53 ms·

Ask HN: Teach me something new

• amin 4y ago
  Quantitative easing (sometimes mistaking called "money printing") isn't directly inflationary. Because when central banks buy bonds, they do not pay with normal money. Instead, they pay with a special type of money that can never enter the real economy (as to not create inflation). This special type of money are called "bank reserves". And bank reserves can only be used to 1) settle interbank transfers and 2) buy more bonds. They can never leave the loop of the banking system. So the next time you see scary looking charts showing that the total amount of money increased a lot in the last two years, keep in mind that that "money" includes bank reserves that are stuck in a closed loop. This is also why Japan, who is the king of QE and "money printing", barely has any inflation. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
  • tomcam 4y ago
    So why don’t we just put $100 trillion of that money into the economy? Why not just pay for everyone’s houses and college debt and personal debt this way?
    • sleightofmind 4y ago
      There you go again. Asking a straightforward question in clear, comprehensible language, without any hand waving. How can you possibly expect the economic sophists to engage with you if you persist in this behavior?
  • SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    If the loop is closed then this money has no use, it is not money. If it's not closed it cause inflation. It's binary. How can you instead define a spectrum of cross talk between real money and sandboxed money?
  • User23 4y ago
    And yet it spends.
  • adtac 4y ago
    Buy more bonds from who? What can the seller of those bonds do with this money?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • tungle 4y ago
    I doubt point 1), pls enlighten me. When a commercial bank receive interest from bonds from a central bank, it can then take out the proportion of 'real money' it put in before. Say, I'm BofA, I put in 10b as compulsory lock (my laymen term), I use some other money to buy bonds and receive interest, say, 200m. Then if that 200m goes to my reserve, I'd have 10.2b, which is 200m above the compulsory lock, then I can take that 200m out and use for business. Money doesn't have the label 'old money, can use' vs 'newly-printed money, can't use', does it? Minor edit: adding missing 'take' (in 'take that')
  • arc-in-space 4y ago
    "Not directly inflationary" does not seem like a very useful thing to say, since QE causally leads to higher inflation. Japan barely had any inflation for a while because their QE program was temporary, and when it looked like inflation might go above zero, BoJ immediately hiked rates, contracting the economy(2000, 20006). This is how you achieve no inflation. By the way, recently they've began trying a more expansionary policy once again. Using QE. It is working, so far. It might stop if they dive their head back in the sand!
    • ffggvv 4y ago
      the yen is rapidly devaluing compared to the dollar right now too
  • ls-lah_33 4y ago
    Recently the fed has been buying corporate debt etfs[1]. Not an expert, but I assume that must increase the money supply in the general economy? QE also pushes down the interest rate, making it easier for banks to lend to the general public. I think QE usually doesn't lead to inflation if your employment drops at the same time or your population size is shrinking (i.e. Japan). In such a situation consumer demand decreases, balancing out the additional money supply. As evidence of this notice how QE in the US did not lead to high inflation until employment started picking up. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/the-fed-s-corporate-bond-portfolio-5069989 https://www.investopedia.com/the-fed-s-corporate-bond-portfo...
  • rmbyrro 4y ago
    Throwing Japan as an example you want to generalize defeats your purpose. As has been famously said, there are only three types of economies: Japan, Argentina, and the rest of the world. So, next time, pick an example from the rest of the world. Is there many where QE did not lead to inflation?
    • FrenchAmerican 4y ago
      The link between monetary inflation and price inflation has been "demonstrated" by the Chicago Boys, with Milton Friedman as their guru. It led to the "monetarist" school of thought - which has been the reigning paradigm in economics since. There is no such thing as "inflation" in general. There are different types of inflation, such as the rise of the valuations of stocks, the rise of real estate price and day-to-day prices such as food. And monetary inflation. QE has led to various effects in various countries at different times. There is no absolute correlation "always and everywhere". The funny thing is that a rise in stock market is always interpreted as a positive thing - despite everybody knowing that bubbles happen very regularly. Otherwise, inflation is seen as bad - which is ridiculous since the extraordinary low interest rates kept by the FED for years ("printing money") has sustained the economic growth and avoided recession. Economists are historians of the economy. They are able to explain what happened - and if they agree on the general picture, they disagree on many points. Which is normal, that is a research field, so there are debates. Some say lessons should be learned from History... well, for sure, all other things being equal, stuff tend to repeat, but as time goes by, the other things are not equal at all - or only to a certain point. I majored in History but historians are not my first sources to predict the future. Despite having repeatedly failed at predicting anything, we can't help but ask economists to be oracles and ask them to set-up policies.
  • neximo64 4y ago
    So the person who sold those bonds after buying them from the government gets that money - in effect the government gets that money. In a puritan world sure, but if you expect the Fed will buy the bonds you can just buy them from the government and then sell to the Fed. And because there were negative interest rates for a time, that is exactly what happened as any other reason would be irrational. So it's not a closed loop - it's just printing with more steps. Likewise now its destruction with the removal of these reserves.
  • mmcconnell1618 4y ago
    Doesn't the US have a fractional reserve banking system? For every $1 in bank reserves, the bank can loan out $9. So even if the special money of the Fed can't be used directly, it has the effect of allowing banks to have a larger base of reserves which means the banks can create money by loaning it out to others.
  • cheeselip420 4y ago
    This is a dumb take. By using "reserves" to buy bonds, it means cash that WOULD have purchased those bonds (like a pension fund or your vanguard fund) is now going... somewhere else. Like stocks. If that money goes to stocks instead, then the price will rise. So while it may not be DIRECTLY inflationary, its only like 1 level removed.
• bluejay2 4y ago
  The Spanish language uses the same word to signify "wife" and "handcuffs" (la esposa/las esposas).
  • ggambetta 4y ago
    Can confirm. "Las esposas" also means "the wives", so it really is the same word.
  • leobg 4y ago
    “wedlock”
• mkovach 4y ago
  Lee Richmond threw the first perfect game in history in 1880. He later became a school teacher in Toledo, Ohio. One of his students was Norman Joss. Norman's dad was Addie Joss. Addie Joss threw the fourth perfect game in MLB history, in 1908.
• Zababa 4y ago
  sudo !! It will relaunch the last command you used with sudo before. Example: $ apt upgrade Could not open lock file ... $ sudo !! sudo apt upgrade [sudo] password for ...:
• mncharity 4y ago
  Consider arm sized, hand sized, fingernail sized, and pinched-fingers "tiny" sized. About 1000, 100, 10, 1 mm. Tray of cookies, hand-sized cookie, chocolate chip, and tiny crumb - yum. Now zoom 1000x, taking tiny sized to arm sized, and they become 1000, 100, 10, 1 um. Call this microview, with microscopic microorganisms measured in micrometers. A grain of salt is sized like a cardboard box, a head hair like a hand-sized pole, your red blood cells like red M&M Minis candies, and bacteria like nonpareil sprinkles. Zoom 1000x a second time for nanoview, with nanotechnology and nanoscale nanoparticles measured in nanometers. Arm, hand, fingernail, tiny, are now 1000, 100, 10, 1 nm. Bacteria are garbage bags and benches, viruses are small sports balls, proteins are chewing gum, and atoms are sand. Beach world, with a grain of salt towering over the city skyline. Scale/size can seemingly be taught accessibly young... we just don't. Nor use size as an organizational frame to catalyze understanding of the physical world. Asking first-tier medical school graduate students how big red blood cells are... goes surprisingly poorly. But there seems lots of fun to be had.
  • Nick87633 4y ago
    Feels like a good VR experience or magic school bus episode would help solidify this! Or maybe time for this adult to make some dioramas.
    • exikyut 4y ago
      Let me know when you have the 1:1 µm-scale beach ball setup on the horizon! (I wonder what existing structures you could paint.)
    • mncharity 4y ago
      Years back I was doing passthrough AR, and spiked a zoom to nanoview (atom beach and towering grain of salt; hardwired to a parking-lot view out my window). Was crude but fun. Intended to go to picoview, to demo a physically-realistic atom-bonding interactive, but it got put aside. Magic school bus uses "zoom you", rather than "zoom objects". Tradeoffs, but one advantage of "objects", especially for chunked-zooming and AR, is you retain your environment to use as a size reference. Eg, "the red blood cell is M&M sized, and a grain of salt is cardboard-box sized, therefore the table, room, and playground are...". Fwiw, my fuzzy recollection is someone wrote a simple VR zoomer in unity some years back. Re dioramas, you might find some inspiration from http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Atoms http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Atoms (very slowwwwly loading page - wasn't intended to be public). I did outreach with a few 1 m diameter tables, each with assorted objects. Pool-noodle floats for hairs, Goodsell's molecular bio illustrations in nanoview, etc. Thought about how one might design a larger exhibit. But I never did manage to find a community interested in this kind of thing, aside from scattered folks at MIT and Harvard. Size/scale is occasionally taught done down towards primary, and is taught in most every science and engineering curriculum. But knowledge of size/scale is rarely then used to teach other things, so there's little incentive to teach it successfully. With "well, that shouldn't come as a surprise, but oh my, yipes" outcomes.
• jimmygrapes 4y ago
  There are in fact occupations other than technologists required for every aspect of your current life to exist as it does! Crazy right?
• znpy 4y ago
  afaik the only way to get epoch with only posix-compliant tools is to use awk: $ awk 'BEGIN {srand(); t = srand() ; print t}' 1651247949 explaination: 1. srand if not provided with a seed will use the current unix epoch as seed 2. srand will return its previous seed in a new initialization (and we assign it to t) 3. we print t I learned this via a "Systems we love" talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfhMUed9RSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfhMUed9RSE)
  • geocar 4y ago
    pax is POSIX: (: > f;echo "$((0$(pax 2>/dev/null -x ustar -wd -- f|dd 2> /dev/null bs=4 skip=34 count=3|tr -d '\0')))";rm -f f) which might be beneficial to remember if your file server has a better clock than you do. also, if you're actually targeting POSIX, you should make sure you've set PATH="`getconf PATH`" to guarantee you get the POSIX version of utilities.
  • schoen 4y ago
    It's definitely not POSIX, but a good GNUish way is date +%s Your portable suggestion worked in gawk, nawk, and mawk -- cool!
    • znpy 4y ago
      > Your portable suggestion worked in gawk, nawk, and mawk -- cool! indeed, that's the cool thing about it!
  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
    Isn't the c99 utility POSIX-compliant. The c99 utility is an interface to a standard C compilation system.^1 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20201202084055/https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/c99.html https://web.archive.org/web/20201202084055/https://pubs.open... cat > epoch.c int printf(const char *__restrict, ...); unsigned int time(unsigned int *tloc); int main(){printf("%u\n",time((unsigned int *)0));} ^D c99 epoch.c ./a.out
• yamrzou 4y ago
  Here is a random factoid: https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/analysis-of-whats-23-of-the-average/ https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/analysis-of-wha...
• darrelld 4y ago
  In your terminal Ctrl+a will return you to the start of whatever line you have typed, and ctrl+e will return you to the end.
  • Jtsummers 4y ago
    This is if you have emacs-based keybindings (which is the default). M-f/M-b (Meta, often the alt key or option key) will move forward/backward a full word. C-f/C-b moves forward/backward a character. C-w kills the previous word (if you're in the middle of a word it leaves everything from the cursor to the end intact). C-r will search backward in your history allowing you to type partial matches (like, "I know I compiled foo.c, but what options did I use?" type `C-r foo.c` and repeatedly type C-r until I find the compiler command I used). https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bindable-Readline-Commands.html#Bindable-Readline-Commands https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bindable-... - for a lot more options You can switch to vi keybindings with `set -o vi`.
    • tetris11 4y ago
      Aren't all terminal bindings emacs-based, since they inherit from libreadline?
      • sph 4y ago
        zsh doesn't use readline
      • O_H_E 4y ago
        By default, yes. (Well, its not the terminal but the shell that takes input) but readline has support for vi bindings configuration
  • tmaly 4y ago
    I use Ctrl+u if I think I might have added a typo in a password and have not yet typed enter
  • arnarbi 4y ago
• f0e4c2f7 4y ago
  The command 'w' on a Linux box shows uptime, load, and who's logged in.
  • jiscariot 4y ago
    Nice. Those are the first two commands I usually issue after jumping on a box to investigate something.
    • rzzzt 4y ago
      Are "who" and "last" anywhere on the list?
  • pards 4y ago
    Works on MacOS too
• galoisscobi 4y ago
  set -o vi to get vim keybindings in your terminal. set -o emacs to go back to default.
• jasfi 4y ago
  Nim (https://nim-lang.org/ https://nim-lang.org/) is a fast, compiled language that is as easy to use as Python. It doesn't have the same ecosystem or user-base of Python though, although Python and Nim can be bridged via nimpy.
  • mordechai9000 4y ago
    I've been itching to pick up a new language, and Nim is high on the list of choices. But I'm leaning towards Rust, just because it has more recognition and a more evolved ecosystem.
    • jasfi 4y ago
      The small ecosystem is Nim's downfall for now, sadly. It really is a much easier language to learn and write in. I'm working on some Nim modules which will be Open Sourced soon. This will provide a web framework with an ORM. It will be a batteries-included framework. It will also easily plug-in to a Flutter powered front-end engine which can use Nim defined back-end UI code (not just Nim actually). Also to be Open Sourced soon. The landing page with a wait-list you can sign-up for: https://nexusdev.tools https://nexusdev.tools
  • ajot 4y ago
    A very fine and useful project written in Nim is Nitter, a super fast, no-JS, reading-only Twitter frontend.
