zkfcfbzr

joined 1 year ago
[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

If anything it probably makes the biking route take a bit longer, since you still have lots of walkers to dodge but a lot less room to do so, and on a curvier path with some unknown-to-me material that's probably not as smooth as pavement.

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Honestly seems more like an art project than a legitimately useful-for-any-purpose bridge - like it's beautiful and makes the neighborhood nicer, but also... It cuts maybe 30 seconds off of the walking route?

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

That's it, yes - each state gets as many electoral votes as it has congressmen, including senators. Most states award all of their electoral votes to whoever wins the state, with no proportionality to it at all - only two states (Nebraska and Maine, neither one large) do anything proportional with their votes.

With a system like that it's easier to see how things can end up with the less popular candidate winning - they can, for example, sneak by with 50.1% of the vote in just enough states to win, but bomb it out with 20% of the vote in all the other states. That's an extreme example specifically for the purpose of illustration, but less extreme versions of that are usually what happens.

The electoral votes also aren't distributed entirely fairly - the number of electoral votes per person tends to be larger for less populated states. The less populated states also tend to be Republican states. So in a very real sense, each person's vote counts for "more" in those states, and "less" in states with high populations. I don't believe it's really possible to fix this problem without vastly increasing the number of electoral votes, but congress currently has its size capped at 535 members for what I consider not very good reasons.

Yes, the whole system is trash from the ground up. But much of its structure is defined in the constitution itself, which is very difficult to change.

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Faithless electors have never once affected the outcome of a US election.

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (4 children)

This is not correct. The electoral college is exactly as susceptible to giving the win to the person with fewer votes as it was in 2000 and 2016. It's also not an issue that's due to any state in particular and is not an issue that can be solved by individual state action. The NPVIC would fix it but requires the cooperation of many states and is not in effect, and has stalled pretty hard in recent years.

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 31 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I am personally concerned about the possibility of Chile firing neutrinos directly at me through the Earth.

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 31 points 5 days ago

Nah, the bill was never passed in the senate so it isn't law at all. Just unenforceable posturing.

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 49 points 5 days ago (6 children)

Going through the center of the Earth, that region in China is only 2.96 Chiles from Chile. I'd like to see a corrected map that accounts for subsurface travel.

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A billionaire doesn't buy a news organization for money, they buy it for power - and every lost subscriber is a little less of that. Losing over 10% of your subscribers in one go is huge.

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

God, you're exhausting. They don't sell the data. Get over it. The email left no room for ambiguity. You're reaching so far it's embarrassing. Are you really that jaded?

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Reviving a long-dead thread for a relevant update, in a top-level post because you deleted all of your replies in the thread where it was relevant.

Mozilla did reply to my email asking for clarification on their Fakespot privacy policy, and whether they collect or sell user data, as we were discussing - though that reply took them four weeks. Their response in full:

""" Hello,

Thank you for contacting Mozilla and for your question. At this time, Fakespot does not sell or share any user data pursuant to any applicable privacy laws. The only data we share outside of Mozilla are generalized aggregated metrics with service providers who make Faksepot run to help us with logging and debugging issues to provide an uninterrupted experience for our customers, and we do not share this data for monetary gain. We are in the process of updating our privacy policy for additional clarity on all the points referenced in your email.

We trust this answers your questions and thank you again for reaching out.

Kind regards, Mozilla """

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 63 points 1 week ago

The main difference to me is the lack of a profit motive, which is the primary driver of enshittification. The federation helps harden it against things like abusive admins, since it's dead simple to jump ship to another instance in that case, but honestly that's pretty secondary to me.

17
Coin-flipping game (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world to c/dailymaths@lemmy.world
 

We're playing a game. I flip a coin. If it lands on Tails, I flip it again. If it lands on Heads, the game ends.

You win if the game ends on an even turn, and lose otherwise.

Define the following events:

A: You win the game

B: The game goes on for at least 4 turns

C: The game goes on for at least 5 turns

What are P(A), P(B), and P(C)? Are A and B independent? How about A and C?

17
Bounding a function (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world to c/dailymaths@lemmy.world
 

Consider the function defined by y = x^(sin(x)^sin(x)). Observe its graph. Find an increasing function which passes through each of its local maximums, and another increasing function which passes through each of its local minimums.

Extra credit: You'll notice the graph isn't drawn for x-values which make sin(x) negative. This is because most of those values make the function undefined - though it is defined for infinitely many points in those intervals, it just also has infinitely many holes. Since it lacks continuity here, it has no true local maxes or local mins, and doesn't impact the original problem. We can nonetheless cheat and fill in the holes by expanding the function to these regions with y = x^|sin(x)|^sin(x) (Using x^-|sin(x)|^sin(x) should also be technically valid, but is being ignored because it's discontinuous with the rest of the graph and not as pretty, but will be mentioned in my solution). Doing so adds more local maxes and local mins. The new local mins should line up with your function that finds the local maxes for the original function - but, find a new function which hits all of the new local maxes.

 

(x/5)^log_b(5) - (x/6)^log_b(6) = 0

11
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world to c/dailymaths@lemmy.world
 
Index of my unnamed series of posted problems
Date Post
2024-05-07 Find a+b
2024-05-09 What is the area of the shaded region?
2024-05-15 Solve for x
2024-05-17 Bounding a function
2024-05-22 Coin-flipping game
49
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world to c/dailymaths@lemmy.world
 

An 8x5 rectangle. If the bottom left corner is considered (0, 0), then two lines are drawn within the rectangle, from (0, 4) to (8, 1) and from (1, 5) to (7, 0). The smaller two regions of the four these lines cut the rectangle into are shaded. What is their combined area?

