Hamartiogonic

joined 1 year ago
[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I wonder how a (software) daemon would fit in. It would just take care of various background stuff and nobody would notice it until something goes wrong.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 weeks ago

Fair enough. We’re going to assume it’s completely safe until proven otherwise. Vulcanologists can tell you that the viscosity can be pretty high, so there could be a choking hazard though. Further study would be needed to determine the exact nature of potential hazards.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 16 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Be careful though. If you keep on digging deeper and deeper, you’ll find magma. That’s not a bad deal either, because you can use that heat to run a geothermal power plant.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Also, there’s the actual Chad, which is bigger than Texas.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago

The cable that came with my cheap scale is borderline e-waste. The resistance of that abomination is many times higher than with any USB cable I’ve ever measured, so it’s pretty clear which corners were cut in production. I wonder how bad the battery is though… Better be careful when charging it.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 weeks ago

Some times you bump into these special connectors that follow no standards at all. If a manufacturer can’t squeeze an already custom board into a case why not just spit it in half and stack them on top of each other.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 weeks ago

At least that follows some mathematical logic. Mohs scale of hardness is pretty close to pT scale in that sense, but there’s no mathematics or logic involved. It’s just a list of standard materials that define specific points on the scale. When you compare the results with a more logical scale, it looks neatly non-linar at first glance, but the closer you look, the less sense it makes. It’s just a list of exceptions to whatever rule you may have had in mind.

Doesn’t mean it’s a useless scale. You can totally use it for qualitative assessment of hardness, but steer clear of it when numbers and decimals actually matter.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It’s only fair to give credit when credit is due. Doesn’t mean I like that unit, but I can see where they’re coming from.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 weeks ago

You could totally make an extra cursed temperature scale. Randall proposed the °X scale, but maybe we can do better than that. That was pretty cursed because it defines three points based on statistics observed on of Earth and uses linear interpolation to connect the dots.

I propose an extra cursed system that uses completely fictional values. Let’s take -π as the melting point of unicorns and +GrahamsNumber as the peak temperature in the core of the hypothetical planet Vulcan. Between the two points you can fit any seventh degree polynomial you like in order to get the values that fit your needs. On Wednesdays you can use a sine wave too.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago

I think it’s about time we switched to using seconds as the universal time unit. I really hate the messy base 60 conversions we inherited from the Babylonians. Also, month is such a broken unit, and it just makes many calculations unnecessarily complicated.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

In the Middle East, the winters are brutally cold and the locals suffer. Tourists from colder regions come there to enjoy their winter vacation in December or January, because it’s paradoxically quite warm. They only pack their normal spring clothes because it isn’t really that cold in their opinion. You know, a thin coat, maybe a thin summer beanie. You’ll probably be ok without any mittens. Also, you can wear normal shoes which is nice.

Extreme weather gear is considered just normal winter clothes in some parts of the world.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

I don’t really use the Fahrenheit scale for anything, but when I bump into it, I prefer to think of those values as: 0°F is a cold winter and 100°F is a hot summer weather. Makes sense for the human experience, which makes it a very practical unit. The original definition was more technical than that, but it was also severely limited by the technology at the time, so it had some flaws.

You also have to look at these units in the proper historical context. Measurements were a complete mess, so having at least something that sort of makes some sense and is somewhat repeatable, is a clear improvement. Both, Fahrenheit and Celcius scales totally addressed those concerns, and that makes them both good enough. Absolute zero and plank temperature weren’t even known back then, so what can you expect.

When it comes to using these units in serious scientific and engineering applications, you run into problems, but the kelvin scale addresses those pretty well. It’s not exactly elegant, but at least it’s functional. Because of historical baggage, we’re pretty much stuck with these units, but it could be worse.

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