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Me IRL
  • Me but with sleep 😬

  • *Permanently Deleted*
  • Nice

  • Something wholesome for a change.
  • But most of the possibilities when you do ask suck

  • Do you genuinely believe that government as a whole actually cares about your best interest?
  • Unfortunately, the entire thing is plagued by politicians, so it is falling apart.

    Then the structure of your government is trash.

  • “hAvE YoU TrIeD MaKiNg a tO-Do lisT?”
  • Yep. Now I just know all the shit I failed to do today :\

  • snek
  • inside egg was good but outside is best

    Nah

  • literal pooppost
  • If you are reading this then you are having a poo poo!

    Not necessarily. I could be crying.

  • YSK: If you're on Lemmy.World or Sh.itjust.works you should not subscribe to any Beehaw communities
  • set up shop on an instance

    Don't do that. You probably should have multiple accounts on different instances. If you really need a continuous, single identity, post links to all your usernames in each.

    This is why the move from Reddit was so difficult for Redditors: because we put all our eggs into Reddit Inc's basket. All our content is under Reddit's control. This analysis can be applied to any centralized social media service. If your instance shits the bed or bans itself from everyone else, you can move somewhere else. You can start your own in the worst case. It's annoying, but at least there is a real path to move on.

    We shouldn't be putting our eggs in any one basket. We shouldn't have been doing it before the Fediverse, and we shouldn't be doing it here either. Your social media access should not be dependent on the goodwill of one person or entity. Eventually, that entity will corrupt.

    Also, I'm on vlemmy.net. Right now, they haven't defederated from anyone, and I believe we're still not banned from Beehaw or anyone else. If you really want the whole Fediverse (and you probably don't), make an account on vlemmy or one of the top three instances on this page.

    Why don't you have a second account?

    Lazy. Don't care if my shit gets fucked. But if you do care if your shit gets fucked, then you shouldn't rely on centralized social media.

  • Blowing air out of your mouth, like blowing out a birthday candle, is just a DC form of talking.
  • Yeah. If the signal changed from 0V to +3V, in any way, at any time, then technically it is AC. However, we might treat it as DC for engineering purposes depending on the context. If the system the DC current is going into is stable and responds quickly enough, we can ignore the effect that "starting" the signal will have. However, most non-trivial circuits have non-trivial dynamics, so we need to make sure that, at a bare minimum, they can be started properly.

    Dynamic circuits have, amongst other things, resistances, inductances, and capacitances. Resistors are boring; put in a current I, get back voltage V = IR. Circuits with only resistances are not dynamic. Capacitances and inductances are themselves dynamic elements. For them to exhibit any interesting behavior, the signal (input current or voltage) needs to be changing. Circuits can (but will not necessarily) experience weird behavior when turning on if the power is taken from zero to some voltage too quickly. For example, if a current in an inductor is set from zero to a nonzero constant, you will get a huge (theoretically infinite) spike in voltage. This is because voltage across an inductor is proportional to the rate at which the current signal changes. In the case of a current switched from zero to non-zero, the change from zero to not-zero happens almost instantly, implying a voltage that approaches infinity as the transition becomes steeper. Practically, you get a voltage spike which, when multiplied by current, could generate enough power to blow up whatever you're working on.

    I didn't mention this in any of the comments, but real "DC" sources are dirty. Noise is a class of signals that can take on random values at all times. The fact that it can be a different random value at any time implies that noise is a subclass of AC signals. A "pure" source contaminated with noise is colloquially called a "dirty" source.

    Dirty power supplies, the effect of turning the power on and off, and other supply imperfections are why if you look at the power sections of electrical circuit diagrams, you will see capacitors from the supply voltage to ground. The current through a capacitor is directly proportional to the rate of change of the voltage across it. A constant voltage would imply a zero rate of change, so no current is going through the capacitor. Colloquially, it shouldn't do anything unless there is a disturbance in the circuit.

