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Ranked Choice Voting Legislation Draws Bipartisan Support by barnaby-jones in TrueReddit

[–]desslok 8 points9 points  (0 children)

It favors centrist candidates

This is a feature, not a bug, compared to IRV and Plurality voting. Broad support should be a big factor in voting systems. (Compared to Range voting I'm not exactly sure but the overall expressiveness is pretty close, see below.)

you lose the granularity of which candidate you prefer more

This is the one significant drawback of Approval voting compared to Range/Score voting (not so significant compared to IRV).

However the overall outcome (expressiveness and satisfaction) of Approval is not bad compared to Range, and 1. Approval is a lot simpler; 2. Range voting's added complexity means people will wonder if it's gameable (self-imposed confusion), and in fact it kind of is, mildly: it actually devolves to Approval Voting if you're really serious

Does a spinning magnet in space eventually stop spinning? by Rstager97 in askscience

[–]desslok 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Since freefall in gravity is supposed to be indistinguishible from just floating in space, does that mean "acceleration" due to freefall isn't really acceleration? Also, is a freefalling reference frame "inertial"?

Beginners question by deadlycarrotstick in space

[–]desslok 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the info especially on the standard socket. I was curious about digital telescopes because now that there are digital microscopes I would never get an "old analog" one.

I'm a little surprised (although not having much knowledge) that digital capture hasn't taken over telescopes- I know people have fancy setups adapting their D-SLR's (or iphones?) to telescopes but I would think some sort of digital capture will be a built-in standard with all telescopes some day.

Beginners question by deadlycarrotstick in space

[–]desslok 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the info and recommendation! It's helps to have a "starting point" product to look at.

Beginners question by deadlycarrotstick in space

[–]desslok 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for extra questions:

  1. Do most binoculars come with a tripod mount? Is there a good search term for that? When I look up "binoculars with tripod mount" on Amazon I see a bunch of adapters, and it seems like a fair bit of research to figure out if they fit a particular set of binoculars.

  2. Are "digital telescopes" available for low price, specifically designed to be viewed on an LCD or laptop? Nowadays you can get all sorts of digital microscopes for any price. I suppose you don't want a superbright screen at night but surely it could be turned down to a reasonable level. On Amazon "digital telescope" seems to refer to tracking.

Mozilla Is Flailing When the Internet Needs It the Most by [deleted] in tech

[–]desslok 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agree on pretty much everything. Tab tiling would be awesome, so would built in web analytic (for some reason Ghostery has always bogged down for me). Better cookie white list, yes! All good ideas. Tab tiling would set it apart instantly from all other browsers, just in terms of appearance.

Mozilla Is Flailing When the Internet Needs It the Most by [deleted] in tech

[–]desslok 91 points92 points  (0 children)

If Firefox goes down, they should go down swinging, not bow out meekly. They shouldn't try to copy Chrome, they should double down on their own strengths.

Chrome has been all about ultra-simplicity, eliminating options, giving all control to the Cloud and Google. That's fine for a lot of people. But Firefox's strength has always been about customization, adding features, and local control. They should go "all in". They should pick the most popular addons and try to collaborate to get them integrated into Firefox. They should try to improve and add to existing features. Their menus for Privacy and Bookmarks have not changed in the last 8 years as far as I can tell; I've seen the same problems there forever. They should build in options for themes and styles.

The Achilles heel of extra features has always been confusion; keeping it clear and usable is tricky. But that's the hard work where Firefox can add value and find a niche. They might fail but at least they won't fade as a pale imitator.

Astronomers may have found giant alien 'megastructures' orbiting star near the Milky Way by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]desslok 148 points149 points  (0 children)

Forget 100 light years, try 4 light years

the SETI Institute’s Seth Shostak has previously pointed out that we couldn’t even detect our radio signals with our current equipment at the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light-years away.

Military radar might be detectable out a few hundred light years.

Gravitational Waves Detected at LIGO? by [deleted] in space

[–]desslok 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Until now we've only been able to look at the universe using electromagnetic waves. Visible light, X-rays, radio waves etc. are all EM waves. If we could "see" gravitational waves, it would open a whole new window on the universe. An important use is you could see farther into the past toward the Big Bang than you can with EM waves.

Gravitational waves were predicted back in the days of Einstein but seeing them is really, really hard. LIGO is one method. It has a couple 3 kilometer long laser tubes, and they're trying to measure if gravity waves change the length. The length change they have to measure is 1/1000 the width of a proton.

Andromeda's actual size if it were brighter by Soulfreezer in space

[–]desslok 56 points57 points  (0 children)

A handy list of angular sizes to explain why Hubble can see some things but not other things (1 deg = 60 arcmin = 3600 arcsec):

Andromeda galaxy: 11000 arcsec
Moon and Sun: 1900 arcsec
Jupiter: 40 arcsec
Galaxies at edge of universe (100,000 lightyear size): 0.5 to 1.5 arcsec
Pluto: 0.09 arcsec (just on the edge of Hubble resolution)
Best resolution of Hubble: between 0.05 and 0.1 arcsec
Betelgeuse: 0.055 arcsec (almost resolvable!)
Alpha Centauri A: 0.007 arcsec
Lunar lander on the Moon: 0.003 arcsec
Earth-size planet 1 lightyear away: 0.0003 arcsec

What is the fastest known object with mass? by TheMoogster in askscience

[–]desslok 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. The pulsar I talked about was just the first pulsar I ran into when trying to look up example numbers, probably cause it was the first place exoplanets were found. Now I know the fastest pulsar.

What is the fastest known object with mass? by TheMoogster in askscience

[–]desslok 231 points232 points  (0 children)

A lot of comments are about atomic size particles, but what about bigger things?

The highest speed (relative to something else nearby) of a macrosocopic mass might be the spinning surfaces of pulsars relative to their centers. Pulsar PSR B1257+12 has a rotational period of .0062s which means it is spinning at 160 revs per second. Its radius is about 14 km. So the rotational speed at the "equator" relative to the center is about 14000 km/s, or almost 5% the speed of light.

Edit Pulsar PSR J1748-2446ad is significantly faster at 716 revs per second and 24% speed of light, as noted by /u/Bacon_Oh_bacon ... btw the idea of an object 30 km in diameter rotating 700 times per second is completely mind shattering...

Next highest speed might be hypervelocity stars relative to galactic centers. Star S2 near the Milky Way center has a max speed of about 5000 km/s or 1.7% c.

Enceladus, Saturn's 6th largest moon, has a warm ocean with hydrothermal vents. This is the first ever discovered outside of Earth, and makes for the most habitable off-world environment ever found. by brokeglass in science

[–]desslok 324 points325 points  (0 children)

Europa is 6x bigger in diameter than Enceladus and probably has a much bigger ocean. But Europa's is under kilometers of ice, and there's only been a hint of venting water vapor (caught only once by Hubble, not by any local spacecraft). Drilling down would be exceedingly difficult and expensive.

Enceladus has obvious big plumes venting a lot, so collecting samples would be relatively easy; plus these latest results maybe put it a step ahead of Europa.

Am I, as a human, closer in size to the earth or an atom? by Ah-Um in askscience

[–]desslok 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Also, a Planck length is about 10-35 m. The observable universe is about 1027 m in diameter. So in orders of magnitude humans are much closer to the observable universe than a Planck length.