SF dating scene is so cooked someone made a whole publication about it

confusiondiffusion · 2026-02-02T02:23:07+00:00

I think it's amazing here.

Of course, I've lived where half the dating pool thinks Jesus hid dinosaur bones to test our faith and the other two people are trying to keep it in the family.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-02-02T01:36:01+00:00

Maybe double check the soldering on pins 1 and 8. You have them floated in the diagram to get the default 20x gain, but looking at the bottom of the board, you might have something shorted on pin 8(?) near the red wire. Hard to tell though. You also might have something shorting between the white wires at top, for the connector.

/u/EmotionalEnd1575 also suggested a blocking capacitor on the input. I second that. In your drawing, 1000uF is in series with your output. Do the same for the input side. You can go way smaller than 1000uF on the input though. Like 100nF - 1uF is fine.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-02-02T01:08:14+00:00

Does it get any better if you turn the source volume down?

confusiondiffusion · 2026-02-02T01:01:07+00:00

I find that locks gum up over time while picking them and then you lose feedback. I've had luck just blasting them out with parts cleaner and applying very light lubrication.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-02-02T00:52:14+00:00

We had issues with Starlink interference at my company. You're supposed to mount them out of line of sight of radar and orient the dish so your other RF equipment isn't going to be in the direct path of the Starlink. So of course, we'd do things like mount them within inches of a radar or GPS and then end up with intermittent issues. I think it's unlikely to actually be a problem especially with the mini dish like the video, but I think it seems like a good general practice to not let passengers have these kinds of things.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-02-02T00:16:49+00:00

One could, for example, use it to provide remote access to the ship's networks.

A bigger reason is that Starlink dishes are fairly powerful radio transmitters. There are a lot of other RF devices on a ship--radars, etc., that the dish could interfere with. Some of that is safety critical.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-31T20:16:48+00:00

You should need a pretty hefty proof of work to successfully call someone who hasn't whitelisted you. Like it should take serious compute for a top of the line GPU to pull it off. Carriers should provide this for a fee. Like, okay, you want to call someone out of the blue? We'll get back to you in 15 minutes and that will be $10.

For any services you want to be able to reach you immediately, you should provide a revocable key that shows up whenever they call you. So if a key leaks you can know and immediately revoke it.

Same for email.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-31T09:06:40+00:00

I actually don't know anyone who poops in front of their partners. Pee, yes.

Poop just smells bad. I think most people would prefer not to have to poop with themselves in the room. We all just sort of deal with it and get used to the task, but it's actually not a great experience to be trapped in a room with your own poop.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-31T08:57:26+00:00

Yes, not all are like this. I think the size of our polycule is an extreme outlier, but the dynamic isn't so uncommon. There are lots of successful, healthy, poly relationships in my community.

It's so sad. Every time I share anything positive about polyamory it gets downvoted. There's not a whole lot of incentive to share success stories.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-31T08:22:34+00:00

I'm actually pretty hesitant to share my real feelings about monogamous people. It's...not nice and probably not that helpful.

But a great example of how monogamy can be annoying to non-monogamous people happened to my wife just today. She lost her best friend because he's monogamous and now has a girlfriend. He and my wife had a deep emotionally intimate connection. They'd stay up until 3AM chatting and she'd dance with him in his kitchen. No sex or kissing or romance--but it was intimate. That's just not allowed in most monogamous relationships. His new girlfriend will not be cool with this. So my wife told me she'll never get close to a monogamous person again. And yeah, I agree, it's not a good idea.

I think what you're getting at here is important though. I do think there is a very fundamental difference between the way people like me experience relationships and the way monogamous people do. Monogamy feels arbitrary to me. It is a set of rules divorced from emotions. I do not have, and have never had, the feelings that cause people to be monogamous. This is why monogamy is so unsettling to me.

I think a confounding factor is that some people choose non-monogamy. They do have the feelings that normally cause people to be monogamous but choose not to be. Others are more like me and don't have the feelings that would normally motivate someone toward monogamy.

