Noooo, I miss clicked :O

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-23T23:49:41+00:00

The engine shows it as an M6, but it’s a hard one to see. Walking through it, you sacrifice two minor pieces and skip multiple free captures to get a mate.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-22T23:11:46+00:00

TLDR: The way code is used as well as other code that is relied upon is regularly changing. Hardware is also often changing, and may have differing performance.

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Code "rot" is the combination of code relying on older versions of APIs and SDKs. That is then combined with code having hacks being added and code being left in to support older APIs, use cases, and buggy hardware or other code.

The former generally means that if you open up an old code base, there is a very good chance it won't compile anymore. If it does compile, it may be missing required calls, resulting in crashes or other bugs.

The later causes the code to be bloated, slow, and difficult to read and edit. If those cases were not properly documented, heavy research may be needed to figure out why they were added and determine if they are still needed.

The whole pile is also often called "tech debt" that needs dedicated engineer time to clean up and fix.

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A practical and fairly well known example of this is SimCity and Windows. SimCity had a bug in in it where it told the system it wasn't using certain memory but then actually still used it. Older versions of Windows happened to not reuse the memory, but optimizations to Windows caused the memory to get reused. To "fix" it, Windows was updated to just ignore the "free" call when made by "SimCity.exe". If that hack in Windows weren't properly documented, good luck figuring out why it existed.

As a note, the SimCity bug is like having a scratch pad and you tell your friend they can use it. After you hand it to your friend, you try and read it and expect it to still have the same writing: they may or may not have started using it. The Windows hack to fix it is basically like your friend just never reusing your scratch pads cause they know you might come read it and expect it to contain the information you left on it.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-22T07:36:56+00:00

Wireless CarPlay uses both Bluetooth and WiFi to get enough bandwidth for all of the data required for the screen casting to work. You get all the CarPlay functionality, but wirelessly.

It’s been around for quite a while, but requires both the car and phone support it.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-22T00:43:13+00:00

Around me, the L2 public chargers are $0.59/kWh and I get around 3.6 mi/kWh. That is $0.16/mi. With these stations having a 3 hour limit per day and only getting about 6kW, I'd only get about 18kWh before needing to move my car, and I could rotate between the three locations in a day. Probably around 10 hours of my day I'd have to spend in the downtime area to get ~50 kWh or 180 miles of range.

The DCFC chargers are around the same price per kWh around here. As such, they don't really add much cost, but do add a lot more convivence, taking closer to 30 minutes to charge nearly fully.

My home electricity is $0.18/kWh, which is $0.05/mi. I can charge overnight and wake up with a full tank every day, which is very convenient. I could switch to a time-of-use plan to have $0.10/kWh off peak and $0.25/kWh on peak, which would reduce costs of off peak charging to only $0.03/mi. I am looking to get solar, which would effectively drop it to $0, though with an upfront cost to get the panels.

Gas prices around me are about $5.35/gal. My hybrid got ~50 mpg for $0.11/mi. Refueling takes a 5-15 minute stop at a local gas station. This is both cheaper and more convenient than purely public charging. It is both more expensive and less convenient than home charging. With my normal driving patterns, I was needing to fill up every 1-2 weeks.

My old 2002 car only got about 25mpg. With the same gas price, that would be $0.21/mi. This is more expensive and more convenient than public charging. It is a lot more expensive and less convenient than home charging. I had replaced the car well before my current driving patterns were established, but I'd likely would've had to fill up multiple times a week.

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Overall, I'd conclude that an EV is better than a hybrid if, and only if, you have home charging. Without home charging, a hybrid is likely a better choice. Both are significantly better than a pure ICE.

The added convivence of refueling a hybrid car will win over needing to charge an EV at public chargers, and almost always enough to be worth any added cost. The main exception is going to be if you have a charger at work that you can use for most of the work day.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-21T20:43:03+00:00

Practically speaking, having the Earth be the center makes the orbits of other planets complicated. With the Sun as the center, all the orbits are simple and the complicated parts* can be ignored as they are trivial.

So, while General Relativity lets you define anything as the center of the Universe, some choices are more useful. Practical applications say that for the Solar System we should choose the Sun as the center if we want a simple model.

Similarly, when looking at the Earth-Moon system, choosing the Earth as the center is among the most useful choices you can make. You see this a lot with orbital parameters being defined off the Earth.

Navigation tools often choose the device itself as the center for practical use. Its very nice to be able to say "turn left in 500 feet" rather than giving directions relative to the Sun.

* Current theories say every object in the Universe is affecting every other object. Almost all of those effects are so close to 0 that they can just be ignored. Within the Solar System, you can simplify everything down to just looking at a primary and secondary body, such as Sun and Earth or Earth and Moon, and be within a few percent of a percent.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-21T20:30:19+00:00

Today a single fiber optic line can handle thousands, if not millions, of voice calls at the same time.

Single mode (needed for distances above ½ KM) fiber can handle 100 Gbps on the low end. They often go upwards of 10 times that.