19
Find a+b (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world to c/dailymaths@lemmy.world
 

The image is of a large unit square with five smaller disjoint shaded squares contained entirely within it. The five smaller squares are congruent. Four of them are at each corner of the large square. The fifth is in the center, rotated diagonally, so the center of each of its sides is touched by the vertex from one of the other four squares. You are given that the common length for the five smaller congruent squares is (a-sqrt(2)) / b, where a and b are positive integers. What is the value of a + b?

 

I read this article and still walked away feeling like I didn't understand the situation that well.

Is it $56 billion that he's already been paid, and he needs to return it? $56 billion he's partially been paid, and he can keep what he has, but won't get the rest? Something more complicated?

 

Note that I'm using autohotkey v2, not v1.

I want to run two different autohotkey scripts. I want to trigger a hotstring in the first script, the output of which ends up being part of the hotstring trigger for the second script. Is this possible?

Here's a simplified version of my intended workflow.

Script 1:

#Hotstring EndChars \
#Hotstring o
#Hotstring ?
::iv::ǐ
::av::ǎ

Script 2:

#Hotstring EndChars \
#Hotstring o
#Hotstring ?
::nǐ::你
::hǎo::好

So the idea is that I can type niv\ and the first script will convert it to nǐ - then I can immediately type \ and the second script will convert it to 你. So I type niv\\ and my text goes from niv to nǐ to 你. I can then type hav\o\ and have my text go: h, ha, hav, hǎ, hǎo, 好. So I can do niv\ hav\o and get nǐ hǎo, or I can do niv\\ hav\o\ and get 你 好. Both writing systems in a reasonably simple format.

There are reasons I want to set it up like this. The first script has dozens of functions beyond writing in pinyin/chinese, and I share it with another person - so I don't want to add potentially hundreds of random Chinese hotstrings to it, just the special pinyin characters. That's why I'm using two scripts.

But I also realize I could just make "niv" and "havo" their own hotstrings which go directly to 你 and 好 without the intermediate nǐ and hǎo. I don't want to do this mostly because I think the system I have in mind is prettier - type it correctly in pinyin first, then have it correctly convert to Chinese.

All of that aside: I've gathered that this is probably possible using some combination of SendLevel and #InputLevel - but I've tried a bunch of different combinations and ideas with it, and haven't successfully had one script trigger another yet. Even in simplified toy scripts, which is a little discouraging. Ideally I'd be able to do this with as few changes to the main script I share with another person as possible - the script that handles the Chinese can be as complicated as it needs to be though. Anyone know how to make this work?

1
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world to c/whatsthisbug@lemmy.ml
 

Imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/ikTA97e

Those photos were taken under extreme magnification and bright light - the actual size is about the size of an uncooked grain of rice. Maybe smaller. This one was killed by freezing to preserve its form.

In the last few days I've started to see a lot of these - I can find one crawling across my desk every 5 or 10 minutes if I remember to look (Though I can't find where they're coming from at all). They don't move all that fast - they're frankly pretty easy to capture or squash.

In person I don't think they look very much like ants but in the closeup I think they kind of do. Also hoping they aren't termites.

Thanks for any help.

Edit: Here's a video of one scurrying across my desk too: https://imgur.com/a/ZC15gNZ

 

For example - if a popular TV show is about to have its season or series finale, or a sport league is about to have its championship game. Are there any websites that track these, without all the noise of less important shows or games, to keep track of?

ESPN.com does seem to track upcoming sporting events pretty well, but it's not that easy to tell which upcoming games are "big" for the league in question or not.

135
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
 

It seems like every shower has its own unique way of controlling water temperature and pressure. Of all the showers I've ever used, no two of which have ever been alike, I like my controls the least. Plus the faucet has started dripping lately.

Is this likely to be something I can replace on my own, without a plumber? To me, that means: Can I likely do this without damaging the wall, without having to mess with pipes, and without needing to do anything involving words like "hacksaw", "weld", or "plumbing torch"?

Basically I believe in my ability to buy a faucet and control thingie from Home Depot; to use screwdrivers, allen wrenches, pliers, and regular wrenches; to use things like plumbing tape, lubricants, and caulk; and to remember to turn the water off to the house.

Would a project like this likely require anything more complex than that? I tend to prefer shower controls that have separate knobs for hot and cold, but I figure going from a one-knob setup to a two-knob setup is definitely going to require reconfiguring the plumbing. Should sticking with a one-knob solution be okay?

I don't know if it matters but I live in Florida in the US, and this place was built in the 1980s. I doubt this matters, but my current controls work by turning the larger knob left or right for temperature, and the smaller knob for pressure.

My place does have some annoyances - like the front door is an uncommon size that's difficult to find replacements for at places like Home Depot. Is there any chance of me running into issues like that when it comes to things like the size of the pipe openings?

Thanks for any insight.

Edit: Thanks for all the replies. It's pretty clear now that this is something that could very easily end up a lot more involved and time consuming and property damaging than I'm comfortable with.

 

I'm mostly thinking about insurance here. I've been told conflicting information. I live in Florida.

I live with someone who has a driver's license and a car, but I don't have either. I've avoided getting one because I have no interest in car ownership, and I feel like if I started driving regularly I'd probably die - I have driven before but I really don't think it's something I'd ever get good at.

It's undeniable that having one would be convenient though - for rare occasions like emergencies at a minimum but also other scenarios.

I know almost nothing about how this stuff works. If I get a license, am I required to acquire and pay for insurance, even if I don't own a car or regularly drive? Or will the person I live with have to pay more for their insurance? Are there any other costs or downsides associated with it that I might not be thinking of?

Thanks.

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