I’ve ripped a good number of blu-rays to network storage. If you’re looking for older, less popular stuff it’s the best option. And older releases are usually just a few bucks. The new stuff I torrent because I can usually find a decent rip, but for stuff I want to put in my library a rip from optical disk is the best, but not free of course. You can even do it for free, public libraries often have a good collection of older releases on optical disk.
Dogs were instrumental in early human survival and they’ve benefited for it. There’s almost a billion dogs in the world, but only a quarter million wolves. So in a natural selective sense that was a good move wolves made by becoming companions with humans.
Behavior has been bred into dogs going way back to the beginning. Fetch is one of those behaviors. I recently watched a documentary that showed the unique interaction of dogs with humans. Dogs are really good at understanding human body language. For example you can point at something and a dog will cue on it. No other animals reliably respond to that gesture, even chimpanzees which are genetically closest to us.
That’s good they won’t be adopting WEI, but if my bank or some other critical site decides to enforce a desktop browser with it, I’m still in the same boat. I did think of a way to avoid a WEI browser on my desktop if it comes to that. I can probably substitute a phone app for any critical services, but that’s still a drag. I don’t like phone apps much, I use a desktop browser for everything.
I think Google’s destruction of the Internet is most simply a matter of influence. If Chrome didn’t have the huge market share they wouldn’t be able to pull off this kind of thing, open source or not. Unfortunately people have a herd mentality with everything on the internet so we allowed it to happen by doing what we always do.
A conductor with no resistance is a big deal for many electrical applications. Electrical resistance is often a big part of design. Removing that aspect changes things significantly. Electrical power losses and the size of conductors can be greatly reduced.
I’ve read lots of unsubstantiated claims about superconductors. A solution has to be producible in quantity at a reasonable cost. Otherwise it’s not going to be a breakthrough. I mean we currently have expensive and bulky superconductor solutions, but they’re limited to applications where it’s reasonable such as MRI machines and particle accelerators.
An inexpensive room temperature superconductor would make the most difference in tech sectors such as power transmission, electromechanical, and power electronics. These are areas where power loss due to circuit resistance is a big part of design. The impact would be minimal for computing and logic. There may be areas where power loss can be reduced, but logic relies on semi-conductors which must have resistance to function, it’s in the name. The term “semi” implies resistance.
Would this potential superconductor work in devices like phones and laptops? Would it lead to more efficient operation?
If inexpensive it could be used in power components for consumer electronics like phones and laptops, but wouldn’t make a huge difference since most of the power consumption occurs in chips and displays where superconductors wouldn’t apply. Though it could lead to some reduction in size and better efficiency. Battery operated devices are considered low power. High power applications are where superconductors offer the most benefit.
There’s a new one suddenly popping up in my feed but obviously the reports are being “resolved” by the mods of that community. They suggested to me that I block their community but I will not because that is how you get a cesspit of an instance. How do we report disinformation communities straight to the admins?...
The admin here takes a conservative stance on defederation. He doesn’t do it unless there are lemm.ee rules violations or network abuse. I haven’t looked at any explodingheads content, but if it does not violate any lemm.ee rules and presents no network abuse it will probably not get defederated.
I agree with lemm.ee’s philosophy on defederation and that’s one of the reasons this is my home instance. In general you can’t call for defederation just because you don’t agree with content. If it’s blatantly offensive then I suppose that would be valid grounds, but I would hope that reason is used sparingly. I mean discussion that’s offensive to you may not be offensive to me.
No issue here on sticking with the standard Lemmy front end. I’m fine with that. Even if you hosted different front ends, I’d probably keep using the standard one. Also hope the best for you on the personal side.
Strange new Worlds. I think it’s the best Star Trek series since the original. I don’t think the casting is particularly great, but Anson Mount makes up for it. Like William Shatner was born to be Captain Kirk, Anson Mount was born to be Captain Pike.
Funny, when I was a little kid my grandmother had a Zenith TV with that exact remote. I still remember the long throw and clank of those buttons. TV remotes were uncommon then so I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Yeah dating myself here.
