Zonetrooper

@Zonetrooper@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scifi question about time travel:⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Disclaimer, I am not a physicist, just a guy with interest in sci-fi, science, and too much free time.

  is their any theory centered around our frame of reference having a past but not a future?

  So, the answer is, yes, this is actually kind of a common theory on how time actually works. Maybe.

  This has to do with physics, and the fact that no two observers have the same perfect frame of reference. For most of us humans, our frames of reference are close enough to be identical on a day-to-day basis. It’s even close enough for (most) science. But it’s not true on a perfect level. For instance, special relativity says that time passes differently for objects in motion; GPS satellites have to correct for the fact that their onboard clocks are experience “slower” time than us observers on Earth. Even astronauts “lose” about ~1/100th of a second for every year spent on the ISS.

  What’s this got to do with the future not existing, though?

  So we know no two observers have a perfectly identical frame of reference - there is no objective “truth” of when something occurred. Cool. Now what? Well, what we can talk about is historic light cones. Because the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant, we can reference how far from you a photon departing your actions would travel. Places that photon would reach are said to be within your historic light cone, and in common parlance, the past. The boundary of how far that photon is reaching at any given moment is, from your frame of reference, “the present”. But since nothing can exceed the speed of light, it is impossible for an observer to view past the present, into the future.

  The catch, of course, is reference frames. You used a plural - “our frame of reference”, “we’re blazing a trail forward” - but the reality is that each of us has a minutely different reference frame and is blazing a minutely different trail. Again, for almost any day-to-day purposes this is irrelevant… but there are certain scientific experiments which exploit or even rely on this absence of reference frame.

  Cool, what about time travel again?

  In my first comment above, I mentioned something called closed timelike curves. Those are an actual thing: By severely bending spacetime, you can theoretically cause a photon to “curve” around and end up at the same point in time it was produced, now in its subjective past, while mathematically not violating quantum physics.

  This is where things get kind of freaky and headachy; if a photon can be sent into its subjective past, doesn’t that imply a future now existing, in which that photon will be generated? The answer is, not in the frame of reference of that particular photon. A historic light cone of that photon being generated, now in that photon’s future, still exists; but that photon is now generating a new, detached lightcone…

  Like I said, headachy. I also have to emphasize that while the math holds up, there’s ample reason to believe CTCs don’t exist, chief among them that our mathematical understanding of quantum physics may still be imperfect.

  ---

  tl;dr: Yes, absence of reference frames means that each distinct observer is blazing their own trail, which spreads into the “past” at the speed of light. The future, exceeding the speed of light, is unobservable. This framework does provide a mathematical concept of how you could send something into your subjective past, but such a means is still theoretical at best.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scifi question about time travel:⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This is fundamentally a variation on the question of a Temporal Paradox, also known as a Grandfather Paradox (“You go back in time and kill your grandfather. What happens?”). Although no killing happens in this variation, the basic idea is the same: Information is transmitted to the past from the future, but results in a situation where it cannot be transmitted in the first place.

  Accordingly, there are several hypotheses to cover this. This isn’t even all of them:

  • The closed loop theory: To maintain the loop, you will in the future build a time machine which will allow you to activate the machine in the past, maintaining the loop. Past you may even be unaware it was activated from the future.
  • The Parallel Universe theory: When future-you sent information into the past, they did not send it into their own past but rather into a universe in which you do not send the information back in the first place.
  • The Timelike Curve theory: Because there is no common reference frame for “time”, each quanta of “you” is experiencing a different reference frame. The historic light cone of your future self sending the information back exists, and if you could follow those photons backwards you would find him doing this. But future you, in your frame of reference, will never see the machine activate.
  • The Emergent Time theory: Time is not a linear path, but a function of entropy. By inverting entropy, you have caused a reconfiguration of the universe into a version in which the machine is inactive.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The UK Stop Killing Games petition has reached 100.000 signatures⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Haha, holy shit. Somehow I had never connected that Piratesoftware was Maldavius. Yeah, that explains so, so very much of this entire SKG debacle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who discovered/"invented" fire?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It really is an interesting question, yes! Fires started by frictional heating are pretty uncommon in nature, but early humans could pretty readily see that objects placed near a fire would begin to smolder and burn just from radiant heat.

  It really depends on when we were able to take intellectual leap of realizing that all heat is equivalent, and fire is not a prerequisite of making new fire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who discovered/"invented" fire?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We don’t know. Hell, we can’t even narrow it down to a specific place with certainty. There is strong evidence in human settlements for use of fire anywhere from a few hundred thousand to 1 million years ago. When, exactly, is hard to ascertain; for instance, some sites which are claimed to hold the oldest evidence have been criticized as resembling the aftermath of wildfires.

