scallisto

@scallisto@retrofed.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would guess it depends on the environment. Energy needs to he expended to develop and secrete toxins, it’s not a free perk.

  Plus, you have all the fungi (+ other critters) who cheat and simply look like a poisonous guy to avoid getting eaten. I know there’s lots of snakes and such that do that, there are probably plenty of copycat shrooms.

  Did not do biology so don’t know any of the specifics!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it "Their name is Trevor," or "Their names are Trevor" if you know 2 Trevors?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If you are referring to only one of the two, it is “their name is Trevor”. If you are introducing both of them at once (possible, but less likely), you would say “(both of) their names are Trevor”. Sometimes people also pluralise the name, e.g. “I’m friends with five Alices” or “I know two Bobs at work”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨With Reverse-Engineer-Everything, has Software become basically worthless?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It wouldn’t be worthless, if people only reversed engineered existing software then the quality would slowly degrade, like a JPG that’s been shared too many times. You still need competant developers to write new software!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do they sound like born and bred Americans?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Define “born and bred”, what the hell does that mean. The closest definition would be Native Americans I feel, who have lived on those lands for ages, but there’s so many different tribes and accents. But my intuition is telling me this isn’t your definition of a “born and bred” American.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are you able to tell which language is which by looking?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In Hong Kong, Macau (both speak majorly Cantonese), and Taiwan (mostly speaking their own flavour of Mandarin, Hokkien, and a few other ones too depending on where you are), they use traditional Chinese characters while the mainland uses simplified, and somebody who knows one is not always able to read the other.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come the bacteria that make people obese don't seem to be affecting countries where there's widespread famine?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The bacteria don’t produce calories out of thin air, even high school physics will teach you that energy needs to be conserved!

  I didn’t do biology, but from my understanding, energy (mostly) comes from the food you eat, and any excess is stored as fat. Obesity occurs when you have too much of that excess where it is a health risk, and differs depending on your metabolism and that sort (which things like gut bacteria can change because of weird biology shenanigans, don’t ask me, I’m a physicist).

  But if there is no food, then you don’t intake any energy. Famine is defined as the widespread lack of food (by natural or artificial causes, unfortunately it’s often the latter), and when you don’t have food, you don’t tend to have high obesity rates.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tech hobbyists, How are you avoiding the crazy prices for computers and newer tech?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Experimenting with stuff I already have. Using an old laptop with a cracked screen as a Nextcloud + other bits server, switching to a tiling WM (Niri + Noctalia) on my personal laptop (it has been awesome so far!), setting up emulation stuff on my phone, etc.

• What is the political landscape across Europe right now?
  Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩ | ⁨0⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• What are some awesome science YouTube channels for preteens?
  Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩ | ⁨22⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do the people claiming the X2 causes brain bleeds explain why every other rollercoaster isn't also causing fatal brain bleeds?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Other factors might include the design of the car (how it distributes the force, for instance), the rails (friction, tolerances, etc.), or the environment (decorations around the roller coaster, lighting effects, sound, etc.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do the people claiming the X2 causes brain bleeds explain why every other rollercoaster isn't also causing fatal brain bleeds?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As it turns out, there’s a lot more factors towards the safety of a rolls coaster asides from peak force. Mainly, you have swift changes in force due to rapid changes in speed or direction. A gradual increase in force is safer than a quick burst!

  And apparently the company denied the claims and are avoiding investigation (what the hell???) from what I can tell by skimming the Wikipedia article

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Realistically, what do people plan to do on the Moon and Mars that requires a permanent, or long term human presence there?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Putting bases on the Moon means we can do more studies, experiments, etc. outside of Earth, particularly tasks that are difficult to complete by current rovers. Human physiology in low gravity situations, lunar geology, possibility of water and life outside of Earth, that sort of stuff. I’ll also echo what others have said about how the Moon could become a launching base for future explorations, given its lower gravity and lack of an atmosphere.

  There isn’t a conspiracy by lizard men to set up a Death Star, this is driven by the curiosity of humanity and our desire to explore the unknown. The “race” to have the first base between Americans and Chinese is, like during the Cold War between the former and the Soviets, a push to be the first, trying to show that they are ahead in terms of technology and science. In a nutshell, it’s driven by curiosity and, at least partly, national pride.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does all AI graphic design have the exact same style?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would imagine that it’s the easiest for the model to produce. Bold colours, clear and distinct shapes, that sort.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[NSQ Friday] Is this a stupid question?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you define a stupid question as one where discussion is difficult or even impossible, then no, this is not a stupid question. Questions provoke debate and communication of differing ideas, and this is exactly what is happening now.

  A true stupid question would be like asking if guns can kill people. Of course guns kill people, there is no discussion about this. A better question could be how we should regulate guns and ways to avoid placing them in the wrong hands.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it more accurate to call current 'Artificial intelligence' (AI/LLM) as Counterfeit Intelligence?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like we should better differentiate between LLMs (the ones that literally tell you to eat rocks), generative models (the ones that are stealing the work of creatives without permission), and the ones that are actually used for neat science stuff, where they are trained on a specific set of data and are doing a specific set of tasks repeatedly, rather than training on the entire internet and then some and trying to do everything!

  I think we should label them as large language models, generative models, and predictive models (maybe? Or maybe “targeted predictive models”?). It’s important to emphasise that all of these, even the useful ones, are not intelligent, they do not understand what they are doing. They are just models of data that do thing go in, thing go out.

• What are some good Peertube channels? Also, issues with subscribing to channels outside MakerTube
  Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩ | ⁨3⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would be an interesting magical effect for a pineapple that is displayed but not eaten at a fancy dinner?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The longer you look at the pineapple, the more your food tastes like pineapples. There comes a point when you food is too sweet, too acidic, but you can’t stop looking at the beautiful pineapple.

  Alternatively, it makes everyone’s piss a deep yellow. Saturated and not healthy at all. Weeing is painful and feels like a pineapple getting squirted out of whatever hole you wee out of. Everybody avoids drinking water and only eat dried food, and they all die from dehydration within 3 days.

• Other (non-American?) superhero movie franchises besides Marvel and DC?
  Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩ | ⁨18⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The Cold War by Kings & Generals on YouTube has lots of excellent videos / “minidocs” on the cold war era. They have many covering both West and East Germany, as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall + reunification.

  They’re still internet videos though, they give you brief summaries that encourage you to explore for further details, so I can also recommend reading and listening to the other suggestions!