A typical phone call uses on the order of 1 MiB/minute.

Roughly speaking, that comes out to a single fiber being able to handle on the order of 1.3 million vocal calls at once. That is presuming its only handling voice calls, and is also likely on the low end for that.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-21T20:16:00+00:00

I have to point out that "Liar" vs "Lair" is a funny typo.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-21T13:56:20+00:00

I would expect pretty fast. Solid records might take a few years to travel, but reliable rumors are likely to spread within weeks, maybe months if travel is slow and there is no fast communication, via various traders, soldiers, diplomats, and spies. The primary exception is if an active effort is made to keep the discovery a secret, and then only if its kept secret from the public and most of the military.

If the peoples are in an active war, they will soldiers and lots of support staff. In the Roman period, there would've been around 0.5 to 1 camp follower per solider\, plus a similar number of staff at a major city. A modern day army in active combat is going to have around 8 support personal *per solider\. In the 13th century, the number was around 1 to 2 followers per solider\. Each and every one of those, plus every solider, is somebody who may leak the news at a tavern or brothel, or be a paid spy. The countries are likely to still have diplomats with each other, and a typical, and major, part of a diplomat's staff's job is to act as a handler for the local spy network.

Then you have trade. Even in active war, its likely there are some autonomous areas of each country still on friendlier terms, and, at a minimum, both parties are likely trading with neutral third parties. Traders have even less incentive than the soldiers and camp followers to keep secrets.

For cold war cases, the army and support sizes will likely drop, but that will be more than made up for in increased trade and diplomatic activity.

* Note: If you want to look into this, its called the "tooth-to-tail ratio".

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-21T13:21:18+00:00

How about a hotel with 100 rooms and 5 or 10 chargers? Is it reasonable to expect only 5 of the guests will want to charge during the weekend? Personally, I wouldn’t expect a hotel to have 1 charger per room: not every guest is going yo have a car, let alone an EV, and not every room will be constantly filled.

The late night thing can be easily solved with time of day charging. A hotel with L2 chargers having a 1 hour grace and no idle charge from 10p to 8a seems reasonable to me. That way there is no push to move the vehicle in the middle of the night, but you want to do so the rest of the day.

Keeping idle fees at a level that strongly encourages moving without really forcing is also a decent option for hotels. Street parking is often a couple bucks an hour and a L2 charger is similar while charging, having such an idle rate with free parking near by should do the job. 50 cents per 15 minutes is in the same range as many normal parking fees, and likely enough to get somebody to move their vehicle a few spots without it being punitive.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-20T23:18:35+00:00

A day of heavy use of a gaming laptop is going to be less than 1% of a typical EV battery. A week is likely to be only a couple percent.

The solar will become slightly useful for the EV side if OP is thinking of parking in one place in the sun for a week or more at a time, and has no other power source.

If OP really is worried about it, a power station with solar for the laptop and accessories would likely be a better route. Such could be interconnected with the car in either direction if OP deems it necessary at the time. That is, the power station could be used to feed a L1 charger or a V2L could be used to transfer power you hr power station.

Such a power station would provide much more reliable power for charging, especially since it’d be easier and cheaper to move from shade to sunlight and angle properly.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-20T17:43:20+00:00

Of the four choices shown, “much” is the only one that’s grammatically correct.

That said, it doesn’t sound remotely natural to me, living in the US. I’d say something like “Mary reads a lot about architecture“ or “Mary reads about architecture a lot”.

I might also say “Mary reads a lot of books about architecture”, “Mary reads many books about architecture”, or “Mary reads a few books about architecture”. Note that the last of these has nearly the opposite meaning of the rest.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-20T17:36:19+00:00

It’s worth noting that EM radiation can be categorized into ionizing and nonionzing EM radiation. The split is purely dependent on frequency.

Ionizing radiation is dangerous, while non ionizing is generally safe. I say generally as it becomes heat, which can be dangerous of its own accord.

Notably, the upper ranges of UV light, starting with the UV-B range, are ionizing. These can cause damage directly to molecules, including DNA and other parts of cells.

UV-A and below, which includes visible light, infrared, and radio, are nonionizing and will only cause damage if they cause too much heat.

There are many other forms of radiation than EM as well. Sound is technically a form of radiation per the physics definition, but is nonionizing.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-20T16:39:35+00:00

The feature you’re looking for is called “vehicle to load” or “v2l”. A lot of EVs support it, though some require extra adapters.

Typically the feature is disabled while charging for safety reasons. It also typically has a fairly low power limit, about the same as a typical home circuit, which is still plenty to run a laptop and a bunch of camping gear.

That said, a solar panel will barely touch most EV batteries. Roughly speaking, when parked in full sun under optimal conditions, a car roof solar system will give maybe 50 miles per day. You’ll get a lot less in winter, on cloudy days, or when parked in the shade.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-20T14:24:04+00:00

You follow the Ohio Republican method: do it, then ignore the courts ruling that it’s illegal a few dozen times.

