4 hours ago:
In a nutshell, there are three types of program interfaces. CLI, TUI, and GUI. GUI means it is graphical, buttons, menus, that sort of thing. CLI and TUI both rely the terminal (they are “non-GUI” I guess), where CLI means command line interface, things like “cd” or “tar” would fit into this. TUI means terminal user interface, and they usually involve keyboard navigation, but you still have menus and such. A good example I use a lot is rmpc, a neat music player! There are some TUI programs that also support mouse input, like aforementioned rmpc, but it’s not the focus.
TLDR: GUIs have buttons you click with a mouse, TUIs have menus that can be navigated via a keyboard, CLIs mean you type commands into the terminal.
- Submitted 4 hours ago to [deleted] | 1 comment
- Comment on Is there any such thing as "edutainment" shows for adults? 9 hours ago:
There are plenty of good YouTube channels that have this sort of stuff.
Veritasium is really good for exploring various topics of science, their videos are very well-made and they help to convey information in a digestible way. A newer channel called “The Rabbit Hole” is also excellent. And of course, minutephysics and MinuteEarth make very good videos on various topics that are quick and to the point. xkcd’s What If answers lots of silly hypotheticals that are fun to watch, like draining all the water from the oceans!
And there are plenty of other channels I like too that have specific niches. If you like maths, Numberphile, Stand Up Maths, and Tom Rocks Maths are awesome. Up and Atom does videos on various topics in maths, physics, and computer science that are quite interesting. If you like astrophysics*, I would recommend Arvin Ash and PBS Space Time.
If you like geography, Jay Foreman (+ Mark Cooper-Jones) makes fun videos on various different topics. You might also like Geography Now, who has made a video on every single (U.N. recognised) country. It’s very interesting to see how their quality of videos has increased from the beginning to the end. After finishing the Zimbabwe episode, Barbs (Barbie) now covers various other things like unrecognised / partially recognised territories.
If you want some history, The Cold War (run by Kings and Generals) is awesome if you are interested in anything that happened during the Cold War era, and TimeGhost History (run by Indy Neidell) has great coverage of the interwar years between the World Wars as well as the events post WWII.
Ryan Chapman has some videos on various ideas (like nationalism, Zionism, democracy, and Marxism) and assesses conflicts, and I find he does take the points of both sides and judges them fairly. His video on the Taiwan conflict is really good as well! Many people like Johhny Harris as well, and he does make entertaining videos, but some of them are a little oversimplified, especially given that the issues he discusses are very nuanced.
Technology Connections rants about dishwashers, light bulbs, and heat pumps, and covers all the topics nobody else does! And Hank Green makes videos on all sorts of things, and as he puts it, he doesn’t have a specific niche. He’s just Hank Green! Tom Scott has recently come back to the scene and is now doing a series on weird and interesting things in every county in England. Pretty neat!
*Not what you’re looking for, but Anton Petrov is AWESOME if you want to be up to date on all the astronomical discoveries that are happening
- Comment on Is there any such thing as "edutainment" shows for adults? 10 hours ago:
Little bird guys are fun! I think they give a good surface level overview of topics, they condense information into a very digestible piece of media, but additional reading from other sources is better if you need a full understanding. They make great work, and I think they help a lot to make science more accessible to people!
- Comment on Is it safe to use a non-gaming computer for light gaming? 10 hours ago:
Just of note, “Ryzen 7”, “Intel Core i7”, etc. aren’t good indicators of performance. The generation of chip is more important, as newer chip designs are more efficient and have better performance.
Also note, both Intel and AMD have re-released older chips as seemingly “newer gen”, so beware of that! For AMD, which is what the laptop you are looking at is specced with, see if the chips is Zen 3, 4, 5, etc. Zen 5 is the latest gen, 4 is still pretty good, and 3 is bit older and is now found in a lot of really cheap machines.
