Smokeydope
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world
- Comment on Want to play the latest multiplayer games? Just go into your bios settings or upgrade your PC if it doesn't have TPM chip. 1 week ago:
Call Of Duty Black Ops 7, however im hearing Battlefield 6 is also in the same boat.
- Comment on Want to play the latest multiplayer games? Just go into your bios settings or upgrade your PC if it doesn't have TPM chip. 1 week ago:
A lot of gamers tend to also be teenagers/young adults who just want to play a game with their friends in their social group. I was a kid once too after all so its understandable. However its the “just want to play with my friends” crowd that enables the industries worst practices by being consumers who think of yearly video game release hype cycles as vehicles of social interaction instead of caring about games as an art form thats being slowly degraded by corporate cuckery over time.
- Comment on me_irl_conflict 1 week ago:
That was Hubble who discovered cosmic expansion was a real thing. einstein believed in a static universe and made up a constant specifically to model such a universe in general relativity
- Comment on Want to play the latest multiplayer games? Just go into your bios settings or upgrade your PC if it doesn't have TPM chip. 1 week ago:
Black Ops 7. Its got plenty of shaming going on for other reasons already but this is the first time ive seen this message.
- Want to play the latest multiplayer games? Just go into your bios settings or upgrade your PC if it doesn't have TPM chip.lemmy.world ↗Submitted 1 week ago to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world | 127 comments
- Comment on Online Oxford English Dictionary puts definitions/meanings and usage behind paywall 1 week ago:
Paid products can be enshittified. Also, its not just the quality of products that are getting enshittified but the concept of ownership over usage and access to digital data.
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Slowly raising sub rates with that boiling frog tek.
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No longer providing means to purchase local copies of data on a CD-ROM when you did before, just to pigeon-hole buyers down a subscription only access to the cloud.
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Not offering a one time lifetime subscription in your sub-only model.
It used to be that you bought something and owned it physically or at least owned a private copy of the data that could be cracked/ stripped of DRM so you could truly freely own and distribute. Now they all want to be digital landlords where you own nothing and pay a little more each month through the good old boiling frog while pinning price increases on inflation. The mid-term result is a 100$/year to rent out digital access to a dictionary when before you could buy a cd copy.
Also, I don’t buy the “academic quality things should be incredibly expensive because its meant for scholars and university libraries” argument. Fuck that grift man. Free educational and reference materials would be a digital right in any sane society. Im sure Oxford University gets enough tax breaks and gov subsidy they could do it without impacting the stock holders precious quarterly figures. That entire 12 volume OED set + SOED takes up 500mb and can be fit on every modern tablet and phone. It sure as hell could be fit on a CD ROM years ago when they made that. The only reason its not is greed and maybe the dopamine rush scholars get from filtering the plebs.
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- Comment on Online Oxford English Dictionary puts definitions/meanings and usage behind paywall 1 week ago:
so why all the fuss about the inaccessibility of OED?
Because the OED is the creme of the crop for dictionaries, particularly the SOED has some of the most well put together definitions of any dictionary for casual lookup. Because the 1200$ paywall they put behind the physical editions was always bullshit. Because they no longer have legitimate ways of purchacing a cheaper local digital copy when one was available before is bullshit.
This behavior is so scummy and gatekeeps high quality reference knowledge that should be available for everyone. Its crazy to me that bootlicker apologist came crawling out of the woodwork typing 5 paragraph essays justifying the enshittifying commodification of understanding English language. The exact same kind of people who would absolutely eat up per-definition microtransactions and Oxford Gatcha Lootboxes where your 100$ sub gets you 10 credits to play in a dictionary slot machine with a 1/3 pull chance of actually paying out with the definition you wanted.
Sure, wiktionary or webster might have an entry for the word but if you do side by side comparisions betweeen dictionary theyre mid compared to OED/SOED. If your reaching for one the logic should be that you want the best/most accurate and descriptive one possible, no?
I genuinely believe that universities have at least a moral obligation (HA!) to provide free public services that better humanity. These are places of education subsidized and given tax breaks by the government for gods sake, yet theyre so corrupt from the rich fucks that run them like a for-profit corporation.
I would make an argument that free access to the highest quality dictionaries thats the gold standard for scholarly reference and similar such materials should be closer to a digital right than anything. In a better world academia pricing structures get fucked, knowledge becomes truly open through digital online and local reference resources without DRM.
