FourPacketsOfPeanuts

joined 2 years ago
[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 2 points 5 hours ago

Depends how you learn. Being mindful of what your goal is helps. C# can be used for console apps, it can also be used to make ASP.Net websites, further afield you can program the Unity games engine with C#. Each of these will have "absolute beginner most basic first steps" type tutorials out there. They'll all have some similarity as you'll need to just learn the C# syntax one way out another, but it miles easier doing this if you're vaguely interested in the types of apps you're heading towards.

If all else fails, message me, I was there once, about 20 years ago..

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 1 points 5 hours ago

If it's your thing 3Brown1Blue do an excellent deep dive on neural networks including LLMs that's really informative

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 2 points 5 hours ago

Name dropping's fine lol, I just wanted to discourage obvious spammers away from top level comments

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 2 points 5 hours ago

Amazing the progress that's been made in that area

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Yes! My ten year old brain would have melted at what's available off the shelf now. A raspberry pi zero is, what, £20 or something? Picos I think are intended to compete directly with Arduino are even cheaper. That's completely nuts

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 2 points 8 hours ago

Despite Israel lying, the fact Hamas are psychotic extremists means on some occasions Israel doesn't need to lie..

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 22 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

(UK) Last time I started in a unioned job the company (voluntarily?) told me about it during my induction, there were flyers in the break room, a poster in the break room with a named representative on my floor (a regular worker like me, it was voluntary) and official rep who I could call. Maybe once or twice a year the union did a presentation in a meeting room at the office and you could could take the hour (unpaid) to go and watch, after which you were encouraged to sign up. Semi regular emails through the year to my company email address about pay and bonus negotiation etc.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 14 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

And even then the European countries that feel they're ahead of the rest tackling racism it's usually only the urban university educated talking with their fingers in their ears ignoring the majority of the rest of their country.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 8 points 11 hours ago

I feel slightly less dirty afterwards than at McDonald's...

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 3 points 15 hours ago

I know Jordan Peterson has a lot of followers. He says it's the women's fault men are lonely

Peterson has a habit of saying things that might technically be true in isolation but will then disagree with you when you try and make a conclusion from it. In this case he has also said it's men's fault for not making women a good enough 'offer'.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 4 points 1 day ago

It is indeed, it's where I spend most of my time! Absolutely amazing.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 2 points 1 day ago

I try to remember to appreciate it the way ten year old me would have (when still loading computer games from tape). It's so much more satisfying.

 

I was listening to the New Year's Day concert by the Vienna philharmonic and wondered who one of the composers was so used a popular song recognition app. (I expected it would make some fuzzy match on the piece and give me the name + composer). To my amazement it did give the name and composer but as played by the Vienna philharmonic in 2005 in the same location. The orchestra does not have the same members as 19 years ago, nor was it the same conductor, so it seemed the piece was matched on the acoustics of the Musikverein where they were playing, which I found astonishing.

13
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by FourPacketsOfPeanuts to c/[email protected]
 

Believe I've finished this (if anyones stuck on any clues am happy to help), but am just mystified as to how some of the clues are supposed to work..

34a A posh car taking carriers outside department store

_ A _ R _ D _

So for this I had "Harrods". So "department store". The "posh car" is rolls royce giving the RR. But I'm lost as to how the remaining letters on the outside (HAODS) are "carriers". It almost seems like a typo for HANDS, which would make sense, but obviously doesn't give Harrods, or anything else that makes sense

Help? An I missing something or is this a mistake by the setter?

 

For the regulars this ought to be easier than your usual broadsheet cryptic, and I believe I've completed it, am just mystified as to how some of the clues are supposed to work..

34a A posh car taking carriers outside department store

_ A _ R _ D _

So for this I had "Harrods". So "department store". The "posh car" is rolls royce giving the RR. But I'm lost as to how the remaining letters on the poster (HAODS) are "carriers". It almost seems like a typo for HANDS, which would make sense, but obviously doesn't give Harrods, or anything else that makes sense

Help? An I missing something or is this a mistake by the setter?