If you have a modern processor, the iGPU is fine for basic gameplay. I have a laptop with an Intel 13th gen chip (P series), and the iGPU is good enough to reasonably run most games I want to play. The games you have added will probably play fine on modern iGPUs.
TLDR: Look at the architecture of the CPU (Zen n?), modern chips have good iGPU performance that will run most games just fine (just don’t expect AAA games at highest quality settings)
Another thing, since it looks like you won’t be playing any evil multiplayer games with invasive anticheat, I would recommend for you to run Linux if you aren’t already! It generally improves the user experience and sometimes has better performance too. Distros like Fedora, Mint, etc. are all great options, just go with one that you like. You can always distro hop!
- Comment on Sex Education 2 days ago:
Unless you believe that Satan is made up of hydrogen and helium, they ARE metal. But maybe your mythos believes that Satan is a star / constellation, I dunno.
Many of the constellations (collections of stars) were though to be embodiments of deities in many belief systems across the world, from the Greeks and Romans in Europe to the indigenous peoples of Australia! It wouldn’t surprise me if Satan is thought to be made of star stuff in some mythos.
- Submitted 2 days ago to [deleted] | 8 comments
- Comment on 2 days ago:
In this case, this would be time zone shenanigans. These are decided by big governments doing governmenty things, but the universe doesn’t care about what our politicians think. Time ticks at the same rate it always does for everyone. Look at a time zone map if you have the time, it’s very interesting to see chunks being carved out for different political entities!
If you were travelling near the speed of light OR were very close to a strong gravitational field (like a black hole), time runs, to a stationary observer, much slower than on Earth. You don’t feel anything, the clock runs just as fast as it usually does. But if an astronaut coming back after such conditions would see their twin become much older. If you’re interested in this kind of stuff, check out the movie Interstellar! A lot of it revolves around exploring worlds near black holes, so you get really weird physics! Very good movie I think.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
I’m not sure why people are downvoting your post, it seems like a generally good question, but perhaps worded a little confusingly.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
Now that I have answered the question in a physical way, let me delve into maybe the more philosophical / subjective take on it.
We indeed to live in a sort of crosspoint of time and space. We happen to live on a very habitable planet with endless oceans and breathable air. Life in all forms is abundant. What are the odds that we were born here, and not in one of the many, MANY inhospitable places in the universe? We live in a very, and I mean very, small part of a very large universe, and it’s the only place we can call home.
And at the same time, we are living in an age of technological innovation and scientific discovery. Medicine is more accessible than it was even just 50 years ago, an incredibly short time scale in the eyes of the universe. Wireless networks span the Earth, allowing communication between peoples from across the planet. GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, etc. give us incredibly precise location tracking, supercomputers are in the pockets of so many people, software development has come very far from the days of punch cards, knowledge has never been more widespread (see libraries, the Internet…). We know so much more about the universe, the planet we live on, its geography, the inner workings of life, etc.! We truly are living in the golden age of humanity.
We live in a very precise crosspoint of spacetime, existing in a small blue marble within the vast void of space, living in a time of prosperity and discovery.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
Went on a little bit of an off-topic tangent there, but I hope you learned something neat!
- Comment on 3 days ago:
We live in both spatial dimensions (three of them!) as well as a time dimension, which seems to always tick forwards. We don’t know why we never see it tick backwards, all physics we know of work the same way when time is reversed aside from weird weak force shenanigans. This is called time reversal symmetry, and is part of the larger CPT symmetry, which is a topic I have researched before!
C stands for charge conjugation, while P stands for parity. C symmetry is to do with the reversal of the charges of all particles in a system, while P is, in a nutshell, the same process but in a “mirror world”, so a particle with clockwise spin becomes anticlockwise, your left hand becomes your right. Originally, it was thought that C symmetry always holds in the universe, but this was proven to be incorrect due to weak force shenanigans. The same was true with CP invariance, the combination of C and P symmetries thought to always hold, more weak force weirdness led to the breaking of that. This finally led to the theory of CPT invariance, which added time reversal symmetry. This means CP violating processes must also break time reversal symmetry!
