Reminds me of the first time I saw Sin and Cos lookup tables being used in early 3D gaming. The computers could calculate those just fine, especially with a math co-processor. But for 3D gaming it would be too slow to get a good framerate. So lookup tables were used to greatly improve the speed.

Back on those days all sort of neat tricks like that would be used. Often done as little demo programs that were very impressive. Before the internet it was hard to look up something like that and the latest and greatest tricks weren’t written in books yet. So often little code snippets and demo programs would be shared amongst programmers using the sneakernet, so we could all learn and get better.

Arj for life!

Nah it lacks the lemon company investing billions into the lemon stand, just so they can buy billions worth of lemons. And the lemon stand needs to set almost all of the lemons on fire and sell just a fraction of them at an extreme loss. Meanwhile the CEOs of both the lemon stand and the lemon company should shout at everyone and anyone: “LEMONADE IS THE FUTURE BRO, JUST ACCEPT IT!”

Why does the USB-A plug fit exactly in the RJ45 network port?

Very sad we don’t have many of those any more :(

Yeah I was surprised to learn as well that a lot of trees grown for lumber only live for 15-30 years depending on the species. At some point it just won’t grow as fast anymore and it’s better to cut it down and replace it with a new tree that can grow fast again. Some might take longer, but that increases the price a lot, so the demand for those is shorter.

The average lifespan of trees is also relatively short in relation to their maximum age. A tree takes up a lot of room, not just in terms of size, but also in terms of access to the sunlight and nutrients. So the big trees we see are the survivors, for each of those probably at least 100 smaller trees didn’t make it. Trees can also easily die due to disease, infestations or other mishaps. Some trees like elm could live a very long life, but depending on the region usually don’t make it past 100 because the chance they get a disease or fungus that kills them within that time.

Impossibruh!

It’s so terrible that the stock jumps up on news like this. All of those assholes already rubbing their hands going: “Yeah, we’re going to make so much money from cancer patients. Fuck yeah, bleed em dry the suckers”.

Instead of a rational world where we make sure these kinds of companies or labs are doing good and have money to do their thing. But once a new drug is developed we make sure we can produce it cheap and safe in enough quantities for patients to get treatment.

There’s absolutely no need for the insane profits we’re seeing recently. We can run the world just on normal profits. The CEO would still be a millionaire, the fat cats would still be fat. But we can make sure everyone has access to stuff they need without going bankrupt. Or in civilized countries, without our collective money flowing into big pharma companies (and especially the owners, higher ups and shareholders).

As a species we’ve lost our damned minds.

It’s all fun and games, till some plumber comes by and kicks you in the teeth

Good news: The feature you want has been a part of KDE since forever. Cursors are fully customizable with different cursor packs being available. Installing a cursor pack is very simple, just look through the different packs, select the one you want and click install. There’s so many different kinds available, one is probably to your liking. And if it isn’t you can probably find an artist easily enough and commission your own set.

Yeah except this is a tiny little plane and a 737 is huge. So those comparisons don’t make much sense.

I still have PTSD from 25 years ago when I killed two snails. I feel terrible about it.

I was on holiday with my first wife in France. We had this beautiful little cottage in the countryside. We went to bed at night and I wanted to close the shutters on the window, so we wouldn’t get waken up at the crack of dawn. But I noticed two large snails sitting on the windowsill outside.

They would be crushed if I closed the shutters. So I did this trick I learnt where I tapped on their shells with the tip of my finger. That tricked them into retreating into the shell. Then I gently applied force to get them off, waiting till they released themselves as to not hurt them.

I set them down on the side, waiting for them to get a grip. Once they were firmly in place I let go and checked they were doing alright. They started crawling away and I was satisfied I could safely close the shutters without harming them. After having done so, I got a good night sleep, perhaps the last good night sleep for the rest of my life.

The next morning I went to open the shutters, to let in the light and some fresh morning air. As I opened the shutters I heard this terrible crunching sound. I was absolutely shocked and my wife put her hand in front of her mouth, pointed at me and yelled: “SNAIL KILLER!”. As I slowly opened the shutters I found that indeed the snails had crawled back to a place in front of the shutters. As I opened the shutters, the snails were completely crushed leaving nothing but a sad pile of sadness.

Obviously I didn’t close the shutters for the rest of the stay. I still feel terrible to this day I failed my small fragile gooey friends. I try to make my garden as inviting as possible for all kinds of animals. And I don’t get a lot of snails, but there are a lot of other small and large critters. The God of Snails probably warns them to stay away, which is understandable.

I’m sorry snail friends, I’ll do better in the future.

That’s one of the things that frustrates me most about this whole AI thing. I fucking hate it and I want it to die, I wish it were never created in the first place. But from a tech enthusiast and a maths nerd point of view, it is super interesting.

Like the performance of these models is shit compared to a real person doing actual work. But if we think about what we are doing on a basic level, the performance is way beyond what I would expect it to be. I wouldn’t expect it to be able to form a coherent sentence or scale as well as it does (even though the resources required to run these is still very high).

It could have been really cool shit people did studies on and played around with to explore the math. Cool little play models we could let go on a bunch of data and see what it did and how. Something for a small group of nerds and experts who are into that kind of thing, for the sake of learning and nothing else.

But no, somehow it got transmorphed into “AI”. And marketed like this actual learning almost sentient computer system that can replace all workers. You can ask it anything and it will give PhD level expert answers. Oh and it’s run by a handful of the most vile men imaginable who pour all of the world’s money and resources into it, all so they get to be god emperor of the world. Fucking terrible.

Looks like a pretty significant dip yeah. No idea if it’s just an unseasonably warm bit that evens out, or if the ice started retreating really early this year. Normally the peak is in September, not August.

I’m going to guess you have a “Don’t thread on me” flag up, but also a “Thin blue line” flag at the same time?

Yeah true, the biggest difference is they decide when and where to do such a thing. If the conditions are right and they have the water and logistics to do such a thing, they can try something like that on exactly the location for it to work. It’s also often one of the tools in the toolbox that gets used in combination to work.

This is obviously total bullshit, given the amount of water and maintenance required would lead to a staggering cost. But it wouldn’t even work. If just a bit of water could stop a wildfire, they wouldn’t be an issue. The water would simply evaporate under the intense heat. Another big issue is embers flying over on the wind, landing on top of something flammable (like roofs of most North American style buildings). Once the fire clears the obstacle, it’s done for.

Usually with forest management fire breaks are incorporated. A clearing large enough so a fire on one side doesn’t easily cross over. These are often combined with access roads for fire trucks. However when a wildfire is large enough, the heat and embers are easily able to cross over. Especially when the wind is involved. Once a fire gets to that scale, it’s very hard to fight and some sprinklers in the ground ain’t going to do shit.

Even if it were all above board, it’s just gambling and should be heavily restricted just as all other forms of betting.

A kidney? Psssh that’s small potatoes, how much RAM do you have?

Wasn’t that whole gros michel story made up after the fact? Those bananas are still available, just more expensive. People who’ve eaten them have reported them tasting a bit more like the chemical banana taste, but not really the same. And the taste is highly dependent on how ripe the banana is. I think the actual story was the chemical banana was close enough and cheap and easy to produce. People also liked it, even though it didn’t really taste like bananas. So it became the de facto banana taste. In small amounts the taste is a lot closer, but people prefer the higher amounts because of the more intense taste.

It even says as much on the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel#%3A~%3Atext=The+Gros+Michel+has+a%2Cseeming+version+of+the+Cavendish

A food history myth is that artificial banana flavor was specifically developed from the Gros Michel, but isoamyl acetate is a simple compound and was not based on any specific cultivar.