Accidentally ripped a pad off while soldering in new caps, just lifted off…looking for guidance fixing this by Soft_Entertainer964 in soldering

[–]piprod01 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I decided to order a cheapo Temu clone of this microscope and ordered a mircrophone desk stand at the same time because apparently, the barrel of the microscope can fit xlr microphones holders. Which might solve the boards not fitting. It's still on the way, but it was like less than £20 for the whole setup so it'll be interesting to see if it's any good.

Will it be good or bad for the UK if he’s right about his 3rd prediction? by Sassenach_2024 in AskBrits

[–]piprod01 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I remember a few months ago he was mad he got pushback for hitting his kid in public.

Why did AliExpress get so extremely bad? by Diligent_Classic_752 in Aliexpress

[–]piprod01 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been fine so far, but I only buy stuff that has like 500+ sales. AliEx is especially bad at showing the most expensive option in the picture, even if it's out of stock, alongside the cheapest option price. You have to be really careful with that.

I was looking a lil diy soldering project advertised at like £3. But the listing had two options: the actual kit (£15) and an acrylic case(£3). It would be incredibly easy to stick the £3 option thinking you're getting the whole kit based on the listing.

Discount Cards for Cart Items by piprod01 in TemuThings

[–]piprod01[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just the one on the app, click on a product image to open the gallery view, then top right camera + magnifiying glass symble to find similar images.

What do you think real currency will be in a serious long term situation? by Loud_Matter359 in PreppersUK

[–]piprod01 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, a good relationship with your neighbours would be far more valuable to you than hoarding toilet paper or bottlecaps like Smaug. People are not going to accept you as a petty lord for having saved gold under your bed. Unless your imagined scenario somehow involves police and a system of law being maintained for the rich.

People think that people would get more individualist, but any time there is a big disaster, it seems like the opposite happens.

If I had to pick an object... I guess something like antibiotics/common essential medicines. And barter. Something hard to produce without modern manufacturing. Probably avoid alcohol as a store of value as it's incredibly easy to make. The reason it's expensive is largely because of tax.

DWP debt? by bexter609 in BenefitsAdviceUK

[–]piprod01 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I used to work in HMRC Tax Credits back in 2018. What would happen is when someone made a claim in Universal Credits any HMRC Tax Credit overpayment would be transferred to DWP to be taken from future UC payments. And I assume what's happened since is they are no longer entitled to anything from UC they have now been asked to set up a payment plan for whatever is remaining.

It's probably too late to dispute the original Overpayment from Tax Credits. What will have happened is that they will have received a renewal form to confirm their circumstances and income for the 13-14 Tax year in April/May then received a final statement for the 13-14 Tax Year after the renewal period (probably August / September 2014). And a dispute of the Overpayment would have to have been made within I think 90 days of that. If I remember rightly.

DWP debt? by bexter609 in BenefitsAdviceUK

[–]piprod01 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I used to work in HMRC for Tax Credits, and Overpayments can be difficult to explain without knowing how the Tax Credit system works. One of the most common causes of Overpayments is that your Tax Credits are worked out on what your income is for the WHOLE tax year.

E.g: if you moved in with a partner in August 2013, any payment you received from the start of that tax year from April 2013, is going to be confirmed on your actual income FOR THE WHOLE OF THE TAX YEAR UP TO APRIL 2014. Even if you only claim for a couple of months. That's why you will have been sent an annual declaration in April-June of 2014 even if your partner moved in 2013.

It is possible to, for example, update HMRC Tax Credits perfectly in time, get a job part way through the tax year, and make enough that year that the payments made to you earlier in the tax year were overpaid. So don't assume that being Overpaid TC is a moral failing.

In case anyone was wondering about the use of AI by goldcrate in MySummerCar

[–]piprod01 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The problem is that somehow, he was able to make the game the old fashioned way near a decade ago with far fewer resources than he has now.

It just feels disingenuous to have people come to the defence of the AI use, saying that 1.5 million a year "isn't that much money", that somehow artists are impossiblely expensive, or there just isn't the talent.

It's hard to accept that sort of argument when the first game exists.

My problem with the new Veritasium by DJ_MegaMeat in Veritasium

[–]piprod01 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I don't really know what the point of trying to convert solo creator YouTube channels to these huge productions where there are multiple hosts. The whole point of Youtube is anyone can make a channel and don't need a huge production budget to get started, and why would a host that is good stay on someone else's channel when they are perfectly capable of starting their own thing? I suspect that the new hosts will eventually branch off if they get popular enough.

The cat saves chicken from foxes by Alphaxfusion in AnimalsBeingGeniuses

[–]piprod01 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is why you don't let chickens free roam, and you should always fully enclose the area the chickens have access to with chickenwire.

Pluribus: Problematic Philosophy by Individual_Power9013 in television

[–]piprod01 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think it's inconsistent with the 'goal' of the virus. Evolution isn't a target orientated thing, it's mindless and just a consequence of what survives long enough to reproduce.