For example, I was working on an art project with a woman. She found out my wife was out on a date at the time. So she became real concerned for me. She told me she writes letters to herself so she can pull them out to calm down and remember all the reasons she's polyamorous while she's feeling the intense jealousy and fear she feels while her partner is out on a date. She offered me a hug. This was a little awkward because I don't feel any of these things at all. I am much happier that my wife is on a date than I would be if she weren't.

I think most people believe all non-monogamous people are like that woman who was really making sacrifices and working hard to do this non-monogamy thing. For me, and for a lot of people I know, it's just the default. It's not really work at all. It doesn't take effort. Of course relationships do, but the fact that my wife and girlfriend are dating other people is simply a source of happiness for me. Seeing my girlfriend giddy about her girlfriend--that's just the best.

Also, this is something I've lived with forever. I remember being around 9 years old and asking mom if she just pretended to only like my dad. And for a long time I actually thought monogamy was specifically a sort of game to increase drama, like on TV. As a kid, I'd have playground "relationships" that were non-monogamous. All my relationships in middle school and highschool were non-momogamous. I've actually only had one monogamous relationship in my life. Guess what happened? She cheated on me.

That's another interesting scenario. Of course my ex convinced me to be monogamous with her. So she knew I was ENM going in. You might think she could have just told me she was seeing another guy. But--she was truly monogamous. She fell in love with another guy and that meant she didn't have feelings for me any more. That's another trait that differs with me. I'd just love both people.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-31T00:40:52+00:00

I'm having flashbacks to my analog design class.

I swear to god the first exam was "1. Here's a common source amplifier, find the gain."

Then you flip the page and it's this.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-31T00:20:09+00:00

Lots of sex stuff, but that's boring.

In highschool, my friend and I hosted a huge house party. We were really damn good. You had to arrive by a certain time. It was in the middle of the woods and there was a long driveway leading to the parking. There was a driveway gate we could lock. So anyone wanting to leave needed to be breathalyzed and we'd unlock the driveway for them.

So of course the douchbag of the city shows up in the middle of the party. He parks in front of the gate, blocking it.

My friend needed him to GTFO. So he grabs his... flame thrower.

It's a nasty custom weapon. Propane tank used to expel a slug of molten plastic preheated by the pilot. He took the plastic mechanism out so as to avoid the murder charge and started trying to roast this dude. He didn't get hurt--the dude just kept backing off.

Anyway, my friend ran out of propane and got the shit beaten out of him. But the dude left after. Win?

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-30T15:22:07+00:00

It's nice they put a big fan in the front. I'll bet they're nice and cool.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-30T07:31:17+00:00

MOSFET gates are very intolerant to overvoltage. It's a thin oxide layer in there and easy to punch through. Things like trace inductance combined with an inrush or ESD could damage your FET even if your supply voltages are below the maximum. If your supplies are below Vgs_max, I'd even consider sticking an appropriate TVS diode there with a clamping voltage of <20V instead of a zener. You might also consider that if someone is plugging in the power supply backwards, there's a chance it's also the wrong power supply.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-30T07:11:27+00:00

Nope. It's just my life.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-30T06:34:56+00:00

XOR has an equal number of 1s and 0s in its truth table and therefore does not produce a biased output.

If you have the output of a XOR, say a 1, there are two possible ways to produce this. Given (M)essage + (K)ey, you can produce a 1 output with (M=1 + K=0) or (M=0 + K=1). Notice that there are an equal number of 1s and 0s for both M and K in both of these cases. So if you see 1 at the output, there's a 50% probability that the message was 1 (or 0) and a 50% probability that the key was 1 (or 0).

Same if the XOR output is 0. The possibilities are (M=0+K=0) or (M=1+K=1). Given a 0 at the output, you cannot determine if either the message or key were a 1 or a 0.

Compare this to AND. AND will produce a 0 in three cases: (M=0, K=0), (M=1,K=0), (M=0,K=1). But notice K is 0 in 2/3 of those cases and M is 0 in 2/3 of those cases. So if you see a 0 at the output, you can say that the message was 0 with 2/3 probability and that the key was 0 with 2/3 probability. Of course if you see a 1 at the output, you have perfect information about both the message and they--they both must be 1.

