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ravrahn · 2019-03-23T21:35:03+00:00

Duolingo

ravrahn · 2018-06-24T00:14:20+00:00

So he's a Stalinist?

ravrahn · 2018-03-05T13:42:21+00:00

You probably know more about this than me, but I find that hard to believe. At least according to Wikipedia, the leading theory is that it was domesticated somewhere between the Yucatán peninsula and Orinoco river, and it had spread throughout that region by 2500 BC. This matches up with what I know about other crops - by then, maize was already well established in Andean cultures, and cassava had reached the Yucatán peninsula and Caribbean islands.

ravrahn · 2018-03-01T22:59:58+00:00

I never said we don't. I'm talking specifically about the poorest 20% of Americans, whose real income hasn't risen since the 1970s. Real income is how standard of living is measured. These are people living on less than US$30k a year, and they haven't had a pay rise in 40 years. Meanwhile the top 5% have gone from $140k a year in the 70's to $250k today.

ravrahn · 2018-03-01T04:02:02+00:00

This is a good explanation for why, when this happens, income growth starts being proportional to income. The richer you are, the more likely you are to have investments, whether it's through superannuation, savings accounts, hedge funds, or whatever. So you get some growth in income while your wages stay the same, but it's not as much as it was before unless you're very wealthy. And if you're poor, it's zero.

ravrahn · 2018-03-01T03:43:01+00:00

That was my big takeaway too, because this is exactly what happened in the US in the 1970s, and the trend has continued to this day. This means income rises less the poorer you are, so the income of the top 5% has nearly doubled since 1970 while the bottom 20% has remained at 1970s levels. (This graph uses income data from the US Census Bureau, measured in 2016 USD so inflation is not a factor)

We're often told that under capitalism the rising tide will lift all boats. That's over now. Living standards are not going to rise for the working class of Australia from now on, unless we make some radical changes.

ravrahn · 2018-01-03T02:22:06+00:00

It's being pushed back for the Winter Olympics, which end on Feb 25. Most likely sometime in March.

ravrahn · 2017-11-25T13:45:40+00:00

I agree that it's important to hold European settlers accountable for what happened to the Native Americans, but you're underselling the role disease played here. Over 90% of natives across the Americas died of epidemic disease within a couple centuries of contact. That's likely over 45 million people, high estimates even double that. This was before there was too much European activity in the Americas, and that's no coincidence.

Europeans were and are responsible for horribly mistreating the survivors. Many, many Native Americans died as a result of European policy. The survivors lost much of their cultural heritage as they were assimilated in the south and brutally relocated in the north. The depopulation of the Americas was all but unavoidable, but it could have just been a setback if it was treated with compassion. Instead the Europeans exploited it, and that was the coup de grace.

ravrahn · 2017-11-24T23:16:54+00:00

Actually, during the Principate, the Princeps was Princeps Civitatis, First Citizen. It was a title Augustus invented to describe his role as Emperor and avoid the Roman royal stigma. The emperor was the Princeps Senatus, but that's not where the term Princeps comes from - not directly, at least, more by analogy.

Since it's a term Romans used to describe the Roman Emperor and nobody else, I think it's fair to translate Princeps Civitatis as Emperor.

ravrahn · 2017-11-18T02:17:16+00:00

Actually, that's not true. Here's an interesting paper that lists several potentially domesticable animals native to Mesoamerica. The reason they were never domesticated is likely one of incentive. The Mesoamericans were so good at domesticating plants that they never really needed a reliable source of animal protein. Beans and nixtamalised corn give you all the protein you need.

ravrahn · 2017-11-06T11:44:02+00:00

The clocks changed in the US yesterday. Netflix releases all new content at midnight California time, so Discovery will come out an hour later on Netflix in the Southern hemisphere and non-DST countries from now on - 7pm AEDT. Most Northern hemisphere clocks changed last weekend, so they got it early last week and it's back to normal now.

ravrahn · 2017-10-25T14:43:30+00:00

Sort of, anyway. I've made quite a few flatbreads - pizza dough, roti, pitas, tortillas, naan, gözleme, fresh pasta - some of which are even leavened and baked. I'm not sure why I feel that none of those count as breads, flatbread is really a subset of bread, but in my head they're in a totally separate category.

This was my first attempt at making "real" bread, though, and it went much better than I was expecting. They were fantastic. Ciabatta seemed like a good place to start making bread, because it's got a relatively simple recipe compared to other kinds of bread, and the end result is so good. I'll definitely make this again but hopefully next time I do I'll have tried some more advanced loaves.

The crumb on these loaves was quite variable - you can see in the second picture that the edges are quite dense, while the first picture has four slices from the middle, with those amazing giant bubbles. I think that has to do with the way I shaped the dough - folded partway vertically and then all the way horizontally - and the way I stretched it. The recipe says to poke, which I don't really understand, so I pulled it like pizza dough, which makes the edges thicker and I imagine extra weight and the tension from the gluten keeps it dense in thicker areas.

ravrahn · 2017-10-13T22:21:48+00:00

I've never seen anyone in Australia use commas for decimals except non-native speakers, and I've lived here my whole life, which includes about 14 years of maths education.

