According to this guy, societal collapse is imminent because a. entropy and b. the high EROI (energy return on investment) afforded to society by the use of energy dense hydrocarbons such as coal and petroleum will decline dramatically in the near future due to the decreasing economic viability of acquiring them and the lack of a similarly high return alternative (barring nuclear fission, which is VeRy DaNgErOuS (and also practically infeasible politically in most countries that can achieve it), and nuclear fusion, which is, of course, perpetually 20 years away) and because this EROI is (according to him) what makes the complexity of modern civilization possible, it is inevitable that we will soon see a corresponding decline in said complexity (collapse). Now there is a section in the wikipedia article that touches on some of these points (Economic influence) so it's not totally junk science (if you trust Wikipedia, that is). However, I'm still struggling to grasp the significance of this figure. As long as our means of acquiring energy is scalable, why does it matter what the EROI is as long as it is greater than 1? if we need to spend one fifth of the energy we get from solar panels on making more, fixing existing ones, and installation, can't we just make a bunch of them to match our energy needs, even if they're growing? What am I missing here?

For context: my mother said that my father has used these decongestants regularly for as long as she has known him. He passed this habit onto me when I was young, originally with Afrin, then Narix. Given there is a recommendation to not use these decongestants for extensive periods of time and apparently a rebound effect and syndrome called rhinitis medicamentosa comes from ditching it's use after said long periods, my mother decided using it like this is unhealthy and thus cut my use of it for the day, and given this stuff is cited in Wikipedia and a fair number of news/medical articles, it seems legitimate, and thus I agreed.

After that, my skin is more prone to goosebumps and being overly sensitive, my eyes are watering more, my throat feels more scratchy (although I already woke up with that, before my mother made this decision) my nose is running way more than it used to.
Can I blame withdrawal on this?
What happened to me?
How long does this last?

And is this site really where I should turn to to try to find out?

So recently I've been playing Destiny 2. After you launch the game you need to press "X" for the game to start loading (which takes multiple minutes, it's ridiculous).

I've seen this in other games and I never understood the point. Yes I want to move past that screen, load the game and play it. Do you guys know why game developers do this?

I'm interested in the subject, but don't know where to begin investigating it. I tried to look over the code for SeDuMi, but it is much more massive than I had realized. I have a background in mathematics, if anyone can point me towards a textbook.

This is something weird to me. I think skin color is pretty diverse no matter where you go, or at least, I don't know enough to say otherwise. But take hair color. Europe has more diversity in hair color than almost anywhere else. Same with eye color. Why is this? Is it just because I interact with more people of European heritage on day to day business, or has Europe actually had more mutations which affect hair color, eye color, etc? Or is it that Europe, being a crossroads has had more people immigrate through it.

If this is racist, it's unintentional, this is just an observation, which I've been unable to find an answer to.

If you have an answer, a link to a paper would be great.

Edit: A point against what I just wrote that I thought of: Asia has both mono and double eyelids, which is something Europe doesn't have. Native americans don't count either for or against, since they immigrated fairly late in a small group, which also explains why almost all native americans are type O

Hi everyone,

Recently I became interested in learning about wilderness survival for the first time since I was a Cub Scout. I like to camp, but I'm the type of person who pours a can of fire starter on the camp fire after setting it up tipi style and then goes around bragging about how good I am at fire-starting. (I would be completely lost without a lighter and starter fluid.) I am planning on taking a camping trip with a friend of mine who has a great deal of wilderness survival training after COVID-19 restrictions are loosened, and I would like to come prepared.

I have found outlines for several course syllabi on wilderness survival, but not resources for each of them. Here are two examples below:

Example 1

Lesson I: Introduction

Lesson II: The Psychology of Survival

Lesson III: Introduction to wilderness survival planning

Lesson IV: Fire

Lesson V: Clothing

Lesson VI: Shelters

Lesson VII: Sustenance (Food and Water)

Lesson VIII: Introduction to Signaling

Lesson IX: Introduction to map and compass

Lesson X: Survival Kits

Example 2

Lesson 1: Introduction to Wilderness Safety and Survival

Lesson 2: Survival Essentials for the Wilderness

Lesson 3: Selecting the Right Gear

Lesson 4: Health and Safety

Lesson 5: Treating Illness, Bites, and Stings in the Wilderness

Lesson 6: Traumatic Injuries and Environmental Illnesses

Lesson 7: Environmental Illnesses and Their Treatments

Lesson 8: Understanding the Importance of Your Clothing

Lesson 9: Procuring and Purifying Water

Lesson 10: Food and Nourishment: Plants, Fruits, and Bugs

Lesson 11: Food and Nourishment: Crustaceans, Birds, and Fish

Lesson 12: Food and Nourishment: Tracking and Acquiring Mammals

Lesson 13: Food and Nourishment: Preparing and Cooking Game

Lesson 14: Navigation

Lesson 15: Signaling

I was hoping that perhaps some Tilderinos could help me out in filling in the blanks with resources for wilderness survival topics, or even some anecdotes about learning wilderness survival yourselves.

