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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)BR
Posts 5
Comments 519
Wait, my body's own heat is enough? Always has been.
  • People in this thread are hitting us with all sorts of whatabout stories with extreme conditions; and meanwhile I'm working in a office where people will come in and turn on the cooling because they just walked up some stairs, and then turn on the heating after they've sat down for a couple of minutes. No concept of self regulation. Just any hint of discomfort means the room has to change temperature.

    It that context, the pushback in this thread is a bit depressing.

  • Russian ruble
  • That might be a viable strategy if those were the only two currencies. (But even then, the freedom dollars are still likely to stay in better shape - since the USA is not currently an international pariah or financing a failed invasion.)

  • Insane savings
  • Furthering the idea that 'life is more than mere survival', I want to add that choosing to buy or not buy an item affects more than just you.

    When you buy a $70 item from Amazon on sale, yes, you've spent $70 and not 'saved' anything at all. But even if it was a good price, you should consider the added cost is that you gave your $70 to the evil empire. Amazon got your money, and you got your trinket. Surely it would be better if you spent the $70 somewhere else. Give it to someone that you like more than Jeff Bezos. I'm sure you can think of someone like that. You probably won't be able to buy that exact same trinket for $70, but surely you'll get something else you want - and you can actually help someone else at the same time rather than entrenching the power of exploitation.

  • 8 yr old me after my parents did my woodworking assignment
  • My proof is that actually that my pet cat knows more about manufacturing than he does, therefore he doesn't know the most. In fact, my cat knows literally everything possible to know about manufacturing. It's amazing. And if you don't believe me, then you need to show your evidence that it isn't true. Also, my cat doesn't routinely give misinformation about the capabilities of the products made by their companies.

  • flouride
  • Pretty much anything you can think of is recommended by someone, because different people have conflicting views. The key is to choose whose recommendations are based on the best reasoning & evidence aligning with your goals.

  • Microsoft tries to convince Windows 10 users to buy a new PC with full-screen prompts
  • I've never owned any Apple product whatsoever - and yet I'm in a similar position to you. Their standings have risen in my eyes simply by keeping their badness level relatively stable while Microsoft and Google rapidly get worse.

  • In the US, is this actually the moment past the point of no return?
  • We're here in "no stupid questions". The OP asked a question. So if you want to offer some of your knowledge and insight - go for it. But simply telling OP "you don't understand" isn't really adding anything of value.

  • math @lemm.ee blind3rdeye @lemm.ee

    Chalkdust - maths magazine

    chalkdustmagazine.com Read Issue 20 now! - Chalkdust

    A magazine for the mathematically curious. Issue 20 now available: Spirographs, complex triangles and a lot of ants feature in our AW24 issue! Plus all your favourite puzzles & columns.

    Read Issue 20 now! - Chalkdust

    I've just discovered this maths magazine (online, and in print). What I've seen so far looks good, and I'd never heard of it before - so I figured I'd share it here.

    0
    If Open Source is so great...
    1. You can delete and edit comments on lemmy. But that doesn't mean all severs or users will honour that request. Same is true for reddit, hence why it is possible to see deleted reddit comments on 3rd party websites. (And deleted tweets, etc. on other sites.)
    2. People post on lemmy for the purpose of sharing thoughts and ideas with the world. If your stuff is private: don't post it! This is true for all social media. Also note, lemmy doesn't ask for your phone number or other unrelated personal information.
  • Mastodon sees a boost from the 'X exodus' too, founder says
  • It will outlast bs. Mastodon has been around for many years now. It already outlasted Google+, which was bigger and had more funding. And since it has a broad base of support it's unlikely that it will all just fall apart. Unlike the commercial social networks, no single person can pull the plug the fediverse. (Lemmy is younger, but it also seems very strong right now. I just hope lemmy still gets some exposure on the outside now that the major drama at reddit has died down.)

  • Popular Female Skyrim Modder Has Abandoned Her Work Due to Daily Harrassment
  • I've been a great fan of gaming for my entire long life. But I don't play online games any more, because so many gamers are toxic. Obviously there are good individuals and some good outposts, but taken as a whole it is a toxic community.

  • "What Is Your Dream for Mozilla" - Mozilla is doing a survey, and it could be a good opportunity to share some of the feedback that usually gets commented here :)
  • So you got this survey in an email. Was the link intended to be shared like this? Can I find the survey link somewhere on Mozilla's own websites?

    I guess I'm not totally convinced that this is an official Mozilla survey, or even if it is - I'm not sure who their target survey audience is.

  • these folks sure are quiet these days
  • You'd reach more people on bigger platforms, but it is easier to steer the conversation with smaller groups. So I don't think its totally clear-cut where the best psyops targets would be.

  • Anon questions our energy sector
  • The cost of constructing and decommissioning power plants is important for sure; but it has nothing to do with energy density - which is what we were talking about before. It's true that building solar panels takes energy and resources, and the panels don't last indefinitely. So there is a lifecycle cost to using them. But the same is true for all forms of power generation.

    A common way to compare these costs is to look at the 'payback time' of each form of power generation. The payback time is the amount of time it would take for the power plant to produce enough energy to pay back the lifecycle costs required to build, operate, and decommission that type of plant. It's basically how long it takes for the construction to have been 'worth it'.

    In terms of payback time, wind power is by far the best; typically taking less than 1 year to pay itself off. Solar is pretty good too, but is highly dependent on where it is used. And nuclear... is not good on this measure. It takes decades for a nuclear power plant to pay itself off, because the plants are very expensive to build and decommission.

