Recent submissions

Comment · 1 year ago
Sure, but that's a fair bit of extra time and friction to watch an HDR video versus just clicking the play button on Windows or Mac and being done with it. It's also nice on Windows how every Steam game launches and runs without a "missing libfoo.so" error like you get for a number of games on Linux, though I'm glad Linux support continues to improve and look forward to switching back to Linux from Windows when there are sufficiently few issues I have to research how to work around and fix.
Comment · 1 year ago
One can choose to have neither a Samsung Account nor a Google Account on a Samsung phone, as I have done, and use F-Droid and Aurora Store as I mentioned in a parent comment. The linked video shows that all the settings needed to disable the bad behavior are already included on the device with a nice UI. Meanwhile with an iPhone one is stuck with the App Store and Apple can and has remotely deleted apps. Apple has deleted data tethering apps. Apple has deleted the VPN apps of Chinese users. Apple also is trying to memory hole that time it was going to scan one's private photos on one's own phone. It's very clear iPhone users do not have the final say over who ultimately controls their devices.
Comment · 1 year ago
Yes, I concede these niche operating systems won't show me ads. But can I play an HDR YouTube video in a web browser on my HDR display using FreeBSD or OpenBSD? No. One can't even do this with Linux yet as far as I know, though Firefox on Linux recently in the past few months now has experimental HDR support (haven't tried it yet).
Comment · 1 year ago
I can disable the Ubuntu terminal ad in seconds, whereas the last time I tried to install Debian I gave up after several hours of dealing with getting the correct proprietary firmware blobs, etc., that the Ubuntu installer mostly handles for me. But ultimately Ubuntu doesn't have as effortless of desktop hardware support for gaming laptops/PCs as Windows does.
Comment · 1 year ago
You can quickly disable all the Windows start menu ads using either gpedit.msc or regedit. On Linux Ubuntu there's a least one Ubuntu Pro terminal ad I remember having to disable, so no OS is immune from this. As a long time user of Linux, Mac, and Windows, Windows involves the fewest time concerning hassles to tweak a system to be perfectly comfortable and distraction free. With Linux I have spent way too much time solving hardware issues like a laptop not waking from sleep or a bluetooth device freezing Gnome or NVidia drivers not playing nice with Wayland, etc. Linux has been way too slow to support HDR monitor output for YouTube. Mac has way too many issues with third party hardware. If you use a non-Apple mouse with a Macbook the scroll wheel direction will be wrong until you research and install a third party scroll reverser utility. I also remember having a lot of trouble figuring out what third party software I had to install to disable mouse acceleration on the Mac (Steelseries Exactmouse was one older solution). Last I used a Mac the Night Shift feature didn't work with non-Apple monitors so I had to research and install the third party Flux solution, but I recall that had some bugs and its own privacy concerns.... Meanwhile, Windows works great with all my non-Microsoft hardware because that's the nature of its open ecosystem. Windows 11 now also does proper desktop color management like the Mac has had for ages.
Comment · 1 year ago
Only downside is no blue bubbles texting family, ha ha. Seriously, the switch was easy. My Samsung phone included a migration app that transferred over all photos and other important stuff from my old iPhone. I love the Samsung S-Pen, something you can't get on iPhone.
Comment · 1 year ago
At least with Windows one can 100% disable start menu ads using either gpedit or regedit. A major reason I switched from iOS to Android are the much more powerful adblocking options for browsers (Brave, Firefox, etc.). On Android I can use F-Droid and Aurora Store and install a bunch of Google Play Store apps without a Google account. I can use a proper terminal with a real filesystem and git.
Comment · 1 year ago
When a 300mph Japanese maglev passes close by it looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gp4DcRsELc

Imagine living in the SF Bay Area and seeing a BART train move like that? Just unreal.

Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 1 year ago
> Nah, just create the world at a state where modern medicine can cure cancer, like we're on the slow road to doing.

We would have cures for every illness if not for human selfishness and evil. Look at all the money and effort spent on war during the last 10,000 years, on legal fees and disputes for the last 5,000 years. Rather than love our neighbors as ourselves, too many of us in our hearts say, "This land is MINE! This money is MINE! This patent is MINE! The credit is MINE!" If all this effort went to instead cultivating gifted individuals to research and cure diseases we'd have all our cures.

Comment · 2 years ago
I needed this cute video to tell me what the heck conker is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLGuZZraIqg

You and your opponent each attach a chestnut to a shoestring. You try to destroy your opponent's stringed chestnut by swinging your own stringed chestnut at it. The video explains different ways to cheat, such as coating the chestnut with nail varnish.

Comment · 2 years ago
Only iPad Pro has M4? Once upon a time during the personal computer revolution in the 1980s, little more than a decade after man walked the moon, humans had sufficiently technologically developed that it was possible to compile and run programs on the computers we bought, whether the computer was Apple (I,II,III, Mac), PC, Commodore, Amiga, or whatever. But these old ways were lost to the mists of time. Is there any hope this ancient technology will be redeveloped for iPad Pro within the next 100 years? Specifically within Q4 of 2124, when Prime will finally offer deliveries to polar Mars colonies? I want to buy an iPad Pro M117 for my great-great-great-great-granddaughter but only if she can install a C++ 212X compiler on it.
Comment · 2 years ago
Consider a simpler example from basic math. Is 1/x infinite when x==0? The answer is that 1/x is undefined when x==0. In calculus one can take limits as x "approaches" 0 but x==0 is still undefined. Likewise, the Lorentz length contraction is undefined when traveling at c.
Comment · 2 years ago
How were these drawings made? It seems the only accurate way would be to painstakingly excavate soil around the root systems a few tiny clumps at a time so as to record how the root system really is shaped prior to any disturbance. This would mean slowly observing the root system from shallower to deeper levels, then reconstructing the side views seen in the drawings.

Growing the plants in some sort of 2D glass observation vessel in order to observe the roots from the side would cause the roots to grow more unusually than in nature.

Very curious how these were done.

Comment · 2 years ago

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