Thanks for any help!
-gbbb

As the various Arctic climate feedbacks show, we are fast approaching the stage when climate change will be playing the tune for us while we stand by and watch helplessly, with our reductions in CO2 emissions having no effect in the face of, say, runaway emissions of methane.

from this article: https://e360.yale.edu/features/as_arctic_ocean_ice_disappears_global_climate_impacts_intensify_wadhams

Does there exist a function that does not include any trigonometric function in its definition that has similar properties (periodicity, for instance) as trigonometric functions? I can't think of any, and this strikes me as a bit surprising.

Edit: I thought of a simple answer: piecewise functions can achieve this!

Here's the article: I have asthma. Am I more at risk of having a severe coronavirus infection?

Here's the key point:

at this stage, there's no evidence to indicate that people with asthma — even those with severe asthma — are more prone than others to becoming seriously ill with a COVID-19 infection

I'm only 30, but I can't think of a time entire sectors of the economy were shutting down like this.

I'm looking at statements from countries that appear vastly more prepared and honest, like Germany, who say they expect 60-70% of the population to contract the virus. Am I wrong for seeing the general lack of appropriate reaction from the US and expecting worse?

I expect the US will eventually be in a similar situation like Italy is. Most people staying home and most businesses shut down. How do people pay bills? Mortgages? Rent? Healthcare? Find money for basic supplies? Car loans?

Has something like this happened before to a modern economy?

A drink coaster goes under a glass or cup, and is intended to catch any condensation or spillage from the glass, to protect the tabletop underneath.

But most coasters are flat.* Any liquid that gathers on them can roll off the edges onto the table. Some coasters are made of a water-absorbing material, like cardboard or cork, but some are made of materials that repel water, like metal or ceramic or plastic.

I ask this because I recently discovered a small coaster-like tray with an upraised lip around the edge. Strictly speaking, it's not a coaster, but it's exactly the right size to be used as a coaster - and, with the upraised lip around the edge, it actually prevents liquid from escaping onto the table.

So why are coasters flat?

(I bought some of the lipped not-coasters to use as coasters. This design makes sense to me. And they happen to look nice as well.)

* It was only while researching coasters online prior to making this post that I discovered that some coasters have lips. Every coaster I've seen in real life is flat.

What started out as a little facetious in my own head leads me now to a serious question. Is there some meaningful reason why Google has to use a subsection of images for reCAPTCHA? I really dislike having to do this and at the very least would appreciate some variation.

• Traffic Lights
• Buses
• Bicycles
• Cars
• Crosswalks

Is there something special about these things in this context? Is the visual noise they're usually associated with what makes them good candidates? Are Google just really into urban planning? Who knows...I'm hoping some Tilder smarter than I can help me out.

I've been lamenting the death of the dumb TV for years now, but I'm finally in the market for a new set and trying to plan my next purchase carefully.

I've come to grips with the fact that any late-model TV I buy is going to feature some or all of the following:

• Internet connectivity
• Slow, janky menu screens with awful UIs
• Pre-installed apps (all of which I consider bloatware)
• Ads incorporated into the built-in menus or overlaid on my content
• Alexa / Google Home integration
• Automatic content recognition and/or other data collection techniques
• Microphones or cameras, purportedly for voice/gesture control

My goal is to take a stock smart TV and completely neuter all of the above, resulting in an otherwise fully functional dumb TV. All of my content will be delivered over HDMI from external devices.

As I understand it, basically all modern TVs are running one of five operating systems: Android TV, webOS, Tizen, Roku TV, or SmartCast. Not knowing anything about these platforms, where should I begin? Which are most susceptible to rooting? Are there any good custom ROMs I could install that would achieve what I'm looking for? Surely others have asked these same questions before me, but I can't find the answers online.

Yes, this is a companion post to my other home theater question earlier today.

Let me make a possibly unpleasant question: why is Tildes only on Gitlab? Do you self-host? Is it because of Microsoft? Or idealistic reasons (that I would totally 100% respect)?