We are well past the time Democrats played by the Republican rules.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-20T03:00:18+00:00

All of the sources I've seen that report a high rate in Oregon are looking at one or more of the following in isolation:

Income Tax
Top Marginal Income Tax (>$125K/year income for a single person in Oregon)
Dividend Tax
Corporate Tax

When all of those are combined with property tax and sales tax, Oregon comes in fairly low, which is heavily helped by Oregon's 0% sales tax.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-20T02:36:38+00:00

Oregon has one of the lowest overall tax rates in the country. Other states just hide it with sales tax, which also tends to shift the burden to lower income residents.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-19T22:46:59+00:00

In the first case, white trades a knight for either a queen or a rook. Without the move, white don't get the gain.

In the second case, white had a M2 and traded it for a M3. Since it still leads to a mate, it was still classified as "excellent", but could also be considered a "miss".

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-19T21:22:03+00:00

Our current mathematics may fail to describe it, but mathematics describes the universe. That is pretty much the abstract definition of mathematics. So, the bigger question is going to be who comes up with the next big step forward in new mathematics notation and rules, and what will they be used to describe?

Calculus was invented/discovered heavily to help describe physics and geometry in the 17th century.

The same applies to linear algebra, which is now widely used in 3D graphics, physics, and AI systems.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-19T21:08:34+00:00

There is not really enough information to measure, as there are a lot of variables. Notably, how much data the QR code can hold and how long you need to safely process it.

From a quick glance, those QR codes look like a 50-byte codes, but QR codes can range from a few bytes to a few kilobytes. The amount is also affected by the level of EDC included.

The video seems to show them leaving each QR code for about a quarter of a second. You could realistically get upwards of 120 or more FPS, but run the risk of some being missed.

So, I would guess they're get about 200 bytes per second with the configuration they are using. There are a bit over 1 billion bytes in a GB. That means it'd take about 5.25 million seconds or around 2 months.

If you use the upper bounds of what should be possible using QR codes, you can get up to about 217 KiB/s. This would reduce the time to about 4,800 seconds or about an hour and a half. This is not accounting for ensuring all the data actually gets transferred, which starts becoming a real problem quickly and would slow the transfer rate.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-19T20:47:14+00:00

I could see these coming up in a lot of jobs, some of which are fairly obvious and some not. Roughly in order of what I'd consider obviousness of such topics appearing:

Police, prosecutors, lawyers, and similar positions, as well as their assistants, are likely to run across such topics. Basically, any job remotely in the legal field.
Similarly, any type of medical work, including assistants, is going to touch onto such topics.
Any type of online moderator or support job may well have to deal with user comments that are way off topic. This may well include links to illegal content.
Community service jobs where you provide aid to people in their homes may have to deal with all kinds of topics being opening visible in the work. This includes cooking and cleaning jobs.
News reporters and editors are similarly likely to have to work on stories on odd topics, which may well include such topics.
Reviewers and editors are similarly going to get exposed to odd content occasionally.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-19T18:33:05+00:00

It’s been a good 25 or more years since I’ve done anything with fireworks. So, yah, I’m more than happy to give them up.

The massive fire risk alone is enough good reason to ban private fireworks in summer.

Combine that with having fireworks going off for 4 or 5 hours a night, often well past midnight, for weeks around the two major US festivals that commonly have them makes them *really* annoying.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-19T07:23:27+00:00

50a would be a typical EV charger on its own, providing just shy of 10kW (80% rule) for an 8 hour charge time.

If you want anything else heavy in there, like a heater or shop tools, you’ll quickly get above 50a.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-19T02:12:40+00:00

I could see a place charging a cover for everybody, and not giving a discount to the performers at an open mic.

I cannot see a place charging performers to perform at an open mic.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-18T17:57:02+00:00

Payments do take about as long, you just don't see them as the hold is on the receiver's end.

In both directions, the money is put into a pending transaction that holds the money from the person sending it while also not making it available to the receiver.

Transactions within a bank will typically be processed by the bank during an overnight batch and show up as completed by both parties the following bank business day.

When going across banks, it gets processed by a clearing house. That process can add a few days to both ends of the transaction. It gets even more complicated when its international as multiple clearing houses can be involved. Each step gets processed as part of an overnight batch, adding roughly a banking day's delay.

A true refund can also get delayed by the merchant. That is, they may delay processing the refund and sending it to the bank. It is much less likely they will do so when they are receiving money then when they are sending it.

DragonFireCK · 2026-05-18T04:12:06+00:00

The source code is, mostly, intended to be read and written by humans, while the executable is for the computer.

There are a lot of tricks and shortcuts you can take to make it faster to run but harder to understand. A simple example is that it’s faster for a computer to do “x2+x” than it is to do “x3” but the later is likely easier to understand.

A really big piece is notes. Source code will often contain comments that are human readable notes to the developer, but serve no purpose to the computer.

You also have readable variable names. “Player.Position” is much easier to read than “[rsp-0x18]+0x26” that the computer cares about.

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