thebestaquaman

@thebestaquaman@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Belief⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  One has to wonder if that’s truly a highly specific incompetence, or intentional.

  I’ll apply Hanlons razor again: These people are stupid, therefore doing “everything in their power” involves using woefully ineffective means to achieve their goal. I have no problem believing that most anti-abortionists genuinely believe that they’re trying to save innocent lives. However, being relatively dumb people means they are primarily driven by feelings rather than logic, and are easily manipulated. This results in them using the means that they “feel” should be effective, rather than proven methods. It also means that the few people that actively are looking to oppress others can manipulate their feelings to make them support means that hurt the people they’re trying to help.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has anything from the lemmy universe ever went viral before Reddit or Tictac or Insta?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know for certain, but can’t really imagine that being the case. There are several reasons I can’t imagine something going viral off lemmy per now:

  1. The combined user mass of lemmy is probably smaller than the critical mass needed to really go viral 1a. This could be “worked around” if someone reposted from lemmy to some other, larger network. Still, I wouldn’t say that meant something “went viral off lemmy”, since that would imply it went viral before being reposted.

  2. Lemmy doesn’t (by default) push heavily to get trending stuff into everyones feed. 2a. I say “by default” because I’m assuming someone could set up an instance designed around maximising the views of trending material.

  3. Slightly related to 1, but afaik, there are few, if any, very big social media personalities on here. For something to go viral, you’re basically reliant on either an algorithm catching on to your stuff and shoving it in everyone’s face or some person with a huge following shoving it in everyone’s face.

  4. The very system of lemmy (following communities rather than users) makes it extremely difficult for any individual user to gather a large enough following to make things go viral by posting/sharing them

  Basically: Too small user mass, no big personalities, and a “following system”/visibility algorithm built around promoting interesting and healthy media consumption rather than cultish behaviour prevents things from going viral off lemmy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨w e a k n e s s⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Funny, creative, smart woman that makes a living messing around with building cool stuff… was there anyone that didn’t have at least a little crush on her?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"i can hear the difference"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m so glad this is illegal where I’m from

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a point we can track down when we stopped caring about doctors, nurses, teacher, etc? And thought it was a great idea to pay atheletes millions and screw everyone else?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  With modern tv/streaming, tickets aren’t a limited resource anymore, in the sense that by far most of the viewers are not in place live.

  Sure, you could price live tickets following “normal” market rules, since you still have the practical limitation regarding the number of people living in reasonable distance from the stadium. The idea of using pricing to regulate demand/consumption for streaming services doesn’t really make sense the same way, since the marginal cost of another viewer is essentially zero.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a point we can track down when we stopped caring about doctors, nurses, teacher, etc? And thought it was a great idea to pay atheletes millions and screw everyone else?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I have to admit that, without wanting to defend absurd wages for anyone, there’s a pretty decent explanation in the case of athletes. If you’re one of the top ten boxers in the world, there are tens (hundreds?) of millions of people that want to see your matches. It’s not unreasonable to ask for some compensation for providing entertainment, so let’s say each viewer is paying 1 USD / match. After paying the costs of setting up the match, you’re still left with millions of dollars per match.

  Specially in the case of top-level athletes, we’re in a situation where very may people want to see very few people provide entertainment. Even if they take a very low price, they’re still going to be making buckets of money. I don’t really think that would be unfair, provided they actually charged some small amount. What irritates me is that the sports associations have decided to charge absurd amounts to squeeze people fore mine to make even more. That should definitely be illegal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Under what circumstances or axioms do spheres (the shape) have infinite surface area?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  While I’m completely open that my factor is likely wrong here, the expression you provided is definitely wrong in both the 2D and 3D case (I’m assuming the r superscript on the pi was a typo), since it gives neither n = 2 => A = 2 pi r nor n = 3 => A = 4 pi r^2.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Under what circumstances or axioms do spheres (the shape) have infinite surface area?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I believe the surface area of an n-dimensional hypersphere is (n - 1) pi r^{n - 1}. In that case (I may have some factors wrong here, just going off memory), an infinite-dimensional hypersphere has infinite surface area as long as it has non-zero radius.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hospital Bill 1961⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This sounds so dystopian I’m having a hard time comprehending it… what happens when they provide the mandatory emergency care and invoice someone who just doesn’t have the money to pay?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hospital Bill 1961⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Wat? Are you saying that people who give birth in a hospital are sent a 13 000 USD bill afterwards? Like, is that actually what happens? I feel like I have to ask, because I actually cannot comprehend that being the case.