    Engineers generally expect power supplies to "kinda suck", even those marked as DC. If there are any other dynamic circuits being powered by the supply (and there almost always are; we want our electronics to actually do things for us!), they will be affected and possibly compromised entirely by a dirty power supply.

    I couldn't really think of an application where blowing could be treated as a DC signal and talking could be treated as an AC signal. From an electrical engineering position, blowing is a particular subclass of speech signals, for which there is a dearth of literature, all of which hinges on the assumption that speech signals are "AC", e.g. time-varying.

  • Blowing air out of your mouth, like blowing out a birthday candle, is just a DC form of talking.
  • All talking is DC AC, unless you also speak while breathing in.

    Slowly varying signals like the waveforms generated by speech in all its forms are still AC signals and need to be treated as such for engineering purposes.

  • Blowing air out of your mouth, like blowing out a birthday candle, is just a DC form of talking.
  • because all of them can also be said of DC electrical current.

    I mean I can't and wouldn't force you to think a certain way, but that premise is false, and I thought I demonstrated as such in the previous comment.

    What I can add is that actual "DC current", e.g. that delivered by a physical, nearly-constant current source that turned on at some point in time and ostensibly will be turned off before the heat death of the universe, does have an AC component! At the very least, it will turn on and off, which is a variation in time. When we design circuits for "DC current" (or voltage), we make the assumption that the AC component is too small to be considered, and thus we just pretend that we have an ideal DC current.

    So when we talk about DC current with any kind of precision, we really mean the constant part of the current waveform equal to the average value of the signal. Blowing as a set of related signals in all it's media are not constant signals. A recording would demonstrate this, and the requirement for sound to have a nonzero frequency also rules out the possibility for a DC sound.

    Now I know that analogies are loose comparisons, and if your analogy aids your understanding then more power to you, but I genuinely cannot find any way that they are analogous.

  • What is so great about Reddit/Lemmy apps?
  • Yeah, it was and is a lot easier than desktop usage. I am lying in bed right now typing this with my phone while my desktop is playing YouTube videos. I am too lazy to pick up my keyboard and type this out.

    I tried out the Reddit app for a few days during the protests, and it just fucking sucked. It was slow, buggy, and not customizable. Even in dark mode, it was too bright and gaudy for my tastes. And I had to install extra software to disable ads.

    I used RiF, which was a bit like a more mature Jerboa with some features like swipe to hide posts, built-in username switching, saving post/comment drafts, and well-done integrations for embedded images and webpage links. Links I click in Jerboa currently appear in my browser history, whereas RiF opened up its own browser. Hopefully, Jerboa will add a WebView option.

    More importantly, I felt like Rif was text based, as any Reddit client should be. The Reddit app uses icons where RiF would use a text field. As someone who has put in the time to learn how to read, and used that skill continuously for over two decades, it is annoying to have to freshly learn an app's specific, increasingly abstract icons when we already have the ability to read text.

    I came to Reddit for the in-depth text posts and comments. The meme communities were a nice side thing, but I was really there for the long posts, and to dump long posts of my own.

    IMO, the standard Lemmy web app has more features implemented than Jerboa right now. However, I want to keep my Lemmy/Reddit history separate from my ordinary browsing. For both sites, the app allows my browser not to get cluttered with Reddit links. Jerboa currently opens up a canned tab of one of my browsers, but the browser doesn't get info about every post I open on Lemmy, so it still does have a great deal of utility.

    IMO Lemmy is really well designed from the ground up. The web app is pretty good, but I would simply rather not use it in my browser if I don't have to.

    Apparently, Reddit's app and web interface were additionally inaccessible for blind people to use, so they resorted to 3rd party apps (although I don't think RiF was one of their typical choices). Reddit has allowed a few select non-commercial accessibility-focused apps to use their API for free, but I think that the status of serving NSFW content to these 3rd party apps is tenuous. The concern was that for all practical purposes, Reddit unilaterally decided that blind people could not interact with NSFW content. Now I just checked /r/gonewild, an established porn sub, and /r/erotic literature, a text-based erotica sub, on RedReader. So far, it is fetching new content for both subs. However, I have not checked any other apps (other than RiF, which is just completely dead) or subs. Anyone with more perspective on the current situation for blind users, please reply.