• jbki1121 4y ago
  ctrl-T in chrome to restore your tabs!
  • jimmyspice 4y ago
    To be clear, this is Ctrl+Shift+T . I know you had T in capitals, but keyboard keys are normally written that way
    • BizarroLand 4y ago
      CTRL+T opens a new tab
    • joshbaptiste 4y ago
      indeed.. I don't look at the case of a letter to determine when to press "Shift" needs to be written explicitly
• kretaceous 4y ago
  Take a positive integer. If it's odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. If it's even, divide it by 2. Example: 7-22-11-34-17-52-26-13-40-20-10-5-16-8-4-2-1-4-2-1-4-2-1... Any positive integer you take, you end up in a 1-4-2-1 loop. It's not proved yet but there's no number found yet that satisfies otherwise. That's the Collatz Conjecture or the 3n+1 problem. Probably the easiest conjecture to explain to someone. Good day/night!
  • maddynator 4y ago
    Very interesting. whats the use case of this?
    • kretaceous 4y ago
      Well, no particular use case I can think of. The OP asked for anything that you find interesting so here we are. =)
      • BizarroLand 4y ago
        I'm sure there is a use for it, that pattern may be representative of some other phenomenon in the universe that we haven't correlated it to as of yet.
        • bluepoint 4y ago
          Well there is this famous paper by Volovich [1] where he argues that space is basically pixelized and p-adic numbers might best describe their geometry. But of course this has no connection with the reality we have access to. p-adic numbers are also used in various areas of number theory (not my expertise). I see them like the lesser known sibling of real numbers. [1] https://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/~mwatkins/zeta/volovich1.pdf https://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/~mwatkins/zeta/volovich1.pdf
    • contingencies 4y ago
      Impressing ladies at the bar with your 'deep connection'.
• bovermyer 4y ago
  Opera singers learn the International Phonetic Alphabet in order to perfectly pronounce foreign languages without having any idea how to speak those languages.
  • Timpy 4y ago
    In the music department at my university the vocalists had to take two different foreign language classes for this reason, and they were _supposed_ to learn the meaning of everything they sang so they could capture the feeling of the song. Bullshitting your way through those kinds of inflections is the voice undergrad's version of slapping a paper together the night before a deadline.
    • mejutoco 4y ago
      It is good enough for the Pope :)
  • webmaven 4y ago
    Hmm. Is IPA sufficiently nuanced to represent speech as pronounced by a native speaker without the leeway that would permit a non-native accent? Put another way, it was my impression that IPA was coarse grained enough to permit at least some different accents to be represented by the same IPA "spelling".
    • tomcam 4y ago
      Opera singer here. IPA is indeed as coarse grained as you described in the latter sentence. Accents can definitely leak through. Practically speaking most opera singers do not use it, and are expected to take two or three romance languages in college. Accents tend to be ironed out mechanically because you want uniformity (when singing in a chorus) and good projection of the phonemes onstage.
• JimWestergren 4y ago
  In "Magic the Gathering Old School 7 Points Singleton" you play the card game Magic the Gathering but only with cards printed in the first 2 years (93/94) and only maximum 1 copy of each in your deck. And power cards are limited to 7 points according to a table found here https://ligaoldschoolmadrid.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/7-points-singleton-2/ https://ligaoldschoolmadrid.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/7-point... A wonderful nostalgic way to play the game.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • zeroego 4y ago
    I wish Arena had a mode for that. It sounds like a lot more fun than the modes they currently have. I’m still a beginner in MtG, would you say the way you described is easier than modern Magic?
    • JimWestergren 4y ago
      Call me old fashioned but for me Magic is something you play holding physical cards in your hand. If I look at modern cards they don't feel like the same game. Digitally generated art, strange creatures "Social Climber"? and most of the cards has long complicated texts and many using complicated mechanics. Compare those new cards to old classic cards like Black Knight: https://scryfall.com/card/leb/95/black-knight https://scryfall.com/card/leb/95/black-knight Maybe it is nostalgia, I don't know. But for me the essence and spirit of Magic as a game is with the 93/94 cards.
  • flobosg 4y ago
    > and only maximum 1 copy of each in your deck Excluding lands, of course.
    • JimWestergren 4y ago
      Yes, basic lands.
• mindcrime 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
• bluepoint 4y ago
  There are two possible extensions of the rational numbers: the reals and the p-adic numbers. This is because of Ostrowski’s theorem which states that any norm defined for rationals, can either be the normal absolute value or the p-adic norm. For p being a prime, n and d being integers relatively prime to p and e being an integer, a rational can be written as r=p^e*n/d. And p-adic norm is p^(-e). Then in 3-adic numbers you can write 1/2 = 2 + 3 + 3^2 + 3^3 + 3^4 + … which actually converges because the norm has the negative of the exponent. pari/gp has a native p-adic calculator, where you can type 1/2 + O(3^5) and get the first p-adic digits. I don’t know why this impresses me, but it is probably because there are just two ways of extending the rationals, and the p-adic numbers are like the lesser known brothers of reals. I feel, I should have known this for ages. And no, I don’t know if there are known applications, outside number theory, but still, its cute.
• pigtailgirl 4y ago
  fast forward - 4 billion years- during the Andromeda & Milky Way galaxies merger - the nights sky is expected to look like this: https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20120929_andromeda_collision_4-3-9Ga_hs-2012-20-f.png https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20120...
  • vl 4y ago
    In 200 billion years all other galaxies will be beyond visibility horizon because of the space expansion (i.e. they will move away faster than light). Any new civilization then in unlikely to develop Big Bang theory.
• illwrks 4y ago
  Almost everything around you has been designed by another person, or teams of people.
  • contingencies 4y ago
    Any piece of engineering design is a statement. By the designer without the user. - MSM
    • compressedgas 4y ago
      That is from Michael S. Mahoney (1939-2008) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sean_Mahoney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sean_Mahoney https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/ https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/
      • compressedgas 4y ago
        Specifically Michael S. Mahoney's interview with Joseph H. Condon http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/transcripts/condon.htm http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/transcripts/condon.htm http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/transcripts.htm http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/transcripts.htm
  • occamschainsaw 4y ago
    “Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is, everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you … the minute that you understand that you can poke life … that you can change it, you can mould it … that’s maybe the most important thing.” – Steve Jobs
  • leobg 4y ago
    Almost everything around you has been shaped by the human hand. I had this thought while walking down the street in a foreign country. And I remember it having quite a profound effect on me. What a marvelous thing it is, our hand! (It even applies to many things we would call „nature“, such as woods or meadows.)
• romanhn 4y ago
  You have overlapped (meaning, lived at the same time) with almost all, perhaps all, oldest verified people in history. I'm 40 and overlap with all of the 100 verified oldest women and 100 oldest men, save for one.
• mikelevins 4y ago
  I've described this on HN before; forgive me if you've already seen it. I have chronic migraine. It sounds worse than it is; I rarely suffer attacks anymore, and when I do, they're usually mostly harmless, as in the case I'll describe below. Contrary to popular belief, migraine is not a headache. It's something a little more like an epileptic seizure. Intense headaches are one common symptom, but there are a lot of others. One common symptom of migraine is called *scintillating scotoma*. A scotoma is a blind or blank spot in the visual field. A scintillating scotoma caused by migraine is an area of the visual field that is temporarily replaced by a vivid visual aura. Its appearance is commonly the first symptom of a migraine attack, and is often followed by more unpleasant symptoms. I've seen scintillating scotoma many times over the years. A few years ago I was reading and enjoying a good book, and my scotoma appeared. It was a humdinger: roughly triangular prisms of white light with utterly black zebra stripes moving along them kaleidoscope-style. It took up the lower left middle of my visual field, pulsing and radiating and turning, covering the book in my hand. I was disappointed. I didn't want to stop reading. I was enjoying the book. So I decided to keep reading until the scotoma made it impossible to continue. It never did. It became so vivid that I couldn't see my hand at all, but I still had no trouble reading the book. I even started reading it aloud without any difficulty. After a few minutes the scotoma faded. In that instance, it was not followed by any other symptoms (that's happened more and more frequently over the years since probably my forties). I could now see the book again, and could confirm that what I had been reading was indeed what was on the page. I thought about how to explain my experience. The best hypothesis I've come up with so far is that the neurological process of seeing and the neurological process of being consciously aware of what I'm seeing are not the same thing. They're independent processes. The scotoma prevented me from subjectively experiencing seeing the book, but did not prevent me from actually seeing it, nor from correctly interpreting what I was seeing. This experience (and one two other odd experiences) has led me to adopt the working hypothesis that many of our cognitive experiences are more complicated than we tend to assume, and that they're often made up of several more or less independent processes. We usually benefit if related processes pretty much work together, so they pretty much do. Because they do, we experience them all together as a single experience, but that's an illusion that unravels if circumstances screw up their synchronization. I hope someone finds that as interesting as I do.
  • 4y ago
• gala8y 4y ago
  you are comprised of many selves, subpersonalities, which you can talk to. they have their own agendas, views, emotions. i could talk to your inner teacher, a six year old in you, your lazy bones, etc. bonus fact: it goes deep and it's fun and interesting as hell.
• runjake 4y ago
  There are no aliens[1] or alien technologies at Area 51. 1. Other than a gag mannequin or few.
  • aitoehigie 4y ago
    This sounds like something the United States government would say
  • iod 4y ago
    Edward Snowden, who had access to basically all the US governments secrets for NSA and CIA with the highest above top-secret clearance, went specifically looking for stuff related to this and says that he came up with nothing. Out of anyone who could know things about this, I find his situation and argument to be most convincing.
    • runjake 4y ago
      Perhaps, but there's all kinds of tangentially-related stuff that could have been leaked but wasn't. Nor was mentioned by Snowden. One already-public example being the 2004 Nimitz incident, which is of genuine national security concern. I know Snowden is highly-revered around here, but he's not all-knowing, and I'm fairly certain he did not have access to the entire US IC store of intel.
  • sph 4y ago
    What happened to those that wanted to storm Area 51? The Internet Historian remembers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ7F6ELO-hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ7F6ELO-hQ
• helph67 4y ago
  Here's mine, the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule. You will find that it applies in MANY ascpects of life and knowing it may give you an `edge'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
  • eps 4y ago
    Closely related - In theory, there's no difference between the theory and the practice. In practice, there is.
    • O_H_E 4y ago
      Oohh, that is good. Actually made me laugh
  • seesaw 4y ago
    Related: 80% of the work is done by 20% of the team :)
• snyena 4y ago
  The Boltzmann brain hypothesis suggests that it would be more likely for a single brain to spontaneously and briefly form in a void (complete with a memory of having existed in our universe) rather than for the universe to come about in the manner cosmologists think it actually did. In this physics thought experiment, a Boltzmann brain is a fully formed brain, complete with memories of a full human life in our universe, that arises due to extremely rare random fluctuations out of a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. Theoretically, over an extremely large but not infinite amount of time, by sheer chance, atoms in a void could spontaneously come together in such a way as to assemble a functioning human brain. Like any brain in such circumstances (the hostile vacuum of space with no blood supply or body), it would almost immediately stop functioning and begin to deteriorate. By one calculation, a Boltzmann brain would appear as a quantum fluctuation in the vacuum after a time interval of 10^10^50 years. This fluctuation can occur even in a true Minkowski vacuum (a flat spacetime vacuum lacking vacuum energy). Quantum mechanics heavily favors smaller fluctuations that "borrow" the least amount of energy from the vacuum. Typically, a quantum Boltzmann brain would suddenly appear from the vacuum (alongside an equivalent amount of virtual antimatter), remain only long enough to have a single coherent thought or observation, and then disappear into the vacuum as suddenly as it appeared. Such a brain is completely self-contained, and can never radiate energy out to infinity. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain
  • leakbang 4y ago
    Intriguing yet terrifying at the same time.
  • sillysaurusx 4y ago
    You forgot the part where people suspect that we are Boltzmann brains.
    • desbo 4y ago
      If I’m a Boltzmann brain that can only survive for an instant, why do I experience existing for a whole lifetime?
• leakbang 4y ago
  Mind Uploading - AKA Whole Brain Emulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading
• larmstrong 4y ago
  Reptiles (and other ectothermal vertebrates) will “artificially” give themselves fevers by staying in heat sources longer when they’re fighting an infection. It’s called a behavioral fever. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27381718/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27381718/
  • tomcam 4y ago
    So what I did that in middle school all the time. Kidding!
  • Nick87633 4y ago
    I've definitely felt this before, The hot soup, hot tea, sweatpants, sweatshirt, wool hat, get-in-bed I feel like I'm about to have a fever reflex.
    • bitwize 4y ago
      I tend to get chills with my fevers. Maybe "chills" in ill mammals are similar instinct, to provoke the urge to bundle up and get warm when it isn't necessary, thus instigating a fever?
• webmaven 4y ago
  The scroll wheel on your mouse is probably a functional middle button. On Linux, you can usually left-click-drag-release to highlight some text, move your mouse cursor to a new location (in any window), and middle-click once to paste the text you highlighted there. No explicit keyboard or right-click copy and paste required.
