And now this is also just how we communicate that the speaker is stating their own pronouns. If I put "Pseu he" as my username, there's a high chance of confusion. If I put "Pseu he/him" as my username, it's obvious what I'm trying to say.

So the Stanford post assumes that we continue to consume roughly 2% more energy per year. At that rate, in 1000 years we would go from consuming 1.753×10^13 W to consuming 6.98×10^21 W. This would be 40,000 times the energy the sun puts on the Earth. Because most energy quickly turns into heat, this would heat up the entire surface of the Earth to the point where it is uninhabitable. I feel that tidal locking would be the least of our concerns at that point.

Professor Liu seems to have made a simple mistake: What his model showed was unsustainable was not tidal energy, but actually his assumed exponential growth rate of energy consumption to ludicrous levels, levels that would spell disaster for the Earth.

That said, the website's math checks out. The linear approach is a very basic year 1 physics problem that can be quickly confirmed.

The values we need for this calculation:

The mass of the earth (M) is: 5.97×10^24 kg

The radius of the earth (R) is 6.37×10^6 m

The angular velocity of the earth (w) is 7.29×10^-5 rad/sec

The current total worldwide primary energy consumption is 1.753 × 10^13 W. This is pretty close to the article's assumption

The equations necessary:

The moment of inertia of a solid sphere of uniform density is: 2/5 MR^2

Rotational kinetic energy is calculated by: 1/2 I w^2

After some very basic plug-and-chug:

This provides a moment of inertia of the earth (I) of: 9.69×10^37 kilogram meters squared

And a total rotational kinetic energy of: 2.575×10^29 kg m^2 /s^2 This is pretty close to what the Stanford website calculated.

So if we used the suggested 1% here, it would take around 5.0 x 10^10 years to tidally lock the earth to the moon with our current energy consumption. But that's not what was assumed in the article. It was also assumed that we would continue to expand our energy consumption by a constant 2% per year. This requires basic calculus.

We have energy consumption that starts at the previously mentioned: 1.753 × 10^13 W

Below, n is equal to the number of years.

This leads us to a consumption growth formula of: 1.753×10^13 * 1.02^n

To indefinitely integrate that formula, we simply divide it by ln(1.02), which gives us: 8.85236×10^14 1.02^n (we will drop the +c because it's not necessary here)

And now we just need to solve the following equation for n: 2.575×10^29 = 8.85236×10^14 1.02^n

Solving gives us a real solution of: around 1681 years. This is close enough for me to say that the math checks out, considering that I didn't start with exactly the same base formulas. But ultimately this is besides the point. The math is right, but the premise of a constant 2% growth is ultimately unsustainable. Short of building planet-scale radiators to shed heat, the earth would become uninhabitable by virtue of the sheer energy consumption alone.

If you have infinite inventory space, then you need a way to navigate through infinite items. Towards the end of the game, a player could easily have nearly every item in the game. For some games, that would be fine, but for many, that would make the list of items prohibitively long. Filtering and searching would help, but if you're looking for an item that you forgot the name of, a search doesn't necessarily do much.

Then there's balance reasons. Some games use their inventory system to limit the player, making sure they don't start a level with enough health potions and grenades to cheese every fight.

In survival games, a finite inventory sets the gameplay loop: you go exploring/mining and then return to base, drop off your stuff and head out again. It makes your base valuable, if only because that's where you keep most of your resources and moving would be hard. It also gives the player a break from one task. I played a Minecraft mod that gave me an effectively infinite inventory. I went mining for so long that it started to feel like an awful slog. Because my mine shafts went on too long, getting back was itself a hassle. When I reverted back to a more typical inventory size, I could feel how a full inventory breaks up the grind and prevents mining from getting out of hand.

At 16x, you will get 72MB/s read speed. My SSD has a 560MB/s read speed. Because of this discrepancy, loading a game from a blu-ray disc will take roughly 7.7 times longer. A 20 second loading screen becomes a 2.5 minute loading screen. This alone justifies the cost of keeping it on my SSD. Especially because if I want to remove it I don't lose permanent access to the game, I can download it again in a couple hours.

