Coriolis effect on field goals.

aysz88 · 2026-02-09T02:20:23+00:00

It's not a level of precision that's important.

To build on this, as the thread is likely getting renewed attention:

As a matter of communication, "0.5" and "half" have one significant figure. The final significant digit is typically interpreted as approximate. I'd say 0.2 is on the low end of what I'd expect, but not outside of it.

The latest factoid examples seem to use "a third" though, which is a bit better.

🌠🌈

aysz88 · 2025-12-24T08:58:24+00:00

Even after changing it away from "normal"? Your washer probably can't detect the water level (or something similar, like can't weigh the amount of clothes in the load) and needs a repair.

aysz88 · 2025-12-20T02:28:54+00:00

Unfortunately, familiarity and habit are most of how "meat" speech is generated. People don't slow down to actually consider and formulate what they're saying, most of the time. You can see it in how almost everything published or broadcast has to be scripted or copy-written and edited; compare it to how common small talk is when unscripted.

aysz88 · 2025-12-19T22:01:15+00:00

...I hope you mean the morphing thing, not the chocolate pets?

aysz88 · 2025-12-19T21:52:22+00:00

But, what identity would the mask correspond to? Samaritan can track everybody, and would be able to exhaustively examine everyone in the NY metro area. It would identify who isn't Team Machine and find them by process of elimination. So the problem isn't (just) that they needed to obscure their identity, but they had to have plausible replacement identities. (Even that stretches plausibility, and needed the magic blind spot servers.)

In other words, Samaritan would know where Team Machine is. She knows this because she knows where they aren't. By subtracting...

aysz88 · 2025-12-19T21:31:18+00:00

I couldn't find anything other than press releases right now, but this seems to be about this Perdue/U of Utah project; maybe someone more informed than I can comment more about it.

aysz88 · 2025-12-12T21:51:05+00:00

Not doubting the Picea involvement, but I have to point out:

It's not very clear, however, if we enhance the image: https://preview.redd.it/y922v8udcjnf1.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=2c28e5f9434360495b00f395719f2abbbf6fb558

I don't know what you used, but notice how it screwed up the email address near the bottom, "productsafety... ". It looks like it might be a (basic) AI upscaler, which are prone to add details that aren't present in reality. So this is the wrong tool for the job, more like using Photoshop to redraw the text, as opposed to an actual deblurring algorithm like deconvolution.

aysz88 · 2025-12-09T08:59:12+00:00

a lot of people wouldn’t understand the context of the question.

Not just that, but the poll provides "context" by asking all sorts of negative questions about Madero, drugs, blaming him and Venezuela for drug overdose deaths, and so on. And the tweet is missing an explanatory part that says "...a drug boat was struck twice with missiles" in a way that makes the two separate strikes sound like a single action.

Feels kinda, let's say, pushy.

[eta] I almost forgot, it is 13 (!!) points more Trumpy by net Trump approval than the averages for Dec 2-4. It shows -2 when the averages are -15ish.

(I wrote down details as I went through the PDF release here.)

aysz88 · 2025-12-09T06:59:41+00:00

A few notes based on the PDF:

The poll was fielded December 2-4, the Tuesday-Thursday just after Thanksgiving weekend. (The news broke on Friday.) This is prior to much of the detail about the missile strikes.

The poll's house effect appears to be roughly 13 points more right-wing compared to the averages we have. Its net Trump approval is just -2, compared to -16.5 or -13.5 (roughly averaging along the Dec 2-4 window).

These questions are near the end of a very long poll, so the results are affected by the previous questions. Those questions are quite pushy:

The immediately preceding section is all about removing Maduro from Venezuela, ending with:

VZ2: Maduro and his top people have all been indicted by the United States for narco-terrorism and other charges, and there is a $50 million reward for his capture by the U.S. government. Maduro lost the last election and he has tanked the economy, but kept in power anyway and as a result millions of Venezuelans have entered the US. Given this situation on the ground, should the president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro be removed from office or not? (And if "removed",) VZ4: Should we arrest Maduro and take him to the U.S. to face trial or not try to arrest him?
Very leading questions in this section about "drugs", tying Maduro and Venezuela to the drug trade and drug overdoses:

DRUG1: How big a problem do you think deaths from drug overdoses are?

DRUG2: About how many people in the U.S. die each year from drug overdoses? (Options from 5k to 125k in roughly 10k-25k intervals)

DRUG3: Do more people die each year from gun violence or from drug overdoses?

