Thorry84
@Thorry84@feddit.nl
- Comment on Why? 1 day ago:
I once went down the rabbit hole of thinking about how the targeting works on the TNG kind of transporter. Like they need to know to the molecule where your body ends and the rest of the universe begins. And you want it to identify clothing, because you don’t want to end up nude on the other side. Plus it needs to identify what creepy crawlies are a part of you and which were just randomly wandering by. We don’t want any of those pesky Fly problems now do we? This might sound easy, but is actually extremely hard. The human body is very complex and like a ship of Theseus what is part of the body is a bit nebulous and can change. All of the microbiome in our gut is essential for us to stay alive. And more importantly we don’t want to leave behind a puddle of crap every time we transport. Plus what happens if we come out the other end, do our intestines just implode? Or does the transporter fill them with air, leaving you to fart uncontrollably until you die?
And how does it know what clothes are? If I’m wearing shoes, does it know where the shoes end and the floor starts? What if I’m wearing skies? What if I’m barefoot on a carpet? What if it’s a leather carpet? What if I’m wearing shoes made by folding carpet around my feet?
The only thing that makes sense is a super powerful AI system that can real-time scan every molecule and figure out what’s what. And it doesn’t only need to be smart, it also needs a lot of real world knowledge. It needs to know what is “logical” to include in every situation. This means it has to be an AGI, has to be superintelligent (at a minimum speed wise) and would most likely be sentient. Them being used for this one and only purpose is really cruel.
This leads me to the conclusion TNG style transporters are basically slavery and put a whole different spin on the morality of the people in that universe. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
- Comment on Is there a 'ama' sub? 3 days ago:
Maybelline
- Comment on Withdrawal is going to make people go mad 5 days ago:
It’s one banana Michael. What could it cost, $10?
- Comment on Anon takes the horsepill 6 days ago:
Also you fart too. So there’s that…
So you’re saying to solve climate change we need to remove the humans? You might be on to something there.
- Comment on Anon takes the horsepill 6 days ago:
0 emissions? Methane from cattle is a large contributer to climate change. If we had as much horses as we have cars, the amount of methane would be too much to handle.
- Comment on “Now I can see it’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen…” 1 week ago:
It’s a variation on the default post causes masturbation copy-pasta. I think there are at least a couple dozen variations and most of them are glorious.
- Comment on “Now I can see it’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen…” 1 week ago:
PLEASE put an NFSW tag on your post.
I immediately started masturbating furiously in the bus in front of 43 people. They realized what was going on, opened Reddit to this post and all 43 started to fap furiously too. Even the 64 year old Malaysian nun on the front seat couldn’t contain herself - her entire arm was up her vagina as she screamed with pleasure.
I was so horny that my phone flew out of my hand & broke through the window, letting in a relentless tide of horny pigeons who were instantly fucked to death by the passengers. The nun shoved an antire pigeon family up her v. Now there is a bus full of exhausted passengers, dead pigeons and buckets of cum and squirt, all because you posted this.
- Comment on Stars 1 week ago:
Honest question: Do people think stars look like the star shape because of diffraction spikes in refractor telescopes? I thought the star shape pre-dated any refractor telescope. And I don’t know how many people would have seen refractor images back in the days to make it so culturally engrained?
The post-processing used in astronomical observations is a really interesting topic. I’m following the debate around the black hole images with great interest. I don’t know enough about the specifics to have an opinion, but it is very interesting and has overlap with some of the things I do for work.
- Comment on What are the next steps for Americans to help prevent the worsening of genocide in Palestine? 1 week ago:
The fight is over mate, we lost
- Comment on What are the next steps for Americans to help prevent the worsening of genocide in Palestine? 1 week ago:
How can a regular person block shipments or arms or dismantle AIPAC? That’s not possible.
What does boosting voices of soon to be dead people do to stop them from dying? What does organizing or donating do?
Trump has promised Israel everything they need, no questions asked, no limits. And they already have so much, they don’t really need a lot more. They can already destroy Paletine, they can already destroy parts of Iran and Lebanon. They just need the extra stuff and funds to do it quicker and destroy more of those countries.
And don’t think for a second Trump and their cronies won’t block any money flow from the US to anywhere near there and divert it to Israel instead. And block organizations in the US from doing anything. Israel is already blocking aid for Palestine even from organizations like the Red Cross. What are small organizations going to do?
Plus the time to act has come and gone. Time is up, this is going to happen within months. We can’t organize, lobby for policy change, set up aid and demonstrations. It’s done, there is a deadline and that means death for a whole lot of people.
All we can do at this point is look with shock and horror as the far right grips the world and destroys a lot of the things we hold dear.
- Comment on What are the next steps for Americans to help prevent the worsening of genocide in Palestine? 1 week ago:
Hmmm yes defend, by …checks notes… killing every man woman and child in neighboring countries.
- Comment on What are the next steps for Americans to help prevent the worsening of genocide in Palestine? 1 week ago:
You’ve said things yes, but not how to do those things (some of which are plainly impossible) or how those things will help (none of those things will actually help). Doing useless stuff just to feel like you tried isn’t actually helping anyone. Israel is going to kill a lot of people and finish multiple genocides and there isn’t a damned thing anyone can do about it.
