Chinpokomon's recent activity

  1. Comment on I can't get my head around US President Joe Biden polling poorly and Donald Trump polling well in ~talk

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    For Score, you get to choose any rating for any or all of the candidates. So, you can elect to not vote for a candidate. Your right that it isn't exactly like how websites tally, as not voting for...

    For Score, you get to choose any rating for any or all of the candidates. So, you can elect to not vote for a candidate. Your right that it isn't exactly like how websites tally, as not voting for something like that isn't regarded as a vote against and each product, restaurant, movie, etc. is averaged for just the number of ratings provided, but the important distinction is that it isn't just an up/down vote and unlike RCV you can decide what the rating means to you. Voting with a couple fives, a four, and a two for 4 out of 7 candidates would be just fine.

    Not voting is like a hidden 0 rating.

  2. Comment on I can't get my head around US President Joe Biden polling poorly and Donald Trump polling well in ~talk

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    I thought I covered that better with how I structured my comment. The biggest problem is when you have lots of candidates from two major parties, and the constituents all vote in block for their...

    I thought I covered that better with how I structured my comment. The biggest problem is when you have lots of candidates from two major parties, and the constituents all vote in block for their party. That probably won't affect a national race as much as state or local, because parties will still want to concentrate their campaign efforts. For other races where the candidates mostly handle their own fundraising, then the parties tend to benefit more as a bloc.

    Still better than FPTP in my opinion and it has strong preference from those who study it more than me.

  3. Comment on Over 5,000 games industry workers have already lost their jobs in 2024 in ~games

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    It's one thing to identify the gap in your team or org and another to allocate the funding to hire someone to fill that gap. Once you have funds allocated you need to be choosy about who you...

    It's one thing to identify the gap in your team or org and another to allocate the funding to hire someone to fill that gap. Once you have funds allocated you need to be choosy about who you select to join your team, because you might not have another opportunity to hire someone soon. Make sure that any potential candidates have the necessary skills.

    So there is a demand, but it is a demand for a very specific candidate unique to the role. General purpose knowledge can usually be found for less technical work, but the requirements are getting more specialized each year.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on People with a "second brain": Why? How? in ~life

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    The other way seems more useful to me.

    The other way seems more useful to me.

  5. Comment on What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he’s not coming back? in ~space

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    The reason goes back to Apollo missions. For Apollo I, they were fitted in place like a plug to keep it sealed. I think this might actually have been a change over Mercury capsules where Gus...

    The reason goes back to Apollo missions. For Apollo I, they were fitted in place like a plug to keep it sealed. I think this might actually have been a change over Mercury capsules where Gus Grissom's capsule sunk in the Pacific after the hatch was gettisoned. For Apollo, once the capsule was pressurized, especially compared with the vacuum of space, the door would be immovable. During a ground test, the Apollo I was pressurized with 100% oxygen when a spark turned the interior into a furnace. Had the crew been able to open the hatch, it is thought they might have survived. So the hatch needs to be able to open quickly when there is urgency.

    The second problem is weight and space. I mean where in the vehicle would you create an unusable pocket of air that would be large enough to hold a person, and If there was an air hatch, that's an extra weighted door you need to remove from potential cargo weight, which serves to other purpose than to keep someone away from the other hatch. There was an air hatch on the way from the cabin to the cargo bay as I recall, but that was also how folks would go for walks.

    7 votes

  6. Comment on 4 billion if statements in ~comp

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    I think there are better ways. Even numbers are those which are evenly divisible by 2. Odd numbers are those which are not even. Therefore, Start at 0 Add 2 Check, is this your number? Goto 2 When...

    I think there are better ways.

    1. Even numbers are those which are evenly divisible by 2.
    2. Odd numbers are those which are not even.

    Therefore,

    1. Start at 0
    2. Add 2
    3. Check, is this your number?
    4. Goto 2

    When you find your number, you will know it is Even.

    I know way you're thinking. And you're right, this is only covering half of the numbers. So I've also worked on a fix. It will run about half as fast, but O() time is technically the same. So yay!

