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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • It’s kinda funny because that larger trend is paralleled by my own personal trend. Back in grade school, I thought the math answer keys were useful information, useful enough to make learning it unnecessary.

    Later on, I realized that the answers were meaningless without the context of the problem and put equal importance on the process as the solution.

    These days, the solutions themselves are mostly just curiosities and it’s all in the process, which parallels life itself nicely.

    Or in the context of video games, one frame displayed on the screen shows millions of results of a bunch of math being repetitively done as you play. Those solutions only matter for a brief instant before new ones are needed and the previous ones often just discarded, though occasionally saved and even sent out to the world for others to appreciate the brief moment they are relevant.


  • Logically it’s just fluid dynamics. If you dive into a pool, you’ll go deeper quicker than if you belly flop. You can’t really swim in air, but it’s the same principle. No I don’t have the math, you’d need a wind tunnel to measure each of the actual coefficients of drag, but something as simple as hand position could have a big impact on drag, which impacts both the acceleration and the terminal velocity.

    So what I’m picturing is diving (like a swim dive) off the building, then rolling into a horizontal position after some time with the higher acceleration. It should at least lower the expected height you’d need to jump from to reach the horizontal terminal velocity.

    That said, the height to reach diving terminal velocity would be even higher than your first number (unless the drag coefficient you used was actually for the vertical position).

    Get a wing suit and the difference between a dive and glide is even more extreme (to the point where terminal velocity might need to be described as lift instead).




  • Yeah, when I got my most recent GPU, my plan had been to also get a 4k monitor and step up from 1440p to 4k. But when I was sorting through the options to find the few with decent specs all around, I realized that there was nothing about 1440p that left me dissapointed and the 4k monitor I had used at work already indicated that I’d just be zooming the UI anyways.

    Plus even with the new GPU, 4k numbers weren’t as good as 1440p numbers, and stutters/frame drops are still annoying… So I ended up just getting an ultra-wide 1440p monitor that was much easier to find good specs for and won’t bother with 4k for a monitor until maybe one day if it becomes the minimum, kinda like how analog displays have become much less available than digital displays, even if some people still prefer the old ones for some purposes. I won’t dig my heels in and refuse to move on to 4k, but I don’t see any value added over 1440p. Same goes for 8k TVs.


  • So what? I’m tired of shit aimed at the lowest common denominator and won’t comment as if I need to appeal to or be understood by those who can’t be bothered to learn a bit about things that play a major role in society.

    They are tired of hearing about linux? Well I’m tired of hearing about whining about windows, plus I blame their inattention for enablong the enshitification in the first place because windows would be much better if more people were willing to look at alternative options. A lot of shit would be better if that were the case.

    Though usually I don’t bother engaging at all and only really engage when there’s pushback saying it’s hard (I found it less effort overall than installing windows and getting it to a state where I don’t hate interacting with it so much), or these kind of arguments that imply because it’s not as accessible a lot of people, it shouldn’t be brought up or something?





  • I recently learned of MDisc (there’s a CD and DVD version, too, iirc) and decided to get a burner and convert my old data CDs.

    While I haven’t verified every single bit, I did check that the files copied off of it were still functional and didn’t see any issues. Also didn’t get any errors. I was surprised because I’ve had some of them for over 20 years now and didn’t do more than put them in CD binders to protect them (during the days when I didn’t even consider the longevity of the media, other then obvious things like scratches.

    Only disc I wasn’t able to get the data from was a packet CD, which was a special format that facilitated treating the disc more like diskettes, where you could read or write at will via the filesystem rather than writing the disc as a special package from the start (or having multiple sessions if there’s still room on the disc after one such write). I was able to find references to the tech, though not if it was a standard or just a name a few different companies used for different implementations, but I wasn’t able to find Linux drivers that could do anything other than rip the ISO and a few strings or tell me it can’t find anything. Though it’s possible that corruption is really what happened here because I’d expect RW CDs to last a shorter time than the write once ones.

    Though I suppose I could try it on my old windows machine and see if drivers are more readily available there.






  • The answer is stable because the liar will always say the bad door is safe and the truth teller will always say the safe door is safe, therefore the liar will always say that the truth teller will direct you to the danger door and the truth teller will tell you the same.

    I tried to add some self-reference to the question to make a paradoxical answer but can’t see a wording that even causes something like “this statement is false”, at least not one about which door to pick.

    Only ways I can think of start with the paradox right in the question. Like “If the other guard said, ‘this statement is false’, would you believe him?”

    Sucks someone downvoted just for asking questions to better understand this less than straightforward thing. I’ve always believed that if you think something is wrong, you should challenge it, because even if you are wrong, the resulting discussion can help you understand why your previous perspective was flawed, which might then cascade to other things you didn’t realize you were also mistaken about.



  • Yeah, it’s impossible to say one way or the other because the setup is underdefined and leaves a lot of room for ambiguity or loopholes.

    On that note, don’t beat yourself up or consider yourself stupid because of that. Even though it’s questionable whether it would work or give them room to screw you, I think it was a good creative solution to the riddle that I’ve never seen before. If you came up with that on your own, I’d consider that a sign of good potential. Nurture and refine that, don’t try to beat it down to avoid being wrong ever. (Haha I really hope you’re not like 50 or that might come off as really condescending rather than encouraging).

    Like, thinking about it more, I think it can be resolved by changing the “and” to an “or”, at least on the lying side. Though that would open up the truth side to be able to sneak in a lie while technically telling the truth. But there might be another adjustment that would close the loophole entirely and give a solution that doesn’t require a reference to the other guard’s answer.



  • (Split it up into another comment since it’s a different idea).

    Another thing that DMs can do is punish meta gaming with things that go against expectations. Like maybe some secret doors are actually the release mechanism for some damgerous monsters that act as security when someone sounds an intruder alert. Or the listen check is to see if you can hear the siren’s song in the distance as you pass a nesting area.

    Maybe the pressure plate is connected to a power source and system to bring the facility the players just entered online, turning on lights and opening doors that are otherwise locked when it’s in mothball mode because the wizards who built it assumed the secret entrance would provide enough security. So while it looks like a trap, it’s just some home automation that would make everything easier. Then if they skip the “trap”, gotta have a scene where they return with someone else who does step on it to leave them wondering if they made a mistake or if they did it the more interesting way.

    I need to find a group one of these days, it’s been too long since I’ve played a tabletop RPG and I was a naive power gamer when I last did, so I’m curious about playing a game without min/maxing.

    Though the best game I’ve played was with a friend who wanted epic shit like in Devil May Cry. There were no real rules, there were rolls but pass or fail was more of a vibe check than anything specific because the more you described a cool action in detail, the more likely it was to succeed. It was pretty awesome and fun.

    For context, DMC features epic scenes like a man-sized entity fighting and beating a skyscraper-sized titan, blocking bullets with swords, and I can’t remember if this is actually in one of the games but even if it isn’t, it kinda shows the level they are on, but I think there’s even at least one scene where a character uses bullets as stepping stones to get within sword range of someone firing down on him from high up.