 

I am, however, watching Death on the Nile on bbc 2

 

It was very satisfying

83
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by FourPacketsOfPeanuts to c/dull_mens_club
 

I was in town to set up a new banking account but wanted to check the deals on my existing ones first. I would have used my phone for this but I have recently got a new phone and would need to join a public WiFi to reinstall my previous apps (if it was possible to do this over my unlimited 5G connection, the way to do this wasn't apparent). I attempted to join the library's public WiFi but needed to supply my membership number which I had not brought with me. No problem I thought as I happened to have my passport and I could surely show this to the customer service desk to prove who I was. The person there was helpful, but said I would need to also show proof of address in order to release my membership number. They suggested I access one of my banking apps on my phone which would show my home address on a statement. But getting my banking apps working was the very reason I needed to join the WiFi in the first place! I asked why proving my address was relevant to getting my membership number when I had already proven who I was, and they admitted they didn't know. We both mused at how things like this highlighted the futility of life. I returned home having not accomplished any of the things I set out to do.

 

A family member put on a game show that included Brian Blessed and I commented it 'must be old as he's been dead for a while'?

Nope. 88 and going strong.

Who else has surprised you?

 

I feel the obvious answer should be "no" but help me think this through. It came from the previous Q on blackholes and am posting here for more visibility.

So considering two blackholes rotating about each other and eventually combining. It's in this situation that we get gravitational waves which we can detect (LIGO experiments). But what happens in the closing moments when the blackholes are within each others event horizon but not yet combined (and so still rotating rapidly about each other). Do the gravitational waves abruptly stop? Or are we privy to this "information" about what's going on inside an event horizon.

Thinking more generally, if the distribution of mass inside an event horizon can affect spacetime outside of the horizon then what happens in the following situation:

imagine a gigantic blackhole, one that allows a long time between passing the horizon and being crushed. You approach the horizon in a giant spacecraft and hover at a safe distance. You release a supermassive probe to descend past the horizon. The probe is supermassive in the way a mountain is supermassive. The intention is to be able to detect it's location via perturbation in the gravity field alone. Similar to how an actual mountain causes a pendulum to hang a miniscule yet measurable distance off the vertical.

Say the probe now descends down past the horizon, at some distance off the normal. Say a quarter mile to the 'left' if you consider the direction of the blackholes gravitational pull.

Let's say you had set the probes computer to perform some experiment, and a simple "yay/nay" indicated by it either staying on its current course down (yay) or it firing it's rockets laterally so that it approaches the direct line been you and the singularity and ends up about a quarter mile 'right' (to indicate nay).

The question is, is the relative position of the mass of this probe detectable by examining the resultant gravitational force exerted on your spaceship? Had it remained just off of centre minutely to the 'left' where it started to indicate the probe communicating 'yay' to you, or has it now deflected minutely to the right indicating 'nay'?

Whether the answer to this is yes or no, I'm confused what would happen in real life?

If the probes relative location is not detectable via gravity once it crosses the horizon, what happens as it approaches? Your very sensitive gravity equipment originally had a slight deviation to the left when both you and probe were outside the horizon. Does it abruptly disappear when it crosses the horizon? If so where does it go? The mass of the probe will eventually join with the mass of the singularity to make the blackhole slightly more massive. But does the gravitational pull of its mass instantly change from the location in the horizon where it crossed (about a quarter mile to the 'left') to now being at the singularity directly below. Anything "instant" doesn't seem right.

Or.. it's relative position within the horizon is detectable based on you examining the very slight deviations of your super sensitive pendulum equipment on board your space craft. And you're able to track it's relative position as it descends, until it's minute contribution to gravity has coalesced with the main blackhole.

But if this is the case then aren't we now getting information from within the horizon? Couldn't you set your probe to do experiments and then pass information back to you by it performing some rudimentary dance of manoeuvres? Which also seems crazy?

So both options seem crazy? Which is it?

(Note, this is a thought experiment. The probe is supermassive using some sort of future tech that's imaginable but far from possible by today's standards. Think a small planet with fusion powered engines or whatever. The point is, in principle, mass is detectable, and mass is moveable. Is this a way to peek inside a blackhole??)

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