  • xml 4y ago
    If you ever use the middle mouse button to open links in a new tab, you should disable this "feature" because it is a security vulnerability which allows for grabbing the clipboard content. Demo: https://randomforest.net/captureClipboard.html https://randomforest.net/captureClipboard.html
• Turing_Machine 4y ago
  sin(0) = sqrt(0)/2. sin(30) = sqrt(1)/2. sin(45) = sqrt(2)/2. sin(60) = sqrt(3)/2. sin(90) = sqrt(4)/2. You probably knew all of those, but may not have seen it set out in this fashion before.
  • tmaly 4y ago
    How does one calculate an initial set of values for sin for using in a table in the computer?
    • Turing_Machine 4y ago
      Oh, gee... Numerical Methods class was a long time ago. The Taylor series comes to mind immediately. There may be (probably are) better methods.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• catsarebetter 4y ago
  You probably don't have free will, you have no more control of the thoughts that motivate you to take action as you do the thoughts that do not.
  • catsarebetter 4y ago
    Thank you everyone for commenting, you did so because you were compelled by forces that you don't control and thus, did not do so of your own free will. On a serious note, Sam Harriss essay on free will is a good read, nihilism and existentialism too. A point I'd like to make is that surrendering and accepting to things you don't control can bring you short term peace but will crush your long term peace. I personally don't care if I have or don't have free will, there are things about myself and the world around me that I cannot control but will never stop trying to fight against it. Hurting people, for one. I think that's my definition of free will. Someone else made a point that free will could be similar to the god of the gaps theory, where free will is in the gaps.
  • iKevinShah 4y ago
    There have been some studies to prove it too right? I dont remember exactly.
    • goodpoint 4y ago
      Yes, indicating that our consciousness is simply reacting to our choices and rationalizing them rather than making them in the first place.
  • tailung 4y ago
    well, I think that if you are aware (mindfulness) about your thought patterns you can steer them, and usually what you think you become, because your thoughts drive actions. In my personal experience practicing self awareness has helped with this. I understand that there are factors outside of our control, but what goes on within us can be controlled to some extent with effort and time.
    • 4y ago
• stevenhuang 4y ago
  The study of unidentified aerial phenomena (UFOs) and the acknowledgement of the extraterrestrial hypothesis (or extra dimensional) will become mainstream. https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/news/press/release/gillibrands-groundbreaking-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-amendment-included-in-final-ndaa_ https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/news/press/release/gillibr... Soft disclosure has happened already via the USS Nimitz encounter. If UAPs are true, then the floodgates are open and will lead to a forced re-evaluation of other high strangeness phenomena (telepathy, ESP, etc).
  • poulpy123 4y ago
    Unidentified aerial phenomena are just what as their name say: aerial phenomena that are unidentified. There are no aliens playing in the US sky
    • stevenhuang 4y ago
      There are enough recorded exigent cases across history suggesting of extraordinary flight characteristics & bizarre behaviour of UAPs. It's an open question if they're aliens or not, there's not enough public hard data to tell. But I would encourage you to suspend disbelief and approach the topic methodically, there genuinely appears to be something deeper here.
  • SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    I always found it strange how UFOs concentrate in the U.S,is it because of the climate? /s I wanted to believe and there is a serious subreddit for UFOs but most are debunked. There exist ~2 truly mysterious UFOs and most of their mystery has been explained.
    • krayzee 4y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux > Folie à deux ('folly of two', or 'madness [shared] by two'), also known as shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder (SDD), is a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief, and sometimes hallucinations, are transmitted from one individual to another.
• mettamage 4y ago
  I have tinnitus. Before I had tinnitus I could simply use earplugs. Problem when I sleep: when I use earplugs it presses in my ear and it aggrevates my tinnitus. Solution: - Bose QC 35 - Earplugs Now the earplugs don't get pushed in and don't aggrevate the tinnitus. The bose QC 35 gets pushed onto whatever is directly outside your ear, which is a bit uncomfortable but fine. This is my new earplugs setup and it works.
  • mdp2021 4y ago
    If you sleep laying down wearing earmuffs, you'd better also place something - like some string - between earmuff and skin: otherwise, you risk suction of the tympanum (and aggravate the situation).
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • parentheses 4y ago
    I cut the earplugs in half and use the tip. It’s a bit annoying to take them out. I’ve once had to resort to tweezers. Also if you’re a regular earplug user, you can get something like: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W3DE3BO https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W3DE3BO I have these and cut off the stalks. They’re easy to take out and don’t get pushed in. Finally, there are (more expensive) “concert earplugs designed to retain the auditory experience while reducing loudness only. Worth checking out if you like your hearing but are often in loud environments.
  • karmeliet 4y ago
    I really like the Ohropax wax or silicon earplugs. They don't penetrate your ear canal as much as the foam plugs, but still provide a good enough 23 db noise reduction. They definitely make my tinnitus more noticeable, but I'm kind of used to it anyway at this point.
  • newyankee 4y ago
    I have hearing loss in both ears which runs in family. Tinnitus is just a serious side effect that I somehow manage. I was hoping that a biological solution to hearing loss would be available by 2020, but even with some hope a lot of projects are running late. Guess most of the approaches want to convert stem cells/ molecular sources etc. to hair cells inside the cochlea. I really hope something is available within 20 years and I can experience normal hearing.
• m4rc3lv 4y ago
  You can play Morse code from your bash scripts. For instance: echo "hello world" | cw -w 18 -e (install with 'sudo install cw')
  • jonah-archive 4y ago
    and for the curious -- cw stands for Continuous Wave, a radio term for signaling that's turned on and off (like Morse code -- as opposed to modulated like AM, FM, etc).
    • femto 4y ago
      Technically there is no such thing as a continuous wave, as any signal of finite duration (time) must be composed of multiple frequencies, and all signals are of finite duration. This is closely related to the uncertainty principle in physics, whereby quantities that are related by a Fourier transform are also related by an uncertainty principle. Duration (time) and bandwidth (frequency) are related by a Fourier transform.
  • justsomehnguy 4y ago
    You can play Morse code from your shell. *angry pedant noises*
• silisili 4y ago
  I'm going to go a bit random...get a styptic pencil! Nobody I've met even knows what they are. I came across them years ago in the shaving section, and was blown away by their utility. They are solid pieces of some saltlike material that are super effective at stopping bleeding. We don't even have bandaids in our house anymore, the pencils are way more useful.
  • oauea 4y ago
    Is that basically a small alum block?
    • silisili 4y ago
      I've owned both, and found 'alum blocks' pretty useless. Looking up the ingredients, they seem very similar however. Maybe the pencils are more concentrated? They are solid white and chalky, not semi translucent and slick like the alum block I bought.
  • callmekatootie 4y ago
    Can the same pencil be used on more than one person? Or does that lead to infections?
    • silisili 4y ago
      I'm not an expert, but my family shares. They are best when wet a bit, so typically we douse the cut or wound with peroxide, then apply. That said, they are cheap enough for everyone to have their own if that's a concern for you.
      • Engineering-MD 4y ago
        No need for peroxide, just slightly salty water is better unless visibly contaminated. By using peroxide, scars are often worse, which is thought to be due to killing cells which contribute to wound healing. Furthermore, peroxide doesn’t significantly help prevent infections.
• m4rc3lv 4y ago
  Ctrl+D to quickly close a terminal window (Bash).
  • joseph 4y ago
    Ctrl+l clears the screen. Ctrl+[ is the same as escape, which I like more than reaching for the esc key.
  • brobinson 4y ago
    Most of these work in most programs using readline: https://readline.kablamo.org/emacs.html https://readline.kablamo.org/emacs.html It's fun to blow people's minds by cutting/copying/pasting _in the shell_ without touching the mouse and using Ctrl+u to clear password inputs when you make a typo.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• ediardo 4y ago
  In my experience, a lake looks glassy when the wind speed is less than 5 km/h.
• thinkingemote 4y ago
  People have always and will always think that the time they are living in is the most important time ever. This is a self evident fallacy or a universal truth. These times we are living in are not the most important. Or, of they are, then everyone everywhere is at everytime living at the same importance. Now, there is something called the hinge of history that some mathematicians have looked into the chance of "well right now is most important, people in the past and future are delusional". The chances are very very low. Think of this the next time you hear someone appeal to urgency as political motivation.
  • sillysaurusx 4y ago
    But… we do live in the most important time. We’re alive, and everyone else is dead. We can do things; they can’t. I don’t know what’s more important than that.
    • tempestn 4y ago
      Your parent covers that under, (paraphrasing) 'if we are, everyone always is'.
      • sillysaurusx 4y ago
        That’s true. But isn’t that tautology? Either it’s the most important or unimportant.
        • mdp2021 4y ago
          > Either... Logic of natural language does not work that way. It's paraconsistent: statements are attributed a value within T(A)^T(¬A), T(A)^F(¬A), F(A)^T(¬A), F(A)^F(¬A) because we judge meanings, interpretations, multiple per expression.
          • tmaly 4y ago
            You lost me at T
• subb 4y ago
  Colors don't exist outside of your brain.
  • tailung 4y ago
    Well, our brains are only wired up to detect a limited spectrum of colors. There are insects and birds that can detect a greater variety of color. So, how can it just exist in our brains?
    • zevv 4y ago
      One way to look at colors is to see them as qualia, which is basically a subjective experience. Electromagnetic waves come in a large range of frequencies, some of which excite the nerve endings in your retina, causing your brain to experience colors. But colors are a bit more complicated than that: for example, there is no such thing as just "yellow": yellow is the subjective term given by humans when there is a certain balance between the excitation of their there-color vision. You can experience the exact same sense of "yellow" from different types of light: there is true monochromatic yellow around 580nm, but you can also experience that same yellow when mixing the right amount of red and green light. There is no wave of 580nm in the second case, but still you see the same color.
    • laserlight 4y ago
      Our eyes are wired up to detect a limited spectrum of wavelengths. Although those wavelengths correspond to a color, not all colors correspond to a wavelength. That’s why OP stated that color is a brain phenomenon.
  • arc-in-space 4y ago
    Eh, I would say that they do, there are just many, many, many more of them than we can see.
  • mdp2021 4y ago
    Colours are, in the outside world, fuzzy ranges of electromagnetic frequencies: they do «exist outside of your brain». (Similarly, "brain" and "mind" are not the same.) Otherwise, the intended general idea is that found e.g. at the beginning of Arthur Schopenhauer's Welt als Wille und Vorstellung: > "The world is my representation": this holds true for every living, cognitive being, although only a human being can bring it to abstract, reflective consciousness: and if he actually does so he has become philosophically sound
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  Upon a cursory inspection of the first 10,000 or so early GitHub users, it takes about 64 followers to be in the top 20% of followed GitHub accounts.[1] Users with 100 or more followers can often be business owners, well known employees from FAANG companies and the like. Users with 1000 or more followers tend to be specialists in lesser used technologies who have created open source technologies used widely in that specific domain. Users with 10000 or more followers tend to be luminaries who have created technologies most people in the industry are familiar with, like say coffeescript. [1]: https://github.com/andrewmcwattersandco/github-statistics https://github.com/andrewmcwattersandco/github-statistics
• jonah-archive 4y ago
  The big bang was extremely hot; the universe now is quite cold (microwave background). It was a continuous process of cooling, implying that there was an interval where the entire universe was comfortable (there are at least a few papers on this, e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0613 https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0613 , but I like it more just as a strange thing to thing about).
  • goldenkey 4y ago
    Comfortable but not necessarily livable?
    • mikevin 4y ago
      I guess comfortable with regards to temperature but definitely not livable in any other regard.
  • operator-name 4y ago
    There's also the slightly more complex hairy ball theorem, such that a combed hairy ball will always have 2 cowlicks (or that on earth there will always be two places with exactly the same temperature, or the exactly same wind speed).
• contingencies 4y ago
  The Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge (HZMB) is a 55km (34mi) bridge–tunnel system consisting of a series of three cable-stayed bridges, an undersea tunnel, and four artificial islands. It is both the longest sea crossing and the longest open-sea fixed link in the world. Designed to last for 120 years and built from 2009-2018 at a cost of USD$18.8B, it is currently almost completely vacant due to COVID.
• leephillips 4y ago
  Most rape victims in the United States are men: https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report.html https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report.html Caution: that’s hard, explicit, distressing reading.
  • wonderbore 4y ago
    Every time statistics like these are brought up in public they're twisted against men themselves. Oh, 80% of homicides are of men? How about "men kill xyz thousand women every year?"
  • onos 4y ago
    Aweful. The government should be liable for this.
  • exikyut 4y ago
    (2001) I wonder what aspects have gotten worse over the years and how the dynamic has shifted, if at all. Or maybe it doesn't matter this was from 20 years ago? :<
  • mellosouls 4y ago
    Men are most often victims of violence generally including murder as well. You wouldn't get that impression reading the news. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_men https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_men
    • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Depends on whether you interpret something being on the news as a measure of how common it is. This is often demonstrated with the two hypothetical headlines "Dog bites Man" vs "Man bites Dog". One is expected based on its ubiquity, and so a poor headline, where you want some emotional reaction to hook readers.
      • mellosouls 4y ago
        True - and a good point - but also a troubling one as the clear implication is that male suffering is really not considered a concern - at least to the news platforms.