C and CP violation is super important for the study of the baryon asymmetry, which, in a nutshell, is the question of why there is more matter (mostly made up of baryons) than antimatter. Our current physics doesn’t have a good explanation for this, since most processes produce and destroy the two equally. C and CP violation would mean antimatter (which has opposite charge to their matter counterparts) can act differently to normal matter, giving rise to an asymmetry between the two. Investigations towards new extended models of physics usually include additional CP violation (in the form of new processes, particles, etc.) for this reason.
Baryons are subatomic particles composed of three quarks. You might have heard of the proton and neutron, which have uud and udd quark configurations respectively, where u is the symbol for the up quark and d is the down quark. Most matter is made up of these baryons.
Electrons are not made of quarks, they are fundamental particles (not made of smaller bits) categorised as leptons. Another lepton you might have heard of is the neutrino, which you might have heard of as the “ghost particles” since they are nearly massless and rarely interact with anything. Because of their ghostlike nature, it is difficult to measure them, which is why focus is directed towards baryon asymmetry over lepton asymmetry.
If there was an equal number of matter and antimatter particles, everything would annihilate and you would be left with only photons. Stars, planets, etc. were all able to form, meaning there must have been some process that created a matter-antimatter asymmetry. And of course, we are made of matter, our existence tells us that some amount of matter must have survived annihilation.
Our measurements of the CMB as well as the abundances of light elements show us that, during the early universe, there was one additional baryon for every million anti-baryons. Without these literal one-in-a-million baryons, no matter would have been left in the universe.
CPT invariance and CP violation is a really interesting topic with very deep implications for how our universe formed. If you are in any way interested in physics or astronomy, I would really recommend reading into it!
- Comment on What is the deal with IPv6? 4 days ago:
Yeah I do computer science too, and decimal is more common. But denary is still thrown around, at least in the media I consume.
- Comment on What is the deal with IPv6? 6 days ago:
I dunno, I use the two terms interchangeably. Both describe the same thing and you get the idea with both words. “Senidenary” is much less common than “hexadecimal”, so the latter is preferred. But to be fair, it is kind if weird I used denary then hexadecimal. English is strange, it’s many languages in a trenchcoat.
- Submitted 6 days ago to [deleted] | 75 comments
- Comment on Why are some things heavier than others? 1 week ago:
A lot of what makes the elements different is the electronic configuration, which is probably more important in chemical interactions compared to proton number.
For instance, chlorine has 7 outer shell electrons and readily accepts an additional electron. This makes chlorine very reactive! In contrast, the next element, argon, is a noble gas that rarely reacts with anything. So much so, it’s often used in experiments where chemicals should not be in contact with oxygen. This is because it has a full outer shell, so it doesn’t readily react to create compounds. The addition of a proton also means (for a neutral atom) an additional electron, and this can drastically change the properties of an element!
Electron configuration is what mainly governs chemical processes, so differences in the chemical nature of elements is often due to the difference in electrons and their energy levels!
- Comment on Why are some things heavier than others? 1 week ago:
First, the measurements of volume, weight, and mass are different. This is important.
Volume is the amount of physical space something takes up. It’s measured in cubic metres (as well as litres, gallons, etc. for liquids), like the units you have given.
Mass is the inherent property of matter, while weight is the force applied to a mass by the Earth’s (or some other large body, like the Moon’s) gravity. On Earth, weighing scales measure in Newtons, weight, but do conversion to give you conventional grams and kilograms, units of mass. Mass is the property of matter, while weight is the force produced by gravity.
Density is, in a nutshell, mass per unit of volume. Water is around 1000 kg / m^3, meaning there is 1000 kilograms of mass for every cubic metre of water. Different materials have different densities, and this is because of all sorts of things. The atoms might be very tightly bonded together in a lattice, like in many metals. This is why metals are usually very dense. While they could also be free-floating molecules with very weak attractions. This is why gases are not very dense.