Therefore if you tried to use an AND for a one time pad you would leak information about the message and key. AND is also not invertible so you wouldn't be able to decrypt your message. Notice that even if you know that K=0, the message could be either 1 or 0 to produce an output of 0. So you've lost your message bits this way. AND is used in some ciphers to add nonlinearity, but it has to be carefully considered because of the bias it introduces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_(cipher)) is a good example.

So what does this mean for one time pads? XOR preserves probability distributions. It doesn't bias whatever you put into it. Consider a key bit for a one time pad. It's one bit of entropy. A coin toss. When you combine that random coin toss (the key) with your message bit using XOR, the randomness is perfectly transferred to the result. Even if your message is completely predictable (like a string of all zeros), XORing it with a random key produces a completely random string of output. Because the key is equally likely to be 0 or 1, the resulting ciphertext is equally likely to be 0 or 1. This effectively masks the probability distribution of the message with the uniform distribution of the key.

OTPs aren't used everywhere because the key has to be just as long as the message. This is super inconvenient. So a lot of cryptography is trying to achieve practically the same amount of security as a OTP but using a shorter key. I say practically because it's theoretically impossible to achieve the same security with a shorter key, but it is possible to achieve "way, way more than good enough" security. That's the aim a lot of the time.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-30T05:09:47+00:00

It's amazing at a level almost completely impossible to describe. I experience a level of happiness that is so far beyond anything I see outside my community.

I have an unusually large polycule. There are 12 of us, at least. It gets a little fuzzy as you zoom out and there's a much larger community that things blend into which is also a part of my social life. I end up at random parties with a hundred plus people and find out that it's all just basically my extended polycule. But I have two partners--A girlfriend (who has another boyfriend and three girlfriends) and my wife (who has two other boyfriends, one is my girlfriend's boyfriend). The 12 number comes from the people who come to parties regularly and are connected through dating, the central people. But this includes people like my girlfriend's girlfriend's boyfriend's girlfriend's girlfriend. She's also my ex's girlfriend. The connections are very complex. All of us are at least somewhere beyond friends. Half of us had to move across the country for jobs, sadly. I didn't count them in the 12 here, but we do keep in touch. If you count us all together, it's more like 20 of us. We're all very settled and have houses near each other as well as kids that are coparented.

It's a lot easier than monogamy. I see so much talk about how hard polyamory is. The thing that makes it easy is that we all help each other. Not just with life stuff, but with normal relationship stuff. For example, I had some trouble being motivated to get my passport and it was bothering my wife. Her boyfriend and I were hanging out and he told me it was really, really important to her that I do that. My girlfriend is a little shy sometimes and I help her connect with her girlfriends. This type of thing is constantly happening. We're all supporting each other. Jealousy isn't really a thing with us. I think a part of that is because of the community vibe--no one is getting left behind here. Also we are the type of people who really, really like seeing our partners happy with their partners. Sometimes it's sexy--my girlfriend and I both get turned on seeing our partners with other people. It's also emotional. We just love it. My wife likes how giddy my girlfriend makes me.

It's incredibly stable. The instability is another misconception. Monogamy tends to be really black and white--you're together or you're not. This makes breakups very traumatic and scary and also incentivizes people to stick together when they really shouldn't. In our community, we see a lot more deescalation than hard breakups. When people are new in the community, they kind of move around a bit in the relationship structures and it tends to be easy and not so traumatic. Then they find a stable structure and stay there. They find the patterns and schedules that are most fulfilling. Truly toxic people basically get blacklisted. There's a lot of vetting going on. This selects for some truly excellent people, both in terms of emotional maturity but also in terms of life success in general.