• arnarbi 4y ago
  xp is a quick way in vi to swap two adjacent characters (a common typo correction) Ctrl-T does the same in emacs, and also in readline based programs like bash, as well as everywhere on macOS.
  • _zywo 4y ago
    > xp I always thought the fact that Vim had automatic buffer copying and forced me to use "0p instead of p was really annoying. Looks like there is an actual reason for it after all :)
    • arnarbi 4y ago
      (Apologies if I’m misunderstanding and you already know this.) Not specifying a register (e.g. "0) just means the commands, including x and p, will use the " register, aka the unnamed register. By itself, p is equivalent to ""p. :reg shows you all the registers and their current contents. This seems like a good description: https://www.brianstorti.com/vim-registers/ https://www.brianstorti.com/vim-registers/ Edit: Oh I guess you are saying it was unexpected that delete or change commands clobber yanked contents of the unnamed register.
• leephillips 4y ago
  By far the most important martial arts skill is the ability to function effectively after receiving a powerful blow to the face, solar plexus, etc. The only way to develop this skill is by practicing it; very few people do, for obvious reasons. If your martial arts training does not include this, it may have many benefits, but is severely lacking as training for actual fighting.
  • vasco 4y ago
    My teacher used to say the most important martial arts skill for real life is predicting a fight and turning around and running away.
    • leephillips 4y ago
      Absolutely. And functioning effectively includes retaining the ability to run away, rather than falling to the ground in a heap, which will be followed by your opponent kicking you in the head.
    • Engineering-MD 4y ago
      I always thought this, but only works if you are alone, or the person you want to protect can run too. Fighting is most useful to defend someone else who can’t run or fight.
      • legends2k 4y ago
        I think the advice is more meta than actually about fighting. It’s about being aware of one’s circumstances/environment and choosing your battles.
    • sph 4y ago
      Check out Krav Maga. It's a self defense "martial art" with the only goal of quickly incapacitating an enemy to be able to flee. Very practical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krav_Maga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krav_Maga
  • theonething 4y ago
• parentheses 4y ago
  A conference that happened today: https://www.hytradboi.com/ https://www.hytradboi.com/
• SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  Most of the scientific problems (diseases, quantum gravity, etc) have been resolved, it's just that no one knows it. Because researchers are paid to produce new papers, but nobody is paid to extensively read the ocean of existing papers. Cancer? PNC-27 + thymalin Ageing? Skq1 + Epitalon Quantum gravity? https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/9706055.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/9706055.pdf
  • ralala 4y ago
    Isn't that what conferences and journals are for? Reviewing and selecting the most important papers? When something is really solved (a solution exists without negative side-effects; and this fact has been verified several times), they should indeed look for new problems.
    • SemanticStrengh 4y ago
      In theory, not in practice. Revolutionary papers ignored by all are the rule, not the exception. I have seen hundreds. See e.g. This 410% reduction of ALL cause mortality. No side effects and in addition significant amelioration of quality of life (sleep, etc) It was twenty years ago and will keep being ignored for the rest of eternity. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12577695/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12577695/ The human condition is miserable because even the scientists themselves are actually scientifically illiterate.
      • Kaibeezy 4y ago
        I’d like a 410% reduction in all cause mortality as much as the next Joe, but the Pubmed similar articles list isn’t very encouraging. Nearly all the 90 articles listed spanning 40 years are from Russia, many from the same small group of researchers. I observe: 1) there HAS been a sustained effort and publication among a substantial group of investigators, and yet 2) these dramatic results have failed to attract further attention. I (non-scientist, applying Occam’s razor and the principle of “if it seems too good to be true, it surely is”) conclude there is probably a fundamental flaw, like, perhaps, after a few years of “improvement” people suddenly shrivel up into a husk. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?linkname=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=12577695&page=3 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?linkname=pubmed_pubmed&from...
• Beldin 4y ago
  White dwarfs and neutron stars are both "stellar corpses", the remnant of stars. White dwarfs roughly cram the Sun's mass into an Earth-sized sphere, neutron stars cram that amount of mass into a sphere of about 10km diameter. Oh, and neutron stars have mountains: height differences on their crust of a few centimeters or less. Scaling that height difference takes more energy than scaling Mount Everest. Gravity is weird. (Armchair interest in astrophysics; this is roughly correct but I'm sure others can point out nuances better).
  • mkl 4y ago
    Robert L Forward wrote a fascinating novel about life on a neutron star: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Egg
    • mikelevins 4y ago
      It's one of my favorite books. Another great Forward read is Rocheworld. Forward was a physicist, and created settings that only a physicist would be likely to think of.
• ToJans 4y ago
  I watched a piano/music teaching video from the 60s yesterday that made it all "click" [1] Most modern music chords patterns are easy to find out on piano. Start on any of the white keys, and play 7 white keys left to right. That is called a mode: a series of notes separated by certain intervals to compose a song. Different modes have different vibes. Atmosphere of the song ( sad or happy) is directly correlated by how "willing" the notes are to resolve to the mode root (the first key of 7 you hit). Now, take a 1-3-5 grip on the white keys (press one key, skip one, press one, skip one, press one). That is called the first chord. Move one to the right, and do it again. That is the second chord. One more to the right is the third etc. Most popular songs are composed by using mostly the same repeating chord patterns: - 1-5-1-4 (first, fifth, first, fourth) - 1-4-5 - 1-5-6-4 If you experiment a little bit with this, you will instantly recognize a lot of songs, although they might be pitched higher or lower. One step further, is learning different chord fingerings: we started with 1-3-5 which mostly results in a major or minor chord in a mode. - 5th chords are 1-5 - 7th chords are 1-3-5-7 - sus2 is 1-2-5 - sus4 is 1-4-5 - etc Now, the next thing you need to learn is to transpose: move songs up or down one or more keys to the left or right, but also taking into account the black keys when moving up/down. This will allow you to play along with a song in the perfect key (starting note of a scale) There's other things (like modulating modes in songs), but this should give you a headstart. [1] https://youtu.be/g7oA1-y0EJE https://youtu.be/g7oA1-y0EJE Edit: layout and some extra clarification
  • wildmanx 4y ago
    > One step further, is learning different chord fingerings By the way, pianists use the term "fingerings" for which finger is placed on which key. For example your C-E-G chord which you wrote with 1-3-5, the standard way of playing this as a beginner is the 1-3-5 fingers (1 being the thumb etc). More advanced players often play it with the 1-2-4 fingers. That lets you quickly change to the C-F-A chord with 1-3-5 fingering, which is essentially the F-A-C chord. By moving the hand one key to the right, you get D-G-B with 1-3-5 fingering, and voila, you got your first chord progression: C-E-G (1-2-4 fingering) C-F-A (1-3-5 fingering) D-G-B (1-3-5 fingering) C-E-G (1-2-4 fingering) Etc etc.
  • InCityDreams 4y ago
• andreskytt 4y ago
  Wombat is the only known animal whose poo is cubical. The reason for this appears to be, that this allows the poo to be easily stacked high to mark territory.
  • femto 4y ago
    The original study of the Bare-nosed wombat was produced by a 15 year old boy, Peter Nicholson, who in the 1960s used to sneak out of his boarding school dormitory of a night to crawl into wombat burrows and make friends with the wombats. He used to "speak wombat" to them and his scientific paper is still cited. https://www.wombatfoundation.com.au/team-view/peter-nicholson/ https://www.wombatfoundation.com.au/team-view/peter-nicholso... https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-secret-life-of-wombats https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-secret-life-of-w... https://www.abc.net.au/austory/the-wombat-boy-march-25,-2002/10447234 https://www.abc.net.au/austory/the-wombat-boy-march-25,-2002...
• idrios 4y ago
  In drug development, a lot of the engineering goes into making sure the pharmaceutical compound -- having been developed -- actually reaches the target area of the body. If the compound is a relatively large particle that needs to get into the blood stream, a nasal spray might result in the compound being deposited at the bottom of a person's lungs without ever getting absorbed. If stomach acids break the chemical down then digestion might not be a feasible approach. Intravenous might work but shots are scary, or worse the medication may need to be administered in low doses over a long period of time, requiring an IV catheter. For a pill that can be digested, often it will be the case that the pharmaceutical compound needs a lot of buffer space, sugar or something else to prevent it from being absorbed too quickly. So if a pill says "Do not break in half" or "Do not chew", this is because doing these things increased the pill's surface area and the rate that the drug gets absorbed, when optimal rate of absorption has already been calculated.
  • agumonkey 4y ago
    that's pharmacokinetics right ?
    • majkinetor 4y ago
      Yes.
  • golergka 4y ago
    > a nasal spray might result in the compound being deposited at the bottom of a person's lungs without ever getting absorbed Is it also true for cocaine and other similarly ingested substances? Are coke users walking around with garbage in their lungs?
    • idrios 4y ago
      I don't actually know the answer to this, but I know that heavy particles in the lungs would trigger an intense fit of coughing to get rid of them, and so I doubt that residue would accumulate. I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice.
    • 4y ago
• SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  Very few people know the potent facts about the brain: * your neurons are not in your "brain" 90% of your neurons are not in what you generally denote by brain. They are in your cerebellum. The cerebellum has a distinct neural architecture, that difference is in fact clearly visible with the najed eye. A very poor simplistification would be to call it our GPU. * the spinal cord is huge and is structurally a contiguous extension of your brain. * your brain is mostly not filled with blood but with the transparent cerebrospinal fluid Btw there is a liquid almost twice as much more present in the human body than blood, the white lymph. It's unclear to me why we don't see lymph on dissected bodies. (possibly because of microvascularisation?) also anyone know how is lymph pumped? I don't think the heart pump lymph so is it stagnant? * opiods,nicotine, and cannabinoids are endogenous neuroreceptors. They have the name of exogenous drugs because it happens they bind on those ligands but that also means that the brain generate similar but slightly different analogues itself. * in terms of neurotransmitter s, types of receptors and even patterns of activation of brain regions per stimulus, humans are not much different from rats or other mammals and this apply for surprisingly high levels cognitive tasks such as e.g ADHD. * the problem of consciousness/qualias If qualias are supraphysical then how can it be created from a physical process? Moreover where are you?! Where are you qualias located in your brain? And more remarquably, how many are you? Our two hemispheres are highly (but not that much though) symmetric, we might have one consciousness per hemisphere. Or not? But then what about those people that have their hemispheres crosstalk surgically cut? They behave normally (mostly), and have two independent brains. However the best proof might be e.g dolphins, which have a mono-hemispheric alternating sleep. So if one hemisphere dream, the other day it's the other hemisphere. Hence two distinct qualiesque brain in one dolphin brain.
  • sph 4y ago
    > your neurons are not in your "brain" 90% of your neurons are not in what you generally denote by brain. They are in your cerebellum. Excuse the dumb question, but what's in the brain then? Or are you meaning to say that the cerebellum has a much higher density of neurons than the brain?
    • SemanticStrengh 4y ago
• hiisukun 4y ago
  In a lot of terminals, Alt+. (or Option+. on Mac) will paste in the last argument of the previous command. $ mkdir hi $ cd <alt+.> You can hit . several times to cycle through earlier final args.
  • burner556 4y ago
    or <esc> .
  • schoen 4y ago
    Wow, I did not know that! I would have referred to this using !$, which is one of the Bourne shell history substitutions. Like $ mkdir awesome $ cd !$ (The "!" has the connotation "history" in the shell, while the "$" has the connotation "last", as in regular expressions.) An advantage of the way you mentioned is that you could actually see the history item displayed on the command line before running the command!
    • senjin 4y ago
      I use !$ multiple times every day but you just helped me make the connection to try !^ for the first argument and I think I'm going to start using that as well. Thanks!
      • schoen 4y ago
        There is also "!!" for the entire prior command line. Someone elsewhere in this thread mentioned the usefulness of sudo !! for "run the entire previous command under sudo". Another example could be echo "!!" > myscript for "save the previous command into the file myscript".
        • senjin 4y ago
          I also use cat `which !!` every once in a while
      • aasasd 4y ago
        At least in zsh, there are also !:1 for the first argument, et cetera with the rest of natural numbers, and something like !:* for all the arguments without the command. The generic form is !n:m for n-th last command line and m-th argument, with an omitted n being a shortcut for the last line. Not sure if all of this works the same in bash.
• hyperpallium2 4y ago
  We can't know what would be new to you, without knowing what you already know. If you'd known this, you'd have given some idea of your background. Therefore, the above is the only thing that we can know is new to you. :P
  • mdp2021 4y ago
    When you post, how often and how much is it for a generic poster, and how often and how much for a specific poster.