    1. Assign the value of 0 to the variables A and B
    2. Add 2 to A
    3. Check, is this your number?
    4. Subtract 2 from B
    5. Check, is this your number?
    6. Goto 2
    2 votes

  7. Comment on Theory: All children love Darude - Sandstorm in ~music

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    That's probably similar to when I found Donna Summer's, I Feel Love. It was a NYE party only a few years ago and there was a local house band playing songs. I realized as the rich bass...

    That's probably similar to when I found Donna Summer's, I Feel Love.

    It was a NYE party only a few years ago and there was a local house band playing songs. I realized as the rich bass progressions washed over me - this must be what disco was like. It was a song I had heard forever growing up. I probably first listened to it on the AM radio in one of my stuffed animals. Hearing it live, on a sound system that could give it justice, it was a transformational experience. I got it! I understood disco. I remember sharing my experience with others. "I love disco, and I hear it's making a comeback." I stared intensely at my father as I awaited his reaction. "What are you, high?" My father didn't love disco - I get that now. And what if I was? Does that make the music any less magical? No, they're the ones who are wrong. They just don't get it.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on I can't get my head around US President Joe Biden polling poorly and Donald Trump polling well in ~talk

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    There are other voting systems which take the spoiler effect out of play. Plurality or First Past the Post (FPTP) is what we use most commonly and it naturally reduces to two candidates and...

    There are other voting systems which take the spoiler effect out of play. Plurality or First Past the Post (FPTP) is what we use most commonly and it naturally reduces to two candidates and therefore strongly supports a two major party system.

    Approval Voting is an interesting system. Of the x number of candidates before you, indicate which ones you would approve of? It sounds like a decent system, but it has a few things working against it.

    Other voting systems like Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) or Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) can allow a third party candidate who appeals to overlapping voters across the aisle, but it also can encourage more extreme candidates to win. This is especially true if there are a lot of similar candidates which split the vote for the first round, but the voters put down the more familiar extreme candidate for their second choice. Some people dislike this system because it doesn't assure a Condorcet winner, so a candidate with fewer votes cast in the first round can beat out candidates who had more votes and might be considered "winning" in early tabulation, but it seems to me that the candidate who wins has managed to demonstrate the greatest appeal to the most people, so I personally see that as a strength.

    Range Voting or Score is like looking at the star rating for a review site. Something will have the highest rating and something will have the lowest. When voting, you get to choose any rating for any or all of the candidates. Unlike RCV, you don't have to be that exact in deciding that you prefer one candidate over another. If you want to give all five stars to candidates with a party letter next to their manger or all one stars to any other candidate, you may, but that starts to look like Approval and brings some of its flaws.

    STAR (Score then Automatic Runoff) is an interesting system which is sort of a mix between Score and Instant Runoff. All systems have tactical voting flaws where how votes are cast can sometimes lead to a winner that is somehow regarded as inferior to a majority of voters. STAR tries to eliminate these weaknesses by bringing the best of Score and Instant Runoff so that they work against each other to prevent gaming.

    Pretty much any of these would be better than Plurality and several actually give a boost to the third party candidates. However, it would take some significant Acts of Congress to change how things are conducted, and most members of Congress are in one of two parties. It's desirable but unlikely that you could get Congress to support bills which would effectively remove the Party system which got them elected in the first place.

    4 votes

  9. Comment on Trailer for Mickey Mouse slasher film drops on same day ‘Steamboat Willie’ character enters public domain in ~movies

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    Yes, but it also pushes the copyright. This trailer alone seems to be directly positioned to test Disney. And Rovio maybe. Intentionally using clips, the silhouette of the mouse, and using the...

    Yes, but it also pushes the copyright. This trailer alone seems to be directly positioned to test Disney. And Rovio maybe. Intentionally using clips, the silhouette of the mouse, and using the name Mickey, it's putting a stake in the ground to see if Disney tries to challenge anything. While I hope that someone creates a film like you suggested, if Disney didn't challenge this film in court, then someone could create a nice film without risk. If Disney goes after them, then we'll also know something.