    Obviously there are other things to consider in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of power generation. But you've been talking about the cost of materials and construction as though it is a weakness of renewables, and it really really isn't. That's in fact one of their strengths, and a major weakness of nuclear. Its strange that you say nuclear is 'insanity powerful for its cost', because its cost is the greatest weakness of nuclear power. Its much cleaner than coal, but much more expensive, even though it uses so little fuel. And it is not cleaner than solar or wind, but it is still more expensive.

    Your point about land usage is a stronger point in favour of nuclear power... except that depending on what country you are talking about, that could easily swing the other way. Solar and wind do take up more space than nuclear, that's for sure. But nuclear requires certain geological conditions for the safe operation of the plant, and the storage of waste. So depending on where you live, finding unused land suitable for renewables can be much easier than finding a suitable location for a nuclear power plant and waste containment facility.

  • Half-Life 2 peaks at 52,000 concurrent players, 20 years after its release
  • I was totally fine playing HL1, and HL2, and HL2 episode 1.... but I never finished episode 2 because of motion sickness. The problem isn't really with episode 2 though. The problem is just that I got old, and now I get motion sickness from FPS games that didn't affect me before.

    But I do know that not every FPS makes me sick. I think mouse-look smoothing helps. I'm not certain what else, but I'd try messing with the field-of-view angle and stuff like that.

  • math @lemm.ee blind3rdeye @lemm.ee

    Ideas about Pythagorean triads

    I've recently realised something about Pythagorean triads; a topic which very few people I know would be interested in hearing about... so I'm posting in here - a ghost town maths community. (But I'll also post on mastodon.). Anyway, the realisation is related to complex numbers.

    If I have two complex numbers, I can multiply them like this: (x₁+y₁i)(x₂+y₂i), or like this r₁r₂cis(𝜃₁+𝜃₂). So then, if I represent a Pythagorean triad as a complex number, x+yi, with r as the hypotenuse, then multiplying two of these together is guaranteed to produce another triad. The rectangular method of multiplication guarantees integer real and imaginary components, and the polar method guarantees an integer hypotenuse. For example, (3+4i)(3+4i) = -7+24i. And 7²+24²=25².

    So that's a bit interesting. But I have more. Since the polar angle in these triads is always an irrational multiple of 𝜋, repeatedly multiplying by the same triad will never return the angle to where it started. You'll just get new triads every time. But of course, if we are multiplying different triads together, its easy to come up with different ways of producing the same triad product. Following this line of thinking, we can view the Pythagorean triads as either 'prime' or 'composite'. Any triad can be written uniquely as a product of prime triads - just like with integers. (For this to fully work, we must allow 'flat' triads such as (1, 0, 1), (2, 0, 2), etc.)

    How can we tell if a triad is prime? Well, I don't know - other than trying to brute-force the factorisation. If the hypotenuse is a prime number, then the triad is definitely prime. But if it isn't... I haven't thought much about that yet, but my current answer is to just check to see if a triad can be made with the factors of the hypotenuse.

    Anyway, that's all I've got on that for now. No doubt there's some fully fleshed out details somewhere on a wikipedia page citing some well known facts from 2000 years ago or whatever. But discovering is more interesting that knowing. So I'm not going to check right now.

    5

    Best way to use GOG on linux

    I'm looking for discussion and suggestions about the best way to play games from GOG on linux.

    My current method is that I've got GOG Galaxy installed with bottles, and then I use GOG Galaxy to install and launch the Windows games. That's working alright so far. One downside is that won't install Iinux versions like that, so for games that have a native linux version I have to decide if I want to install it separately, or just run the windows version with the others. So that isn't perfect. Another minor thing I don't like is that since I'm installing games via GOG Galaxy via Bottles via Flatpak... I end up having very little idea of where stuff is being saved. It's difficult to find save game files for example; and if there is some junk installed or left over from something, there's very little chance that I'm going to notice and delete it. It just feels very opaque. (I guess that's mostly just about my personal lack of knowledge though.)

    Anyway, I'm mostly just wondering how others are choosing to handle their games from GOG.

    26

    Maddy makes heaps of stuff in GDQ

    mastodon.gamedev.place Madeline Stephanie Thorson (@maddy@mastodon.gamedev.place)

    Here's a short thread for SGDQ2024 runs of games I worked on! Times are in PST and will probably shift. Full schedule is here https://gamesdonequick.com/schedule/48

    I just think it's cool to when indie developers are an active part of the gaming community.

    0

    Requesting folder encryption recommendations

    I'm vaguely interested in having a few different encrypted folders on my computer, with different passwords on each. I don't have any particular strong requirements. It's more of a velleity; mostly just to try it so that I know more about it.

    That said, when I search for encryption options, I see a lot of different advice from different times. I'm seeings stuff about EncFS, eCryptFS, CryFS; and others... and I find it a bit confusing because to me all those names look basically the same; and it's not easy for me to tell whether or not the info I'm reading is out of date.

    So figure I'd just ask here for recommendations. The way I imagine it, I want some encrypted data on my computer with as little indication of what it is as possible; and but with a command and a password I can then access it like a normal drive or folder; copying stuff in or out, or editing things. And when I'm done, I unmount it (or whatever) and now its inaccessible and opaque again.

    I'm under the impression that there are a bunch of different tools that will do what I've got in mind. But I'm interested in recommendations (since most of the recommendations I've seen on the internet seem to be from years ago, and for maybe slightly different use-cases).

    23