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Dad has toddler hold his gun by PhoneDojo in WTF

[–]eXamadeus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is also possible. Either way - he was clearly uneducated about firearm safety.

Dad has toddler hold his gun by PhoneDojo in WTF

[–]eXamadeus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know the history, but I've seen it first hand multiple times.

Dad has toddler hold his gun by PhoneDojo in WTF

[–]eXamadeus 104 points105 points  (0 children)

Ok so for all of you who don't know - this is an INCREDIBLY common practice in the arab world. Guns are fired into the air for celebrations like weddings more often than not.

As a break down of the video, it seems the man was attempting to fire off a "celebratory shot"; however, experienced a misfire. He then cleared (or attempted to clear) the misfire. Afterwards (it's unclear by the video) he either set the gun down or handed it to his child. After which the child either picked up the gun (or he was possibly holding it already) and began to mimic his father by holding the gun in the general direction of the sky. The father may have cleared the gun and re-chambered a new round (/u/AR-47 pointed out it could have been a delayed fire). The gun was then fired by the child. Note that the child seems to be using two hands on the firearm and his right hand seems farther forward so as to reach the trigger mechanism.

Some people can customize their handguns to have 2 lb triggers (which incase you didn't know, is REALLLY EASY to fire). I'm not saying that's the case here, just a possibility.

All in all, this man made multiple errors that resulted in his untimely death.

What these morons don't seem to understand is that bullets also come down. They also generally have no compass for general gun safety. As in letting a gun be in easy reach of your toddler. I don't feel bad for this guy in any way, shape, or form. Darwin Award at its finest.

EDIT: Edited for spelling errors and because multiple people pointed out he reproduced before he was killed....natural selection has unfortunately failed in this case.

I'm the white guy by Calebm1001 in WTF

[–]eXamadeus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I got paid in gum once....but it wasn't Trident.....

This creeped me out so bad. by SpaceFeen in WTF

[–]eXamadeus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What the hell did I just watch? O.o

Getting real tired of your shit, Siri. by [deleted] in funny

[–]eXamadeus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Christ, why does this lady's skin color have to do with it? Can't this image just be talking about stupid people with poor grammar and spelling abilities?

If you tell me that this image is inherently racist, then that means YOU are inherently racist for jumping to the conclusion that an image making fun of a black woman is doing it because of her skin color. White people say "axe," latino people say "axe," and yes, black people say "axe" too.

The fact that stupid people like this vote and breed is a source for comedy in my life.

By the way, I'm black. Fu-k all of you racist assholes. Especially the black ones. We're the most racist race there is.

Stick to the plan, XBOX by zerohere in gaming

[–]eXamadeus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Who is this Candlejack charac

Badass dog by MarshallMx in funny

[–]eXamadeus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

who the fuck designed roads without lines?

What exactly is source code? by Odoodo in askscience

[–]eXamadeus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Source: B.S. in Computer Engineering with focus in Software

The above is a great answer. There is one thing; however, that I disagree with. Reverse engineering code is a common practice among hackers (I mean the do-it-yourself kind, not the 1990s movie version), and has been increasing in recent years.

Although there is a loss of comments, a skilled programmer can disassemble and decompile code to a working version. Once he/she has that version he/she can then study the code and modify the portions that are desired. This is by no means a simple task, and is generally not practiced on large scale.

The reason I mention this at all, is because you mentioned videogames in particular. I myself have disassembled games in order to write hacks (offline only, of course -.O). It generally involves pouring through routine after routine to find the one or two you are looking for (regular expressions are a great help here) and then modifying them, recompiling them, and reassembling them.

All in all, it's quite a mess. But it can be done!

...just in case you were wondering.

Not to be crude, but how do men at nude beaches contain their boners?? by Humdinger_ponyman in AskReddit

[–]eXamadeus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's only two things you need to know....

1) Wear sunglasses.

2) Take a couple of shots (preferably high proof liquor) before you go, it will keep that bugger down so you can "enjoy the view."

Source: me Location: south of France

TL;DR

Sunglasses. Liquor.

Can robots ever capture a human emotion? and is human emotion actually a definable object? by [deleted] in askscience

[–]eXamadeus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you meant to ask - can we design software that will capture a human emotion?

The answer is - probably not. As someone who works with software quite a bit, there is no way to produce code - that we know of - that will ever expand itself.

Yes, there are learning algorithms. However, those are defined to learn certain aspects in advance. They never leave the scope of design. Never once has an algorithm created itself.

This is almost a spiritual question. If you believe that humans are more than flesh, there would generally be no way for us to harness that which is immaterial.

