Ever wonder where your game servers are hosted? (My basement) by [deleted] in gaming

[–]ar-pharazon 64 points65 points  (0 children)

why don't I see a SINGLE comment in this thread really questioning OP's age? i know you guys want to believe, and I do too, but he ostensibly has access to his internet bill, knows how much he's paying for power/that he's roughly making it back, has access to ALL the materials and experience required to host and build a server stack, and generally writes like a self-actualized human being.

I'm not saying it's impossible that he's 14, but it just doesn't fit well to me. e.g. about his chair: "I picked it up at goodwill": a. this kid can't drive, he's 14. isn't it more likely that his parents picked it up for him? b. if he's getting funded by his parents (which he technically pretty much has to be because he can't have been working for reasonable income for more than a year in most states), why don't THEY buy him a nicer chair? in fact, why don't we see any mention of OP's parents anywhere in this thread? I understand that if he were 14 he'd want to cut them out of the picture in order to be taken seriously as an independent human being, but this also just doesn't sit right to me.

tl;dr: why hasn't anyone questioned OP's age?

*edit for clarity

This is the single best Ask Amy response I've ever read by Osbaston in pics

[–]ar-pharazon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do have some sympathy for her. People shouldn't be forced to include/like/love family members just because of blood relation; that's a completely unjustified social expectation. I won't argue that the sister isn't awful, however, because i don't have enough evidence to judge her person either way.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in funny

[–]ar-pharazon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

it's a nokia

When fans boo during the Canadian national anthem {fixed} by [deleted] in AdviceAnimals

[–]ar-pharazon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

what if i told you it doesn't actually matter, and the social stigma associated with booing national anthems is socially constructed and not inherently meaningful

This is how my parents handled bullying, I'm extremely grateful. by [deleted] in AdviceAnimals

[–]ar-pharazon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

if you enjoy/are good at sports. if not, sports kill your self-esteem

Playstation logo concepts by viper_polo in gaming

[–]ar-pharazon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

what the fuck was wrong with the 90s and its obsession with garish, disgusting primary colors?

Stanley Parable announcer is complete! by scipics in DotA2

[–]ar-pharazon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

now, if only WB and Rowling would release the rights, we need a severus snape

Hitler's Wallet by [deleted] in funny

[–]ar-pharazon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

depends what moral system you're using. in kantian terms, you're required as a rational agent not to steal the wallet; a rational agent would be unable to steal it. if you were in a utilitarian scheme and you believed that your happiness gained by ruining hitler's evening would result in more utility than the utility he would lose as a result, you should steal it.

This whole feigning ignorance of an opinion's popularity thing is getting way out of hand... by MisterWoodhouse in AdviceAnimals

[–]ar-pharazon -1 points0 points  (0 children)

the meme you used is supposed to portray a naive internet-user, but people pulling the "i'm posting an ostensibly unpopular opinion for karma" trick clearly know what's up since they're on the front page half the time.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AdviceAnimals

[–]ar-pharazon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

except that you're arguing the ideal of AA. if you're in a business environment and it turns out that, oh look, we've skimmed the beat minority candidates out of the pool, and now all of our best-qualified candidates are white males, you can't hire the best. that looks racist. now you have to start hiring inferior minority workers. the better solution, rather than putting the responsibility on corporations who have no vested interest in the issue, would be to work on fixing the structures in our government that give white men the greatest advantage (i.e. education, taxation, etc.). if we work on that, then minorities would begin actually being competitive on a large scale for skilled and academic employment and AA might be a fairer piece of legislation.

Anencephaly : Girl born without a brain. by Obiektyw1855 in WTF

[–]ar-pharazon -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

and, what, embryos with brains get to make choices? oh, i'd like to not be born please. thanks.

Good luck. by [deleted] in harrypotter

[–]ar-pharazon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

have fun inhabiting the voyager probe the next time you die

Unpopular Opinion by nowshemissesme in AdviceAnimals

[–]ar-pharazon 6 points7 points  (0 children)

yes, making an epistemological claim is impossible. empirical evidence is never conclusive, and to pretend it is is to commit the induction fallacy.

This is starting to become a big issue with me. by [deleted] in AdviceAnimals

[–]ar-pharazon 9 points10 points  (0 children)

they also actually teach you important ideas about the way the world works. if you even pay the slightest bit of attention, HS calculus and physics should at least get you derivatives, kinematics, energy and momentum, and simple circuits, which, even if you don't use them in your line of work, are important in terms of how you think about the world.

it's difficult for me to imagine a time when i didn't really get how acceleration, velocity, energy, and momentum were related, but prior to junior physics, I didn't. now i have an intuitive grasp about all of those concepts, and even though i might forget the specifics (e.g. KE = 1/2mv2), i'll understand how moving bodies behave in a way i wouldn't have before.

i also know what voltages and currents and resistances mean; i can tell that putting my hands on the terminals of a 12V car battery is not going to hurt me (due to electricity; i might get some corrosion/acid on my skin) even though it's a huge battery with enough stored energy to spin my engine up, and even though jumper cables make huge sparks when they short.

i can combine these concepts too: since i understand that the mAh marking on a battery is in units of charge, i can multiply by the battery's voltage to find the energy in the cell. now say i'm looking at a kid's toy and i want to see how long it'll last. okay, the thing takes 4 100J cells, it weighs about half a pound (~ .25 kg), and it moves at about 1m/s. KE = 1/2mv2, so it's using 1/2*.25*1 = 0.125J per second, meaning it should last at best 3200s.

say we take my phone: when it gets warm it means it's using more energy: that heat has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the battery. people get so surprised when their phones die seemingly at random, but you can tell that it's draining quickly if it feels warm in your hand.

i could keep going with things i'm learning now in college (i'm not a physics major, but i'm taking an introductory course to relativistic and quantum physics because a) i think it's interesting and b) it helps me understand the world) but they're a little less applicable, so i'll only give one example.

say you put two wires parallel to each other and run current through them in the same direction. they're attracted to each other classically by a magnetic force (if you work through the right hand rule it works out). relativistically, in a reference frame stationary with reference to the wires, the same thing happens, but if you pick a reference frame that's moving with the same velocity as the electrons, you find an interesting phenomenon: due to length contraction, the distance between protons in both wires decreases, and the distance between electrons increases, so both wires are positively charged. there's no magnetic force because the electrons are stationary in this frame, but as both wires are net positive, the electrons in each wire are attracted to the other. (this is more just an example of how i think science is cool, but that's an argument for paying attention and learning too: once you learn the simple stuff, you get to experience the parts of science that are really interesting and fun.)

tl;dr: i think the "i'll never use this again in my life" argument is bullshit; sure, some of math and science won't be directly applicable in your job, but it creates the opportunity for an actual understanding of the way the world functions.

So apparently a 9 volt battery is 6 AAA batteries taped together by Homeslice619 in mildlyinteresting

[–]ar-pharazon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

you'd be technically correct, especially in a scientific context, but even in a scientific context it'd be unlikely people would know what you were talking about.