It's a 70-qubit quantum computer. It doesn't have enough memory to break even rudimentary 128-bit encryption.

The algorithm that it executed was also not Shor's algorithm (the one that could potentially break encryption). The benchmark used is called random circuit sampling, which is just doing a bunch of random quantum operations between pairs of qubits and then reading the output. It's one of the fastest quantum speedups of any known algorithm.

This. As much I would like someone to really change things for the better, I could absolutely see laws like the ones passed in Florida and Texas being passed nationally if elections go poorly.

a situation where your character would get killed for a bad dialogue choice.

I think this is a ridiculous thing to criticize too. Dialogue is important in a game like this and it has (sometimes lethal) consequences.

Imagine if this argument were applied to combat. It turns out that it is impossible to beat some encounters by role-playing a loner wizard who refuses to cast spells. Nobody in their right mind would actually believe that is a valid criticism.

As a 70-qubit quantum computer, it's not going to be doing many helpful calculations. The benchmark used is random circuit sampling, which is doing a bunch of random quantum operations, and then reading the result, and it is compared to a supercomputer simulating the various random operations. This algorithm isn't useful outside of benchmarking.

This also makes Sycamore a particularly ineffective "weapon" considering that we don't really use encryption that's less than 1024 bits, which is well outside of the capability of our current quantum computers.

Well, the typical way of measuring q does measure the energy it takes to get the boulder up the hill, but not the inefficiency of the machine to get the boulder up there and the ineffency in extracting its energy as it goes back down.

There's a lot of unsexy research that could make fusion come a whole lot sooner. More efficient powerful lasers, better cooling methods and design for superconducting electromagnetics, more efficient containment methods and more thought on how to extract energy from the plasma efficiently, and then making it cheap enough to build and maintain that we can actually afford to build them.

First off, the first amendment says otherwise.

Second, in this case, it was an expert on the opioid crisis pointing out that the lt. governor had made policies that made it harder for people with opioid addiction to get help or be safe without being prosecuted. And that naturally this had the effect of people not pursuing treatment that could potentially land them in legal trouble. She wasn't commenting on the personal life of Dan Patrick, she was commenting on his policies and the consequences of those policies on a subject that was the topic of her lecture and her field of research.

Dwarf Fortress (before the Steam edition.) There was no in-game tutorial. I found a 2 hour long fanmade tutorial on Youtube, and even after that I had to learn a lot of stuff from the wiki.

I always feel a bit weird when people ask me what I do in my own spare time and my answer is basically fixing my shit, then pushing it just hard enough that it breaks again.

Relevant

Does Payday have a singleplayer mode? I thought it was a multiplayer game.

My parents briefly discussed sending me to a military-style boarding school because I was not the greatest kid at the time. This one wasn't the "kidnap you and force other kids to watch you pee," kind of place but it did bill itself as structured and instilling discipline.

Naturally, they googled and researched it and places like it. My mom found stories about the stress that such places out on students and research concluding that kids often end up with more behavioral problems rather than less. After that, they never brought it up again.

This kind of research probably isn't going to change minds in an argument, but there are parents of transgender kids who are exploring treatment options. They very well might be convinced by research when it comes down to sending their own kid to conversion therapy.

https://www.ktiv.com/2023/05/22/18-year-old-charged-northeast-nebraska-abortion-case-takes-plea-deal/

The daughter plead guilty, scheduled to Jul 20th for sentencing. The mother is going to trial on the 14th. If convicted, she'll get another sentencing hearing.

Because nuclear is not a threat. This is the first reactor in 30 years. At this rate, we'll have a fully nuclear grid in 87,000 years, assuming US electricity consumption doesn't increase in that time.

Texas has policies regarding opioids, its treatment of people with addiction and it's enforcement of drug laws that directly contribute to the crisis. For example, Lt. governor Dan Patrick is responsible for laws that remove protections for people seeking help with addiction, which naturally results in fewer people seeking help. His office is currently stalling a bill (that passed in the Texas House) to declassify fentanyl test strips as drug paraphernalia. These decisions obviously have an impact on the opioid crisis, which was the topic of her lecture.