• schoen 4y ago
  In the 1800s, scholars who knew a lot of languages (including, often, several modern and ancient European languages, and increasingly also Sanskrit) started to notice some amazing patterns about similarities in words among all of these languages, including languages from very far apart and that had no visible connection at all from the point of view of their present-day speakers. As these patterns were explored, they were found to be even more systematic and pervasive than they had appeared. In some cases, one sound would systematically change into another sound from language A to language B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law These patterns helped reveal historical connections between most languages of Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia, showing that those languages had descended from the same ancient sources. (Note that this isn't true of 100% of languages in this region -- there are other unrelated families that turned up -- but it's true of a significant majority.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages The languages that turned out to be related this way included the Germanic family (like German, English, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages), the Romance family (like French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Catalan), the Celtic family (like Irish and Welsh), the Slavic family (like Russian, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian), and also Farsi and all the Central Asian languages related to it, and Hindi/Urdu and all the South Asian languages related to it. Oh, and Greek. If I tried to list all the languages and language families that were linked up to this family tree, we would probably be here all day, because they go on and on. Just under half the people in the whole world have one or another of them as a native language today! These languages changed quickly enough in history that most people no longer noticed, or remembered, that most of them were related to one another, yet slowly enough that it's been feasible to deduce an enormous amount of information about the history of particular languages and particular words, once many of the rules and patterns had been identified. A Grimm's Law example is that the h sound in Germanic languages usually corresponds to the k sound in Romance languages (note that this can be stated much more technically and accurately). So, it turns out that "hundred" and "cent"/"cento"/"centum" actually share the same origin. And "heart" and "cœur"/"corazón"/"καρδία" (origin of "cardiac") (also "cordial"; the root in Latin sounds like "cord-"). And "who" and "que"/"quoi"/"qui" (and similarly for other wh- questions in English and qu- questions in Romance, which were originally hw- sounds in English and kw- sounds in Latin). Some other examples are t to d ("ten" and "decem"/"diez"/"dez", plus some of the examples above that have a t in English), and f to p ("foot" and the Latin and Greek words from which we get "pedestrian" and "podiatrist", and Romance "pied"/"pie"/"pé"; and don't forget about "father" and "padre"/"pater"/...). Those are just a couple of the phenomena that people noticed in the 1800s; while the exact development of these patterns gets much more complicated, they've proven to work over and over and over, for hundreds of languages and hundreds of thousands of words! (... Also, the Grimm from Grimm's Law is one of the Brothers Grimm, from Grimm's Fairytales!)
• bmlzootown 4y ago
  According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the term "factoid" was believed to be coined by Normal Mailer in a book he wrote about Marilyn Monroe. Per said book, factoids are "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority." While many use "fact" and "factoid" interchangeably, they are (by original definition) inherently two entirely different things.
• pabs3 4y ago
  Bootstrappable Builds is one of the more important and hard open software projects today. Going from 512 bytes of machine code plus a ton of source code all the way up to a full distro. https://bootstrappable.org/ https://bootstrappable.org/
  • operator-name 4y ago
    Odd that the wiki (but not the projects section on the homepage) mentions Guix, which seems to be doing a lot in this and the reproducible builds space: https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/guix-further-reduces-bootstrap-seed-to-25/ https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/guix-further-reduces-boots...
    • rekado 4y ago
      I wanted bootstrappable.org to focus on the individual projects (such as Mes, bootstrapping the JDK from C, etc) instead of distro integration. The idea was to avoid the impression that this is a distro project (much as reproducible-builds.org used to look like an exclusive Debian effort). I don't maintain the Wiki.
      • pabs3 4y ago
        It might be good to reshape the Bootstrappable Builds effort in a similar way to Reproducible Builds, in order to make it appear to be and also really be a more cross-distro multi-community effort.
• pxeger1 4y ago
  Double-clicking on text selects the whole word. Double-clicking and dragging selects text word-by-word. Triple-clicking selects the whole paragraph. Middle-clicking a link opens it in a new tab. Middle-clicking a tab closes it. Middle-clicking in general often has useful functionality!
  • clort 4y ago
    Double-clicking the title bar of a window toggles between sized-window and full-size-window mode
  • texasbigdata 4y ago
  • exikyut 4y ago
    And X11 on Linux (if you're not using Wayland) supports middle-click emulation, where pressing the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously (debounced to within a couple milliseconds) will be interpreted as a middle-click. I may or may not use this with my laptop dozens of times a day (it's how I copy/paste out of xterm). (Fun bit of trivia, my old EliteBook 8470p has a trackpad+trackpoint setup with two independent sets of buttons, and while I don't seem to be able to middle-click with the trackpoint buttons, I can send a middle-click by pressing both trackpad buttons, keep them held down, and then independently send left and right clicks (press-release) using the trackpoint buttons as much as I want. I somehow doubt that was an accident. Engineering archaeology is fun :D)
  • Jowsey 4y ago
    Shift+Arrow keys can be used to select text as you navigate through it Ctrl+Arrow keys navigates through whole words at a time Ctrl+Shift+Arrow keys can be combined to select whole words Ctrl+Backspace can be used to delete whole words
    • Jowsey 4y ago
      Oh, and most code editors I'm aware of will switch out the whole-word functionality of Ctrl/Double-click with whole-syntax-element, if that's more your thing
• ComradePhil 4y ago
  The highest number of births by one woman is 69: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_children https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most...
  • mongol 4y ago
    According to the same page, Simon Watson is the father of 800 children.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• Timwi 4y ago
  In Windows, pressing Win+1, Win+2, etc. activates the first, second etc. icon on the taskbar.
  • tmaly 4y ago
    I like using Window + right or left arrow to setup my primary windows on a large screen then choose a second window for the other side.
  • Talinx 4y ago
    Works in Gnome too.
  • ectopod 4y ago
    Alt+1, etc. selects tabs in Firefox on Linux, with Alt+9 always being the rightmost tab. Ctrl+1, etc. works in Firefox on Windows.
  • is_true 4y ago
    Win+T selects the icon without activating it
• tapanjk 4y ago
  Shortcuts for dictionary in MacOS. If you use Spotlight search to look up a word in dictionary, you need to hit down arrow repeatedly to select the word, or click on the word. Instead, you can: - Command + L to jump to the word - Command + D to open Dictionary app with that word
• flobosg 4y ago
  To determine the three-dimensional structure of proteins (such as the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2) one of the most used techniques is to grow protein crystals and blast X-rays at them. It has been estimated that these crystals have a cost per weight around 3000 times higher than diamonds.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• tjpnz 4y ago
  Planet Nine may be a primordial black hole with the diameter of a small coin.
• valid_username 4y ago
  At any moment there is atleast one pair of diametrically opposite points on Earth's surface which have same atmospheric temprature and pressure. And that's because Maths. It's quite fascinating to me
  • smegsicle 4y ago
    (pretty sure that's related to 'can't comb a hairy ball flat', so assuming a topologically spherical earth) and any four-legged table that wobbles can be rotated to a position so as not to wobble (assuming the floor has no cliffs or other topological oddities in its unevenness)
• adamnemecek 4y ago
  Adjoints, norms and fixed points underlie like 90% of all formal systems https://github.com/adamnemecek/adjoint/ https://github.com/adamnemecek/adjoint/.
• alangibson 4y ago
  Brown is actually orange https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU
• vishnugupta 4y ago
  > command line trick 1. "cat foo.json | python -m json.tool" pretty print on console. 2. "cal" pretty prints current month on console. "cal 2022" pretty print current year. > interesting to you 1. Bank of England one of the earliest banks to issue paper money was establish to finance war expenditure. 2. Federal reserve is holding (and hence funding) ~$2.7T worth of mortgage backed securities[1]. It started out as a stop gap measure to cushion 2008 crisis but they are yet to discontinue it. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WSHOMCB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WSHOMCB
  • _zywo 4y ago
    For JSON pretty printing I generally use jq (`cat foo.json | jq`). It highlights and indents the output, and it's easy to add a filter.
  • flobosg 4y ago
    More cal tips: * cal -3 shows the previous, current, and next month * ncal -C shows the current month with today’s date highlighted * ncal -C3 is equivalent to cal -3 with highlighting
• aspaviento 4y ago
  Harmonicas are amazing instruments. At first people assume them to be like toys (you can buy really cheap ones everywhere) and initially the concept seems really easy: 10 holes, drawing air produces some notes and blowing air produces other notes. But the more you get into it, the more amazing it gets. Soon you discover that you can bend notes by positioning your tongue in a specific way and your repertoire increases tremendously. You learn about overbending, tongue blocking, the "Wawa" sound you make covering the flow of the air with your hand rhythmically (don't remember if that has a name)... I knew very little about music when I decided to play the harmonica. I looked for an instrument that required little maintenance, were easy to transport and easy to play everywhere. So I decided to learn to play the harmonica by myself. It's easy to start with it, but it gets challenging when you try to learn those techniques mostly because you can't see inside people's mouths to see what they are doing and you aren't used to force your tongue to do those specific movements. When you see what people can do with it, it can be jaw dropping. I'm still a beginner at it but it's so rewarding after practising a lot to get your first bending, to reproduce songs you have learned just by muscle memory, to sound a little bit closer to those blues masters... definitely something worth to try in my opinion.
  • nstart 4y ago
    Fabulous addition. For anyone looking to see what a master harmonica player looks like, highly recommend looking up blues traveller / John Popper. In particular, there’s a live performance of no woman no cry that has John Popper alongside Ziggy Marley. Mind blowing. Watch it. You won’t regret it. https://youtu.be/9zk0HFG5mDw https://youtu.be/9zk0HFG5mDw
    • aasasd 4y ago
      In reggae, melodica is also vaguely popular, primarily through Augustus Pablo: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MiaekG1Q0UE https://youtube.com/watch?v=MiaekG1Q0UE
    • kk6mrp 4y ago
      This one is incredible! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoauBe465qQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoauBe465qQ
• andrei_says_ 4y ago
  What we call “free will” consists of a multitude of forces we have no control over. Look at your choices and try to find an independent entity making a decision. You will likely notice your conditioning and preferences, beliefs, emotions, thoughts, physiological and psychological state in the moment, your environment, habits, trauma patterns, all collaborating toward one thing or another. “Free will” is a shortcut for all these forces we have mo control over. Even when we explicitly feel we’re in control - usually the goal this control serves is not in our control. We don’t choose our preferences, tastes, morality, desires, or thoughts. Paradoxically, in this complete absence of “choice” as we understand it, lies freedom.
  • TylerLives 4y ago
    > What we call “free will” consists of a multitude of forces we have no control over. What is "we" in this context?
    • andrei_says_ 4y ago
      This is the money question, isn’t it. “Who am I?” Is one of the common pointers used to investigate. Observing and unpacking one’s choices is another.
  • Engineering-MD 4y ago
    I think of it as we have free will, bound by the entity that we are.
    • andrei_says_ 4y ago
      I read a quote somewhere - “If you want to make a perfect robot, have it experience your programming as their own choice “
    • viceroyalbean 4y ago
      We can do what we want, but we can't arbitrarily change what we want.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• vermarish 4y ago
  An electric guitarist usually has a pedalboard that they use to make different guitar tones. Let's approach this like an electrical engineer might. Time is a straight arrow: call it t. The guitarist plays, and their guitar pickup records a signal. At any time t, measure the value of this signal's waveform: call it x. That signal can go into a pedal that maps each value to create an output signal. Call it f(x, t). The pedal is a linear system when it satisfies f(x1 + x2, t) = f(x1, t) + f(x2, t). In English, you can blend two guitar signals going into a single linear pedal, and it will sound the same as if you used a separate pedal for each guitar. The pedal is a time-invariant system when it satisfies f(x, t1) = f(x, t2). In English, a time-invariant pedal does not warble over time. The magic happens when a system is both linear and time-invariant. These systems are so special, we call them "LTI" for short. Feed an LTI system a single, really loud, POP! Something like a clap, or a gunshot. Record the sound of this gunshot, and call it "impulse_response.wav". This file characterizes EVERYTHING about the system. If you know how the system responds to an impulse, you will know how the system responds to any other sound. All you have to do is convolve the sound with the impulse response, i.e. use the contents of impulse_response.wav as a set of weights and pass the sound through it. The echoes you hear when you speak in a large room is a real-world example of an LTI system. People will go to a cathedral, an open field, or a large tunnel, set up a microphone, and fire a blank pistol. They can go home, convolve the sound of their guitar or voice or whatever with the impulse response, and it will sound exactly like they're in that space! There are whole communities of people making and sharing impulse responses out there, and I just think it's the coolest thing ever. For any guitarists reading this, I'll bring this back to the pedalboard. Another cool thing about LTI systems is that when you chain multiple of them together, the order does not matter. Reverb, delay, EQ, and wah are all LTI effects. If you've ever wondered why pedal ordering sometimes matters and sometimes doesn't, this is why.
  • reom_tobit 4y ago
    > Another cool thing about LTI systems is that when you chain multiple of them together, the order does not matter. Reverb, delay, EQ, and wah are all LTI. Delay and reverb may be LTI in your definition, but they very much do matter what order they are in, every time. Delay before reverb is going to give a more staccato sound, whereas the reverb before delay is probably just going to wash the whole thing out if you’re not careful on your settings. Great comment otherwise!
• devoutsalsa 4y ago
  There are Greek and Roman ruins in Russia.
• ajb 4y ago
  In statistics, the mean and median are both averages, but are technically quite different. The mean is the sum of all items divided by the number of them, while the median is the middle item in the sorted list. When they are different, this can have strange effects. For example, when estimating engineering tasks, the mean error is often positive while the median is often negative. This is why your manager believes that engineers are too conservative and always pad estimates, while projects are always late. Indeed, they can learn both these things from observation without realising that they are contradictory. Because humans learn by the most common observation, which is represented by the median, but outcomes can be dominated by the less common, which affect the mean but hardly affect the median.