- Comment on What are the next steps for Americans to help prevent the worsening of genocide in Palestine? 1 week ago:
There’s doomerism and there is reality.
This is reality and it’s bad. It isn’t a maybe it will be fine maybe it won’t situation. Trump has promised wealthy powerful people a lot of stuff to get him into power. And they put him into power specifically to do that stuff. They have plainly said exactly what they are going to do, laid out an agenda and promised to follow it as best they can. The final hurdle was the election, which even if it went a bit bad for them could have still worked with lawsuits about voter fraud or plain insurrection. But it didn’t went bad for them, it was a major victory. They couldn’t have dreamt of a better outcome. There are no more hurdles, no more barriers, no more limits. At this point it’s denial to think they aren’t going to do what they set out to do.
I feel there are things we can do for our own mental health and maybe the people around us. But as for the big picture, it’s done, it’s over. We’ve seen first hand what happens if this kind of thing goes down in a country and the outcome is always the same.
- Comment on Funny but it's even less funny 1 week ago:
Well once the US stops support and drops out of Nato and Putin starts steamrolling across Eastern Europe countries after they decimated what’s left of Ukraine, I’m sure all the borders will be closed.
Not that it does much good. If the option is get tortured and killed or try your luck with an illegal border crossing people will always try. Even if the border police starts shooting like at the North Korean border, people would still try.
- Comment on Scales that refuse to measure if the battery isn't brand new 1 week ago:
It’s actually a plastic ribbon with a metallic foil in a zigzag pattern on top of it. It’s extremely cheap and does a pretty good job. It usually sits on top of a metal bar that can deflect a tiny little bit.
You can read all about it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_gauge
- Comment on Scales that refuse to measure if the battery isn't brand new 1 week ago:
That’s because of the way these scales work. They use a material that deforms under stress and when it deforms the resistance changes. By putting current through this material and measuring the voltage drop, it can be mapped to how much stress the material is under and thus how much weight is on the scale.
This is a pretty roundabout way and has a lot of caveats, but it is very cheap. So cheap scales always work this way. That’s why they aren’t super accurate and have deviations depending on things like temperature. Another big downside is any permanent deformation ruins the calibration, giving incorrect results. That’s why you never put more weight on kitchen scales than it says, it will break them.
The issue you are running into is the way it measures. It applies a very specific voltage and current in order to get the result. The lookup table it uses is only valid within a narrow range. When the battery voltage goes outside that range, it can no longer perform the measurement. Even though there’s plenty of juice for things like the little processing chip and the LCD display. They don’t need a lot of power and can do with low voltages. But it can no longer weigh anything so it just errors out with a low battery warning.
- Comment on Hehe he said "hole" 1 week ago:
And bring him to a free clinic to see after his bunghole.
- Comment on uh oh spaghettios! 2 weeks ago:
Good, from a certain point of view
- Comment on Eat lead 3 weeks ago:
And the fun scientific counterpart of the Boltzmann brain. The idea that in an infinite universe (at least in a couple of the spatial dimensions if not also a time dimension) random fluctuations could combine to form your brain. Including all of your memories, thoughts, hopes and dreams. You think you have had an entire life, but in reality your brain was just formed moments ago. And it may possibly stop existing in a few more moments, this moment being the only one the brain has actually experienced.
When taken to its natural conclusion, the entire Earth of even the solar system or galaxy might have just been created by random chance. The perfect storm of randomness. It may have been created longer ago or just nanosecond before now. There is no way of telling.
Thermodynamics has been used to counter and strengthen this idea. And with infinity on the table anything goes.
- Comment on Birmingham Travel Guide 3 weeks ago:
Well you say that, but near the office park where I used to work there was a gas station that served as the outlet for a local sandwich place. All the sandwiches would get made fresh in the morning and be delivered just in time for lunch. They were awesome, there were lines around the block at lunchtime. They were known throughout the area. The sandwich shop also did deliveries for orders of 50 pieces and up, but the company I worked for only did that a few times a year. Haven’t worked there for over 15 years, but I still remember the taste of those sandwiches.
- Comment on How to clean a rescued pigeon 4 weeks ago:
AI will take jobs when the shareholders think it will make them more money. This has very little if not nothing to do with how good said AI is at the job.
- Comment on Publishers Always Innovating 4 weeks ago:
Yeah totally correct. The CRT is only the tube part, the whole thing is the monitor. But when I call it monitor people automatically assume it’s like an LCD. So I would have to call it CRT monitor, but that’s a lot.
I will post a vid of the thing if people care.
- Comment on Publishers Always Innovating 4 weeks ago:
Yeah the pot is fine, that was the first suspect. Cleaned it and even thought of replacing it, but it measures just fine.
I’ve found several versions of the service manual and combined them to get the info I want. Both seem to be parts of a larger manual, which I can’t find.