Github and Microsoft may be "evil", but that's where everybody is. I'm 99% more prone to post an issue on Github than on Gitlab. I know it's "wrong", but that's also true and not just for me. Couldn't Tildes have at least some presence on Github? Is it possible for a mirror to get issues? (I really don't know, honest question). And why not just move to Github, mirror to Gitlab and have some super-reliable backup?

This would give Tildes more exposure (maybe Tildes doesn't want more exposure right now. That's entirely understandable). But Github is where things happen, and I really want Tildes to happen. And, even if Github ever turns evil (or already is), couldn't we just fork/transfer/whatever to someplace else? Or just use the backup? What's the downside?

This is something I was thinking about. When I read about the end of the second world war, the thing which surprises me the most is how easily the German population accepted that their government really committed such atrocities (Yes, I used Holocaust in the title, but I mean any genocide commited).

I was wondering how it might go down in our current culture with the emergence of Fake News and alternative "facts"; our post-fact culture. Would they more readily dismiss it as a photoshopped image? Would the impact be mitigated by the meme-ification of genocide?

(To a mod: The title should say « more or less »)

Long story, but I've ended up becoming the admin of a group on Facebook (the previous admin stepped down in a rush, and added me as he left). And the group has an existing group chat associated with it.

Is it possible to "moderate" this group chat? Specifically, as an admin of the group, can I remove unsavoury/unwanted messages from the chat associated with the group? It looks like I can't.

Can even the creator of a group chat do this? If I close the group chat and create a new one, will I (as its creator) be able to remove unsavoury/unwanted messages from that new chat?

I've done some searching via Google, and I'm not finding anything to indicate that this is possible. If someone posts something unsavoury in a group chat, it looks like the only option is to remove the person from the chat - but the unsavoury messages can't be deleted.

Please tell me that's wrong!

It’s no secret that data science is a good career path. The jobs are in demand, the salaries are compelling, and the work is interesting. So how does someone break in?

In particular, I’m interested in how an experienced IT professional can move into data science. What advice would you give to someone with, say, five years of computing experience, who wants to break into the field? Tell me about the skills required, where you’d tell your friend to go to acquire them, and how to get a job without a specialized degree. What would make you say, “I want to hire this person, even if the individual lacks the relevant schooling”?

It is my understanding that if you are looking at an object falling into a black hole from a remote viewpoint, then the object will appear to take “forever” to complete the fall into the black hole. The object is effectively frozen in time at the black hole’s event horizon, from the remote viewer’s POV.

Is this the correct interpretation so far? If so, let’s remember that.

It is also my understanding that a black hole can increase in mass as it captures new objects. The mass does increase from an external viewpoint. Is this accurate?

If I understand known science on the above points, then the paradox I see here is that while the visual information is frozen in time from the external POV, the mass of the black hole does increase from the external POV. So is this where the Holographic Principle comes in? Or is there another explanation here, or am I off-base entirely?

Or is it just that the accretion disk gains mass and black holes never increase in mass from an external POV, after they are initially formed?

Is this known?

Please either attempt to answer my tortured question, or point me to material that might lead me ask a better question.

Thanks!

I am helping my parents rent out their place in Seattle. I posted it on Zillow, we got tons of traffics and interest. I now need to get the rental agreement in order.

Does anyone have an informed opinion on where to get the agreement template from? I see at least 2 good options, please help me choose.

1. Legal Zoom ($29)
2. eForms (Free)

Looking at the development setup page, the suggested setup is to use vagrant to create and provision a VM. Out of curiosity, is there a reason for this preference over setting up a Tildes Docker image inside the repo? Tildes seems like a pretty simple and straightforward web app, it shouldn't be difficult to create. Is it just a developer preference of Deimos/Tildes devs? Or is there a logistical reason?

I've never read Marcel Proust, and I know very little about his work. But every serious reader of literature I know absolutely gushes over him, but never seems to be able to explain what's good about it or what the books are even about.

The scarce pop-culture references I see to his work (like in "Little Miss Sunshine") seems to cast an affection for Proust as kind of a mark of being an unmoored and depressive romantic.

So is he worth reading? The full collection of "Remembrance of Things Past" is nearly $100, so that's not a trivial amount to invest. Is there a recommended/definitive translation or edition I should read? What should I keep in mind or be open to if I do try giving it a shot?

By that last question I mean like, I'd have hated "Catcher In the Rye" if I wasn't told ahead of time to approach it from the mindset of a 15 year old boy. Or I kind of hated 'Madame Bovary" but when explained to me that this was Flaubert's exercise in trying to make people see themselves in an adulteress, a generally reviled archetype, and this was groundbreaking for the time lets me at least appreciate it for accomplishing what it's set out to do. Are there any literary contexts like I this should have in my head before I delve in?