In the case of gold vs copper, the former has much larger nuclei with much more protons, and that probably contributes to an increased amount of attraction in the metallic lattice, making gold denser than copper. This means the gold will be heavier than the same volume of copper.
It’s not just about the number of protons though! The configuration of electrons is also very important, arguably more so than proton number. For instance, osmium and iridium are both denser than gold, but they have smaller nuclei. Electron shell shenanigans are everywhere in chemistry!
- Comment on Why didn't she just stand up? 1 week ago:
Damn, it really does look like grass. Surprised there weren’t any obvious warning signs or similar that there’s a canal there.
I would like to kindly request that you stop poking fun at these accidents. Real families are distraught, this is a real person who had a real life.
It would be like asking why didn’t somebody run away if they were about to be murdered. It’s a stupid argument and it is disrespectful for the people who are affected by the loss.
- Comment on Do young people still say words like "taped"? 1 week ago:
That’s fair. Stainless steel isn’t made almost entirely of iron though, usually there’s around 20ish percent of chromium and something like 10% of nickel and other metals. It depends on what kind you’re dealing with though, since different amounts of each element in the alloy are used for different applications.
Definitely not 98% iron content though, it’s probably more like 65ish percent, give or take a bit depending on the alloy.
www.britannica.com/technology/stainless-steel
Brittanica says that stainless steel with very high corrosion resistance can have up to 35% nickel and 16 to 26% chromium, meaning iron makes up less than half of the alloy. In contrast, steels that are used in areas where corrosion resistance is not as important, no nickel is used and 10.5 to 27% of chromium is used, making the amount of iron relatively high. Very interesting.
- Comment on Do young people still say words like "taped"? 1 week ago:
There’s a lot of words we still use, even though the thing it referred to is no longer readily used. Hanging up the phone has been mentioned as one, but we sometimes still “dial” a phone number on our smartphones using the “dialpad”, even though dial-up telephones are no longer readily used. Cut, copy, and paste refer to cutting up / copying a bit of paper and pasting it on another document, but in the digital age it means to move data into and out of the (digital) clipboard. The word clipboard now refers primarily to the digital version, as the physical ones are less common in comparison. We still film videos, even though most video cameras are digital. Most people don’t use gloveboxes to store gloves. Uppercase and lowercase letters referred to the drawers used to store the moveable type for typewriters, which most people don’t use anymore. Podcasts referred to the popular iPod, which is no longer sold by Apple. Software patches used to refer to how parts of paper tape and punched cards were cut out and replaced with literal patches to modify the program.* Stock footage is no longer stored in “stockrooms”. Individual songs are still referred to as “tracks”, even though vinyl is no longer ubiquitous. “Hot off the press” referred to how newspapers feel warm when recently printed, but now just refers to fresh media (usually not paper-based). To “sack” someone no longer involves an actual sack where they put all their things in, it just means to dismiss somebody from a job.
a lotall of the ones I mentioned came from this source: englishinprogress.net/…/30-examples-of-anachronym…relevant xkcd (there is one for everything): xkcd.com/3075/
As this xkcd comic shows, there are loads of anachronyms, like:
- tin foil (referring to foil made of aluminium) is sometimes used
- sponges (the scrubby) are no longer made of actual (sea) sponge (the animal)
- silverware isn’t always made of silver anymore, most people own those made of stainless steel
- linens don’t always refer to bedding made of linen (the fabric)
- clothes irons and the act of ironing no longer involves iron, modern “irons” are made of stainless steel
- many glasses now use plastic lenses, not glass
- "9 iron" refers to a golf club, being that they are now made with materials like stainless steel. Presumably wood is another type of golf club that is no longer made of wood, but I haven’t heard of that term
- sidewalk chalk (the kind for drawing) is no longer made of chalk (the rock)
- rubber ducks are majorly made of plastic nowadays
And the title text of the xkcd also notes that paper money is still called that, despite it now being composed of other materials with better durability and security.