    Lastly, I didn't moderate any communities on Reddit, but apparently, moderating through the Reddit app or their modern interface sucked. Somehow, the 3rd party apps had much better tools than Reddit's own app.

    For me, RiF was the "frontpage of the internet". I'll miss it, but Lemmy has given me hope for the future of the internet for basically the first time in my life. Jerboa is currently the primary way that I access Lemmy, so I am rooting for it's success, as well the other Lemmy apps and Kbin.

  • We did it Lemmy!
  • I can already imagine it being used in a phrase with something about jumping off cliffs and being brainless followers and whatnot.

    Yeah I'm okay with that. It'll keep us humble when we inevitably screw up.

  • Blowing air out of your mouth, like blowing out a birthday candle, is just a DC form of talking.
  • [Air] being blown out of your mouth is similar to DC ( direct current ) and that it's a continuous wave of air with frequency zero.

    Nope. You can't have sound without a vibration. A vibration of zero frequency is constant for all time. When you blow air, you get a bunch of "not-zero" frequency noise from the actual movement of air. Even if you could somehow blow a perfectly DC (0Hz frequency) wave, the fact that you started at some point of time mathematically implies that there are higher frequencies in the signal. [1]

    To convince yourself of this, record an audio clip of yourself blowing into a microphone. Any mic will do, just don't overload it.[2] Open up the audio file in Audacity, Ardour, or any other audio program that can display waveforms. It will be oscillating quite a bit.

    This also indicates that approximating sound as a constant waveform is not a good engineering decision. As an hobbyist audio programmer and electrical engineering major, it would make my life a lot easier if blowing sounds were constant, because then I could do away with frequency analysis and digital filtering, which is so easy to screw up. We would simply sample the constant audio waveform in whatever medium [3] it is constant.

    [1] I actually had a much more detailed post in mind where I discussed Fourier series, Fourier transforms, and the exact definitions of DC values in electrical engineering, but unfortunately Jerboa ate the comment before I could submit it. Oh well, I can't be mad since the app is so early in its lifecycle. If you need any help navigating the above pages, feel free to comment. I can also point you to more rigorous references if you need some reading material.

    [2] Really, I mean not to clip any element in the signal chain. All digital audio devices have a maximum loudness. If the signal has a bunch of flat tops, like it was going to keep going higher or lower and then some jerk clipped off the highest and lowest points with scissors, you've clipped the signal. This is especially important for blowing because it (intentionally) moves a lot more air than ordinary talking, so try to physically back away from the microphone when you blow. Technically you can damage a microphone by blowing at it, but you probably can't blow hard enough to blow it. It's mostly a signal integrity issue.

    [3] I have been using the word "waveform" rather loosely. The sound is physically propagated through space as related waves in pressure and particle velocity. Microphones typically respond to changes in pressure, which is converted into an analog voltage waveform. Now the pressure waveform exists over time, but also over space. Mathematically, this expresses the fact a sound might be louder or quieter depending on where in space you are relative to the sound's source. If the electrical system is competently designed, the distribution of the voltage in space should be negligible. This expresses the reality that audio distributed through headphones sound the same regardless of where the player is located relative to the headphones, so long as all the wires are connected correctly. Ideally, once you have the pressure at a point, or more realistically an average over a small region of space, the reading is converted to a voltage that is directly proportional to the pressure waveform. In reality, there are going to be some nonlinearities, but the hope is that the waveform is as close to the original as possible under reasonable restrictions on frequency content and signal size, e.g. that the signal isn't too fast or too big.

    Furthermore, the analog waveform needs to be sampled. This generates a new waveform that only exists at discrete points in time. Then, because computers have a finite number of storage bits, the sampled waveform is quantized, or forced into one of a discrete set of values. This is the digital waveform seen in Audacity or a similar program. Furthermore, your computer has to reverse that process so it can send a voltage signal to the headphones, which finally generates the pressure variations that reach your ears.