  • GranBurguesa 4y ago
    i found the concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9chet_mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9chet_mean helpful. it's a generalization of the different kinds of averages and you can express the arithmetic mean, geometric mean, harmonic mean, median or even mode just by swapping out the distance metric in the formula.
  • mirekrusin 4y ago
    If the project is planned according to median, you accept up front that there is 50% chance the project will be late.
    • waqf 4y ago
      It's worse than that. You need the median time for the whole project, which you can't get just from summing the medians of the individual tasks.
  • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    One of the rules of thumb of process management is to reduce the median, rather than the average time taken, because outliers are more likely to have one-off causes and so be harder to fix systematically. In fact, attempts to fix outliers can be a distraction and even net negative.
• atoav 4y ago
  Ordering a typical printed circuit board with components placed on it is so cheap nowadays that this is a viable option for electeonic hobbyists nowadays (e.g. just ordered 50 pieces of audio output amplifiers at 3,49 € per piece (customs and shipping included), where 1.60 € would be the parts cost of the two chips on it. Only thing you need for this is: 1. An idea and some knowledge about electronics 2. An EDA software where you design the schematic and the PCB (Horizon EDA, KiCAD, Eagle, ...). This software will give you the Gerber files needed to manufacture the PCBs and the BOM (Bill of Materials) and a Pick-and-Place file which is basically just a CSV telling the manufacturer which part goes where and in which orientation. 3. Using the BOM you find corresponding parts the manufacturer has and put create a CSV that matches their format requirements 4. You order (e.g. I ordered at jcbpcb) The electronics knowledge is the hardest part.
  • elric 4y ago
    Story time: Back when I was in school, our introductory electronics class had us make a PCB for a PICmicro programmer on our first day. We got a handout of the schematics. We had to transfer its negative to a copper coated plate using some chemical, used UV light to fixate it, then dissolved the rest of the copper in acid. Finally we got to drill the holes for through-hole soldering points. Next class we soldered all components. And by the end of two classes, everyone had their own functioning (or not ...) programmer, which we used the rest of the year on a variety of electronics projects. Great fun.
    • stavros 4y ago
      I used a 3D printer to draw the schematics onto copper clad with a marker: https://www.stavros.io/posts/make-pcbs-at-home/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/make-pcbs-at-home/
      • ozfive 4y ago
        Check out this company if you haven't already heard of them! Nano-dimension https://www.nano-di.com/ https://www.nano-di.com/
  • 4y ago
• tigershark 4y ago
  sudo means “I sweat” in Italian.
  • merry_flame 4y ago
    Sure (and in Spanish…), but it isn't pronounced the same way.
• SteveGoob 4y ago
  Programmatically determining the region of an AWS EC2 instance using the metadata API was very annoying in the past; there was no endpoint for it. Instead, devs used many methods to determine the region[1], primarily by dropping the last letter off of the availability zone, (e.g. `us-east-1a` -> `us-east-1`) which was queriable. At this point, AWS has updated the API to allow querying for the region as one would expect. See my answer on the afore-footnoted question[2]. [1] The number and variety of answers on the topic is both hilarious and terrifying: https://stackoverflow.com/q/4249488 https://stackoverflow.com/q/4249488 [2] https://stackoverflow.com/a/62664161 https://stackoverflow.com/a/62664161
• tromp 4y ago
  The number of legal chess positions has now been estimated with 2 digits of accuracy as ~ 4.8 x 10^44: https://github.com/tromp/ChessPositionRanking https://github.com/tromp/ChessPositionRanking For the game of Go, we know all 171 digits of the number: https://tromp.github.io/go/legal.htm https://tromp.github.io/go/legal.htm
  • operator-name 4y ago
    The 2nd link for go gives me a 404.
    • tromp 4y ago
      Sorry; misses an l at the end; should be https://tromp.github.io/go/legal.html https://tromp.github.io/go/legal.html
• Adrig 4y ago
  You probably heard about the quirks in the French numerical system. For example, 99 is translated "quatre-vingt-dix-neuf" which is literally "four twenty ten nine". This is a legacy of the base 20 numerical system used by the Celtics thousands of years ago before the modern Romance language drove it out. The hybridization with our current base 10 system came with the Roman conquest of the Gaul. Another example of the base 20 in use is the Quinze-Vingts National Ophthalmology Hospital in Paris, where Quinze-Vingts (fifteen twenties) refers to the original capacity of 15*20 = 300 beds available when built in the Middle Ages.
  • MaanuAir 4y ago
    Thanks for this! As a French, I always wondered why this oddity. That should also be introduced when teachers explain hexadecimal :-)
    • picklesman 4y ago
      Me too! Btw, in the spirit of the title of this thread, in English you would say "as a French person". In the past, "Frenchman" was used but it's understandably out of favour these days. "French" can be used as an adjective but not a noun in this context. It's a very common error, I suppose since "français" can be used as an adjective or a noun en français :)
      • euroderf 4y ago
        And don't forget french as a verb! -said every high school guy ever
        • picklesman 4y ago
          Ha! Indeed! In fact in informal Quebecois French, it's also used as a verb, with the same meaning as in English. As in "J'ai Frenché ma blonde" --> "I Frenched my girlfriend"
      • causality0 4y ago
        That is wrong. The demonym for a person from France is "French". It only sounds wrong to an English ear because we're so used to calling them Frenchmen, but it's chauvinism on our part, not a linguistic mistake on theirs.
• lathiat 4y ago
  On Mac/Linux the windows/Mac key + tab switches applications. Windows/Max key plus the ~/` key switches windows in the same application. I personally cannot deal with the alt tab style switching between all windows this app to app switch works much better for me and I use it constantly.
• peter_retief 4y ago
  We are asymmetrical... Humans look symmetric on the outside but have stark asymmetries on the inside Thus, we have a spleen on the left but not the right. Our left lung has two lobes, but our right lung has three. Our heart and stomach are shifted left of center, our liver is shifted right of center, and our intestines meander throughout our abdominal cavity with no regard for the midline at all. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/quirks-of-human-anatomy/symmetry-and-asymmetry/6B91C73DA77BC52744BD18F486A651E1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/quirks-of-human-ana...
• newusertoday 4y ago
  digest field in http contains hash of the file and sha algo used to create hash. You can check this field to know if the file has changed or not and download it only when it is changed.
• jayp1418 4y ago
  Some command line tips https://www.unitedbsd.com/d/308-moritz-systems-bsd-tips-and-tricks https://www.unitedbsd.com/d/308-moritz-systems-bsd-tips-and-...
• Aidevah 4y ago
  One of Bach's most famous church cantatas, BWV 140[1], was written for the 27th (or no. 3^3, the importance of this will be apparent in a moment) Sunday after Trinity, the last possible Sunday before Advent. The cantata is a chorale cantata based on the Lutheran Hymn "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", the opening movement is a chorus that is based on this tune. The tune is in Bar form, the first 3 verses are repeated, followed by 6 verse which is sung once through (3x2 + 3x2), and Bach's chorus mirrors this structure. Bach decided to set the piece in E-flat, which is a key signature with 3 flats. He also decided to make the time signature 3/4, so each bar has 3 beats. There are 3 groups of musicians involved (not counting the obligatory basso continuo): 1) vocal forces, 3 parts (Soprano + Alto + Tenor, the bass mostly doubles the basso continuo and is not independent); 2) strings, 3 parts (violin 1 + violin 2 + viola); 3) winds, 3 parts (oboe 1 + oboe 2 + alto oboe). Also, the opening melody of the chorale outlines the 3 notes of the tonic triad of E-flat (E-flat, G, B-flat), while later on, Bach being Bach, there is a miniature fugato where the three lower voices open with the same 3 pitches in a different order (G, B-flat, E-flat). I'm usual sceptical of most other numerological readings of Bach's music precisely because when Bach wished to make a point with numbers, he makes it damned obvious, as in this case. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfNeJ-Cedeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfNeJ-Cedeo
  • kmarc 4y ago
    Oh he was brilliantly playful with his musical cryptograms. Also see: * BACH Motif: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACH_motif https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACH_motif The letters of his name, B, A, C, H encoding a melody.
    • ZoomZoomZoom 4y ago
      Obligatory mention of "In The Name Of Ron" by guitarist extraordinaire Ron Jarzombek. For those interested in creative exploration of musical ideas. https://youtu.be/YYlzPWEQhLg https://youtu.be/YYlzPWEQhLg
• b0ner_t0ner 4y ago
  Humans might just be the stupidest animals on the planet when it comes to seasonal migration, we get tied down by our monetary system, taxes, government policies, borders, etc., while polluting our planet with patchwork solutions like air conditioning for the summer or burning fossil fuels to heat our surroundings in the winter. We can't simply just "move" to a different location like other animals.
  • tmaly 4y ago
    Maybe more remote work jobs could push us in that direction?
  • DavidSJ 4y ago
    I think it's the opposite. We can move, but we have the intelligence to tame our environment so we don't have to.
    • dssagar93 4y ago
      Taming the environment is proving to be bad, isn't it?
      • DavidSJ 4y ago
        It has pros and cons, but I think civilization is a massive pro that outweighs all the cons.
    • b0ner_t0ner 4y ago
      > but we have the intelligence to tame our environment I beg to differ when most wealthy and well-off Americans get affected by drought, fires, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, freak snow storms... and still stay in the same place all year round trying to tame their environment.
    • is_true 4y ago
      We cannot tame the environment, we just create mini environments. Nature is amazingly powerful
• aaron695 4y ago
• beefield 4y ago
  In some editors (SQL server management studio, visual studio code, but badly), ctrl-shift-arrow keys lets you edit many rows of text simultaneously. Simplest example is multi-row comment, but if you align your code well, some repetitive tasks become surprisingly efficient.
  • enobrev 4y ago
    Alt+Shift+Left-Click for any JetBrains IDEs. I use it for coding as well as data editing (eg. Aligned MySQL CLI results in a scratch file) all the time. The support is excellent as when you have multiple cursors, all other standard key combos, like Ctrl+arrow work for all at once. It's also great for selecting a list of aligned text and pasting it elsewhere.
    • is_true 4y ago
      ALT+J selects the same token in other parts of the document. You can also use it when you select something, what you selected becomes the token More: https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/guide/tips/multi-cursor/ https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/guide/tips/multi-cursor/
  • pards 4y ago
    Option+left click in Sublime
• rawoke083600 4y ago
  ok I'll have a go ! Here is my favorite mental-model for problem solving (and my favorite analogy) So I have this problem: I love eating scramble eggs, I hate cleaning up the pan and have been trying over the years many different techniques to make sure the egg's doesn't stick to the pan. (No I don't want teflon thanks). So I tried different oils, temperatures and techniques, all with the goal of getting those delicious eggs not to stick in my pot/pan afterwards. Then one day it hit me, I'm solving the wrong problem. The problem to be solved is not "EGGS NOT STICKING TO PAN", it's "FINDING A BETTER WAY TO CLEAN" the pan ! And I have found it, it's using a different type of plastic-scrubber. It looks like steel-wool, but it's all plastic. So whenever I'm stuck on a problem for too long, I try and model the problem as an "eggs-in-pan" problem statement.
  • gonzo41 4y ago
    Try cooking on a cast iron pan that's been seasoned, i cook eggs on these and I can clean it in about ~1 minute with a soft sponge.
  • ThinkBeat 4y ago
    I use a cast iron pan for the most part. First I put oil in the pan and let it heat up. Once it is hot, I pour the scrambled egg on it. Use my spoon, fork, whatever to distribute and turn. then I tip over the pan get the eggs onto my plate. My pan has a nice feature to make pouring it out easier. Usually nothing has stuck to the pan. It is key to heat the pan and the oil first. If something sticks, whilst still hot, pour some water on it. It will result in a satifsying bubbling that usually will get any residue out. Dry with a (paper) towel or whatever else you use. I usually drip a little oil in the pan before I put it away. If that sounds complicated it realy is not. Once you do it a few times it takes up little time and is fairly reliable. Another good tip is make sure you use the right oil. Use oil that is mean for high heat.
  • morninglight 4y ago
    I had a girlfriend in Amsterdam who taught me to make scrambled eggs in a double boiler. This keeps the eggs at the temperature of boiling water. The result is so much better (light and fluffy) that you will never use your skillet again. I have heard that there are special large double boilers that are used to prepare scrambled eggs for restaurants, but I have never seen one. .
• Annatar 4y ago
  How SmartOS avoids sadness http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/04/10/libsunw_ssl-or-how-smartos-avoids-sadness/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/04/10/libsunw_ssl-or-h...
• stavros 4y ago
  Water is blue.
  • spython 4y ago
    What? No. As was known by Homer already, water is wine-coloured: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer)
    • stavros 4y ago
      Yeah, that's what I said, wine-blue.
• scrollaway 4y ago
  Take a few minutes to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu Gotta spell anything over a voice line? Use it. No more screwing around with "B.. like Bryan, and then U, like .... under". s-c-r-o-l-l-a-w-a-y: sierra charlie romeo oscar lima lima alpha whiskey alpha yankee. I learned it when I was 14, and I genuinely used this a TON in the decade and half since.
  • tromp 4y ago
    The word "Yankee" originates in calling early Dutch colonists Jan-Kees, Jan and Kees being common Dutch male names.
    • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Jan is the equivalent name as John, Ian, Ivan, Ewan, Euan, Yan, Jean, Juan, Giovanni, Hans, Shaun, Sean, Jock, many others. Amazing how many terms for 'foreigner from <place>' or 'random man' all resolve to variants of the same common name.
      • freemint 4y ago
        If you are wondering about Hans. Johann -> Johannes -> Hannes -> Hans
    • thematrixturtle 4y ago
      One theory is that Kees is a dialectal version of "kaas" (cheese), so Jan Kees is "John Cheese".
      • mikelevins 4y ago
        Which is what the name of Monty Python member John Cleese would be if his father hadn't decided to change it to "Cleese" because he didn't like being named "Cheese".
  • 4y ago
• Parker_Powell 4y ago
  Did you know that the first-ever photograph was taken in 1826? It was a picture of a tree, and it took eight hours to expose.
• acqbu 4y ago
  "The mutual transformations of matter are not an accidental feature, but the very essence of nature. Without change, there would be no world. Heraclitus seems to acknowledge this in his praise of war and strife: We must recognize that war is common, strife is justice, and all things happen according to strife and necessity. War is father of all and king of all; and some he manifested as gods, some as men; some he made slaves, some free. Conflicting powers of opposites, including those of elemental bodies, make possible the world and all its variety; without that conflict we would have only lifeless uniformity." From: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus
• p0nce 4y ago
  80-bit floating point have more special kinds of numbers: pseudo-subnormal, pseudo-NaNs, pseudo-infinities, and unnormals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_precision#Extended_precision_implementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_precision#Extended_pr...
• poisonarena 4y ago
  • s1291 4y ago
    https://www.arabnews.com/node/1151751/saudi-arabia https://www.arabnews.com/node/1151751/saudi-arabia
  • O_H_E 4y ago
    What the hell is this islamophobic crap. Just fyi for other readers, that has nothing to do with Islam beliefs.
    • poisonarena 4y ago
      how is it islamaphobic? they are the ones surrounding the kabba from the vampire takeover
• cyber_gekko 4y ago
  A Gaeltacht (Gale-tuct) is a region of Ireland that is designated by the government as Irish speaking. There are a few of these areas, mainly along the coast, where the majority of people will conduct their daily affairs through Irish (although they're mostly happy to speak English to you if they notice you have no idea what they're saying!). Back in the 00's an Irish heritage group in Canada bought a chunk of land in Ontario and managed to get it designated as a Gaeltacht. So officially, as of today, Irish is the common vernacular in several small-ish regions of Ireland and a .25km^2 chunk of Canada. Bit more info here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_North_American_Gaeltacht https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_North_American_Gae...
• dssagar93 4y ago
  I'm gonna throw some Hindu mythology- time travel here. Did you know that time-travel is a modern concept but in the Indian scriptures, which dates back to thousands of years already mentioned about it. It is a story about King Kakudmi, who sought a husband for his beautiful daughter, Revati. They both had travel to Lord Bhrama's(Creator of the universe) place which was apparently very far from our planet to seek advice. Lord Bhrama then explains them that time moves very differently on his plane of existence and the people they knew on their planet are already dead as it's been 116 million years that has passed in last 20 minutes of Bhrama's time. They then travel back to Earth after seeking the advice. Hindu scriptures mentioned a lot of "modern-day concepts" thousands of years back. Isn't it fascinating?
  • new_learner 4y ago
    I mean isn't this just how fiction supposed to be ? I am sure you can find a huge number of "modern day devices" mentioned in science-fiction of yesteryears as well. All inventions start with imagination after all.
  • aldebran 4y ago
    If you got a kick out of that, it gets better! There’s a publication called “Date Panchang” that gets a new version for every new Hindu year. The first few pages talk about time and how Brahma experiences time. If you can read sanskrit/Marathi, it’s page 5 here: https://pdfcoffee.com/qdownload/date-panchang-2020-pdf-free.html https://pdfcoffee.com/qdownload/date-panchang-2020-pdf-free.... It talks about how long Brahma’s life is and where I’m his life he is right now. Not sure how they calculated that but it’s pretty wild to think about.
  • LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
    Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation by moving at high relativistic speeds close to the speed of light? Even more fascinating for me is the concept of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_lightbulb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_lightbulb in the context of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimana s Imagine they had a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial which would have enabled that. I mean withstanding 22.000°C while being transparent to hard ultraviolet. And some sort of 'ultravoltaic' cells behind that... ...while at least some texts speak of those things as full of crystals and mirrors as part of their engines and on board power plants.
• ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  If you use git and clone the same (or related) repositories in multiple places on a single disk, they can share the hashed object to reduce disk space and/or network usage and increase speed. One workflow is to git clone mirror the main repo and use that as a shared read-only source of historical references when cloning a new repo. You can also hardlink or reference those objects to save disk space (though some file systems will do that transparently for you). It feels like this could be done entirely transparently to the user, for a free speed boost but it's not quite there yet and still needs some thought and setup. Some big services use this behind the scenes though so it's presumably robust. So worth looking into if you are spending time waiting for clones.
  • b15h0p 4y ago
    Sounds like the worktree feature in git: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree
    • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Kind of distinct but could solve similar problems where they overlap. Worktrees let you have different branches from the same repo checked out to the file system at the same time, without needing seperate repos. The clone --shared --reference-if-able and -dissociate options let you have multiple repos with less of a space hit. They almost certainly can be used at the same time, though I've never heard of anyone doing so. The limit of only having at most a single copy of each branch checked out, which makes sense for development purposes, made worktrees unsuitable for my use, which was mostly (ab)using git as a deployment tool.
• Lapsa 4y ago
  potatoes are always watching
• goldenkey 4y ago
  The end conditions of the universe are just as symmetrical as the beginning conditions of the universe, under various cosmological models including the popular and oft subscribed to 'Heat Death.' This means that we are not simply connected to the past by cause and effect -- we're also coupled to the future. For any specific end to come about, our experiences must be constrained. In differential equations, we use the boundary conditions to solve for the dynamical behavior in the time interval between them. In analysis, we use the existing conditions in a process called 'analytic continuation' to recover the whole process. In fractals or the physical theories surrounding them (AdS/CFT correspondence), the boundary determines the bulk. So if you have only the frame/margins of an M.C Escher tesselation, the entire inside foreground (the bulk) can be recovered by gradually painting in what's missing. So we are more of a continuation of both the past and the future than simply a remnant of the past. While the past may have pushed us, the future attracts us.
• smallerfish 4y ago
  In the western/european world, we have access to maybe a couple of dozen types of fruit (including various berries); try listing all of the fruit you know. That is just a small fraction of the (estimated) 2000 types of fruit eaten across the world, particularly in the tropics. Relatedly, in central and south America, _sapote_ is the native american term for (roughly) "edible fruit". The word has nothing to do with the taxonomy of these plants. European colonists made the mistake of adopting the word "sapote" for various different tree species ("what's this called?"; "sapote"), which has led to a lot of subsequent misunderstanding. If you google for "sapote" you'll find some results which naively attempt to give a latin classification to the unqualified "sapote". Now we have fairly useless english names for a variety of these regional fruits, such as (read "sapote" as "edible fruit" in these examples): "green sapote", "white sapote", "black sapote", "yellow sapote", "sun sapote", "south american sapote", and so on - although many of them also have more distinctive names (such as "canistel" or "chupa chupa"), which are much less ambiguous and should be preferred. The company United Fruit was formed by the merger of two companies in 1899. One half of the merger was originally founded by an american railwayman, who obtained a 99 year lease of 800,000 acres of land from the Costa Rican government in exchange for constructing and operating a railway from the capital city to the carribean port of Limon (during the construction of which, thousands of laborers died from tropical disease). Once the railway started operating, usage was insufficient to pay back the debt on the loans that he'd taken out for construction, and so he pivoted to banana exports; the story goes that he had planted bananas along the tracks during construction as a cheap means of feeding his workers (which doesn't quite make sense given that bananas take 14+ months to fruit), and so he doubled down by increasing the density of planting over the area of the land that he owned, of course clearing more primary tropical forest to do so. The United Fruit company (today Chiquita) became heavily involved in politics in the countries that it was operating in, with the most famous example being its significant role in instigating the CIA backed coup in Guatamala in the 1950s that overturned the democratic government and installed a violent dictatorship, and led to 4 decades of civil war in which at least 140k people died, and which set Guatemalan economic development back by decades or more. So yeah, bananas. Oh, and finally, there are dozens of varieties of bananas. The one that's exported most commonly (Cavendish) is relatively large and travels well, but is far from the most flavorful. There have been rumors of a killer fungus for many years, which hasn't had a significant impact on availability (yet); however, there are many varieties of bananas that aren't impacted by this fungus, so in the next decade or two we could see one of the other varieties replace Cavendish as the most widely consumed.
• Igor_Wiwi 4y ago
  we all been using base 60 numeral system without knowing it, it's a clock
• tomatocracy 4y ago
  Button mushrooms, cremini mushrooms and Portobello mushrooms are all the exact same fungus, just cultivated at different ages/stages of maturity.
  • is_true 4y ago
    They are all Agaricus Bisporus. Today I was going to go for a walk to collect some Agaricus Campestris but the river near flooded the place where they grow.
  • justsomehnguy 4y ago
    The bell peppers enters the chat.
• vimarshc 4y ago
  The earth's orbit is elliptical. However the orbit is much closer to a circle than to an ellipse (or at least the image that comes to mind when you say ellipse). This image is taken from the wikipedia article mentioned below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EarthsOrbit_en.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EarthsOrbit_en.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_orbit
• Tainnor 4y ago
  The most commonly used and arguably most useful form of logic, First Order Logic (FOL) is not powerful enough to describe even the natural numbers. In whatever ways we may try to describe them, we always end up with potential extra elements that we cannot account for. Let me describe what I mean. When we want to describe a structure, for example the natural numbers with their usual arithmetic (addition, multiplication and so on), we first decide on a language to use. Our language should contain the symbol 0 (so we can identify the first element) and symbols for the functions S (successor function), + and *. We also introduce variables such as x, y, etc. Then we write down a list of axioms for the structure, i.e. logical statements that should characterise that structure. Such statements in first order logic are built out of the symbols we introduced, together with equality (e.g. 2+3=5 is a statement, where 2 is an abbreviation for S(S(0)) etc.), logical connectives such as "not", "and", "or", "implies", etc. (e.g. not(1 = 2), or "1 = 1 AND 2 = 2") and importantly quantifiers, "for all elements" and "there exists an element such that" (for example: "for all x, x = 0 OR there exists a y, such that x = S(y)"). A structure for a specific language is nothing more than a set of elements together with an interpretation for all the symbols. So, for our language we may just take the natural numbers with the usual interpretation of +, * etc. But we might just as well have chosen the single-element set {aardvark}, where 0 is interpreted as aardvark and all functions evaluate to aardvard no matter their arguments, i.e. aardvark + aardvark = aardvark. That's silly, but allowed. The natural numbers with their usual interpretation of symbols satisfy all the sentences I introduced above; we say that this structure is a model of that set of sentences. Our aardvark-structure is not a model of these sentences, since not(1 = 2) is not true in it (remember that this is just an abbrevation of not(S(0) = S(S(0))) and in this structure, this evaluates to not(aardvark = aardvark), which is false). We can now take the set of all statements which are true in the natural numbers, a.k.a. the theory of natural numbers, Th(N). This set is clearly infinite (for example, it contains the statement "n = n" for all n), but that doesn't bother us. Clearly, the natural numbers are a model of Th(N). But are there other models of Th(N)? Well, in a sense trivially. I can just define the structure {aardvark0, aardvark1, ...} where, for example, aardvark2 + aardvark3 = aardvark5, and so on. That's also a model for Th(N), but if that feels like cheating it's because it is: these structures are exactly the same except for the names of their elements. We therefore call them "isomorphic" and treat them as the same. But are there models of Th(N) not isomorphic to the natural numbers? Yes, there are. Let's introduce a new symbol to the language, call it c. Then add to Th(N) the infinitely many statements not(0 = c), not(1 = c), not(2 = c), etc. There is no way we can interpret this symbol c in the natural numbers and make all these statements true: eventually there has to be some natural number which c is equal to. But now comes the kicker: By the compactness theorem of first order logic, whenever we have a set of sentences so that all finite subsets have a model, the original set has a model. Now, for any finite subset of Th(N) plus the infinitely many statements involving c, we have a model, namely the natural numbers (since the subset is finite, there is a biggest n for which not(n = c) is in the set of statements; then interpret c as n+1). But then, by compactness, the original set of sentences has a model. So there must exist a structure that makes all statements true that are true for the natural languages (i.e. that is a model for Th(N)), but that also has some element c that is bigger than anything that can be "reached" by applying the successor function arbitrarily often to 0. What does such a structure look like? Well, it turns out that such an element must live in a so called Z-chain, a set of elements that "looks like the (positive and nonnegative) integers", but is totally disconnected from the natural numbers (this is because in Th(N) every number that is not zero has a successor and a predecessor); so in essence this structure contains the natural number and, disconnected from it, a copy of the integers. In fact, we may have more than one copy of the integers. Compactness is a really powerful and weird theorem. It can be used to prove that any set of statements that allows for infinite models has infinite models of arbitrary cardinality (i.e. "as big as we want"). It can be used to construct an extension of the real numbers that contains "infinitesimal", non-zero elements (smaller than any positive real number), which is what motivated so-called nonstandard analysis (and makes Newton's and Leibniz's original intuition of "infinitesimally small quantities" precise). And so on. If we want to actually describe the natural numbers uniquely, we have to turn to a stronger logic, such as second-order logic. In second-order logic we can't only quantify over elements, we can also quantify over sets (or, equivalently, properties). We may for example say "for any set, if it is not empty, it has a least element" (a statement that is true for the natural numbers if we introduce the usual ordering). We can then in second-order logic formulate the principle of induction, which suffices, with some other axioms, to describe the natural numbers uniquely (up to isomorphism, of course). However, second-order logic has significant downsides. In particular, there exists no proof procedure in second-order logic that is both sound (it only proves true statements) and complete (it can prove all true statements). That means that, in practice, it's often not all that useful. We do have well-behaved proof procedures for first-order logic and that's why we usually stick to it.