    45 votes

  10. Comment on What was your first computer game? (Soundcheck question 2023) in ~games

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    My brother had that. I used to make levels for him to solve. Usually though, it just became me making levels that I was the only one to play.

    My brother had that. I used to make levels for him to solve. Usually though, it just became me making levels that I was the only one to play.

    2 votes

  11. Comment on What was your first computer game? (Soundcheck question 2023) in ~games

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    My first PC was the TI, so it must have been something for that. The first is more difficult to say.

    My first PC was the TI, so it must have been something for that. The first is more difficult to say.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Apple cuts off Beeper Mini’s access after launch of service that brought iMessage to Android in ~tech

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    And if you look at the arguments made by Aereo, they were the same ones made by the fledgling CATV industry. If you can record broadcast transmission in your home, and in the case of Aereo you are...

    And if you look at the arguments made by Aereo, they were the same ones made by the fledgling CATV industry. If you can record broadcast transmission in your home, and in the case of Aereo you are effectively leasing an antenna in your broadcast region, it should have been a legitimate use case. For the same reason you can record something at your home and then stream it to yourself on the other side of the planet, you should be able to record something you are selecting to time shift and record, and then play back to your own authorized devices. The only real distinction was the length of wire to the antenna, but then you're going right back to the core of what Community Antenna Television was about in the first place.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Grand Theft Auto VI | Trailer 1 in ~games

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    I'm still waiting for GTAV DLC. Online was okay but they should have put some effort back into supporting the reason I picked up GTAV in the first place. Then all the other shenanigans they've...

    I'm still waiting for GTAV DLC. Online was okay but they should have put some effort back into supporting the reason I picked up GTAV in the first place. Then all the other shenanigans they've pulled, sending it DMCA notices for projects which don't actually infringe on their IP. While it was the parent company responsible for sending those notices, I have little reason to support R*.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on Introducing Beeper Mini - get blue bubbles on Android in ~tech

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    The same is true for SMS and RCS on Google Messaging. Both live in the same app.

    The same is true for SMS and RCS on Google Messaging. Both live in the same app.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on How to find out which extension opened an advertising tab? in ~tech

    Chinpokomon
    Link
    Seems like it would be good of browsers to add metadata about which process, extension, or tab opened an URL. This is information which could be read by the user to track down all sort of things....

    Seems like it would be good of browsers to add metadata about which process, extension, or tab opened an URL. This is information which could be read by the user to track down all sort of things. Just like you can identify the parent process in a system that trail is lost when the target is the browser.

    2 votes

  16. Comment on RIP Omegle 2009-2023 in ~tech

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    A fun thing I did in Omegle was join it from Bigscreen VR. It was a bunch of avatars sitting in a virtual theater, and we'd join the video feed of strangers. So it was a really unique experience...

    A fun thing I did in Omegle was join it from Bigscreen VR. It was a bunch of avatars sitting in a virtual theater, and we'd join the video feed of strangers. So it was a really unique experience because those of us in VR were also from all over the world.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on Introducing Steam Deck OLED - November 16 in ~games

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    Have you seen the pixels? It isn't as simple as just making bigger pixels. There is also a problem with yield. As you scale up, the higher a risk for a defect scraping the entire panel. If it is a...

    Have you seen the pixels? It isn't as simple as just making bigger pixels. There is also a problem with yield. As you scale up, the higher a risk for a defect scraping the entire panel. If it is a smaller panel, you have greater assurance that any defects in manufacturing won't impact lots of the material you used. LCD is less prone to these issues when they are bigger because they are transmissive. With OLED, each pixel is responsible for producing light.

    8 votes

  18. Comment on Does the language you speak change how you think? in ~humanities.languages

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    Mostly, I agree that I was dissatisfied, which is unusual for most of what Tom Scott releases. I can think of many counter points which I think are driven mostly by cultural influence, whereby...