Of course, thats a pipe dream. So instead, I simply ask for the option of an updated CD rom to be released as a possible purchacing option in a DRM free format. You know, like they already did years ago.
- Comment on Online Oxford English Dictionary puts definitions/meanings and usage behind paywall 1 week ago:
I don’t own/use a kindle but did a 2 minute search and found this promising fourm post comment from user Enterio www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=360684
"On my Kindle (Paperwhite, 11th gen), the dictionaries are held in the “\documents\dictionaries” subfolder (I kept my firmware to an older version to keep my USB connection). When I bought them online (on Amazon, see Kindle Default Dictionaries category), I received pre-made MOBI files that I only had to place in the aforementioned subfolder, without converting them to other file formats. Afterwards, I set up my default dictionaries for every language on my Kindle in Settings → Language & Dictionaries → Dictionaries. Hope that helped. "
- Comment on Online Oxford English Dictionary puts definitions/meanings and usage behind paywall 1 week ago:
Also, the 1921 version of Merriam-Webster dictionary has entered public domain and is available for local download in stardict format here github.com/ahacop/websters-dict-1913-stardict
- Comment on Online Oxford English Dictionary puts definitions/meanings and usage behind paywall 1 week ago:
Double reminder that local offline copies of wiktionary.org dictionaries are available for download here: github.com/Vuizur/Wiktionary-Dictionaries
- Comment on Online Oxford English Dictionary puts definitions/meanings and usage behind paywall 1 week ago:
- Comment on Online Oxford English Dictionary puts definitions/meanings and usage behind paywall 1 week ago:
Oxford English Dictionary is directly funded by Oxford University. Im pretty sure a world class old money university can subsidize public access and periodic updates to a database without putting it behind a subscription based paywall. At least offer a lifetime sub option.
- Comment on Online Oxford English Dictionary puts definitions/meanings and usage behind paywall 1 week ago:
Well, that sure is an option, though one that I would rather not take, like ever.
Coincidentally a copy of the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary 2nd edition stardict is currently available for free on the internet, only requires approximately 200-300mb of storage space, can be installed on my e-reader or pc software of choice for potential automated database retrieval / RAG, ect ect.
Look me in the eyes and tell me that motherfucking world renouned Ivy Leauge Oxford University who directly funds OED is so tight on funding that they can no longer subsidize updating an online database and have to pinch pennies putting a fucking dictionary behind a SUBSCRIPTION BASED PAYWALL. If it was like a 200$ digital lifetime sub I could maybe see it but the greedy fucks won’t let you pay to “own” permanent access to a dictionary. This is just a meme as is.
- Comment on Online Oxford English Dictionary puts definitions/meanings and usage behind paywall 1 week ago:
In case anyone is wondering you can download a stardict of the shorter oxford english dictionary and have a local copy then use software like stardict or svdc to look up. Heres a copy on the internet archive. archive.org/…/soedrich-star-dict-2022-11-11
- Submitted 1 week ago to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world | 49 comments
- Comment on Fictional 3 weeks ago:
Its more related to limits of knowability of events beyond a certain scale. Its easy an intuitive to think of it like pixels on a grid with a minimum requirement of time and energy to move between them units but its not that simple or at least that kind of granular discreteness is not proven (though there are digital physics frameworks that treat spacetime discrete like this)
The Planck length does not define the minimum distance something can move but rather the minimum scale of meaningful measurement that can make a bit of distinction between two microsstates of information.
Its a precision limit that defines how exact we can measure interactions that happen within the distance between two points.
It’s possible that spacetime is continuous at a fundamental level, but the Planck length represents the scale at which quantum fluctuations of spacetime itself become so violent that the concepts of a ‘path’ or a ‘distance’ can no longer be defined in the classical sense, effectively creating discrete quantized limits for measurement precision.
Ultimately this precision bound limit is related to energy cost to actualize a measurement from a superposition and the exponetial increase in energy needed to overcome uncertainty principle at smaller and smaller scales. The energy required to actualize a meaningful state from a sub-planck length would be enough to create a kugelblitz black hole made from pure condensed energy.
- Comment on Fictional 3 weeks ago:
Is the speed of causation propagation linked to plank length?
Yes, more specifically the Planck length is derived from an equation involving the speed of light/causality.
