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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • The old man and the sea. I learned to hate reading because of assigned books in school and this was the one that drove that hatred most. At times in my childhood I enjoyed reading a couple of novels, but assigned books absolutely destroyed any interest I had. Also having religious cult like parents that always had something stupid to say about reading had a major impact.


  • j4k3@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlWhat was the worst book you’ve ever read?
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    14 hours ago

    Herbert didn’t want to continue Dune and was pressured to write a follow up. It was an era when most science fiction was still published in periodicals. The first half of Messiah are the results that were then compiled into the start. It is like a really shitty draft. Everyone experiences the same thing. I put it down for quite a while too. If you can make it to the second half, it will become one you can’t put down, like the first. It does setup well for what is to come. After I got back into Messiah, I read all the way to the end of the entire series, even the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson stuff. Those last two are not like Frank’s writings, but are their own thing and still more readable than the first half of Messiah. IMO the first half of Messiah is a great example of what happens when Art takes a back seat to an anxious banking type mentality. Bankers make terrible artists and advisors.

    GEoD is IMO the best book in the series as it eviscerates many cultural norms and deep assumptions like fascist altruism, eternal boredom, the coexistence of misogyny and feminism, manipulation that is both brutal and kind, and if an alien can be human. It even infers the question of potential delusional prescience in my opinion. It will make you think about the motivation of leaders and what you may endure because of their vision of a future.







  • Watching the game, there are many times when it is obvious that a receiver is a few steps ahead from an overhead perspective. Abstracting what I’ve seen when I played in HS, the view from up field obscures the real time separation in this kind of instance. It would be very possible the show an overlay of color that indicates how well each receiver is covered in real time along with the ideal pass to intercept distance and speed tailored to the physiology of the QB, i.e. max pass right line 33 yards 2.5sec 2.4sec 2.3sec… This would not be additional information to process specifically, but more like color overlays like the target location to throw is a green-yellow-red pin in view with all players doing the same and an audible system of alarms to indicate dangers and action required in the pocket. The point in AR here is not to add new independent information, it is to firm up and clarify the information the individual is intuitively processing at the human brain’s very limited frequency. Microcontrollers are time machines that turn seconds into luxuriously long days by comparison of available clock cycles. Accessing those extra days worth of time to do research and assess the situation should prove useful to the limited biological compute system playing the game. We are well beyond the point where all of the surrounding information in the game can be sensed and processed autonomously.


  • IMO that adds to the appeal if there is disparity in the tech. I don’t think the tech would really make a difference other than adding a few layers of interesting broadcasting information that might make the game slightly less dull for someone like myself, although not anywhere near enough to watch a 1 hour game tailored around over 1 hour of obscene ads I find grossly offensive. Americans love their underdog team stories. The idea that limiting funds has anything to do with it is bogus as teams are renowned for buying wins through various means. Such tech would normalize military service and likely have a trickle down effect to lower levels. Standardization would likely reduce cost and could likely get a DARPA like subsidized program as it is directly connected to battle tech. It would also potentially showcase military tech in a strategically advantageous way through both showing a hand at the poker table of geopolitics while not necessarily revealing the true capabilities or extent of actual battle hardware tech.




  • It is basically I/O limitations, and the majority of lights in this area likely have an origin in cycling lights as far as the silicon is concerned. I think that is the original high profit niche that drove a custom asic for the application of a PWM LED controller with integrated charging. Pretty much all other lights are built to a price. The chip likely has additional functionality but the actual designs are all built to a bare minimum price (or max profit margin). From this perspective, you’ll see a lot of the feature set differently. On a bike, one button is convenient as well. They usually fash too bright because of the default clock speed of the chip and a design that does not deviate from the chip’s example implementation.


  • I’m not saying it is no big deal to regularly expose one’s self to it.

    I know about how small of an amount can be smelled from building a power supply for a UV light, making mistakes, and yet still smelling the thing. It was back driving some circuit block that shouldn’t have been enough power to do anything, there was no visible effect, but I could still smell the faint smell of O3. Even with a tiny bulb, the smell is nearly instantaneous when the light is powered. Running one around anything that can rust is a bad idea. It is almost as bad as working with hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide as enchants; everything goes super rusty fast. I don’t get exposed to it regularly, so I’m not worried. Most hotel rooms smell pretty strongly of O3 in the many I have stayed in and that is probably the most that the average person gets exposed for any extended length of time. The alternative is probably worse, but still people don’t worry about that one too much.



  • It is 6w before power supply losses and then a tube that is likely under 20% efficient. The primary thing that gets you with welding is the fraction of a second before an auto darkening lens activates. It is a tiny amount of time, but it adds up. Or all those times you accidentally touch the tungsten to the pool with tig. Welding has a wide spectrum, but it is the power that matters most here. The frequency and power are two separate and unrelated things. Like your microwave and WiFi are both 2.4 GHz machines. Your WiFi in your home router is limited to 100 milliwatts and is totally harmless. Your microwave needs a Faraday cage built in to avoid cooking you from the inside out because it is likely around 1500 watts. At 220nm the frequency doesn’t pass through skin or eye fluid and the power output of the light is low. Seriously, try getting into things like telescope filters where you’re trying to isolate certain frequencies. It is challenging at these frequencies to find anything that is transparent. Of all of my science books, my optics handbook is by far the largest and hardest for me to follow. That isn’t saying much, but I have built my own telescope electronics and eyepieces, along with hobby electronics, designing and etching circuit boards and photolithography using various UV lights I have built. Six watts is nothing major. I would be more concerned about how limited of an area one light can cover.