blind3rdeye

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago

There is some misleading information in there. Probably better to just get straight to the point with the 'standard' https://joinmastodon.org/ link.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I'm mean life on Earth, obviously. No one is saying that the planet is going to explode or disappear or anything like that. We're talking about the climate, and life that depends on that climate.

And before you start coming at me with some "but but such and such life will still..." I'll clarify again that there is a matter of scale here. A very large number of species that have been around for a very long time will soon be extinct (many have been lost already). So although we might still have mosquitos and jelly-fish for a long time to come, a lot of the complex life that is currently enjoying a comfortable and otherwise-sustainable life on Earth will no longer be able to do so; because of us. That's what I'm referring to.

Yes, humans have does this to 'ourselves', but we are nowhere near the worst effected life in this situation. In fact, most of the ill effects on humans are just knock-on effects from other life failing. (In particular, reduced capacity to grow food is likely to be a problem for humans.)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yeah. I've been mourning the loss of Earth's future for some time now. It's very sad.

That said, we are not in a simple binary fucked vs fine situation. It's a sliding scale. So even though things are very bad, we can always still take action to make them less bad. That is never not an option.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Using full names like that might be fine for explaining a physical rule, or stating the final result of some calculation - but it certainly would be cumbersome and difficult for actually carrying out the calculations. In many cases we already fill pages with algebra showing how things can be related and rearranged to arrive at new results. That kind of work would be intractable with full word names for the variables, partially because you'd be constantly spilling off the end of the page trying to write the steps; but also because having all that stuff would actually obfuscate what you are trying to do - which is algebra. And during that process, the meanings and values of the pronumerals is not as important has how they interact with each other. So the names are just a distraction.

For setting up an equation, and for stating the final result, the meanings of the variables are very important; but during the process of manipulating the equations to get the result you want the meanings of the letters are often ignored. You only need to know that it is something that can be multiplied, or inverted, or subtracted, or whatever. Eg. suppose I want to rearrange to get the velocity. I don't care that I'm dividing both sides by the air density times the drag coefficient and the area... I'm just dividing ρCA, which is an algebraic blob whose interpretation can be saved for some other time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

There are a few different physical systems that people are trying to build quantum computers with. Superconducting loops are one of the most promising ones, because of a halfway decent decoherence rate. And yeah, superconducts needing near 0K temperature to operate is a problem. It's just hard to scale up while everything needs to be so cold. Room-temp superconductivity would be a huge advantage.

But even then, the decoherence rates are still too high for any long quantum computation. Last I heard, the best qubits are maybe barely getting to good enough errors rates that quantum error correction would be possible - which is great, but 'possible' and 'practical' still have a significant gap between them.

So in short, basically everything about the hardware needs to be better; and its just very very hard. Probably too hard to ever achieve the dream of having arbitrary quantum computation. (But there is always the possibility of some big new idea that makes everything work better.)

[–] [email protected] 107 points 3 months ago

Your response makes it sound like you're responding some kind of rage-rant. But from my reading, the post you responded to basically just lists a few things they like and dislike - clearly given as personal opinions. So your response reads as unprovoked hostility.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Hey man, you're currently posting on lemmy - and bringing up linux totally out of context. Perhaps the problem is not 'other people'.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I liked the idea for awhile as well. But for me, learning about the "proof of work" underpinning is what changed my mind. That - and the fact that cryptocurrency does not actually have any of the strengths that it claims to have. It's definitely and interesting idea... but in practice it's all just scams and incentivised waste.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

In many ways, the silky-smooth convenience offered by modern computer software makes everything much harder to learn about and understand. For anyone that used zip files before this Windows feature, the problem is obvious - but for younger people it's not obvious at all. Heck, a lot of people can't even tell whether or not a file is locally on their computer - let alone whether it is compressed in some other file.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

♫ Imagine all the people sharin' all the world ♪ ♪ Yoo, hoo, oo-oo ♫

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

In this thread we're talking about the recent problem with CrowdStrike on Windows that brought down various services around the world. So I don't know who's bubble you think you're bursting by talking about something else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

When writing my previous post I had started writing a list of suggested strategies; but I changed my mind about posting that. I'm not a member of Mozilla. I don't know what particular challenges they face, and my expertise are not in not-for-profit fundraising. So although I do have ideas, I don't really want to get into a trap of trying to defend my half-arse ideas against people picking them apart. It's beside the point. The point is just that it is achievable, as evidenced by other organisations achieving it.

I will say though that they could at least just mention on the Firefox 'successful update' page that Firefox is supported by donations, and give a link. A lot of people really like Firefox; and I think that if Firefox asked for donations, they would get more donations.

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