  It is also depends on what you mean by “discovered”: Early proto-hominids were almost certainly aware of fire and the concept of burning, so are we counting from when they realized “hey, I can take a burning thing and put it where I want it, and it will spread burning there?” Or are we only counting from when fire began to be used as a tool (e.g., for clearing brush or cooking)? Or when humans discovered how to start fires in the absence of a natural source?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think the solution to selling progressive politics to young men is ?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry, I think maybe my point was misunderstood. Trust me, I’m in full agreement with you: Like the comment I was responding to was saying, trying to simply frame “positive” masculinity in terms of feminine traits doesn’t seem like a good idea. There needs to be a positive reference for actually masculine role models and ideals.

  Like, literally everything you said is something I totally agree with.

  My concern is that, specifically, initiatives which idealize working-class providers and fail to recognize the way automation and computerization have significantly flattened the jobs market (especially well-paying, working-class jobs), are intrinsically doomed because we don’t have an economy which widely supports men acting as supporters for a family. If we idealize a working provider but simultaneously leave things in a state where a man can’t provide for his family, what I fear we’re actually left with is swaths of men feeling unfulfilled and angry at those in charge for bringing them to this point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think the solution to selling progressive politics to young men is ?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  W-Wait, what is this? A well-thought out, constructive, sympathetic comment? Here? I don’t believe it!

  Real talk, though: This is an incredibly solid post and I really appreciate you taking the time to actually write all of these points out. It’s rare (or, subjectively, it feels rare) to see an admission that a major shift in how this topic is approached is needed, and I feel just a bit more hopeful seeing someone else put in the time to go this deep on it.

  I would only make two add-on comments to your points:

  • With regard to point #6, I agree with the concept - but I wonder if “working class hero” is the right target to be aiming at. Unless it comes with a major effort to utterly restructure our economy in such a way that either a man’s value is no longer measured in his ability to be successful in a paid position, and/or we restructure our economy to make success more viable, I fear that efforts to support “working class heros” are doomed to become awkward failures as automation continues to steamroll the viability of those positions.

  • One point I don’t see brought up here, though it is touched at in (1) and (8), is that we’ve got to modulate how we discuss so-called “toxic” behavior. When so many seemingly minor behaviors are met with the same levels of disdain, villainization, and even punishment as things like actual sexual assault, it ends up feeling deeply isolating, undermines the point that is trying to be made, and pushes men towards the worst actors.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are American animations more expensive than Asian animations?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I cannot express enough how true this is. The key animators in a lot of Anime studios are overworked, but there are also “grunt farms” which handle the heavy work of filling in the animations. Even US (and really, everyone else) studios farm out a lot of work to these houses, who take the barebones stuff the main staff have assembled and turn it into a polished product.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m in a similar boat right now - I use the Student Edition ($60-100 a year, depending on sales, locally installed vs. using the cloud-based 3Dexperience).

  It’s not a bad deal by any means, but I do wish I didn’t have to deal with annual reinstalls and perpetually worrying Dassault is going to decide to take it away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  3D CAD software. There are a few options out there (FreeCAD, LibreCAD, etc) and Blender is a thing that exists for more artistic 3D modeling. But they simply don’t hold a candle to the features and capabilities of the paid packages, which typically have costs in the 4-to-5-digit range. And I’m not talking the crazy high-end simulation options - those I understand, they’re hard - but basic modeling features.

  Hell, I’d even settle for a CAD package that had some solid basic features and had a reasonable purchase cost. Unfortunately the few providers have the industry by the throat, and so your options are “free but terrible” and “you need a mortgage to use this”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some of the most realistic fictional movies ever made?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a submarine comedy called Down Periscope from the 90s. The story is, of course, absolute ridiculousness (albeit highly entertaining ridiculousness).

  I’ve repeatedly been told by navy veterans, however, that it comes closest to portraying actual life in the navy - in particular, that virtually every character in the film is someone you can actually encounter in the navy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do people really think setting up domestic manufacturing in the USA is easy?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  "But you just like… screw stuff together, right? Cut the basic materials to make the parts, put it together, box it up, ship it out, right?"

  • Someone I legitimately spoke to once. We were talking about assembling TVs.