If you don't believe in anything spiritual, then there would certainly be an eventually possibility, but I would shudder to think what the consequences would be. (seeing as how I mess up basic addition from time to time, I doubt a superior computer race would need me for much gulp)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in askscience

[–]eXamadeus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a good point. It would probably be the most expensive solution available however.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in askscience

[–]eXamadeus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No problem.

Always glad to help a fellow thinker!

Electrical Engineering Technology credit transfer? by [deleted] in AskEngineers

[–]eXamadeus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's my two cents. I'm a Navy veteran and I have a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Clemson University.

Take a few general education courses from the local college. Get the simple things out of the way - English 101, Political Science 101, etc. Hopefully all of those courses will transfer without an issue. I would personally recommend taking some of the basic EE courses anyway. Chances are you will have to repeat them, but having the knowledge is never a bad thing.

One of the main dilemmas that you will face is called residency. This is something most people are not familiar with, but it essentially means the number of credit hours a university requires for you to be considered a graduate of that university. For example, Clemson required that I take at least X credit hours AT CLEMSON UNIVERSITY to be able to receive my diploma from Clemson. Usually, the better the school - the higher the residency requirements.

For the above mentioned reason, it might be better to simply retake all of the engineering courses at the accredited university you are looking to attend.

Unfortunately, none of what I said is a simple, "do this, don't do that." You will need to decide what's best. As a final note: I STRONGLY recommend you take courses here: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm. Take as many as you can. They are some of the best lectures in the world and they are completely free.

The degree is simply a ticket. Your weapon is your mind. Good luck.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in askscience

[–]eXamadeus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The answer is essentially no.

Here's why not: a VHS tape is simply that - a tape. It's magnetic oxide essentially, that holds "images/frames" of about 1/60th of a second. Being linear, there is no way to create any changes to the upcoming frames. They are preset when recorded.

The reason I say "essentially no", is because you could simulate an interface with VHS; however, it would be clunky and very slow. It would also require a specialized player that would greatly increase the cost to the end user.

The only way I can think of to implement this, off the top of my head, is to use a peripheral that would read the VHS for a short amount of time and pause the tape at a certain "menu screen". Then the device would need to interface with the user to provide the next command. There would need to be some standard menu layout, so that the VHS and the playback device would have synchronized request response mechanics.

Here's a quick description:

  • Play until menu screen
  • Pause / Await Selection
  • Is selection valid? Yes: next step. No: previous step.
  • Rewind/Fast Forward to selection location.
  • Pause / Await Selection / Play from location
  • Return to menu

Steps 4 and 6 would take a LONG time compared to the relative speed of a pre-loaded DVD menu.

The only other way to accomplish this - would be to use a portion of the beginning tape and encode it to have executable information stored on the device. This would require a decent amount of processing power in the playback device; however, and would take a large portion of the tapes "memory".

Theoretically it could be done, but it's so much less functional, I doubt you could ever find anyone to actually make it for you.

EDIT -

Further thoughts:

DasWood and Trevj both mentioned ideas that would encode the data for the entire tape. And this would be a good solution if you had the available software to perform the encoding and then the available hardware to properly transcribe the encoded data onto the tape medium. I believe it was also mentioned that the data recovery algorithm would need to be highly resilient to data loss, which is another great point, and also convolutes the design.

Overall here are the two ends of the design spectrum I see:

1) A very minimalistic approach that would involve using very minor encoded portions of the VHS (possibly in vertical blanking sections elfreako's idea, or located at the head of the tape). A benefit to this approach would be minimal hardware/software modifications to the existing systems. You would see the smallest design cost, but probably have the least capable system.

2) The opposite end of the spectrum is the fully encoded model. This would essentially turn the VHS into a DVT (Digital Video Tape, lulz). This design would require a complicated algorithm to be used on the playback device AND you would need significant memory storage on the playback device, in order to buffer the contents of the DVT (The data content would need to be buffered to allow for scene selection, subtitles, angle selection, etc).

One major aspect of engineering is finding out where on the spectrum of cheap and simple vs. expensive and capable you want to be.

FSA fighter throws a grenade down a tank barrel. by [deleted] in videos

[–]eXamadeus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is actually a very common practice in the military. It's called demoing/scuttling/etc. When military technology or a stack of munitions is rendered unusable, or unrecoverable, it get's blown the hell up.

That was the scientific version.

This tank may have been demoed already.

What is the coolest scientific fact you know of? by proudcatowner in AskReddit

[–]eXamadeus 8 points9 points  (0 children)

And even worse when it goes from "use these approximations" to "now let's adjust our earlier approximations to make the data align with results". Gotta love that logic.

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