retrac

37 ms·

541.
by retrac 3y ago
Prescribed burns (intentional, hopefully controlled, fires) are increasingly common in modern forestry and wildfire prevention. They're done in Canada and Australia, and from a quick search, it was brought back into practice in the 19
542.
by retrac 3y ago
Fire has been a major force in the evolution of land-based life. Even more so in the distant past. In the Cretaceous (70 - 140 million years ago) both temperatures and the oxygen ratio in the atmosphere appear to have been higher than now
543.
by retrac 3y ago
A good majority of Americans believe violent crime is increasing. They have believed this consistently, for decades. The average American has experience with crime, either directly or through their social circle. Is it offensive to dismi
544.
by retrac 3y ago
I think, in fairness, that it has been a difficult problem. Today, losing material is rather inexcusable, given the cheapness and ease of digital storage. But until recently, archiving programs was genuinely expensive and difficult. It&#x
545.
by retrac 3y ago
> It's kind of mind-blowing to know that the thing used to run an entire PC was later used for pocket toys like the Tamagotchi a handful of years later. Perhaps ironically, all of the microprocessors of the early and mid 1970s, the
546.
by retrac 3y ago
"Electronic brain" or "electric brain". Stereotypical 1950s term for a computer. The analogy between the telegraph and the nervous system goes back much further. In 1855, William F. Channing wrote: > The electric te
547.
by retrac 3y ago
Have you read Euclid's Elements? Did you enjoy the proofs? And the general process? The conclusions in the Elements are what any 10th grade geometry student should already know. It's not the conclusions though, but the journey
548.
by retrac 3y ago
I do believe that Star Trek has become a sort of scripture, or mythology. It's clear a lot of viewers interpret it as such. Many episodes of The Next Generation are, in essence, morality plays. That genre doesn't exist anymore,
549.
by retrac 3y ago
> Not just some sort of BIOS but the full MacOS System. It's not quite the full system. It may be best to think of the original Mac OS as a software library. The application is in primary control, and uses the OS as a library dir
550.
by retrac 3y ago
Telecommunications were the first application for nearly every principle and technology now used in computers. In the 1930s, Claude Shannon was trying to optimize the phone network's automatic switching fabric built out of millions and
551.
by retrac 3y ago
Compression is abstraction.
552.
by retrac 3y ago
Syphilis is not transferred in the semen like that. It is transferred directly. From bacteria on the skin, pressed against the skin or, more often, a mucous membrane. In the initial stage there's usually a skin ulceration which is in
553.
by retrac 3y ago
Technically, the human rights offences aren't applied by nationality (as parent poster brought up); those laws have universal jurisdiction. Most countries have similar laws; the Rome Statute requires that genocide and crimes against h
554.
by retrac 3y ago
Channel capacity is b * log2 (1 + snr) where b is the bandwidth in Hz and snr is the linear signal-to-noise ratio. The voice passband in the old telephone system is 3 kHz. And 60 dB SNR average over the passband was typical for a clear voi
555.
by retrac 3y ago
The underlying distinction is about mass versus countable nouns. You can't refer to a sheet of paper as "a paper" (that refers to something else - a completed document). And you can't call a piece of furniture "a f
556.
by retrac 3y ago
> historically cable TV was just transmitting radio signals over coaxial cable instead of radio Well, to be pedantic, that is still how it works. And it's how cable Internet works. And it's also how a lot of techniques over t
557.
by retrac 3y ago
> Really? I have a hard time imagining someone using drugs on the street offering to share with a kid. These people have families. They may be parents themselves. They are living in a community, one which has children. Here in Canada,
558.
by retrac 3y ago
I was terribly addicted for a decade, smoking and then vaping, and for me, withdrawal was almost intolerable. For about three days, it was a terrible experience. I felt sick, raged with anger, cried, felt unhinged, and even had minor visu
559.
by retrac 3y ago
There's a related field, phonosemantics, about the inherent meaning of a word because of how it sounds. (Words which sound like what they should sound like are, I would guess, pleasing.) Onomatopoeia fall in this category: bang, cra
560.
by retrac 3y ago
It's like a sunburn. The radiation damages the DNA of the cells. DNA damage like that triggers a cellular self-destruct mechanism. It's a cancer-prevention mechanism. So over the next few days as the skin or corneal cells star
561.
by retrac 3y ago
Most of the components in the original Apple II are still manufactured. The character ROM is hard to find. The 16 kilobit DRAMs are definitely obsolete, but not exactly rare (dozens of millions were manufactured). Since it's mostly
562.
by retrac 3y ago
It is what happens when a language freezes its orthography in time. English is spelled as it was 350 years ago. There's a great weight of history. How it was spelled in Greek, French or Latin has an impact. Other languages do this.
563.
by retrac 3y ago
Most jobs 100 years ago no longer exist. Most jobs that exist today were created by the advancing march of the machines. Bill Joy (of Sun Microsystems, and the vi editor) wrote an article in Wired more than 20 years ago, [1] "Why the
564.
by retrac 3y ago
An actual 8008 chip is a rare antique at this point. Some people collect ICs, either for nostalgia and amusement, and I guess a few as a serious investment. If you have one it's nice to have a circuit to put the chip in. Electronical
565.
by retrac 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishers_Weekly_list_of_best... Sinclair Lewis has multiple titles listed - best-selling author of the 1920s - later a Nobel Prize winner in literature. I'm not familiar with a lot
566.
by retrac 3y ago
I would suggest reading reviews and literary critiques, written by authors you appreciate and respect. I rarely regret pursuing a book recommendation from someone whose own writing has engrossed me.
567.
by retrac 3y ago
In a few rare spots of the world, gold is literally just in the dirt and rocks. There's certainly some gold in the UK; there's still probably thousands of extractable tonnes of gold in the UK. Whether a deposit is economic to e
568.
by retrac 3y ago
> Also, why the careful removal of the head from the body? Both public display of an executed person, and mutilation of the corpse, have a history in several cultures. For example, in the case of the Ancient Egyptians, integrity of the
569.
by retrac 3y ago
Everywhere, all the time. It is ubiquitous and one of the normal human symbiotes. You probably have some on your skin and in your mouth right now. It can cause candidiasis - thrush - usually of the mouth or genitals. This is rare excep
570.
by retrac 3y ago
It reminds me of the Talmud [1], particularly the oral Torah, with the commentaries attached. On the inside (in purple in the image) we have the actual writing down of the Mishnah, a record of part of the oral Torah. Immediately underneath

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