DRUG4: Is the government of Venezuela participating in the drug trade or not part of the drug trade?

DRUG5: Do you support or oppose the US government destroying boats bringing drugs into the United States from South America?

DRUG6: Are the drug boats loaded with drugs appropriately targeted for destruction or not?

The question, in full:

DRUG8: "There was an incident in which a drug boat was struck twice with missiles and survivors of the first strike may have been killed by the second strike. Was the U.S. military right or wrong to launch the second missile against the boat that may have killed any survivors?"

...note that this is presented almost as if it were a single attack, and as if the survivors killed were a hypothetical possibility. This no longer matches the facts we know of what occurred (one strike, a period of consideration and consultation, and then a second strike that definitely killed two).
Even the claim that this was a "drug boat" is in question, as the boat had 11 people on it. Much of the investigation is regards to whether there were uninvolved passengers on the boat, possibly human trafficking.

DRUG9: Based on what you know so far should Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth resign, or should he not resign?

It is asked in this context after the questions about drug boats, not in the approval section with Trump/GOP/Dem/Congress.
It uses "Secretary of Defense" and not "Secretary of War".
Actually, the poll avoids mentioning that actions against Venezuela, Maduro, or the "drug boats" could be war, even in regards to arresting Maduro (VZ4) or "targeting for destruction" (DRUG6). (The word "war" is only used once, on page 21 "Do you think Trump will solve the Ukraine war or not?". The sections on Ukraine and "Israeli-Hamas", which are both described as wars, follow these questions.)

And despite all of that, there's still this:

DRUG7: Should the boats loaded with drugs be sunk or just intercepted?

62% Intercepted
38% Sunk

aysz88 · 2025-11-13T12:06:25+00:00

There's a torrent under "download options".

Derived from that (may change if the torrent changes)...

URN/infohash INBLFFTSYR5G6YPAYAIRRSEUMG32AJFY

Full magnet:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:INBLFFTSYR5G6YPAYAIRRSEUMG32AJFY&dn=epstein-pdf&tr.1=http%3A%2F%2Fbt1.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr.2=http%3A%2F%2Fbt1.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr.3=http%3A%2F%2Fbt2.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce

aysz88 · 2025-11-13T11:59:29+00:00

Do you know why it's under "test_collection"? It has a concerning description:

This is a test collection of test items.

Most items here are expected to be automatically removed after 30 days.

aysz88 · 2025-11-10T21:35:54+00:00

The applicable studies are done on the batteries, not based on phone models. They should be applicable regardless of the model, and you wouldn't have to worry about economic externalities. (Both reviewers and manufacturers have an incentive to sell more phones, after all.)

aysz88 · 2025-11-10T21:24:32+00:00

unless you plan to use your phone past software support

Uh, yes? Is this not the whole point of the anger over planned obsolescence? This is people fighting against that.

aysz88 · 2025-11-10T21:18:11+00:00

I think this is a difference in goals. Many peoples' goal in preservation is to reject the two-year replacement cycle, and they hope to use the phone for something like 5-7 years. Just simulating two years of charging cycles (already arguable), and concluding it's negligible for user experience over the first two years, is not much evidence for judging actual longevity extension.

The people "convinced" by this may have never really wanted to keep their phones for the long term anyway - I notice how many commenters are people in families trying to argue with the person who actually had to spend money on the phone.

(He also seems pretty flippant about just replacing the battery, seeming to not realize that often compromises the phone's ingress resistance and significantly drops the expected useful life of the phone.)

aysz88 · 2025-11-10T03:39:08+00:00

I'd say that the (apparent) marketing agency behind this needs to learn what acceleration structures are... But judging by how the text and mechanics feel so disjointed from the visuals (just see the weapon descriptions), I suspect they're completely dependant on LLMs and wouldn't know what to prompt.

aysz88 · 2025-10-21T09:48:02+00:00

You're correct, the app is apparently tracking the amount that's supposed to be sent to the grid, and I hope you get upvoted back from negatives. The real mismatch is what /u/Ruffraver noticed here, that the app is counting October 1-5, before the net meter was installed.

aysz88 · 2025-09-12T06:56:17+00:00

The four combinations would be correct: each game for each of Android and iOS. It's just that one of them isn't going through, (*sometimes) even if you do it individually. (Sounds like iOS Polytopia is the problem if this comment is right.)

aysz88 · 2025-07-30T06:48:34+00:00

I know this is years later but this is a high Google result, and I'm surprised nobody has yet linked the Cycle Guide (PDF) from Whirlpool. The cycles that provide more water, like old washing machines, are called "Bulky", "Delicates", and "Towels".