I rarely use any kind of chat, but I used IRC sometimes back in the day. I was recently working on a thing where I needed to use Discord for some programming advice. I got the info I needed, but yeah that Discord is a convoluted mess. Newer hardly ever means better.
RMIT engineers say they’ve tripled the energy density of cheap, rechargeable, recyclable proton flow batteries, which can now challenge commercially available lithium-ion batteries for capacity with a specific energy density of 245 Wh/kg.
You see a lot of stories about the next great battery tech. I’ve been seeing them for years, but still Li-Ion is the ubiquitous tech.
Even if energy density is only comparable, a battery with lower fire hazard and increased longevity is sorely needed. Li-Ion batteries simply wear out too fast. Considering the replacement cost (especially for EV applications), its a huge advantage for consumers. Then there’s a bonus of it being cheaper and more environmentally neutral which is also a big deal.
Of all the proclamations of a better battery, Na-Ion sounds like it might actually be a reality. That would make me happy to be rid of Li-Ion batteries once and for all. The only advantage they have is high energy density, they’re a fail on every other front.
So according to that article Na-Ion energy density is comparable to the LFP type of Li-Ion battery. That’s about 20% lower than the more common types you see in consumer products and EVs. LFP has much longer cycle life and lower fire hazard so it’s used where weight and space are less of a concern. However it still has the same cost and materials issues.
Na-Ion is well poised to replace LFP. The advantage is lower cost and more environmentally friendly materials. Unfortunately Na-Ion is not inline to replace the higher energy density types. As it becomes more widely adopted it may improve to the point where it can so there’s hope for it.
I’ve put together a collage of some books from last months What are you Reading? post. It’s mostly random, but the more discussion something gets the more it stands out to me. Going forward I’m going to make a new post every month to talk about what people are reading....
I’m not a big book reader, but a friend got me “The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla and Other Works”. It’s sitting on my nightstand when I can motivate to crack a boot. The book I finished before it was “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” by Stephen Hawking.
I like reading works from Scientists. I can’t understand their research papers because of the math, but I enjoy the works they do for the layman.
Old English from a millennia ago sounds like a foreign language, even early modern English from Shakespeare’s time sounds pretty odd. So it depends on when the translation was done. With English it’s common for newly invented words to get popularized and end up in the dictionary. The same kind of thing happens with grammar. Conversely people still sometimes use obsolete words from early modern English as a way to emphasize a statement.
The grammar of that quote may be due to the English translation of the time or something he simply interpreted in his own way. It sounds grammatically off for contemporary English, but that’s relative to the time frame. I imagine the English we speak today may sound odd to someone a few hundred years from now.
You’d think aerospace engineers would have it down to reflex that things need to be fail safe. It’s ironic a system designed to make the plane safer actually crashed the plane. That one should get an award for world’s worst engineering.
Like any accident it wasn’t just one thing. The maker implemented a safety system that was not fault tolerant, then the airline neglected to train pilots how to deal with a failure of that system. In fact that particular airline didn’t even know the system had been added to their planes. Bad engineering, communication, and training still happens in the industry, but really it’s pretty amazing how safe these machines are overall.
Pilot error is still the cause of a majority of accidents. A big problem is bad pilots that don’t pass regular exams can slip through the system because of management deficiencies. Like pilots it happens in the medical industry where bad doctors or nurses just get passed on from one hospital to the next. Employers fail to do proper checks on previous job performance.
Four years from now, if all goes well, a nuclear-powered rocket engine will launch into space for the first time. The rocket itself will be conventional, but the payload boosted into orbit will be a different matter.
I don’t see much of a difference between this and current technology. NASA has been using nuclear reactors in probes and rovers for quite some time. Presently deep space probes use nuclear reactors to generate electricity. Propulsion is produced by using electricity to accelerate ions. The ions come from gas stored in cold liquid form.
I don’t see any breakthrough technology here. From what I can tell reading the article, it’s just a lightly different way of creating propulsion, pressurizing the gas with heat instead of accelerating it with an electromagnetic field. Seems like a step back actually.
They transport cars with no gas in them. When I was going to school I used to work part time for a service center that prepped cars for the dealer after overseas transport. There were a lot of things that had to be done. The cars didn’t even have oil in the engine.