From the article:

According to one student who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the school, some students wondered if it was when Alonzo said that the lieutenant governor’s office was one of the reasons it’s hard for drug users to access certain care for opioid addiction or overdoses.

A second student who also asked to remain anonymous for the same reason said Alonzo made a comment that the lieutenant governor’s office had opposed policies that could have prevented opioid-related deaths, and by doing so had allowed people to die.

A third student who also spoke on the condition of anonymity said Alonzo talked about how policies, like the state’s ban on fentanyl test strips, have a direct impact on the ability to prevent opioid overdoses and deaths. A push to legalize the test strips died earlier this year in the Patrick-led Senate despite support from top Republicans, including Abbott.

Much of research is supposed to inform the public about issues and risks that we face as a society and examine the effects of decisions, including political decisions.

The shrines respawn over time. No need to worry about consuming them. The Lillith statues are permanent stat boosts to all characters, not activating them when you encounter them is harmful.

The shrines aren't really a balance element, because they only last a minute or so, and usually make you hilariously overpowered for a little bit.

Uploaded videos are now X videos.

And Beehaw doesn't have a huge amount of activity, so the prioritization provided by a Reddit-style ranking system is less useful. I think going to a typical forum/messageboard system just makes sense.

Even if the CEO of Wells Fargo loses your money, you will still get at least $250,000 of it back (assuming you had deposited that much) via the FDIC.

The FDIC will honor their obligations because to do otherwise would be to risk a massive bank run, of the sort that started the Great Depression. This wouldn't just screw you over, it would screw over the ultra-wealthy too, and we can't have that.

At the end of the day, someone can just not take your mattress money and you might be out of luck. Your mattress can burn down and all that money is gone, which is far more likely than Wells Fargo taking your money and then the FDIC not giving you anything.

I replaced my brakes last weekend. Did the pads, realized I also needed to do the disks and brake fluid too. Ended up being a lot more work than I wanted, mostly because I was missing tools.

You're right, copyright won't fix it, copyright will just enable large companies to activate more of their work extract more from the creative space.

But who will benefit the most from AI? The artists seem to be getting screwed right now, and I'm pretty sure that Hasbro and Disney will love to cut costs and lay off artists as soon as this blows over.

Technology is capital, and in a capitalist system, that goes to benefit the holders of that capital. No matter how you cut it, laborers including artists are the ones who will get screwed.

Hopefully, it can also be used to prove that someone was not at the scene of a crime, enabling prosecutors to rule out suspects and innocent people to get off.

If a platform is only usable by someone of average tech savviness, then its reach is limited to half the population. This would be extremely limiting for a mass market product. As such, platforms cater to the least savvy 20% or lower.

The most they'll have to pay is 20 cents. And that's only with the 200,000th to 210,000th download for developers who are using the free version of Unity (provided that the developer is also making more then $200k/yr in revenue). After that, the developer will probably get Unity Pro and the download fees will start up at $1 million/yr in revenue and more than 1 million downloads. At that point, I don't think that the 15 cents to 0.1 cents that will be charged will hurt too badly.

Or you're me, and can use neither trouble-free. I'm basically this man.

I played a long while ago and a string of similar incidents eventually made me leave.

I came back ~6months ago, and it was more chill, but still not great.

I will say that if you're in a group of 3 or more non-toxic people, you almost never get toxic players. Not only because you've only got 2 chances to roll low rather than 4, but also because they're more aware that probably won't get anywhere.

Minecraft. It's so dang cozy to me.

So at the bare minimum, a mechanism needs to be provided for retroactively removing works that would have been opted out of commercial usage if the option had been available and the rights holders had been informed about the commercial intentions of the project.

If you do this, you limit access to AI tools exclusively to big companies. They already employ enough artists to create a useful AI generator, they'll simply add that the artist agrees for their work to be used in training to the employment contract. After a while, the only people who have access to reasonably good AI is are those major corporations, and they'll leverage that to depress wages and control employees.