The current US Senate majority continues to support the president. However, the current president may have been compromised by the Russian government.

The connections that several senators have to Russia (Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, to name two) raise the very real possibility that the current Republican majority in the Senate owes its existence to Russian help.

The FBI, a renewed Republican target, has suggested as much in briefings given to that same U.S. Congress.

What are the chances of the House investigating sitting menbers of Senate, and what twists and turns might occur should it happen?

I've been wondering about this for a while whenever I'm on a metered connection or a capped one.

It'd be cool if I could use my vps to help save data in exchange for latency. Having it download and compress any compressible materials before serving them would be a godsend, but it sounds very edge case-y given how places like youtube deliver videos in bite size peices

Does something like this sound at all possible, or should I just assume it's too niché and look for other data saving ways?

It took a while for this to sink in, since the arrest of Huawei's Chief Financial Controller a few days ago, but...

How does the USA have jurisdiction over Huawei's alleged sales to Iran?

Huawei is a Chinese company, not an American company. Sure, the USA has imposed sanctions on trading with Iran - but surely those sanctions would apply only to American companies. How does the U.S. government have jurisdiction over what a Chinese company does?

Like millions of people, I have a router at home, with WiFi and admin passwords set up.

If an attacker request comes in, there are no port forwarding rules set, and the router should say "hey request from the internet, I don't know to which device you want to go, sorry I'll drop you then", and I'm secure. But I don't think it's that simple. If a packet from the outer network can attack my LAN without using port forwarding, how?

Which router settings should I be really looking for to make home LAN more secure? Or what are the keywords of network security to start with?

Google knows a lot about its users. Facebook knows a lot about its users. FitBit knows a lot about its users. And so on.

But what happens when these companies all sell their data sets to one another? It'd be pretty trivial to link even anonymized users from set to set by looking for specific features. If I went for a run, Google tracked my location, FitBit tracked my heart rate, and Facebook tracked my status about my new best mile time, for example. Thus, Google can narrow down who I am in the other sets using pre-existing information that coincides with theirs. With enough overlap they can figure out exactly who I am fairly easily. Furthermore, each additional layer of data makes this discovery process from new data sets even easier, as it gives more opportunities to confirm or rule out concurrent info. So then when, say, Credit Karma, Comcast, and Amazon's data enter the fray, my online identity stops looking like an individual egg in each different basket but a whole lot of eggs in all in one. And they can do this across millions/billions of users--not just me!

I don't know for certain that this is a thing that happens, but... I have to assume it definitely is happening, right? How could it not? With how valuable data is and how loose protections are, this seems like a logical and potentially very lucrative step.

Right now, is there an aggregate version of "me" that exists in a data store somewhere that is a more comprehensive and accurate picture than my own self-image? After all, my memory and perception are imperfect and biased, but data stores aren't.

It's hard to get a straight answer on this because there are allegations of shilling everywhere when it comes to VPNs (particularly when you discuss specific providers). There's also this post which gets linked pretty frequently and which seems to throw a wrench in the whole idea.

For context, I ask because I have two main concerns:

1. I have been the subject of a mild internet stalking/doxing, and I have no wish to relive that experience.
2. I live in the United States and, if I am understanding things correctly, my ISP now has the right to sell my browsing data without my consent.

I have no love for my ISP and am all about the idea of blocking them from gathering data about me, but it seems the only other option is to hand all of my data over to another company who simply promises not to do anything with it. While I'm sure some of them are legitimate, how can you tell the difference between a genuine privacy tool and a honeypot?

It's the bottom of the 9th. Bases are loaded, and the home team's cleanup batter hits a home run. What is the final score? Does the game end immediately at 1-0 when the first runner crosses the plate, or is it 4-0 with all runners allowed to score?

Hi,

How often are satellite images taken? Why are more periodic images takes with less resolution (is it a different process?)

for example https://zoom.earth takes every 12 hours, but on the most frequent ones i am not able to zoom much (before it switch to older ones)

I suck at probability, so I thought I would ask here.

To clarify, given a population of size P, a sample size of K, and an arbitrary number of trials N, how do I compute the probability of having included each member of the population at least once in the experiment?

This problem is difficult to wrap my head around. It seems like it uses a combination of combinatorics and dependent events, which really throws me off.

Edit: This problem isn't the coupon collector's problem (please see some of my responses below). Think of the coupon collector's problem as being a special case of this problem where K = 1. My question is meant to cover an arbitrary K >= 1.

After trying windows 10 a few years ago and disabling all the marketing stuff and disabling other features that hinder performance, I've been curious why my only other real choice is linux, or reverting back to windows 7.