Hang on... to go from "System32" to "System33" is one bit flip, but to go from "System33" to "System34" is three bit flips at once. Doesn't that seem astronomically more likely to be a malicious program than bad RAM?
2,221 karma · joined February 11, 2017
And when we purchase a new desktop workstation, equipped with even more staggering horsepower, we're totally OK with installing software that makes itself comfortable by consuming large fractions of this horsepower without any apparent need, all because the amazing hardware is able to mask the awfulness of the software.
Twitter itself has already been built. What new thing would they be building? A slightly different content moderation system? Slightly tweaked steps for verifying accounts? I'm not sure I see anything hardcore about any of this.
Yep, same with electrical work around the house. Obviously not for everyone, but once you get past the initial hurdle of getting comfortable and safe with electricity, there's great pleasure to be had from knowing that you can fix any issue, with minimal cost.
I don't endorse any rules-of-thumb for foraging, but a much better differentiator for beginners is whether the mushroom has pores vs. gills under the cap. There are virtually no deadly varieties that have pores.
When you get to know the specific bits of anatomy of the mushroom body, the trees with which they're symbiotic, the seasons in which they occur, etc., then identifying different varieties becomes as clear as identifying a baseball vs. a tennis ball.
The other thing is that the truly deadly varieties, such as the subject of this article - Amanita phalloides, are really not that hard to avoid. When you're a novice forager, there are plenty of varieties that don't look remotely like Amanita, and are much easier to differentiate.
There are some hardcore foragers who even consume certain varieties of Amanita (some of which are edible!), but to me this would be too much of a hassle, since it would involve spore prints and maybe even microscopy of the spores to be absolutely sure.
I've commented on this before, but it continues to baffle me how poorly-educated our public is about wild plants, berries, and mushrooms. And stories like this just perpetuate the fear (and stigma?) around foraging, when in fact there's a whole universe of flavors and textures to be had from wild mushrooms that are simply better, and more fun, than the grocery store.
Create a simulation, down to the quantum states, of a lattice of molecules at a certain simulated temperature (say, room temperature), and induce a simulated current through the lattice, and see if it superconducts. Proceed by iterating through billions of permutations of compounds in the simulated lattice, until the simulation finds a room-temperature superconductor.
Assuming this is feasible, does anyone know of organizations that are doing this?
About 10 times per day I receive a blank email from an obviously throwaway spam account (e.g. vishal382190130 at gmail dot com)
For the life of me I cannot understand the purpose or goal of these emails, from the spammers' point of view. I've heard the theory that spammers will send "test" emails to check if a destination account is active... But every day? All the time? Is it possible somehow to assure the spammers that my account is active, and to start sending me actual spam, instead of empty messages?
If we don't have all those things, it would be like asking: If the average of two numbers is 10, what were the original numbers?
A Lisp interpreter for a single specific ABI of Android, with which you communicate through a local web server. That's... one way to build an app!
Knowing a bit about human nature, however, I'm aware that we all have a perverse hidden desire to see the world end, which is why doomsday predictions occur so often in religious myths, why doomsday movies are so profitable, and why some people wish to convince you that it'll happen tomorrow, and even try to hurry it along.
And while I agree that basic "survival" skills are valuable, and that you should keep some supplies in case of an emergency, the majority of our energy should be spent working better as a group, towards a more effective society that is itself more resilient against disasters, natural or artificial.
These kinds of articles border on fetishizing the doomsaying, and end up promoting the worst kind of fear-driven consumerism, including consumerism of guns and ammunition. The ads sprinkled between every paragraph are a nice touch, too.
Total ecosystem collapse? Which ecosystem? Why? Again, I'm not denying any of the human impact to our climate, and I agree that many ecosystems will change, and it will be our fault, but I don't think it's productive or healthy to think of it with such bleakness.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/060418-ch... [2] https://phys.org/news/2020-01-planet-greener-global.html
Will we go through local minima while on the path towards absolute upward progress? Of course we will. Right now we might be in a local minimum. Maybe we haven't reached the bottom of the current local minimum yet. Maybe we won't reach it during this generation. But we will get through it.
The other thing is that we simply can't predict societal progress simply by pointing to current trends and extrapolating to the next 5, 10, etc years. Think about the following:
70 years ago, there wasn't a single artificial satellite in the sky. 50 years ago, there wasn't a single personal computer in anyone's home. And 20 years ago, there wasn't a single smartphone in anyone's pocket. All of the above happened within a single human lifetime. I'm saying that it's taking shorter and shorter intervals of time for society to completely transform itself, and we simply can't know what the next transformation will be. For me, that's a prospect worthy of excitement instead of dread.
The large white elliptical galaxies in the center of the image are in the "foreground", while the orange-ish galaxies are much farther away in the background. This is why the light from the more distant galaxies is curved and distorted by the foreground objects, creating the lensing effect that we see.
All I've ever wanted is a folder that syncs automatically. Nothing more. And for a while Dropbox was the best at fulfilling that role and getting out of the way, but it seems feature-creep has taken over.
I've literally never needed to search my disk for a file (using the Windows search interface), and if I ever do, I'd rather wait a few more seconds that one time for my search to complete, rather than have the indexer consume my CPU at all times.
For the other 99.99% of us, it would take many lifetimes worth of free time to make a substantial dent in these materials. To me, guides like these are too intimidating to even begin. Maybe what's needed is a meta-guide on structuring one's time and developing the necessary focus to be able to do this within one human lifetime.
However, in order for programming to have the same footing as a "fine art" (on par with poetry or visual arts), it needs to have the same _relatability_ in non-programmers as it does with programmers. That is, it would need to evoke the same visceral emotion in a nontechnical observer, which is kind of a stretch at this moment. Nevertheless, I'm fine with programming remaining a true art only within a self-selected inner circle. Many other things are the same way.
But before writing my backup to the cartridges, I tried reading their contents, and found that they actually came from a major film studio, with backups of raw animated film content on them!
I think this is simply about reassessing our risk calculus with the fact that the current Covid variant is mild enough that it can be gradually folded into the background noise of seasonal viruses that we deal with every year.