  I find that people who’ve never assembled anything more complex than Ikea furniture or something more technical than changed a pipe or switch in their home, tend to think production exists in exactly two levels: Low-tech, hand-tools-at-most labor which can be easily spun up because “anyone can do it”, and ultra-high-tech stuff like computer chips which need highly specialized factories, but where a few factories can mostly satisfy nationwide demand.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm looking for a no frills, physical key EV. Am I looking for something that no longer exists?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, Low (gear). The 5 “standard” positions the standard shifter levers could be set to. Versus the weird stuff like dials or push-buttons that are incredibly hard to operate by muscle-memory if you aren’t looking right at them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why did/do sites such as the pyramids in Egypt or the Roman colosseum end up in an abandoned state, only to be "rediscovered" later?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Similarly, the Great Pyramid of Khafre (the tallest of the 3 greats at Giza) was once clad in a smooth exterior. The outermost cladding was taken by locals needing stone over the years, leaving only its peak still holding the original cladding.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What happens to all the used guns?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Worked briefly in the waste management industry. Guns in the garbage were rare, but a problem. Policy was to call the local police to wherever they were found and turn them over. Police would take perfunctory statements from facility staff and review camera footage to verify someone hadn’t dumped it and claimed it “found”, then take the gun.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What happens to all the used guns?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Everyone’s telling you why “It doesn’t happen”. They’re not objectively wrong in their answers of how resilient firearms can be, but they’re also not answering the question.

  The ultimate answer for a lot is “broken down and recycled”. How do they get there, though?

  • A lot come through “buyback” programs, where guns can be turned over to authorities for some nominal reward. These tend to harvest a lot of inoperable weapons, frequently from people who had one but didn’t know how to otherwise get rid of them.

  • In states with more lax firearm laws, scrap dealers may accept repairable weapons as scrap metal. In more stringent states, they may only accept them if you’ve destroy the weapon as /u/SolOrion@sh.itjust.works outlined in the ATF poster.

  • Even in states with strict firearm laws, guns can frequently be turned over to authorities without charges. (CAUTION: Read guides on how to do this, and consult your local laws and policies before treating this as truth. Better yet, consult a legal professional.)

  • In some rare cases, a gun dealer may accept the gun, strip it of useful spare parts, and sell them independently.

  At this point, the gun will be deliberately damaged to render it nonfunctional (if it isn’t already) and sent to a scrap metal handler. Metal components will be melted down and reused. Plastic or wood components may be recycled or thrown away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's easier to shoot, a bow or a firearm?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Bows are actually incredibly hard to use. When you see a “draw weight” of the bow, this is the force you need to exert to pull it back to its full draw. 40-50lbs is considered normal, I believe, while the English Longbow - famous for its use in the Hundred Years’ War - had a draw weigh of at least 80 pounds, with some scholars suggesting even 50% greater numbers than that. Imagine lifting a weight that heavy each time you wanted to loose an arrow!

  Bows, then, require extended training to use properly. Not just strength training, although professional archers were jacked, but in how to properly employ the weapon. The dominance of early firearms had much to do with not just their absolute performance - at times, they were actually outperformed by bows in absolute terms - but by that their effective use could be broken down into simple actions which could be easily drilled into new recruits.

  If we’re talking about modern guns, this effect is much exaggerated. Guns can take some getting use to, sure, and modern bows have added features for ease of use. But guns are, honestly, shockingly easy to use for what they can accomplish.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Question about gaming mouse (Logitech G502 Hero)⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  On the G502, the first button directly beneath the scroll wheel should lock and unlock its free-spinning mode.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tried to watch The French Connection... 😠⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like a perfectly good reason to check out whether your local library has it. And/or take up a career in sailing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it a pattern that every time a movie, show or animation that doesn't have a white person as the protagonist is attacked by right-wingers?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  TDP has two main leads, one white and one black.

  I’m not walled off from Star Wars’ controversies, merely pointing out that “every time” isn’t accurate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it a pattern that every time a movie, show or animation that doesn't have a white person as the protagonist is attacked by right-wingers?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “Every time” is certainly an exaggeration. Just off the top of my head in a minute:

  • The Dragon Prince - nobody gave a damn.
  • Star Wars [pick any of several releases] - we’ve had various people of color, both human and alien, as protagonists. I don’t remember much of a fuss over that in particular.
  • Various MCU things - Brave New World just came out, again featuring Mackie as Wilson - taking the place of the stereotypically WASP Steve Rogers, no less.
  • Hazbin Hotel: Vaggie is heavily coded as latina.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Witch From Mercury - okay, not a non-white lead, but the first Gundam series with a female lead, and a lesbian romance front and center. Once again, no attack.

  If I looked around further, I’m sure I could find more. All of these have variously been critiqued for writing, characterization, or pacing, but failed to draw attacks based on the ethnicity (or orientation) of their protagonists.