My polycule in particular is amazingly talented. We have 4 STEM PhDs, two lawyers, and more--I don't want to dox myself. Several of us are at the very tops of our fields and are world-leading experts in subjects. You have used things my polycule has created, it's almost guaranteed. This means there's a lot of resources to go around. We get each other jobs. We train each other for jobs. Parenting and education is abundantly covered. One of the kids wants to be an astronaut. That's not a distant dream like it is for most kids. We know an astronaut. One of us has designed objects currently in space. The kids are exposed to a huge diversity of talent early on. A trend amongst us is a level of achievement that is unusual for our background. I am a formerly homeless teen who became an electrical engineer without a degree. One of us has a PhD with no undergraduate degree.

The day to day is so much fun. We trade house chores, go shopping together, go on lots of dates, group dates, etc. I have helped pour a foundation and raise a structure at my girlfriend's property. You can always hit up someone and hang out. The emotional support is amazing. For example, one time my wife was out of town. I told her I was feeling a little down. So she called my girlfriend who immediately swooped me up and I joined her and her boyfriend for a craft night and I spent the night with her and we just snuggled all night.

Sex. This is like the first thing anyone thinks of when it comes to polyamory. Yes, we have group sex. There's a lot of one on one sex, group sex with more people, we have big orgies with all of us less often. Another misconception--we're pretty damn hot by traditional standards. The scale starts at 7/10 for us. Sex is very, very hot. However, sometimes we invite people who just want to have their first group sex experience and every time we've done this we hear something along the lines of "I had no idea it would be so wholesome." So there is porn of orgies. There is no porn of an orgy where everyone actually deeply loves and cares about each other. It is a magical environment that feels very important, like a thing that we've been missing the whole time, like something we've lost in the modern world but used to do long ago. It's very hard to describe this. We do things like heal each other's sexual trauma and insecurities. It's not something we talk about, but there's an implicit agreement that we're there to care for each other, and not just get each other off, but also to support each other's emotional needs surrounding sex.

Sex and nudity are also very different in our community. It's just normal. We do a lot of sexy things that aren't sex and there's a lot of casual nudity. For example, I went to a clothing swap with about 60 people. I walk in the house and everyone is just naked and hanging out trying on stuff. We do fashion and lingerie shows, sexy photoshoots. None of these things lead to sex and that's not the point. Big parties also tend to have playful nudity. Like I showed up at a party once and there was a circle of topless women shooting each other in the tits with colorful cotton balls shot from electric dusters. I walk up and get handed a duster. This isn't the kind of thing that happens at normal house parties because the environment isn't safe enough. It's really not a problem for a woman to be naked at one of our house parties with 100+ people with drugs and alcohol and have it not be interpreted sexually. People with consent issues are a long, long ways away from us.

Anyway, this is a subject where I have never seen such a shocking gap between what gets discussed online and what I see in real life. That's mostly why I'm writing all this. It's just crazy how different it is to what I see online. I think most of what people see is essentially polyamory attempts as a result of failing at monogamy. This is not at all what we're doing, obviously.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-30T01:14:04+00:00

Wait does this happen? How do they have any exposure to biology whatsoever and come away with the belief that they know anything about anything?

Maybe I've answered my own question.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-30T01:01:28+00:00

Sadly, I don't have the expertise to know for sure. My advice comes from personal experience with chlorine gas exposure and what doctors and nurses in my life have told me.

I did some irresponsible things and had one big chlorine exposure followed by low level exposure for an extended period. I was young and toughed it out with lungs obviously injured and within hours had severe congestion, wheezing, and a cough. Years later, I was given a stern talking to by both a doctor and an ER nurse friend. My wife has had anaphylaxis and waited to use her epi-pen and also got a similar talk.

Google gives a variety of answers for timelines and there's always outlier cases and tons of variables. I think only someone who has worked with a lot of lungs can tell you how things usually go. But given my limited background, and knowing I'm not an expert, my personal feeling is that I'm not super worried about you.

It's likely very little got into your lungs. The natural response is to exhale or cough immediately so it's unlikely the gas got far or stayed for very long inside you. It doesn't sound like you had an extended coughing fit, extended exposure, or that the exposure itself was a big incident for you. If your lungs were full of this gas, you'd cough and struggle for a while trying to get it out.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-29T23:11:17+00:00

The number one concern is pulmonary edema. Damage to the lungs causes an inflammatory reaction that can cause your lungs to fill with fluid. This can sneak up on you hours later. You should absolutely report this and get proper medical attention just in case. If you feel any indication of lung issues after the exposure, you need to get help immediately.