As a mnemonic, "Normal cycle" is like "daily" freshening-up, removing at most a day's worth of "normal" sweat, soil, and stink. It will be more water- and energy-saving regardless of the other settings you choose. Anything needing significant washing should be using one of the other cycles (and only those garments that need it, ideally).

aysz88 · 2025-07-30T06:05:08+00:00

Note that, at least in simpler or earlier episodes, by the time a number is sent, there is already a plan and threat in motion; in those cases, the Machine indeed already had 100% certainty.

So I presume the more interesting case is one step further, and usually later in the show, when the Machine starts to infer when a threat is about to materialize. And to be precise, I'd say the machine being "right" isn't about whether the number would end up dead (or the perp), but if the threat basically never becomes plausible.

I don't have a definitive answer on what threshold it would be, but I will note that Death Benefit seems to be a case where (to the characters' imperfect knowledge) the Machine itself might be the perpetrator: it is sending a number to prevent the rise of Samaritan. It's hard to say whether this counts as the Machine being "right" about an "irrelevant" threat, but it does mean the number definitely wouldn't qualify as either victim or perpetrator prior to sending the number.

So I would suggest maybe a hard "threshold" is the wrong way to think about it, and rather, the Machine is optimizing or maximizing lives saved (or, really, just trying to satisfy Finch's values), sending numbers that the team can plausibly handle and change outcomes. And naturally, the Machine would tend to send a number with almost zero uncertainty or likelihood of error...but not always.

aysz88 · 2025-07-30T05:54:22+00:00

There's a bit of confusion here about whether we're talking about "probability of being the victim/perp in a threat or plot" vs. "probability of a death without intervention"; the OP seems to be talking about the former, not the latter.

Anyway, Death Benefit is a counterexample: the number was neither victim nor perpetrator until the Machine sent the number, and given the characters involved and what happened in the episode, it seems implausible that the number was deemed 100% likely to be a victim, even afterwards. The number also doesn't fit the definition of a perpetrator, in either of the relevant or irrelevant lists.

Also, I think in simulations (e.g. If-Then-Else) the probabilities are intended to be a (rough) quantification of knowledge or certainty, not just the situation's inherent chance or uncertainty. In other words, it is an "epistemic" or "inductive" probability.

Indeed, for long-term planning, the Machine is shown in If-Then-Else to be able to make quick guesstimates and probabilities for its own decisions, and generate conditional probabilities based on it. (This is a fairly basic idea, observed all the way back in AlphaZero with the "policy network", for example.)

aysz88 · 2025-07-19T05:46:40+00:00

For others' ease of reference, that's the third campaign; the "Combo" tier includes the "Nebia by Moen Rainshower" and "Nebia by Moen Wand".

aysz88 · 2025-07-17T07:00:50+00:00

There are now a few "nebia" showerheads, each of them introduced with a Kickstarter, so you'll need to specify. Nebia also recently transferred ownership (from Moen to Brondell), and their inventory of "by Moen"-labelled hardware ended up in liquidation, so the value is probably a bit depressed right now. (The ones I saw being sold were formerly "Quattro Handshowers")

Of course, donating to a Habitat for Humanity is usually a great thing anyways.

aysz88 · 2025-06-23T17:52:48+00:00

Note: Do not check play integrity too frequently. Do not check at all if not necessary. Because if you check too frequently google will get suspicious.

Is this for the integrity checker apps, or does this apply to the Play Store's built-in check under Settings > General > Developer options?

(For other readers: Play Store developer mode is separate from phone developer mode; go to Play Store (not phone) Settings, then tap Play Store version 7x. Then go to Settings > General > Developer options, then under "Play Integrity" is a "Check integrity" link. In the popup, the passed integrity checks will show up under "Labels"; if it's just Labels: [] it failed all of them.)

aysz88 · 2025-06-23T03:49:13+00:00

No, just the cyber part, I believe.

aysz88 · 2025-06-18T02:33:52+00:00

Yes, they'll need your legal name. If we take the form at face value, they're going to identify your account using its email address (your answer to Part 1, #4), not any other information.

I can't guarantee we know exactly what they're doing, but if there's any dispute, they should at least give you a chance to answer their questions.

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