  What if you don’t have the money? Do they expect you to just hold it in until you’ve saved up? Or do they just prefer that people give birth at home with no access to medical care if something goes wrong?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon follows orders⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Not really, it’s more nuanced than that. It’s about an inevitable division of responsibilities. In an effective fighting force, every individual cannot be equally responsible for all levels of strategy/tactics. At the same time, in an effective fighting force, every individual must have a rather high degree of trust in their nearest commander and brothers in arms.

  The consequence of this is that an effective fighting force inevitably becomes susceptible to misuse by higher-ups. If you’re able to highjack enough of the command chain, it becomes very difficult for the remaining parts to figure out what’s going on and do the right thing. It’s more than just “soldiers are brainwashed”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Have you ever considered THIS?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I know people that were actively hoping for twins and got them , twin-twin!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon follows orders⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think a crucial part of it is also that you, as a simple soldier on the ground, don’t really have a good way of figuring out the big picture.

  If your sergeant tells you to “prevent anyone from entering or leaving the parliament building”, you’re very likely to assume that something bad is happening and that the army has been called in to secure the building. You basically have to trust your commanders to see the bigger picture, so that when they tell you that “the guys over there are the baddies”, you can engage them without walking over to check for yourself. If those guys are in police uniforms, that probably means the baddies got a hold of uniforms to try to sneak past you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨why is fossil fuel still used?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That almost seems like a wilful misinterpretation of what I wrote, since I never claimed anything of the sort.

  What makes you completely wrong is that you’re using the fact that petroleum companies are filthy rich and bribe politicians to hell and back as an explanation for why we’re still reliant of fossil fuels. The basic answer to why is that “fossil fuels and combustion engines are pretty damn hard to beat” to the point where we still haven’t found a viable alternative for some applications.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨why is fossil fuel still used?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I get why you would say this, but it’s an oversimplification to the point of being completely wrong.

  Fossil fuels have an absurd energy density. They’re just really hard to beat. Modern batteries and liquid hydrogen don’t even come close. Pair that with the fact that we’ve spent a couple hundred years optimising the steam- and internal combustion engines, compared to some decades (in practice) for electric-based stuff, and you start seeing why fossil fuels are so hard to push of the top of the hill.

  Until very recently all alternatives were pretty much worse under every conceivable performance metric. There’s a reason electric planes are still in the prototype phase. It’s just technically really really hard to even get close to jet fuel and combustion engines.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choose wisely!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re just clearly not interested in having a reasonable discussion about what I consider to be an interesting topic, and appear more interested in attacking me over opinions I don’t have, and positions I haven’t defended.

  I’m not really interested in being talked down to be someone that appears to be wilfully misinterpreting me, so I’m probably just going to leave this comment section now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choose wisely!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s actually absurd to me that you’re able to read that out of my comment. I’m literally asking whether we have a moral obligation to use the technology available to us to prevent cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s, compromised immune systems, metabolic diseases, and fragile backs in our future children.

  I even specifically stated that this wasn’t about whether the same technology can be used for nefarious purposes, which is a different discussion entirely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choose wisely!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  But that doesn’t answer the question of whether we are morally obliged to use it for good purposes when possible. It’s just a different point entirely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choose wisely!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not saying that this kind of thing cannot be used for bad purposes. I’m asking the philosophical question of where our moral obligation to do everything we can to give our children the best possible life begins.