Where C is light, h is reduced planck constant, and G is gravitational constant. Together they tell us the fundamental unit length of meaningful distinction, a very important yard stick for measuring the smallest distances.
- Comment on Fictional 3 weeks ago:
I have no religious beliefs. The thing that trips me up is how is there matter in the first place if none can ever be created? Why was there stuff at a single point at some time
The “matter/information can’t be created or destroyed” thing only applies to closed systems within their own operational bounds. It’s about logical consistency within a closed set, but that tells us nothing about where the closed set itself came from. All the energy from the big bang/first universal iteration was loaned from somewhere else. The how and why of this is probably going to remain a mystery forever because our simulations of the laws of physics can’t go back to before the big bang.
So the nature of the big bang and why anything exists is one of the big open-ended philosophy-of-science questions that there isn’t an easy falsifiable answer to. It’s up to interpretation. I have my own theories on the topic but any guess is as good as another.
From the good old classic “Because God Did It™” to “bubble universes that foam out from a hyperdimensional substrate with random laws of physics/math that sometimes allow for observation and life” and everything in between. It’s all the same to me because we can’t prove anything one way or the other.
- Comment on Fictional 3 weeks ago:
What your asking directly stems from two related open ended philosophy-of-science questions. These would be " Are universal constants actually constant?" and “Does the speed of light differ in speed at any point of time in its journey between two points of space in a continuous substrate?”
The answer to both like all philosophy questions is a long hit on the pot pipe and a “sure man, its possible but remains unlikely/over engineering the problem until we have justification through observing it” however I’ll give my two cents.
“” Are universal constants actually constant?" " it probably depends on the constant. Fundamental math stuff that tie directly into computations logic and uncertainty precision limits like pi are eternal and unchanging. More physics type constants derived from statistical distribution like the cosmological constant might shift around a little especially at quantum precision error scales.
The speed of light probably is closer to the first one as its ultimately about mathematically derived logical boundaries on how fast any two points universe can interact to quantize a microstate. Its a computational limit and I don’t see that changing unless the actual vaccum substrate of spacetime takes a sudden phase shift.
“Does the speed of light differ in speed at any point of time in its journey between two points of space in a continuous substrate?”
Veritasium did a good video about this one. The answer is its possible but currently unmeasurable . so if all hypothesis generate the same effective results then the simplest among them (light maintaining a constant speed during both ways of trip) is the most simple computationally efficient hypothesis among them.
- Comment on Fictional 3 weeks ago:
Do you really believe that in all of eternity, we happen to be just four and a half billion years in? We are probably on our infinite life, and have infinite more to go. Just completely random lives, no idea where we will end up, nothing persists.
Yes I do. There’s a difference between the philosophical idea of an eternal process of cosmological rebirth, and the experimentally observed behaviors of the current universe we live in captured with our most powerful instruments and our best mathematical models.
In the 20th century we built telescopes powerful enough to see into the very distant universe and track the movement of galaxies. Because of this technological achievement we observed some strange things.
First was that galaxies seemed to be moving further and further away from each other. Not only that, they were moving away at an accelerating pace. This uncovered the idea of cosmological expansion, that over time our universe “spreads out” and creates new space between already distant objects.
Second, because the speed of light is finite, this creates fundamental limits to how far we can observe (the cosmological horizon) and a crazy cool phenomenon where the further you look into the distant universe the further back in time you look due to the age of the light from the star and the distance it traveled. We can literally see how the universe looked billions of years ago and calculate how far back we are looking.
If you look back far enough with extremely low frequency radio telescopes you can map out the thermal radiation from when the universe was extremely hot and dense about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. This is called the Cosmic Microwave Background. It shows the universe was in a very condensed high energy state.
Third, we have concepts such as the second law of thermodynamics that says entropy increases in closed systems. Energy always spreads out and systems tend toward disorder on a global level. We have equations that very accurately describe this distribution.
With these breakthroughs we had enough data to simulate accurate matter distributions of the current universe, observe and accurately model matter distributions in the distant past, and use that model to find a best prediction of what may happen in the future with what we currently know. All three lines of evidence point to a universe that is roughly 13.8 billion years old with a definite beginning and end state.
This can still be reconciled with spiritual beliefs if your willing to redefine eternity to something more like an eternal cycle of rebirth with the heat death of one universe bootstrapping the creation of the next iteration. You may enjoy Futuramas bit on it.