    Mostly, I agree that I was dissatisfied, which is unusual for most of what Tom Scott releases. I can think of many counter points which I think are driven mostly by cultural influence, whereby maybe it isn't language which prevents an ability to express ideas, as much as it is trying to express those thoughts to someone else when you don't have an express way to communicate those ideas.

    Your math example is actually a great example of this. For a couple of decades now I've thought about mathematical objects which would support higher spatial dimensions than what we observe. The concept relies on curvature on an infinite manifold. In other words, and simplified to one dimension, does an observable straight line mean that there isn't any curvature over any finite segment? If the answer is no, then it follows that there might be other dimensions to that curve, a straight line, that we cannot observe, but they exist none the less. If division by zero is defined such that +∞ and -∞ are continuous at ∞, then for ℝ, ∞ is just as well defined as an abstract concept as 0, being continuous from +0 and -0.

    This idea had me exploring non-Euclidean geometry to try and understand this more. Without an understanding about this mathematical object, I didn't even know what questions to ask. I'm still not sure, but I haven't found anything which tells me this doesn't work.

    This has implication for our spatial dimensions and suggests to me that Space-time might be a 5-dimensional infinite Klein bottle manifold. An interesting property of this is that you could observe in 3-dimensions that a particle is in isolation, but it's anti-particle pair might be on the other side of this infinite manifold and interact with each other, thus attributing to some of the quantum fluctuations. The other interesting property this would have, is that this would balance all particle and anti-particle pairs in the Universe. The electron could fluctuate between this dimensional boundary and perpetually tunnel across it so that it is popping in and out of existence, although if it were exchanging with the anti side of the manifold, I expect it would annihilate with its positron pair when it transits. Maybe there are more than 5-dimensions and the electron is transitioning into a different parallel. Lastly, and this is where I've had some doubt, gravity as we observe it in our spatial dimensions might actually be a 5-dimensional structure by which we only observe its shadow in 4-dimensions, (3 spatial). The reason I'm uncertain about this is that I'm not sure the inverse square law would still hold. On the other hand, it might also be that in higher dimensions gravity would still be observed to follow an inverse square law in lower dimensions.

    Its taken me a couple of decades to be able to write this concept down, and I'm not sure I'm communicating the concept to anyone who has a deep understanding of math. I know the concept based on my limited knowledge, but it is difficult for me to express it because I don't have the language.

    If the question is whether or not we can have concepts and ideas which we can't explain with a limited language domain, then Tom might be right. On the other hand, if we can't communicate those ideas to others because we're limited by language, I think it becomes a more philosophical question, something like a tree falling in a forest. If you can't use language to describe a concept, do you even have that concept? There must be some foundational concept which gives a new concept footing.

    1 vote

  19. Comment on PowersHELL scripting in ~comp

    Chinpokomon
    Link
    Personally, I really like PowerShell. I like it enough that it is my default shell for MacOS and Linux (WSL) installs as well. There are some modules which are Windows only, and that can be...

    Personally, I really like PowerShell. I like it enough that it is my default shell for MacOS and Linux (WSL) installs as well. There are some modules which are Windows only, and that can be frustrating at times, but the core language is something I can use across different Operating Systems and I can share my $PROFILE. That's very useful for a lot of situations. I have additional scripts I use to encapsulate specific environment needs, but most of setting up my system can be used independent of the platform.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on Any amatuer (or professional) astrophotographers capture the annular solar eclipse today? in ~space

    Chinpokomon
    Link Parent
    It's about to get rare. Total Eclipse in 2017. Annular in 2023. Total in 2024. Annular in 2044. Total in 2046. This is North American, US specific, but it is far less common than the last few...

    It's about to get rare. Total Eclipse in 2017. Annular in 2023. Total in 2024. Annular in 2044. Total in 2046. This is North American, US specific, but it is far less common than the last few years might suggest. Plan for the 2024 of you want to experience it. I saw the 2017 on the west coast, Annular yesterday in Texas, and will probably be back for 2024. Completely worth it and both are different experiences.

    4 votes