  Should we let them be born “as is”, and then have a moral obligation to do everything we can to make the best of whatever genetic baggage they have, or should we do whatever is in our power even before they’re born to give them a better shot at a good life?

  Explosives have caused enormous amounts of death, but also allowed enormous amounts of people to live in safer, more affordable houses, and have been critical for mineral extraction that essentially makes modern society possible, as well as modern transportation infrastructure. Explosives, like most technology, aren’t an inherently “evil” thing, even though they’re used for bad purposes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choose wisely!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We’re not just talking about autism here though. We’re talking about hereditary diseases, maybe a bad back, extreme allergies, etc. Their point is that if we had the technology to prevent our future child from carrying all sorts of genetic burdens (exposure to cancer, compromised immune system, terrible eyesight…) wouldn’t it be immoral to not use that technology?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I Thought I Knew You⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  All else aside, the biggest problem with putting a data center in space is cooling it. Getting rid of megawatts of energy at around 100 C when you have only radiative cooling to work with is an absolute bitch. For that reason alone, the “data center in space” idea is complete crap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨2³² will get interesting...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, I actually have my doubts that the trolley could get through 8 000 000 000 people before stopping due to the resistance, so at least some people should be fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨monumentale⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, I think massive “switchboards” can be relatively clean. The key is that each step contains little enough logic. 1500 lines of 13-14 cases means the average block was > 100 lines, and at that point I definitely agree that it should probably have been refactored a long time ago. Just splitting that into 13-14 smaller functions, and using the switchboard as a delegator could be completely fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Pennsylvania Ave. Ikea⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They have concepts of plans you haven’t heard of that are much better than the plans you have heard of!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon studies Organic Chemistry⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry but this seems almost archaic to me. When I was a student we were assigned a number by the exam office that we wrote on our exams, then after the exams were corrected the exam office would send us back our result. It was quite simply putting in a middle-man that did the student <-> number mapping so that the people correcting the exams never saw any names.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon studies Organic Chemistry⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait… are there universities that don’t have an anonymous exam system?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One of those days⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s absolutely stupid if you’re talking about a number that can be represented exactly in both notations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what's your take on employers banning the use of languages other than English between coworkers at the workplace?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course, I’ll speak English in meetings and other settings where we’re talking about work and need to minimise the language barrier for practical purposes. I’ll also speak English in a lot of social settings, because these are nice people that I enjoy talking to.

  What I’m talking about is the silent expectation that a group of Norwegians talking at the lunch table should switch to English if one or more non-Norwegian speakers enter the room. I don’t like that silent expectation, and really appreciate the colleagues that learn Norwegian well enough that I can just keep the conversation going without feeling like I’m excluding them or feeling that I need to swap to English and fill them in on what we’re talking about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what's your take on employers banning the use of languages other than English between coworkers at the workplace?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think it really makes a difference, as long as you’re staying somewhere for any significant amount of time (i.e. months) it makes sense to start learning the language.

  I mean, it’s common courtesy to try to learn enough of the local language to buy stuff and ask for directions when your just on vacation.

  I was in Germany for half a year during my studies. To me it was obvious that I needed to learn the language from day one, because I had no intent of going around and expecting everyone else to adjust to me not knowing the language. I have a very hard time understanding how someone could move to a country for years, and still not learn the language because “it’s not permanent”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what's your take on employers banning the use of languages other than English between coworkers at the workplace?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I also work in a very international community, with a small minority Norwegians (in Norway). While we often communicate in English, I have to admit that I find it a bit strange that people choose to move to Norway and work in Norway, but don’t learn the language well enough to participate in a conversation at the lunch table.

  Sure, often we’ll swap to English if a non-Norwegian speaker comes in, but sometimes I’m just tired and don’t want to bother with the extra effort. I massively appreciate the colleagues that bother to learn Norwegian.