They transport EV’s with a 40% charge which is the industry standard storage charge for Li-Ion batteries. At storage charge a Li-Ion battery is greatly less likely to spontaneously combust due to a manufacturing defect. It can still happen, but a lot less of a chance. More likely an internal short will drain the battery to zero charge before catching fire.
In any case they don’t know the cause for sure. They’re stating an EV as a possible cause, but it could be anything at this point. They can’t know the cause for sure without an investigation and that won’t happen as long as it’s burning. If the ship sinks there may be no investigation at all.
This is the problem for me. If my bank or other critical institution decides to refuse me access with Firefox, I can’t use Firefox. This is the crux of the issue. Google is creating a browser monopoly with it’s market dominance and attestation scheme.
MS tried to exert control in the early 2000’s with its IE dominance and was thwarted by an anti-trust lawsuit. Google will probably skate on this one. Nowadays the consumer is only a resource to be plundered. The customer is shit.
There might have be a time when Google tried not to be evil, but they’ve been Satin himself for a good number of years now. It just took them a while to realize the irony of their mission statement. It’s funny I used to get mad at Microsoft for being evil, but they’ve got nothing on Google.
I’m afraid that’s always been the case because the mass majority just don’t a give a shit. They’ll happily conform to whatever the monopolies tell them to.
Unfortunately when my bank or other critical institution rejects Firefox for failure to use attestation, I can’t even do that. I’ll be forced to use Chrome. Firefox would have to adopt WEI to remain compatible. In that case I can use Firefox, but it would be the same as using Chrome.
I’d say the monopoly Google has with Chrome is way more threatening than in the early 2000’s with MS and IE. That threat resulted in an anti-trust lawsuit, but not a peep from any government about the destruction Google is doing.
Ironically, since I started pirating, I've spent MORE money on movies.
TL;DR at the bottom....
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What do you swear by?
Brand, thing, behavior, method, advice, mantra, etc....
Google's New Web Environment Integrity Proposal Dismissed by Brave, Mozilla, and Vivaldi (news.itsfoss.com)
First claimed successful replication of LK-99 (twitter.com)
"Accomplished by a team at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology and posted 30 minutes ago....
Does this instance have a stance on right wing disinformation communities?
There’s a new one suddenly popping up in my feed but obviously the reports are being “resolved” by the mods of that community. They suggested to me that I block their community but I will not because that is how you get a cesspit of an instance. How do we report disinformation communities straight to the admins?...
New bot rules, Lemmy 0.18.3, and a message about alternative Lemmy frontends on lemm.ee
Hey folks!...
What are you Watching? (August 2023) (lemmy.world)
Hello /c/sciencefiction lemmies. I’ve put together an image of some of the most discussed shows from July 2023....
The buttons on Zenith’s original “clicker” remote were a mechanical marvel (www.theverge.com)
deleted_by_author
Cheap proton batteries compete with lithium on energy density (sopuli.xyz)
RMIT engineers say they’ve tripled the energy density of cheap, rechargeable, recyclable proton flow batteries, which can now challenge commercially available lithium-ion batteries for capacity with a specific energy density of 245 Wh/kg.
What are you Reading? (August 2023) (lemmy.world)
I’ve put together a collage of some books from last months What are you Reading? post. It’s mostly random, but the more discussion something gets the more it stands out to me. Going forward I’m going to make a new post every month to talk about what people are reading....
Why is “Now I Am Become Death” phrased so awkwardly in English?
Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds — J. Robert Oppenheimer...
Fired Tesla Employee Posts New Video of Full Self-Driving Running Red Light (jalopnik.com)
cross-posted from: derp.foo/post/81940...
The US government is taking a serious step toward space-based nuclear propulsion (arstechnica.com)
Four years from now, if all goes well, a nuclear-powered rocket engine will launch into space for the first time. The rocket itself will be conventional, but the payload boosted into orbit will be a different matter.
There's 3000 cars on fire in the North Sea (lemmy.ml)
Source: todon.eu/
Elon Musk and company take @x handle from its original user. He got zero dollars for it. (mashable.com)
Google is already pushing Web Environment Integrity into Chromium (github.com)