I’ve been probing and scoping for hours over the past months. But when the CRT is apart that’s kinda hard, since it has a lot of high voltage I want to avoid. No worries, I have the tools and the experience to work with these things. Over my professional and hobby lifetime I’ve fixed over a hundred CRTs and worked on/designed/built hundreds of other electronics.
I took out a couple of transistors (this thing is almost all discrete components, no integrated stuff) in the horizontal deflection path and tested them and they seem fine. I hooked them up to a function gen and a scope and tested them within parameters. That’s how I found and replaced two other transistors that were dodgy and bringing the thing back to life to start with (it had fully collapsed vertically).
I checked every component in the horizontal deflection path and they all seem fine. And since the thing works most of the time, I suspect they are fine. It might be mechanical, but I’ve tapped all around and that does nothing. If the issue shows up, it stays like that for a while and then randomly disappears again. Only for it to randomly come back.
I’m pretty sure it isn’t a thermal issue, it’s a small CRT which doesn’t use a lot of power and doesn’t really get hot. The issue also appears and goes away randomly. And with the parts open on my bench it still happens. I’ve blasted the entire horizontal path with hot air in case of some cracked solder or something like that. But it still happens.
I suspect it’s actually one of the other circuits that throws off the horizontal deflection. Probably something shorting or close to somewhere. I’ll have to get out my notebook, print out the schematic and start drawing it out. That usually does the trick to get my brain to figure out what the actual issue is. Somehow even after using computers for so long, I need to revert back to how I learnt it in school back in the days to fully engage my brain. Computers probably are too easy and make me lazy.
- Comment on Publishers Always Innovating 4 weeks ago:
Finding datasheets and service manuals is a nightmare. So many websites claiming to have the right file, only to end up being a scam and not having any files. Having files they have no right to and are publicly available behind a pay wall. Having weird online viewers instead of just giving the file. Padding the file with extra pages of nonsense so they can claim more pages and a larger file size. Having the wrong file mislabeled. Etc. It goes on and on. And then there’s the sites that redirect a thousand times and then crash the browser. I hope I didn’t just get a virus or something.
All I want is to fix this old CRT from 1981 so I can enjoy it for a few more years, is that too much to ask? And back in those days they actually cared about repairability. Especially the services manuals with scope traces for the test points save so much time troubleshooting.
Archive.org is a good place luckily. If it isn’t down because shit heads can’t behave on the internet. As a species we really like to get in our own way all of the time.
And no I still haven’t fixed up that CRT. It is working now after replacing two weirdly behaving transistors, a new power cord and a new power button (old one worked but didn’t stay on unless you held it on). Replaced a few caps but most tested fine, good quality caps. Even the once I replaced were working, but marginal on the ESR. Cosmetics are also good, but there is still an intermittent fault with it losing horizontal size adjustment. It goes from fine and perfectly working to a little too narrow without any adjustment. 90% of the time it’s fine, 10% of the time it’s faulty and it switches random. I’ve been going mad tracing where the issue is, but I will fix it one day.
- Comment on Why are people impressed with SpaceX? 4 weeks ago:
For me being impressed with SpaceX is kinda like loving a piece of art even though the creator turned out to be an asshole. Or liking Star Trek, even though Berman was shady af to put it mildly.
What SpaceX does is very impressive from a technical point of view. Even if the rocket never amounts to anything except this one successful test, it’s still amazing they pulled it off. It tickles my engineer brain. And I think it’s worth to honor all the people that made it happen, despite them having to work for Musk. Combine this with what could be in the future and you can hopefully see why people hail this test flight.
Now I still have serious doubts about Starship in the moon program. The on orbit refueling seems very sketchy and unproven at this point. Sure they will get two rockets into orbit, mate them up and transfer some fuel, that’s a given at this point. But how much fuel are we talking? And how fast does the turnaround need to be to prevent losing a lot of it? How many ships and how many launches? Will this completely offset the cheaper launch costs due to reusability? It’s a huge unknown and will push back the moon program to well into the 2030s.
- Comment on Rabbit Population 4 weeks ago:
As so often with anything related to maths, pi pops out at the most unexpected places.
- Comment on Is duck tape magnetic? 5 weeks ago:
Not magnetic, but it can get statically charged and be attracted to stuff and even stick on the non stick side. However this is usually just a pain in the butt and not an intended feature.
- Comment on Artifical Intelligence 1 month ago:
- Comment on What if? 1 month ago:
The electron shells are just a model, that’s not how it really works. Look at this image for a more realistic model of how an atom works:
- Comment on Shire, Baggins? 1 month ago:
When they got swept away by the water with their bikes, the movie switches to a montage of them getting the bikes transported to their garage. There they tear down the bikes, replace damage parts, do paint jobs. With a full 10 minute part about how they troubleshooted a misfiring issue on one of the bikes and the full rebuild of a carburateur. There’s even a human interest part where they argue over replacing a part, some of them want to replace the part, others want to attempt a repair. Till one of the wraiths shares a story about how they were a kid working on old bikes with their dad and his dad never believed in throwing parts out, he could always repair it. So they contact a necromancer, which revives the dad for him to fix the part with his dad. And then the movie resumes like normal.