- Note that the term “bug” did not, in fact, actually come from a literal bug. The term “bug” was already being used to describe annoying things (this is “bugging” me, for example), and the story of the moth trapped in a computer causing an issue was fictional. It was noted as a joke by Grace Hopper (a great pioneer in computing by the way, she developed some of the first computing languages!)
- Comment on What somebody with cosmetic plastic surgery gets injured, does the plastic "spill out" or get seen? 1 week ago:
And it is not always cosmetic either
Which is why I specified cosmetic surgery.
The word plastic in this case does not mean that actual plastic was inserted or injected.
And that is new to me! That makes more sense, plastic surgery being named after plasticity since it’s changing the shape of something and having it stay like that. Plasticity is the converse of elasticity (the latter describing a material that goes back to its original shape when deformed). I have added an edit to the post now.
- Comment on What somebody with cosmetic plastic surgery gets injured, does the plastic "spill out" or get seen? 1 week ago:
Ok that’s pretty cool :0
- Comment on What somebody with cosmetic plastic surgery gets injured, does the plastic "spill out" or get seen? 1 week ago:
I think I understand now, dang, this is a pretty deep topic. Did not know that different parts of the body usually use different materials, but that makes sense I think
- Comment on What somebody with cosmetic plastic surgery gets injured, does the plastic "spill out" or get seen? 1 week ago:
Ah okay that makes much more sense. Interesting, I did not know that!
- Comment on What somebody with cosmetic plastic surgery gets injured, does the plastic "spill out" or get seen? 1 week ago:
Oh, so they’re way down below the muscle mass? Did not know that. And yikes, salt water leaking out into your inner bits sounds bad.
- Submitted 1 week ago to [deleted] | 14 comments
- Comment on Can travel anywhere in late June, not sure where. Anecdotes/advice? 1 week ago:
And Central America is part of North America! The North and South Americas is split by the Panama canal (which is located in Panama. Central America is usually defined as the bits below Mexico and above Colombia (but it occasionally includes parts or all of Mexico too, depending on who you ask). Belize is right next to Guatemala and below Mexico, so it’s considered part of Central America!
Even more confusing, “Latin America” is pretty much any country in the Americas that speak either Spanish, Portuguese or another Romance languages, excluding of course the English speaking nations of the US, Canada, Guyana, and Belize (as well as a few Carribean islands), as well as the Dutch speaking Suriname. It does include French Guiana (since French is a Romance language). Hispanic America is all the Spanish speaking nations in the American continent(s)
- Comment on Which instance on Lemmy does not apply censorship? 1 week ago:
Another thing to add, FelixCress is a moderator of the community “OPisafuckingidiot”, along with a user called “MeatEater” (hmm I wonder what their shared belief is)
And it seems like they are the main user of that community, with a majority of posts posted by them. The community is intended to mock certain Lemmy comments, mainly replies to their own posts that they disagree with. Mocking people is generally seen as not very nice :(
- Comment on Which instance on Lemmy does not apply censorship? 1 week ago:
Looking a bit into this Pablo Stanley guy, he seems to be a vibecoder, and is a dev at “efecto” (an “AI-native tool” that is designed to that lets you “tell an agent what to design”, and without the buzzwords, basically LLM generated website design) . Stanley is also a huge “AI creator” in a platform called Lumni, which advertises itself as a site for these “AI creators” to share AI-gen stock images. He has over 15 thousand images with 3.6 million views, which seems to be a lot (unsure if this is normal though, given that these are all AI generated. I don’t explore these kinds of platforms so I have no idea. They are big numbers though)
Plenty of his comics, articles, and posts are all about “agents”, “context engineering”, those sort. The comics seem to be human drawn though (there’s no explicit mention of image generation for making the comics, but I can’t find anything that makes it clear it’s not though), and in one article, he mentions how the use of AI is like a “slot machine” (addicting but harmful). This is then followed by him stating that, even still, he “loves to create with AI”.
Take it for what you will. Some sources I looked at:
