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.

That’s not how orbital mechanics work

They strip away everything that actually helps people, so in that way it’s really small.

I’ve had great experience with Axis in the past. However in the past they used to have planned obsolescence where the flash they used had a very limited number of write cycles. With the Linux based OS they run it writes to the flash all the time. This would cause the thing to start dropping writes and misbehave. When ran 24/7 they usually died after about 4 years. The place I worked at just threw them away and replaced them whenever that happened, to not have downtime for cameras. Once I asked if I could have a couple to diagnose the fault and I found out the flash was out of write cycles on all of them. Maybe they are better nowadays, but it was pretty fucked up to see such expensive cameras be destroyed because of a few cents of flash.

Most anti-cheat doesn’t take kindly to running in a VM as well, so if that’s the reason it won’t work.

It’s one banana Michael. What could it cost, $10?

Holy shit, new nightmare unlocked.

I’ve had some horrific shit done to me for medical purposes. What got me through it was remembering two things. First of all, this is all to fix something else, it may get bad but it will get better. Second of all, pain is only temporary and exists only in my body/mind, it holds no power over me and it will pass.

Hope you had have fixed whatever was wrong, that makes something like that worth it.

Stitches that desolve are excellent. I hate the kind that needs to be monitored and removed manually. But I hate it even more when they use the staple kind, there is something just not right in using staples on a human being.

I’ve had one of those super long hairs be ingrown. It just coiled in on itself. I thought it was a black spot, so I dug it out with a sharp pair of tweezers. Once I got it and started pulling, it just kept going. Hair and puss came out and it felt terrible. Once I got it out it healed very quickly and felt much better, so I’m glad I did it, but that feeling still creeps me out.

My first experience in an airplane was quite different actually. In my mind as a child an airplane was this amazing thing that just flew, I had seen pictures of how it looked and thought it was a static thing that people sat in as it flew around.

The reality was quite different, the thing was a bit scoffed up and looked used. I kept thinking how the seats look like the seats on a bus. Not dirty exactly, but used looking and the kind of material you don’t see stains too well and cleans easily. The noise was a lot to handle, not just the roar of the engines and the sound of the air going past, but all of the groins and creaks. And it wasn’t static at all, everything was shaking and moving around, panel gaps showing. I saw the wings go from hanging down to pointing up as the weight of the aircraft hung from the wings. In my mind metal was hard and shouldn’t move as much as it did. Getting on and off was just a ramp that was shoved near the plane from the gate, with a gap in between a flap was laid over. It looked nothing like the high-tech environment I imagined. And flying through the air wasn’t as I imagined, at those speeds it’s more like being under water than going through nothing as I imagined. The plane reacts to currents in the air, getting pushed to the sides and up and down, not the perfectly straight and stable ride I imagined.

So in the end I decided a plane is very much like a bus and that makes sense as it does pretty much the same thing, carry a bunch people from a to b all of the time.

The only thing that surprised me was at take off how much power the thing has. In a bus the engine is usually very underpowered, just enough to get up to speed in the most efficient way. With an airplane the power to weight ratio is crazy, it’s more like driving a really fast car than a bus. But other than at take off, it’s pretty much a bus.

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.

This is usually done to keep things going as normal as possible for as long as possible. Once people start noticing something is wrong, the best people start looking elsewhere. Before you know it, not only is the company in financial trouble, but it can’t recover because some of the best people left. At least one time I witnessed, the company was working on layoff plans and even limited bankruptcy, but at the same time negotiating with the investment firm that owned part of the company to get more money. If they got the money, everything would be fine. It wasn’t till that fell through, they had to start laying people off.

This is a hardware issue, no OS can fix this.

Depends what you mean by “use”.

The Americans are the only ones to have used them in terms of destroying enemy assets (and sadly in that case it was used against civilians). But as a deterrent it’s been used by a LOT of countries all around the world and is still being used for that purpose right now.

An argument could be made the Cold War could have been an all out world war if it weren’t for nukes, with the short peace after WW2 be considered just a break and not the end.

I hope nukes won’t be used, but Ukraine is in trouble and if they are backed into a corner and facing destruction who knows what they will do. Same could apply to Iran before long, if they have the ability to get nukes somehow, it might be their only hope. Just please let it be as a deterrent and not actual nuclear war.

No joke, I loved all these games and played them as much as I could.

It’s the yeti invasion isn’t it? I will send my thoughts and prayers your way. I’m atheist, so the prayers will probably work about as well as those of a religious true believer.

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.

We have this awesome thing in a lot of places where you can use a scanner and scan as you shop. You can put the bag in the cart and bag while you shop. When you get to the self checkout, you can use the scanner and instantly pay for everything and be out within seconds. I pay with my phone so just a touch is needed and I’m out of there. If you are the carry bags kind you can even take the bag out of the cart, return the cart to the correct place and walk to the car with the bag. It’s so fast and efficient.

I’ve become so spoiled I actively avoid places that don’t have such a thing. And I hate people who have a full cart at the self checkout and scan everything much much slower than the regular checkout with a person who’s job it is to do that. It’s fine if you have like 5 items and just scan them quickly at the self checkout. Anything beyond that really should be scanned during the shopping or just go to the regular checkout which is designed to handle a lot of stuff.

I saw a fish beat Elden Ring, I’m sure they can microwave a cup of soup.

Most people who are fed up with Microsofts crap simply don’t buy a new computer anymore. They just do everything on an iPad (maybe pro) or similar without Windows. Gamers switch over to consoles, with Nintendo and Steam deck being preferred. Those things may run Linux like the Steam deck or another non Windows OS, but the user won’t notice or care since they don’t interact with it.

The time of the desktop and to a lesser extent the laptop has come and gone. It’s only for enthusiasts and people at work. At work people probably just use the same couple of apps or even just a browser with a webapp and never really interact with the OS. If it’s even a full computer and not a thin client connecting to a virtual desktop environment. People don’t know or care about OSes. Maybe they’ll bitch about Windows at times, but they bitch about a lot of things at work and they have no influence over any of it.

That would depend heavily on how accessible the computer is and how fat your fingers are. And I can tell you, mine are pretty fat.