• tomrod 4y ago
  Filipino and Polynesian languages come from the same linguistic branch, and their numbers are similar for most and the same for some.
  • thematrixturtle 4y ago
    It's over 11,000 km from Malaysia to the Cook Islands, yet the number 5 is lima in Malay and rima in Cook Islands Maori.
    • marc_abonce 4y ago
      Apparently it's also rima in Rapanui, the language of Easter Island near Chile. And the number two is even crazier, being roa in Malagasy and rua in Rapanui, so this word is shared from Madagascar all the way to Easter Island. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rima#Rapa_Nui https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rima#Rapa_Nui https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rua#Rapa_Nui https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rua#Rapa_Nui https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/roa#Malagasy https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/roa#Malagasy
      • tmnvix 4y ago
        Likely because Polynesians are descended from East Asians that migrated south to Melanesia and then out into Polynesia.
• tiborsaas 4y ago
  You are most likely unable to lift your ring finger when the tall finger is bent under your palm, but it's possible to lean to move it, I just don't know how :)
• DeathArrow 4y ago
  If you extend your arms sideways, the distance between the fingertips is equal to your height.
  • dinkleberg 4y ago
    That is only truly accurate if you have an ape index of 1. But for most people it’ll be pretty close.
• nathanasmith 4y ago
  If you habitually try to open the wrong door at a restaurant entrance or wherever where there's a double door and one side is locked, quickly glance for the side that has the keyhole in it. That's the one that's open.
• causality0 4y ago
  Put your non-dominant thumb in the palm of your dominant hand and squeeze it as hard as you can for thirty seconds. Afterwards your gag reflex will be suppressed for about a minute. Enjoy touching your own uvula.
  • oshirisuki 4y ago
    thought this was a prank, but it's real
  • mikelevins 4y ago
    Weird. Seems to have worked.
  • jonwest 4y ago
    Some of these posts have been incredibly interesting but this is the first one to be both bizarre but also immediately permanently learned. What the hell? What else is this weird body capable of haha
• aasasd 4y ago
  You can select text of links on a webpage if you hold Alt while doing that.
• andrew_ 4y ago
  When ever drilling or hole-cutting into fiberglass, always use masking tape generously applied over and around the area being cut into. Run drill bits in reverse to get past any gelcoat or paint coatings, then run the drill forward to affect the cut. The same goes for hole saws. Slow speed is best with the proper blade for jigsaws. This will prevent cracking of coatings (especially gelcoats) and splintering of the fiberglass.
  • justsomehnguy 4y ago
    The true TIL is always in the comments. With a slight /s
• ajot 4y ago
  One of the most common railway gauges in Brazil is ~1600 mm. Although this seems like a metric designed gauge, it is in fact due to the chance that 5'3" equals 1600,2mm. This (particular type of broad) gauge is known as Irish gauge, and is also used in Ireland and Australia.
• ilaksh 4y ago
  There is a popular lunch meat brand in Mexico named FUD.
• spcebar 4y ago
  The saying "blood is thicker than water" is from the Bible. The full quote is "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb," which means the opposite of how "blood is thicker than water" is used.
  • codingdave 4y ago
    Any idea where in the Bible it says that? I spent a couple minutes searching and found many sites saying the same thing you did, but nobody cited which verse. I searched a dozen or so translations of the bible and did not find it, either. Which makes me wonder even more, as there were just as many sites saying it originated in 12th century writings.
    • gandalfff 4y ago
      I looked and the saying does not appear to be from the Bible
    • spcebar 4y ago
      I could have sworn I read this in one of the gospels, but going back it appears you're right and this is not found in the old or new testament. I must have read this somewhere and taken it for granted. I apologize for not doing my research!
  • papandada 4y ago
    Since we're speculating without proof, my guess is the (not biblical) saying has always meant exactly what you think it means, and someone invented the "blood = covenant, water = familial ties" inversion just to be edgy, ironic, for effect (whatever time period that was). And as social media has taught us, humour and irony get lost very easily. I have to wonder how much of history we misunderstand because we didn't understand the tone.
• dwt204 4y ago
  Since this has leaned pretty much into Indo-European languages, here is something that is not as well known. Indigenous languages in the Americas were nearly extirpated by colonialism. Take a look. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas#/media/File:Langs_N.Amer.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_indigenous_l...
• CharlesW 4y ago
  Van Gogh killed himself one year after Nintendo was founded. Betty White was born before Anne Frank.
  • crystaldecanter 4y ago
    Anne Frank, MLK Jr. and Barbra Walters were all born in the same year.
    • JudgePenitent 4y ago
      Heidegger, Hitler, and Wittgenstein were all born in 1889 Hitler and Wittgenstein attended the same school even The Wittgenstein family also had all of their funds invested in America before the outbreak of WW2
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  There are ghostly individual isolated hydrogen atoms drifting in interstellar space whose effective diameters are about 0.5 mm, while hydrogen atoms in our local environment are more like 1.1 angstrom (1e-7 mm) in diameter. These are called Rydberg atoms and exist because the electon bound to the nucleus of the these atoms has climbed up to very high excitation levels, a state that is very unstable as any collision with another particle or interaction with electromagnetic fields will cause it to collapse down to lower energy levels. The extreme emptiness of interstellar space allows such atoms to persist for long periods. The density of interstellar hydrogen clouds is much lower than what can be achieved with the best vacuum systems on Earth, but laser cooling techniques have now made the production and maintenance of such atoms possible, to the point where they can be used as delicate sensors, and have possible applications in quantum computing.
• pards 4y ago
  The fuel gauge on a car's dashboard has a little arrow or triangle next to it that points to the side of the car with the gas tank. Extremely handy in rental cars. Example: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/know-instantly-which-side-your-cars-gas-tank-is-on_b_7057704 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/know-instantly-which-side-you...
  • wazoox 4y ago
    If there isn't any triangle, than the position of the handle on the little pump is the indicator.
• akudha 4y ago
  There is a small but growing community of people who eat only raw fruits and raw vegetables. I tried it and it was awesome (though it was expensive and I had trouble getting quality produce). I find this community very knowledgeable, smart and down to earth. It was impressive to see a 40+ year old body builder (he is no Arnold, but has impressive physique for an amateur) doing so well on this diet. If someone is interested, spend some time googling this topic. It is well worth your time.
  • jonwest 4y ago
    Isn’t that what Steve Jobs did before he died?
    • akudha 4y ago
      Yes, but he tried it too late. It is not like cancer would go away by eating fruits for a few weeks. Also eating raw diet doesn't mean one should not get modern medical treatment, especially for killer diseases like cancer. It would take years to undo decades of bad eating habits. Eating raw is not a panacea. But it is a solid step in getting and maintaining a healthy body and mind, especially as one ages.
      • JudgePenitent 4y ago
        IIRC he had started this diet (eating only raw carrots and strawberries) before he founded apple with woz
• oriettaxx 4y ago
  The etymology of "Ciao" The word derives from the Venetian phrase "s-ciào vostro" or "s-ciào" (schiavo/sciavo) literally meaning "(I am) your slave" This greeting is analogous to the medieval Latin servus which is still used colloquially in parts of Central/Eastern Europe or the antiquated English valediction "Your Obedient Servant." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciao In Italy you say ciao both when you meet somebody, and when you leave, while in other countries (e.g. Brazil), you say "Ciao" only when you go away: if you use it when you meet somebody sounds sooooo weird :) :)
• ASalazarMX 4y ago
  Molotov cocktails are named that way because Balts have a twisted sense of humor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov_bread_basket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov_bread_basket In 1939, the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, claimed the Soviet Union was not dropping bombs on Finland, but merely airlifting food to starving Finns. The Finns sarcastically dubbed the RRAB-3 cluster bomb "Molotov's bread basket." Consequently, the improvised incendiary device that Finns used to counter Soviet tanks was named the "Molotov cocktail", "a drink to go with the food."
• leobg 4y ago
  A tree that germinated before the Great Pyramid was built is still alive today: The Methuselah tree in Inyo County in eastern California. It is the oldest non-clonal organism that is still alive that we know.
• freemint 4y ago
  30 W of Neutrinos pass you all the time. However due to how little they interact that doesn't actually heat you up almost at all.
• credit_guy 4y ago
  Arithmetic with Roman numerals. You often hear that it was next to impossible to calculate with Roman numerals. That's not true at all. People developed a very ingenious scheme to do additions and multiplications using pebbles. Since the word for pebble in Latin is calculus, we now call calculus calculus. How did it go? You represented the digits of a number by a pebble. You drew some lines in the sand, some rows and columns. The rows represented the digit magnitude (I, V, X, etc). The columns were for the operands. Two columns for a number. Why two? Because Roman numerals sometimes use negative digits. Let's see a concrete example. You want to do the addition 28+44. That is XXVIII + XLIV. You first draw the lines and put the pebbles in the corresponding squares. Note that XLIV has two negative digits (44 = XLIV = -10 + 50 -1 + 5). So the pebble for 10 and the one for 1 are put on the left side. The first number does not have any negative digits, so no pebbles in its left column. ——————————————————————————————— L | || | o X | oo || o | ——————————————————————————————— V | o || | o I | ooo || o | ——————————————————————————————— So, now that we set the pebbles, we need to do the calculation. We can do it in many ways. Let's start by first canceling the digits that can be canceled: a positive 10 pebble with a negative 10 pebble, and a positive 1 pebble with a negative 1 pebble. The table looks now like this: ——————————————————————————————— L | || | o X | o || | ——————————————————————————————— V | o || | o I | oo || | ——————————————————————————————— At this point we reduced the initial addition 28 + 44 (XXVIII + XLIV) to the equivalent one XVII + LV ( 17 + 55). Now we just move the pebbles from the fourth column to the second column. ——————————————————————————————— L | o || | X | o || | ——————————————————————————————— V | oo || | I | oo || | ——————————————————————————————— We are almost done. We got the result as LXVVII. But this is not a valid Roman numeral, we need to do the simplification VV = X. We remove the two 5-pebbles and add a 10-pebble. Oh, and let's get rid of the last 2 columns. ———————————————— L | o || X | oo || ———————————————— V | || I | oo || ———————————————— So now our final result, in correct form, is LXXII, or 72. Multiplication can be also performed, and it's quite a lot of fun. I'll explain it in the post below.
  • credit_guy 4y ago
    (continued) Multiplication of Roman numerals. Here we need 3 columns, one each for the multiplicands and one for the result. Our example will be 12 * 61 = XII * LXI. I chose this example so that we don't need to use negative digits; negative digits can be handled easily, but you can get the idea without them. We start with the operands on the first two columns. 12 has one pebble at the X row and 2 at the units row; 61 has one pebble at the L row, one at the X row and one at the I row. The column for the result is now empty. D | || C | || ——————————————— L | o || X o | o || ——————————————— V | || I oo| o || ——————————————— We start removing pebbles from the first multiplicand. For each pebble in the multiplicand, we perform the multiplication with the second multiplicand, which in our case means we "copy" the multiplicand in the results column with an appropriate shift in rows. Since the first mutiplicand has 3 pebbles, there are three steps: Step 1: D | || C | || ———————————————- L | o || o X o | o || o ———————————————- V | || I o | o || o ———————————————- Step 2: D | || C | || ———————————————- L | o || oo X o | o || oo ———————————————- V | || I | o || oo ———————————————- Step 3: D | || o C | || o ———————————————- L | o || oo X | o || oo o ———————————————- V | || I | o || oo ———————————————- So, the result is DCLLXXXII. Of course, LL is not really "legal", so we replace it with a C, so we get DCCXXXII, or 732, which is indeed the correct number.
• taf2 4y ago
  rj11 cables I.e. telephone wires are straight wires so the pins at the end of each cable are reversed… compared to Ethernet rj45 cables they cross over so whether you are connecting the left or the right side of the wire the pin order is always the same…
• Dowwie 4y ago
  One of the most deceptively dangerous projects that a DIYer can take on is bathroom wall tiling re-grouting. Tiles may not have a strong bond to their substrate and once you remove the grout may fall into the tub/floor, usually breaking. Then, when you search for tile replacements you find no perfect match for your old tile. Always put a heavily padded rug or blankets over the tub before doing tile work so that fallen tile do not break. Also, if you re-tile, buy a lot of extras and keep them stored safely. Oscillating multi-tools are the best for removing old grout, but their vibrations will shake the wall, loosing tiles that you've removed grout from.