Skip Navigation
Today's featured article on Wikipedia: Outer Wilds
  • Once you finish it, it's actually really fun watching other people's playthroughs as well - getting to relive some of the moments vicariously through other people's eyes is almost as much fun as experiencing them yourself the first time.

    It's also quite amazing just how different each playthrough can be, since the game is so non-linear, people take some crazy paths to get to the end ! It can be frustrating as well when someone just can't see what is in front of their face though :)

    There are also so many subtle elements scattered around that most people miss on their first playthrough, and watching someone else play it really made me appreciate many of the details I missed on my own playthrough and even make connections I didn't before, and understand aspects of the story that I didn't fully get the first time.

  • Algerian Imane Khelif wins boxing gold medal after her gender was wrongly questioned
  • The word average is often used to mean mean, however it can be used less specifically - median is a type of average as well.

    From Merriam-Webster definition of average:

    1a) a single value (such as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values

    Also, things like testosterone levels in a population usually follow a normal distribution, where both mean and median are the same, so the distinction is often meaningless for practical purposes

  • See This Red Area? This Is *Sand*
  • The dots are counties - the largest red one above LA is Kern county - Tulare county is the smaller red dot above it to the right

    This is a clearer version of that map. The other two much smaller red dots above LA are Kings and Inyo counties - this map is based on 2016 presidential results, as Inyo went blue in 2020 (by only 14 votes though)

  • Clay content
  • Mozzarella/loam is ~20-50 sand, ~30-50 silt and ~10-30 clay - pay attention to the angle of the numbers and follow the diagonal lines. The center of the triangle has to be 33/33/33

  • Man recording a concert on cassette, Poland, 1980s
  • You have to realize that popular culture was very tightly controlled and restricted by the Polish communist government at this time. This photo was taken at the Jarocin festival, which was a rare chance to see many bands play that otherwise had no radio play or record contracts and often played styles of music that were viewed with great suspicion by the establishment. Recording these live performances and trading tapes was often the only way people got to hear many of these bands.

    I grew up in a neighboring country during this time, but I wasn't much into the rock scene then - I was into folk music, which had a similar scene in my country - many folk artists were straight up banned by the government, so it was impossible to hear them on the radio or buy their records, but tape recordings of live performances existed and were traded among the fans. Same of my favorite music from this period only existed in this form. There were even recordings of shows that got shut down by the police mid-set.

    The 80s were a period of economic stagnation in eastern Europe, resulting in a lot of pent up anger and angst in the youth, and at the same time, the establishment was slowly losing its grip on the population. As a result artists were getting increasingly bold in channeling this anger and dissatisfaction, of pushing the boundaries of what was allowed, sometimes crossing them and getting slapped down - but you never knew what could happen at a large gathering of the youth back then - taping was an important tool to document and spread this to the wider population.

  • Man recording a concert on cassette, Poland, 1980s
  • Most Polish people would disagree. Poland got pretty fucked in ww2, from all sides, but at least they managed to hold on to some of their sovereignty and not be forced to join USSR as a Soviet Republic.

    This partially allowed the democratization movement to form in Poland in the 80s (with Solidarność) and eventually for Poland to get out from under Russia's boot and join the EU and NATO, and avoid the fate of former Soviet Republics like Belarus and Ukraine.

  • Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames
  • The only fuel you can make from water is hydrogen. The RS-25 engines used on the SLS core stage and the Space Shuttle used liquid hydrogen, as did the J-2 engines on the second and third stage of the Saturn V (but not the first stage, which used RP-1 (kerosene) burning F-1 engine)

    Starship's Raptor engines use liquid methane however. There are a bunch of tradeoffs between the different fuels, but generally liquid hydrogen is more difficult and expensive to deal with. With low cost reusability being one of the primary objectives of Starship, liquid methane was chosen as the best option. The fact that it can also be manufactured on Mars was also considered, since CO2 is abundant in Martian atmosphere.

  • Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames
  • LOX is liquid oxygen, which is not a fuel, but an oxidizer. Starship is fueled by liquid methane. Methane can not be made from just water, you need a source of carbon. On Mars for example methane could be produced from CO2 in the atmosphere and water from ice.

  • Ronald Reagan?! The Actor?!
  • Reagan was a union leader in the 40s and 50s, governor of California in the 60s, and elected president in 84 - he didn't just go from acting to being president, he had a lot more political experience and track record than Trump.

    Sure he had charisma and was a good public speaker, but that's pretty much what got Obama the presidency as well.

  • Good luck web devs
  • I think "popular" is stretching it here, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is dead now, and while Hurd is interesting, it has ways to go.

    Alpine is actually popular, particularly as a lightweight host OS to run docker.

  • Elon Musk "We dug our own grave with 'FULL SELF DRIVING""
  • I don't know much about the Hyperloop - I was never interested in it, and it never seemed like a real project, some kind of Musk BS probably, but I don't know enough to debate it. Full Autonomous driving is definitely also a very ambitious project. I do think it is in principle feasible, and has great potential, but also serious possible obstacles. I think it's worth pursuing to figure it out. I would say that selling it to the mass market is premature at this point, and has been overhyped by Musk a lot. Also don't know anything about the Human/Robot AI program, that also sounds like Musk BS, so I don't really follow it.

    I do think Musk is a narcissist, I don't think he is an idiot. I don't think calling him a con-man is really justified. I also don't think he is a genius, more like someone with decent amount of technical competence who often unreasonably clings to slightly insane visions and an ability to assemble talented people and push them to try to execute on those visions and ideas, which sometimes leads to legitimate breakthroughs, for example in case of SpaceX.

    I would never take Musk's predictions, economic or technological at face value, he is clearly always talking far ahead of anything currently happening, an his predictions are notoriously unreliable and wildly optimistic. I don't think that takes away much from the actual achievements of both Tesla and especially SpaceX however.

    I also personally would never buy a Tesla, for a variety of reasons - I actually have a lot of disagreements with the Tesla philosophy, and will probably never own a self-driving car either, but whatever.

  • Elon Musk "We dug our own grave with 'FULL SELF DRIVING""
  • If a NASA program had as many failures as SpaceX has, it would be closed down.

    94 successful Falcon 9 launches this year so far (0 failures) - 90% with reused boosters, with a single booster being flown for the 19th time yesterday - no launch system has ever come close to these kinds of numbers before.

    If by "many failures" you are referring to Starship, those are literally test articles/pathfinders/prototypes tested to destruction. It's a different development approach than NASA's, so I am not sure how the comparison is applicable. It took many failed booster landings early in the Falcon program to perfect the droneship landing, and look where it is now.

    Starship is a very ambitious program, really pushing the boundaries of our technological capability and challenging a lot of existing conventions. Even Elon admits success is far from certain, but declaring it doomed based on the test flight results so far is really premature.

  • The RAM sticks I just bought off eBay
  • Yup, Corsair replaced a pair of modules that were ~4 years old for me earlier this year, they even shipped the replacements first before I sent the bad module in - all at no cost in the end (only a deposit for shipping first, which was fully refunded once they received my old modules). I didn't even realize they had lifetime warranty at first, didn't think such things even exist anymore, so it was a really nice surprise.

    I had years of infrequent random crashes that I finally tracked to a bad DRAM module - I was kicking myself for not running the full memtest earlier.

  • 9 December 2023
  • Not sure about the 80s, but in 1992 there was a futon store seemingly on every corner in a NJ college town where I lived at the time, futons were a bit of a fad then.

  • 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/)YL
    ylph @lemmy.world
    Posts 0
    Comments 25