    We can use the term "audio waveform" interchangeably for all of these things, including the digital ones, because they carry (approximately; ideally exactly) the same information. This is not some hand-wavy term; information theory posits that the amount of information that a signal carries can be quantified. However, the hand-wavy explanation for it is that all of these waveforms are simply different ways to represent the same thing. For the purposes of classifying signals, sound signals should share common properties despite being in different mediums.

  • I wish more people understood how much we autistic folks struggle with summer
  • Me too. Also, AC + fan make constant continuous noise, but they're basically required for me to even begin to feel comfortable. I've mostly gotten used to the noise, but when I'm already overloaded, it's not a nice thing.

  • speaking of alternatives, what brand do people hate that actually has a decent alternative?
  • Coke/Cola -> Tea/infusion

    Wut

    Nah but seriously, they're not interchangeable. A Coke replacement would be another cola.

  • Can I add pills?

    So I take fluoxetine for depression and anxiety. I need to take 40mg a day. I have enough 40mg pills to get through the week, but I also have a bunch of 20mg pills. They are both delayed-release capsules. The difference is basically the dose. I can schedule a psychiatrist appointment to get a refill, but that requires a phone call... which means I'm going to put it off as long as possible. That's definitely what smart people do.

    I know how math works, e.g. that 40mg = 20mg + 20mg = 2×20mg. I'm asking whether two 20mg pills will work like one 40mg pill. If not, would I get more or less medicine, and would I get it in the same time?

    More generally, if you have X pills and you need to take kX (k a positive integer) pills, can I take X k times and expect the same result as taking a kX pill?

    0
    the API changes occur tomorrow, gentlemen, it's been an honor (inb4 Lemmy completely crashes)
    • Reddit/insert enshittified service here: data stored by corporation

    • Fediverse: data stored by the community itself

    • Threadiverse: above, but presented like Reddit threads.

    • Why it's important: takes power back from FAANG and gives it to the people; allows you to store your social media with people you trust, including just yourself; can be studied or forked by users

    I know I've left out a lot of details, but that's why it's a simplification 😄.

  • No, they don't need to make money!

    I hope this is a good place to post this.

    > Corporations need to make money, you know.

    No they don't, and I'm tired of pretending they do!

    I've read this argument all over the Fediverse from ex-Redditors debating the objectives of the protests in response to the API changes, usually justifying why Reddit should charge a "low" fee to use their API.

    I personally fled Reddit partially because the API changes will kill the app I used to browse. I'll admit that my departure is not fully principled. But what made me pull the trigger was the realization that the protest was doomed because of the moderate, business-friendly goals it sought to achieve, and the lack of voices demanding something better. Put simply: it doesn't ask for much. It seems like Redditors are okay with a gradual enshittification, but not a sudden one.

    Even if spez backs down and decides to price the API at a level that the current Reddit developers accept, the fact that it costs anything means that someone cannot afford to begin developing a 3rd party Reddit app.

    I feel like there's a tacit "fuck-you-I-got-mine" attitude from large developers advocating for "cheap" API as opposed to free [1] API. If they're not actively throwing new developers under the bus, then they are at least apathetic to their situation.

    Corporations and the executives that run them are blood-sucking leeches on the backs of the people who actually build and maintain technology. The goal of the executive is to bring as much value into the company as possible, whereas the goals of tech workers are varied, but generally center around developing a product or service to be useful to customers. The lie of liberalism is that these goals are never in opposition, and that the goals of the executive are actually the goals of developers (and workers in general) in disguise, under the assumption that the average person is too stupid to earn their freedom.

    The Reddit blackout has furnished an excellent example where "enshittifying" their platform to make more money off advertising goes directly against the goal to make a nice, usable platform for discussion. The executives clearly control Reddit, because the path thought to maximize profit is the one being uncompromisingly taken.

    > But I/they won't build any new technologies and progress will stagnate if I/people can't get rich.