The WGA's idea that the direct output of an AI is uncopyrightable doesn't distort things so heavily in favor of Disney and Hasbro. It's also more legally actionable. You don't name Microsoft Word as the editor of a novel because you used spell check even if it corrected the spelling and grammar of every word. Naturally you don't name generative AI as an author or creator.

Though the above argument only really applies when you have strong unions willing to fight for workers, and with how gutted they are in the US, I don't think that will be the standard.

Bungie is the developers of the Halo and Destiny franchises.

I feel that the line is not nearly as sharp. I play a lot of freeform games for extrinsic reasons. Building a cool castle in Minecraft is probably an extrinsic motivation, for example.

When I played Minecraft a whole ton, It was because I was on a server, and I was motivated by impressing my friends, a clear extrinsic motivation.

In WoW, I'm largely motivated to master the game so that I can keep up with my boyfriend, running 20+ dungeons and Heroic (soon Mythic) raids. Another extrinsic motivation.

Etterna, a rhythm game is probably my most intrinsically motivated game. I play it mostly because I enjoy the feeling of mastering a new skill. But even that is extrinsic to some degree, because what most clearly shows my skill? The game praising me with AAs and big streaks. I wouldn't enjoy Etterna without those things, so I wouldn't play a gradeless version.

At least in the areas where I see pronouns, they often do it in their status or the like and may not use brackets. "He/him" seems to be more widely understood than brackets or parentheses.

You created an algorithm for a karma farm bot.

And this is why there should always be a "use your best judgment" corollary. Don't post shit that's a clear meme or out of context. But post things that you find interesting from anywhere, whether it's from another aggregator or just your general life experiences.

And no, seeing how cluster ammunition is practically used, russian civilians are not going to disproportionately harmed. It’s going to be military targets which will be fucked up.

The issue with cluster munitions isn't how they're used, but what happens when a bomblet fails. Cluster bombs release hundreds to thousands of submunitions, and when one bomblet fails, it can remain armed and ready to detonate if/when someone comes by and bumps it, picks it up or runs over it with a tractor.

This can lead to issues long after the war is finished, as people are doing their own thing and get hurt or killed.

Haven and Hearth is a slow base building MMO. You build up skill points exploring and finding new items, spend the skill points to unlock more stuff, build a base and start upgrading your stuff from there. It's honestly really cool.

Wonder if Businesses will replace the twitter logo in their windows as well.

I doubt they will for a while at least. This change was so sudden that a lot of people will just not know what X is. It doesn't look like a social media icon and a lot of people will just not be familiar with it.

It's also horribly forgettable, even if I did use X regularly, I might just forget what the icon looked like out of context.

The person outright rejects defederation as a solution when it IS the solution

It's the solution in the sense that it removes it from view of users of the mainstream instances. It is not a solution to the overall problem of CSAM and the child abuse that creates such material. There is an argument to be made that is the only responsibility of instance admins, and that past that is the responsibility of law enforcement. This is sensible, but it invites law enforcement to start overtly trawling the Fediverse for offending content, and create an uncomfortable situation for admins and users, as they will go after admins who simply do not have the tools to effectively monitor for CSAM.

Defederation also obviously does not prevent users of the instance from posting CSAM. Admins even unknowingly having CSAM on their instance can easily lead to the admins being prosecuted and the instance taken down. Section 230 does not apply to material illegal on a federal level, and SESTA requires removal of material that violates even state level sex trafficking laws.

I’d include grocery shopping in “the process”.

Personally, this was the most exhausting part of cooking for me. My recipes are often complicated and call for a lot of somewhat obscure ingredients. Then the risk of forgetting something or buying the wrong thing is also there. Half the time, by the time I start actually cooking I'm already a little bit tired just because I could not find lime oil or whatever for the life of me.

I've started ordering all my ingredients for pickup now. I get a search bar so I'm not walking down isles hoping I'm in the right one, and I can check it against the recipe easily. I can pick it up on my bike ride and it just feels so much better.

Free to play with microtransactions is just the way to go for games that can be monetized in that manner. The lower barrier to entry means far more downloads and the piecemeal monetization means that players will frequently end up paying more than $60 alongside the larger player base.