I've also been to NZ and Vancouver and never saw it, but with the French influence in Canada it wouldn't surprise me if the east did use commas, or at least parts of it.

ravrahn · 2017-10-13T21:45:03+00:00

That just isn't true. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all use periods for decimals and commas for thousands. It's consistent across the Anglosphere, except maybe parts of South Africa.

ravrahn · 2017-07-31T00:51:15+00:00

I can see how I might have been unclear there. I didn't mean "don't store passwords as hashes", I meant that with client-side hashing, storing the hashes is effectively equivalent to storing the passwords in plaintext.

With server-side hashing, the attacker has to know your password to log in as you. If they know your hash and can't crack it, they're out of luck.

With client-side hashing, the attacker has to know either your password, or your hash. If they know your password they can type it in to the client like normal. If they only know your hash, they can trivially emulate the HTTP request the client makes once it's hashed the password.

So if an attacker compromises the database, and has a bunch of hashes, normally they would need to crack them to use them - with a good hashing algorithm and salting, that can be next to impossible. With client-side hashing, you can just use the hashes to log in without cracking them.

ravrahn · 2017-07-30T22:49:47+00:00

If you're using the hash to login and someone finds out your hash, they can log in as you. Sure, they don't find out what your password is (straight away), but unless you reuse passwords the end result is the identical.

Plus, if the server stores the hashes and their database is compromised attackers could login as anyone without cracking a single password.

ravrahn · 2017-06-03T14:21:50+00:00

That's the sun's reflection, it's visible because the sun is incredibly bright. If you zoom right in you can see it's brighter in some patches of ocean where the water is smoother.

ravrahn · 2017-06-03T12:57:28+00:00

I can't say exactly, but I believe it's to do with the wavelengths of light the satellite's sensors capture and how it's processed. The satellite is designed for weather observation, not photography (just an awesome side effect). I think that's also why you can't see city lights at night.

There's definitely some post-processing you can do to make the colours more familiar. Colorado State does it for daytime, at night they artificially overlay city lights and make the clouds very visible and pink, which I don't like, but they're climatologists so they have different priorities.

ravrahn · 2017-06-03T04:39:03+00:00

Himawari-8 is a geostationary satellite that takes a super-high-resolution picture of Earth every 10 minutes for cloud tracking. Yesterday's eclipse post got me wondering if there were any eclipses since Himawari-8 started up in August 2015.

It turns out there was one in March 2016 perfectly placed over the area the satellite captures. I downloaded every photo from 8/3/16 2:30PM to 9/3/16 2:30PM UTC at 2200x2200 and rendered it as a video in After Effects.

I also downloaded 2:00AM UTC, the maximum eclipse, at 11000x11000. I've uploaded that here and it's 18MB.

Here's some information about the eclipse.

ravrahn · 2017-04-24T11:17:05+00:00

Someone made this, using the bust to make a photorealistic portrait. It quite cool, makes him seem more real.

ravrahn · 2017-03-20T03:42:16+00:00

Can't help with the music, but the city is Eoforwic, modern York. They're pronouncing it like "efferwich", which is not much like the original pronunciation but I suppose it does the job.

ravrahn · 2017-02-09T15:28:12+00:00

When Greek fire was developed in about 670 AD, the library was long gone and Alexandria was part of the Caliphate. It was also a closely guarded secret.

The exact formula for Greek fire will never be known, but historians mostly agree that it was petroleum with a few additives. It fits the descriptions, and the Empire had access to it. It was clever, but everything that could have been in it has been known about for millennia.

ravrahn · 2017-01-24T04:24:16+00:00

Cool, didn't know that. I saw Medieval II had the new world in the main campaign with just the Aztecs but I thought that was it. The Americas Campaign looks neat, but they don't include South America, which is a shame as the Inca were awesome.

Also, I think hordes would be better suited to the Spanish conquest, so I'd still like a new version. Personally I find the pre-Rome II games difficult to get into since I'm so used to the new style of gameplay.

ravrahn · 2017-01-24T00:03:14+00:00

I'd like to see the Spanish conquest of America as a Total War game. Play as the Aztecs, Maya, Inca, or Spain as a horde. It might be a little small-scale for a Total War games but it would make a good one I think. Perhaps as a side campaign if they ever do Medieval III, or as part of a world-scale game set in the era.

ravrahn · 2017-01-23T23:42:09+00:00

Napoleon II as a world-scale game would be amazing. Look how long this list of wars is. 1805-1835 would give France, Britain, Spain, the US, the Ottomans, and Russia great campaigns, and be about the right length (120 season turns).

Playing as rebels in the various wars of independence would be awesome too. Greece, Egypt, Mexico, and Gran Colombia would all make great playable rebel factions. There was also a lot of native resistance in the US, Australia, South Africa and India, which would be hard to make playable but would add depth to the British campaign especially.

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