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Cake day: September 24th, 2023

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  • I do audiology research and can tell you right now, short of a cochlear implant -no we can’t. And we are easily about two decades away from anything close. And even then, a CI can’t make music sound as good as your ears. There is no ‘one’ place in the brain you can imput music into. The most dense and easiest place to input the music is in the cochlea, like a cochlear implant does. Every place up the chain then branches out to thousands of connections and makes it harder and harder. And every step higher up that you try to interface into means you are skipping the initial signal generator and lose out on all the needed fidelity. The next step above a CI is an ABI, auditory brainstem inplant. And they sound so bad, just going one stop up from the cochlea, that those users barely can understand speech and only in the best settings. And normally after about a year of auditory therapy with it. Realistically we tell people (the handfull a year who will end up with one) that they should expect to get sound awareness, and that’s it, from their ABI. And now Elon talks about wanting to go another half dozen steps up from that and magically have the fidelity to make it sound like music?? GTFO. This guy is a moron and doesn’t know what he is talking about.


  • Too soon for Obi Wan? 1977? Nah.

    But I will tell you what was too soon. I was at a firefly/serenity trivia night back in about 2008 or 2009 and everyone had various firefly related cute names. Kaylee’s commandos, the 'Washbucklers, team ‘leaf on the wind’, and such. Then you had the one team that chose fire. Their team name was “Reaver cleaning company: putting spears in the wash since 2005”

    That was too soon…


  • For as much as everyone is saying to buy now out of economic fear, I wouldn’t say they are wrong, but there are several steps that will have to happen first. Tarrifs must be congressional approved first. That means the bill must be presented, debated on, voted on, then signed. I would start to worry a little when we see the bill presented, but even then if he presents some insane ranting that everyone knows will kneecap the economy for the rich, then it won’t go through and I wouldn’t worry. But if he lets his economic hit men write it and it is airtight, targeted, and specifically- then I would be buying my computer parts before the effective date hits for the reasons people are saying.



  • MrEff@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldNot a bad guess...
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    4 months ago

    I am a fan of all good sci-fi, regardless of the time it was made or the limits of the budget. This one is on the list. I will warn others as it has been pointed out- very rape centric plot and story beats. Be sure to watch it with a good level of suspension of disbelief and understanding of the setting. Beyond that, it is one of the best post apocalyptic stories out there and I wish it was redone with more plot, tighter story, and less rape related with the exception of the Topeka plot line. Highly recommend for anyone who enjoys old sci fi or post apoc.



  • While any aircraft sent to ukrane is nice, I sure hope they aren’t paying much for them. That airframe is about 60 years old with the last major design overhaul in 1990 and its last electronics upgrade in 2000. They would be better off buying F15e’s or even the new f15ex. He’ll, even getting some last Gen f16’s or f18’s over there would be as good or better, but cost probably more. The f15 though is probably the best multiroll jet for the cost.

    Now, if we are talking about sending some OG Mirage 2000 fighters over there, then that sounds like the ultimate white elephant gift France could give. The US could sent some F4 phantoms over while we are at it.

    The big news I the training of 4500 pilots. That is huge. If they could do that, then the mirage 2000 could basically turn into their base fighter trainer and use it as the training wheels to get the new pilots experience and into bigger and better things.


  • You are on a nuke loving platform and people are going to downvote anything that isn’t hard pro nuke. But you are correct. I have had this exact same discussion before. The numbers you are looking for are called the LCOE, or the ‘levelized cost of electricity’ where the lifetime of the technology cost if factored in. Offshore wind is currently the lowest followed by solar. Nuke is clost to 10x the cost. There is even an international nuke consortium that has several reports agreeing with exactly what you are saying and basically sum it up as: if you invested in nuke early, then it is cost efficient to just keep upgrading. If you didn’t invest in it early, then the cost to implement it so high that you are better off going wind/solar. Even if you add in the cost of battery systems, it is still cheaper than building a new nuke plant. And more than that, with these new nuke plants you have to upgrade all your infrastructure because your old wires can’t handle the output loads. If you look at the 30+ billion Georgia spent on this plant, they could have simply given out a micro generation grant to everyone to add solar to their roofs, not needed to upgrade the lines, and been far better off. But hey, just like reddit, if you are commenting on lemmy you better be pro nuke only and ignore the other numbers.