- Comment on Fictional 3 weeks ago:
The actual answer is because the universe had to pick a finite number and it probably doesnt use meters as an internal measurement ruler for scaling so
- Comment on Youtube can detect VPNs now... the fuck? 3 weeks ago:
A few days ago I gotta message from google saying they “can’t verify my age” (meaning they want gov ID I’m sure) so I’m forced to use safe search and other stuff too.
Fuck. That!
- Comment on Covers the bases 1 month ago:
When I was a teen some of the girls I knew had such big lady boners for the main cast of supernatural ad sherlock Holmes. I never understood why.
Going by the Venn diagram, ive now come to the conclusion that theres something about homoerotic baiting between two grizzled depressed dad archetypestypes that really fires the neurons and gets the hormones going for some chicks.
- Comment on McDonald’s CEO is grappling with a ‘two-tier economy’ as he slashes prices on value meals—and signals backing for a minimum wage increase 2 months ago:
I would, but im too busy getting the grill fired up ;)
- Comment on McDonald’s CEO is grappling with a ‘two-tier economy’ as he slashes prices on value meals—and signals backing for a minimum wage increase 2 months ago:
The point they were trying to make is meat bad and you should feel bad for eating it. Some people have no sense of pragmatic reality and need some cause to feel good about themselves, so they force everyone around them to watch food inc and virtue signal simply to fill in the void of where a real unique personality and opinion set should be. According to vegans agriculture as a whole is evil and everyone who eats a hamburger is equivalent to a sociopath who tortures animals for fun. Unfortunately they would have a point about cruelty and inhumane industrial farming practices, which is completely undercut by obnoxious high-horsing and blaming people for buying the hamburgers instead of the industry and lack of even the most basic rights for non-human animals.
- Comment on I just went onto reddit to a intrest subreddit which happens to be NSFW and i got this, fuck reddit im glad i quit it. 3 months ago:
They haven’t really unless you count the post-dbza content with the shorts and the streaming. Hellsing ultimate abridged was made along side DBZA timeline wise about the time Twilight was still popular.
- Comment on I just went onto reddit to a intrest subreddit which happens to be NSFW and i got this, fuck reddit im glad i quit it. 3 months ago:
Hellsing Abridged from TFS, classic. If you’re gonna watch it you should do it on twitch since they used a copyrighted song for an epic sync that happens in one of the later episodes that got muted on youtube. www.twitch.tv/videos/294882536?collection=Y4Lf2g4…
- Comment on I just went onto reddit to a intrest subreddit which happens to be NSFW and i got this, fuck reddit im glad i quit it. 3 months ago:
- Comment on PLASTICMAXXING 5 months ago:
The thing is that even if there isn’t much energy in plastic to be extracted, theres still enough energy in it to make a viable food source. Now, consider the humble panda and its primary food source, fucking eucalyptus leaves. Theyre so hard to chew that koalas had to spend evolutionary time and energy just to spec into it to the point they cant eat anything else pretty much. Combine that with the fact that eucalyptis leaves are so devoid of nutrients that the koala has to spend all day every day just snacking on them to not die of malnutrition.
Why? Why would a species even bother with this flim-flam if eucalypti sucks that bad as a food source? The answer is: Food scarcity. Because eucalytis grows everywhere where koalas live and because nobody else is bothering to tap into the food source, this sets up a ecological niche by pretty much gaurenteeing any animal that sucessfully finds a way to make it work will have unlimited amounts of food/energy just from the fact theres so damn much of it and nothing else wants to/can touch it. Sure koalas might have paid the price by sacrificing some brain wrinkles but who needs higher intelligence when you have leaves to snack on and sex to make babies.
A similar thing happened with trees and mushrooms. In the deep evolutionary history of our planet trees were once the apex forms of life with forest covering pretty much the whole planet. This is because nothing knew how to break down the wood making up stems for a good couple million years. Most of the coal and oil that we dig up today is actually the preserved remains of these unbroken down trees from the carboniferous period that just layed there petrified never rotting until the carbon compressed into hard rock or squeezed into liquid. The great change in the era happened when our humble mycelium bois finally figured out how to eat wood, causing them to essentially become the new apex life for a time.
- Comment on nyet 5 months ago:
Cool! Thank you for digging up that video I appreciate it :)