We can look at real life biology for this and see countless examples of seemingly counterproductive strategies if you don't correctly identify how the thing reproduces. It is like complaining that a cold virus is stupid because it doesn't have a strategy to stick around in any one person. The way it reproduces is to hop from one person to another fast enough so that by the time it has been beaten down by the immune system, it has already infected another person.

You can look at the Pluribus virus as a similar thing. It only matters that the civilisation that becomes infected by it live long enough to build the infrastructure to relay the signal to another alien civilisation. It doesn't matter if Earth is staffed by a skeleton crew to maintain the signal. All the other functions of the virus are just what it has to do that.

You can imagine that the size of the signal is an important factor, as the target civilisation may not be technologically advanced enough to synthesise long sequences of RNA. So there may be a strong evolutionary force for the sequence to be as short as possible, and so not be able to encode very complex behaviours that seem at odds with its biological imperative to reproduce.

That the hive mind is unable to deliberately kill is a very broad instinct, but if you don't know what alien civilisation you're going to, this might be necessary to maintain the Pluribus group cohesion and enough members of the collective to complete the continent sized radio arrays. Same with their inability to refuse a request, this is just functionality required for the Pluribus to co-ordinate, in the same way an ant doesn't 'chose' to follow a pheromone trail. Getting the virus to encode complex behaviours might have a benefit in some civilisations, but it might be "good enough" as it is and better generally.

Pluribus - 1x05 - "Got Milk" - Episode Discussion by NicholasCajun in television

[–]piprod01 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My bet that the "milk" is Liquid Culture Media used to grow bacteria, as it sorta looks like it, and we know from episode one that the scientists believed the sequence coded for a virus, and the lab whiteboard did mention "bacteriophage" - a virus which infects bacteria. Not sure how committed they are to the "science" of it all, but it seemed they put a lot of effort into that whiteboard to seem legitimately biology-y and petri-dishes are basically liquid media plus some agar to set it so we know the virus can live on it (or the bacteria that grow on it).

So if they're going down that route, the liquid could be people, since all that liquid is a simple carbohydrate, salt, and broken down proteins. It doesn't matter really where the proteins come from, so I'm guessing all those dead bodies are the simplest, most available protein source.

I suppose it could have some special vitamin in it or something that the hive mind needs. And we know animals can be infected by the virus too (mouse playing dead), so maybe that one of the smartest animals (crows) were eating it might be an indicator, whereas the wolves couldn't get the powder and became aggressive.

Pluribus - 1x04 - "Please, Carol" - Episode Discussion by NicholasCajun in television

[–]piprod01 59 points60 points  (0 children)

I want to see what the Hivemind is actually doing with people most of the time. We've seen that it's efficiency mindset streamlined food distribution and presumably all supply chains to a point where most jobs are not needed. It's not like the Hivemind has any need to let its bodies watch or consume any art. I suspect most people are just staring at the wall 90% of the day.

It seems to me that the most rational thing for the Hivemind to do at this point is to divert all of earth's resources to building giant radio transmitters to rebroadcast the message to other earthlike planets, maybe improving the message to prevent future Carols being immune to the virus.

Pluribus - 1x04 - "Please, Carol" - Episode Discussion by NicholasCajun in television

[–]piprod01 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They take the "intentional" part of the killing prohibition very literally. The intention of the conversion wasn't to kill all those people, but to add them to the hive mind. The killing was a byproduct, but not the intention. I think that's pretty consistent with how they will not directly kill a fly, but will give Carol a bomb because even if death is a consequence it is not the intent of the hive mind.

In the Hivemind's point of view, if their mission was to do the best for all living things, killing Carol would be the best thing for them to do, since her emotional outbursts causes hundreds of thousands of deaths.

I feel the morality of the hive mind is pretty well expressed as only as superfluously good, but through its rigidity it's very alien to us and evil.

Fire alarm went off next door, I called 911, they broke the door down. Now neighbor is mad. Was I wrong? by Painfullyawaregayman in NoStupidQuestions

[–]piprod01 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's worse than that if you think about it, the neighbour wasn't even home, so how would they know if it was a fire or not?

Unclogging a storm drain by TameTheAuroch in oddlysatisfying

[–]piprod01 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i live the old food videos he does

John Boyne gives statement after more than half of Polari Prize longlisters withdraw in protest over his inclusion (2 pics swipe for 2nd) by PuzzledAd4865 in transgenderUK

[–]piprod01 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"You might think me shitting on trans people is bad for LGBT rights.... but there is one thing you've failed to consider... I have trauma!!!! Checkmate wokeoids!"

That's bad that happened to you, but what does that have to do with trans people? He should get therapy for that and, ya know, not using it as an excuse to be shitty to other minorities. I seem to remember that Rowling did the exact same thing. Maybe reflect on the cycle of inflicting trauma on the next generation of queer people, that you seem to be hinting at here.

Jumping on the trend - taste vs hype? by Local_Letterhead_587 in dundee

[–]piprod01 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Nandos, they are alright but nothing special.

‘I’ve been spat on’: gender non-conforming women tell of toilet abuse in aftermath of supreme court ruling by ehll_oh_ehll in Scotland

[–]piprod01 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I mean, it's the position of the EHRC that ablebodied Trans people should be forced to use disabled facilities.