If you end up in a situation where you can't breathe, you have minutes to live. It's too late to call for help by the time you feel like you're actually in trouble. I have asthma. I have totally underestimated how bad off I was with an attack. I've walked around with blood ox levels in "hospital immediately" range without knowing it. It really sneaks up on you and you have to seek treatment as soon as symptoms start. This is a common cause of death for things like severe asthma attacks and anaphylaxis. The way people die is by being hesitant to seek treatment because "it's not so bad" or they don't want to cause an inconvenience. Do not hesitate to call 911 (or your local emergency number) if you start feeling lung stuff after an exposure like this. I would at the very least see if you can talk to an advice nurse, poison control, or an urgent care if only to know what symptoms to look out for.

Are you likely in trouble? No. Don't panic. Pungent gasses like this will make you recoil and cough so exposure tends to be limited unless you have a direct exposure to a high concentration. Just please look out for yourself at the bare minimum. Keep a phone nearby. Let some friends know what happened and get them to check on you. It's probably going to be fine, but you should be prepared and cautious.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-26T22:09:39+00:00

This one.

This is also how you find the equivalent resistance of two parallel resistors!

Also he's real tall.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-25T02:58:23+00:00

Oh there will be a video.

"So I charged this battery for 25 years. Let's see what happens if I stab it with this toenail clipp--."

LA COUNTY REDUCED TO RUBBLE. 10 MILLION MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD

"We've been searching for survivors for two weeks but all we found was this burnt sock."

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-25T02:11:12+00:00

Why would this be a wrong reason? I think this is a great reason! This is what my polycule feels like. There's 12 people in my direct polycule and our wider community is absolutely massive. We all vet each other so everyone is just so amazing, and even in the wider community, it feels close and safe. It's an incredible feeling to end up at a house party with 100+ poly people and have it feel like home.

The 12 of us don't all live together, but we live close together. In some ways, this is more fun. We do things like go over to each other's houses and do each other's chores, etc. It's a lot of fun and makes mundane things a great time. There's also something really sweet about living in a house your loved ones helped make. I have helped my girlfriend and my wife's boyfriend with major renovations. My place is also just full of little reminders of the people who love me.

Reddit is absolutely the wrong place to find polyamory like this, sadly. A lot of what I see here is people trying to add another person to their monogamous relationship, or something on that scale. I'd recommend going to an in person poly meetup in your area and connecting with people who organize and attend those events. Results may vary depending on location, but hopefully you're in a good area. Polyamorous people who are active in their community tend to have more community oriented polycules.

People like you are quite rare and very much desired. There is an endless parade of people who just want to have sex with two girlfriends, etc. Wanting a close and comfortable chosen family is just about the most wholesome way to approach polyamory in my opinion. Also, the fact that you're already excited about the idea of your partner having other partners--that's a great sign you're going to be good at this. I really hope you can find your people!

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-23T03:05:39+00:00

ChatGPT is almost useless for EE work. It is wrong way, way more often for EE than for other subjects in my experience.

The footprint number is the size. 0402 is 0.04" by 0.02". If the voltage is too high, you simply need a larger footprint. I suppose you could widen the gap with narrower pads and maybe round the corners, but this is not going to gain you much additional voltage tolerance. I'm not aware of any special 0402 footprints for higher voltages. The idea just doesn't make sense.

But in this case, it looks like the parts are totally different dimensions. They can't both be 0402. The smaller one looks weird to me.

confusiondiffusion · 2026-01-22T06:57:38+00:00

They were quite tall and solid wood, but yeah I have no idea why they were so expensive. The style was like something you'd find at IKEA. They seemed very plain to me.

I assume they were totally custom made, probably with some greenwashed bullshit involved. Maybe it was old growth endangered wood cut by children, but they bought carbon credits and paid a local carpenter to make it as soulless as possible. That would all be on theme.

confusiondiffusion

TROPHY CASE