    Good. Don't let the door hit you/them on the way out. Let's bring in people who don't want to be there out of tech. Disinterested people are the hardest to work with, because they're always dragging their feet.

    If that means all technology disappears forever, then that's fine, because it would mean that our usage of technology was forced in the first place. This outcome strikes me as unlikely. I know damn well that I practically rely on stateful devices to remember things.

    I'm currently teaching myself how to write audio plugins with the goal to give them out as FOSS, amongst other endeavors that, to an outside observer, look like "work." I'm not at all interested in getting rich or generating profit. If profit is a precondition for your participation in a project, I'd love to take that burden off your hands.

    > But people need to eat.

    Yes, and that should have nothing to do with a person's ability to contribute to technology. I know that there are a lot people who would just lie in bed eating Doritos all day if all their other needs would be taken care of, but I am most certainly not one of those people.[2] Honestly, I don't think that people would just chill on their couches for their entire lives, but for academic purposes we must consider the possibility that people are all "that lazy". If that is the fate of human kind, then that outcome indicates that apparently we were all being forced to work anyways, so fine by me.

    > People should be paid for their work

    People should unconditionally have access to resources to stay alive. Under capitalism, this is unfortunately tied to your productive output and the time you sacrifice to your employer or customer. In my view, it is still important to make it worth someone's time, because it is (can be understood as) a strictly finite and non-renewable resource that is by definition required to live. However, there are many ways to make things worth people's time that aren't contingent on imposing a capitalist system upon people. Furthermore, people often do actually do things seemingly out of the kindness of their hearts for no obvious rewards. Liberalism forgets that some things other than making money are actually fun or important for their own sake. For example, I imagine that most of are here to talk to other people, profitability be damned.

    So no, corporations do not need to make money, because corporations don't need to exist. In my view, corporations ought not exist, but accepting merely that they don't inherently need to exist is enough to follow along.

    They don't need to advertise to us either. Again, my view is more like "I'm not interested in buying what you're selling, even if I am," but it is enough to accept that advertisements are not inherently necessary. I'm not at all against public notices or promoting products, ideas, or services you believe in, but cramming such promotions into every nook and cranny of my existence is something I'm absolutely fed up with. Public notices need not be intrusive!

    Although the Fediverse cannot be completely free of corporate bullshit as long as corporations exist, the decentralized structure of federation allows us to freely associate with (and by extension disassociate from) the people and groups we choose, because anyone can host an instance with their own rules. If we can get people and communities onto the Fediverse, this would represent a tremendous shift in the power to curate information away from corporations.

    Because fuck corporations, and fuck their profits too. And I'm tired of talking around that impulse.

    [1] By free, I really mean it as in "free as in beer" in this context. However, as a programmer and anarchist, I think that a fully FOSS API would be easier to work with for separate reasons. Even though the goal of an API in particular is to abstract away the details, I still want to understand what's going on under the hood in case it's doing stuff I don't want.

    [2] Well, maybe kind of. I love Doritos and I'm lying in bed right now. But I have a strong desire to move and create stuff after resting for some time, hopefully soon...

    2
    Metal @lemmy.ml PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S @vlemmy.net

    Death/thrash. Apparently they were an instrumental group until recently. Pumped for their new album regardless.

    0
    Noise Trail Immersion - Symbology Of Shelter

    Like Deathspell Omega with a hardcore streak.

    3

    Death metal with industrial and noise influences. This is pure rage and negativity.

    0
    Deiphage - Crucified in Razorsire

    Found this while browsing unknown bands on YouTube. Good shit.

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    PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S @vlemmy.net

    Ex-Redditor. I have big autism, big sad-all-the-time, and weird math energy.

    Interests

    • extreme metal
    • audio engineering
    • electrical engineering
    • math
    • programming
    • anarchism

    Dislikes

    • proprietary software
    • advertisements
    • paywalls
    • capitalism
    • bigotry
    • people who defend the above
    Posts 6
    Comments 49