  Is this kind of attack a thing that happens? Absolutely. Is it “every time”? No. I’d suggest it’s more often when a series goes out of its way to bludgeon the audience with a message related to it, or tries to sell a newcomer as a superior replacement for a legacy character, that people can get riled up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Some examples of video games with an UI layout ripped off of another game?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh absolutely. OP only asked about UI, so I focused on that. But Generals had a lot of WC3 flavor in it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Some examples of video games with an UI layout ripped off of another game?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Command and Conquer had traditionally used a “right-pillar” control interface, with your map at the top. utility controls like “sell building” or “power down”, followed by a unit build selection screen. There you had 4 panels you could select between - “main base” buildings, defensive buildings, infantry, and vehicles - and you could scroll up and down a given panel. So long as you had the right production building, you could select things to build from anywhere on the map. If a unit had a “special ability”, it would be triggered by double-clicking on the unit.

  Come 2003’s Command and Conquer: Generals, the UI had been totally redone to resemble the layout of Blizzard’s wildly popular Warcraft 3: The control panel now sat at the bottom of the screen, with the map on the left. Building a particular kind of unit required you to select the building or unit that produced it. Selecting an individual unit gave you a list of magic spells special abilities it could take, such as using an alternative weapon or purchasing a particular upgrade.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are character templates based on fictional characters "probably" fair use?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Obligatory IANAL, etc.

  If the template is being used for non-commercial services and does not closely replicate any of the material the characters is based on, then it probably falls under Fair Use - similar to how many rulings have affirmed that fan fiction is broadly legally permitted. Conversely, if the chat service owner is charging for the use, then it would probably be forbidden under the grounds that the service host is financially benefiting from another’s copyright.

  Between that, is a murky zone.

  • Content creators and owners have at times made legal demands that pornographic or other obscene, shocking, or other fan content which could reflect poorly on the original owners be removed, on the basis it damages their value. If I remember correctly, rulings on this have gone both ways and the issue remains largely unsolved.
  • If the bot hoster makes small changes to the identity represented to the bot, it could likewise become iffy. It’d likely depend on the court ruling whether the identity was “substantially changed” enough.
  • A new course would be to argue that - given some of the issues regarding how bots have become abusive or encouraging of harmful behavior - a content owner could argue that any chatbot usage represents an intolerable danger to their brand value. I actually expect to see this litigated fairly soon.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This entire “glitch” is posited on the idea that altering your subjective past does not alter your absolute present.

  And you’re right - that’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t taking away something from the past alter the present? This is called causality and thermodynamics, and it’s one of the reasons physics, as we understand it presently, doesn’t really allow for time travel as it is popularly conceived. It’s not about gold coins, exactly, but the idea that you can’t end up with more energy than you started out with (or the mass equivalent of energy).

  But OP started with the idea that a time machine which break causality and thermodymnamics exists, so I just pointed out how massively broken such a machine would be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Assuming the following conditions:

  • Energy is not conserved - that is, you expend less energy traveling to the past than the net energy value of something you send to or bring from the past.

  • It takes approximately 1 minute for the time machine to recharge and target a new time and location after use.

  • The time machine can transport any object that can be contained in a space, but the space is fairly easy to expand. Think, “setting up a tent”.

  All of this, I should emphasize, horribly breaks physics. But it’s not a stupid question. The answer is, essentially, “the economy, as we know it, collapses.”

  A lot of people are going to point out that you can duplicate energy sources, items, etc… by bringing them from the past. Yes, that’s true. But what people are missing is that this enables exponential growth as well:

  • I buy a gold coin. I put it in a large space.

  • 2 minutes later, I set my time machine to go 1 minute back in time, collect the coin from myself, bring it to the present. Now I have 2 gold coins.

  • 2 minutes later, I do this again - collecting the 2 gold coins and bringing them to the (new) present. Now I have 4 gold coins.

  • An hour later of doing this, I have over 536 million gold coins.

  This works for any reasonably sized object, by the way. A hamburger. A tank of oil. That sweet RTX 5090 for your new gaming rig. A nuclear warhead.

  Society, as we know it, isn’t to survive this. The Earth probably isn’t going to survive this. The universe may very well not, although we’ve already broken so many laws of physics getting to this point that it’s a wash anyway.

  tl;dr - time machines as popular culture imagines them are a cheat code.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do games like Minecraft require a launcher?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m honestly surprised you can even connect to an MMO with an out-of-date client. On the few I’ve played, at least, a version mismatch is an automatic refusal to connect.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do games like Minecraft require a launcher?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Technically you don’t need it, but it makes it a little easier for the developers and the users.

  For that matter, if you poke around in some games’ files, you can find the actual game.exe and launch it directly from there, bypassing the launcher. You just bypass the authentication and compatibility checking as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If someone rubs their pennies on you, is it considered a centual massage?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is /c/nostupidquestions, not /c/jokessobadthey’rewarcrimes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does .World have so many benign and EMPTY communities with no posts?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If I had to guess, at least a good fraction of them are communities people duplicated after the initial Reddit exodus. At that point there was a lot of people trying to establish communities directly carried over, but if they failed to launch then they’ve probably been left to rot.