  • MrEff@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzHardcore
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    7 months ago

    Let me just point this out- this was the exact same argument by many intellectuals back in the 1950’s about segregation/integration and blacks in science. Why should we care about their color? If they are good scientists with great original ideas and experiments, then surely they will get published and get their positions commensurate to their merit. This is also ignoring their segregated schooling being underfunded, not being welcomed into higher ed unless at specific ‘negro’ universities, and the crippled career paths because of it. But sure, even with their second rate primary education due to their skin color, and their second rate secondary education due to their skin color, and then their crippled career prospects due to their skin color- why don’t we then measure them on merit? The black man never amounted to what out nice ivy league educated white man has done, so why take a risk on them? And again, should we not just judge them on merit? Ignore that if a black man has a novel idea then they must then have the idea reviewed into perpetuity while one of the white reviewers just so happens to come up with the same idea then publishes before the black man.

    So to sit here and still argue that merit alone while disregarding the person is only progress is actually quite regressive.

    Now, beyond that- modern publishing is blind in most every respectable journal because of this issue. It is only after being accepted is the author identity revealed to the reviewers.






  • MrEff@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzShouts out to ?anova
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    9 months ago

    I have learned that stats for research is a dark box that you put numbers into, shake it up, and then record the numbers that come out. I use SPSS, my advisor uses SigmaPlot, and another PhD student in my lab uses R. Sometimes I’m not even sure if we are getting the same numbers out of the shaken black box and I am too afraid to ask…

    ANOVA? Sure, it is those clicks in that menu. ANCOVA? MANOVA? sure, there is some thing I check off or some other spot I click on. What do they do? The computer prays to the number gods with a different accent, then I shake the ritual box and read the numbers that come out.


  • I agree with you as a realist on the situation. We will never stop manufacturing them, at least for the foreseeable future. But we forget that something like recycling is the last stage of the 3R’s to follow. We must first look to reduce consumption. We need to find alternatives where possible, and switch away from these forever chemicals anywhere we can. Next, while “reusing” is not the best term here, but we need to find ways to extend the life of the products that we are forced to use and try to use them up in every way we can. Then lastly we need to be recycling it as best as possible before we send it to an incinerator, or more realistically a developing nation landfill.

    Reduce -> Reuse -> Recycle is listed that way for a reason. Everyone always just jumps to the final stage then argue about how bad the recycling is while not even considering ways to reduce or reuse throughout the entire process.


  • It isn’t just about the pumping. You can pump crude all day and still be broke. Look at several of the middle east smaller countries or even most south America pumpers. The refining is where the industry and money is really at. Cars don’t burn crude oil, it has to get refined. Plastics don’t come out of the ground, they have to get refined. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest crude oil exporter and they still have to rely on others to refine.

    In fact, here is a direct quote from OEC-

    “In 2021, Saudi Arabia imported $7.43B in Refined Petroleum, becoming the 27th largest importer of Refined Petroleum in the world. At the same year, Refined Petroleum was the 2nd most imported product in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia imports Refined Petroleum primarily from: India ($2.17B), Greece ($1.09B), Russia ($892M), United Arab Emirates ($835M), and Egypt ($689M).”


  • This is a huge deal for India. They are the world’s second largest exporter of refined oil, and the largest in asia. This means a lot of buisness is about to shift to them. This is also after India has been negotiating cheap raw oil off Russia due to a combination of sanctions and the occasional case of exploding refineries leading to excess raw oil in Russia