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  • Must be binary...

  • ‘More killing won’t bring back lost lives’: Tal Mitnick, 18, on going to prison instead of joining Israel's military
  • Before the cruel events on October 7th and the insane devastation that followed, I didn't realize how deeply messed up the western idea of foreign policy in the Middle East really is. Before October 7th, I knew about colonialism, I knew about the war on terror and its devastating consequences for countries in that region. I knew about things like the insane death toll in the Mediterranean Sea, where innocent people in need are just getting systematically crushed by the EU's border apparatus and the right-wing idea of "securing borders" and "not letting the bad ones in". I knew about it and understood it as inhumane right-wing or neoliberal ideas that align with the interests of those who can really profit from it. The oil industry, weapons manufacturers, etc... and the politicians who are in their pockets or benefit from spreading fear and hate.

    For me, these topics were always something that the progressive left and even many liberal or apolitical people can understand as senseless cruelty. Seeing the news coverage after October 7th and diving deeper into the details of that conflict, I was absolutely dumbfounded, that even some of the progressive news-outlets I follow are avoiding talking about Israels war crimes while repeating the propaganda of Zionist organizations or the Israeli state. My country has defended Israels actions in the international court, and there are quite a few people agreeing with that decision. Quite a few people that I would otherwise consider reasonable and knowledgeable. I have read newspapers that hold themselves to "high journalistic standards" who call peaceful student groups antisemitic and Nazi-aligned. Groups that were advocating for humanity, a ceasefire and a one-state-solution, and have now shut down any kind of public protest because of the hate that came their way.

    Not far from where I live, there was a concentration camp and less than a hundred years ago my country had a fascist tyrant as its leader and plenty of accomplices who helped him with his ethnic cleansing campaign. We are not that far removed from this fascism, from treating people with other ethnic backgrounds like something you can just exploit to drown out in the Mediterranean Sea. From supporting the idea of a pure religious ethnostate having the right to slaughter "uncivilized" people that are in the way. From being ignorant enough to whitewash those who fought against apartheid while jailing those who are opposing it now.

  • Question about gravity and red giants
  • The “towards the center of mass” force, will grow with the square of the distance reduction to the closest bunch of mass(es)

    This is the key point of my question because the mass m of the "bunch of mass" that is close to Venus will be less when you consider the density p with m = p * V, where V is just the volume of mass that is close enough to Venus. Assuming the Suns density is uniform (which it isn't, most of the mass is far away from Venus), p and by extension m and by extension F (the gravitational force) are proportional to 1/r³.

    Unfortunately, the actual calculations are far too hard for me, but my intuition would suggest that the 1/r³ relationship of density and volume would outdo any other factors here.

  • Question about gravity and red giants

    Hello everyone, I have a theoretical question about an animation in the documentary I've linked in this post.

    At timestamp 05:01, you can see an animation of Venus, suffering the effects of a change in gravitational forces. After being close enough to the expanding sun, Venus begins to lose material on its surface due to the stronger gravitational pull of the sun.

    For me, this whole animation doesn't seem right because the mass and the center of mass of the sun doesn't change. I can imagine how the mater of the sun's surface could change the gravitational pull that the material on Venus' surface is experiencing, but would it be that strong at that point? I would've assumed that more and more of the sun's mass will be concentrated in the core as the red giant is expanding and not leaving enough mater to overcome Venus' gravity at its surface.

    Once, Venus enters the denser parts of the suns' atmosphere, I wouldn't doubt that the atmospheric drag or the fall towards the denser core would scatter the material on the surface and eventually destroy Venus completely. Shortly before that, however, while Venus is still roughly maintaining an orbit similar to its current one, this doesn't seem right to me.

    Did they mess up this animation or will the sun, at its surface, have more gravitational pull than Venus?

    3
    Help with a simple and private phone
  • Another thing you might want to consider is the repairability. If you want to swap the battery years down the line, this can become a really important metric as well. iFixit is your friend here: you can just look up a device and check what the repairability score is.

  • Help with a simple and private phone
  • Thanks for the info, I changed it.

  • Help with a simple and private phone
  • is the GCam app noticeably better than a stock camera app? What sorts of things would it do better?

    As I mentioned in my first comment: "Sometimes, the picture quality is decent, but often times it's lacking" when it comes to the ROM camera app. How well a camera does, depends on the app (which is supplied by the ROM) and the driver (usually supplied by the manufacturer). The quality can, therefore, vary from device to device. A few years ago I would've definitely said that GCam is a step above ROM camera apps, but in more and more cases, those have become almost comparable in quality. One aspect where GCam still actually makes a difference is long exposure modes (low light and night photography) as well as offering special modes like panorama or photo-sphere.

    The last I checked, the Pixels had excellent sensors but had some camera software issues that I believe were eventually resolved. I’m hoping that isn’t an issue if I’m just using a basic OS.

    From my experience, older oneplus devices (e.g. oneplus 7/oneplus 7 pro) and pixel devices (pixel 5 and upwards) have excellent community support, so you should be golden.

  • Help with a simple and private phone
  • For me, the key aspects for selecting the right hardware are the camera and the comunity support. All the other capabillities you listed are available on any phone that has a relatively recent ROM available.

    Let's start with the camera quality: If you want to use your phone without GSF or microG, you could use the camera app that comes with the ROM you flashed. Sometimes, the picture quallity is decent, but often times its lacking. Instead, I would recommend using a modded GCam App together with fake GSF. This way, you can use googles powerful camera app without sacrificing your privacy. So when I'm looking for hardware, I always check, if there is a modded GCam version available.

    Aside from that, I would check if there are recent stable versions of the ROM I want, available for the hardware. The last thing I would check is, how active and how big the modding community for that device is. If you can't find a lot of support on XDA, it's probably not the best hardware choice to begin with.

    When it comes to software, there are a lot of privacy-friendly replacements to choose from, but here is my setup:

    EDIT: GCam and FUTO are not Open Source, but they are free and don't collect or require any user data

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • I'll add "Will Save The Galaxy For Food" to my list, thanks! I've actually read Angry Planet a while ago and enjoyed it. A story that is really cozy and easy to read, that helped me through difficult times. In case you haven't read the Murderbot Diaries, I'd highly recommend those. Despite the name, it's also very nice to read.

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • I haven't tried those, thanks for the suggestion!

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • Thanks for the suggestions! I added them to the list.

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • This looks a lot like hard scifi and cyberpunk to me and I'm not sure if they fit the "exploring new worlds and places" part I was looking for. When I eventually come back to those genres, I'll have a great list of recommendations though. Thanks!

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • I've read the first and parts of the second book and I think it has one of the best antagonistic characters. I didn't put it on this list because I was looking more for stories, that explore new worlds and places. Its definitely on the list of books I want to finish at some point. Idk what it is, but it needs to be the right time and place for me to be able to appreciate books like those.

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • I haven't heard of any of those books and especially Permutation City sounds interresting to me, thanks!

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • I have to admit that I've never really gotten into other books by Frank Herbert. I've tried Messiah and a few of his short stories but nothing came close to Dune. I haven't tried the 'WorShip' trilogy yet (which is the same as The Pandora Sequence I'm guessing?... I can't find anything with that name tbh)

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • Thanks for mentioning it. I definitely should've added it to my post, since I enjoyed that story so much. Also, just in case you haven't seen the Apple TV adaptation of it... don't... They completely botched that one imo.

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • Currently, I'm looking for longer stories, but I'll definitely come back to your suggestions at some point. Thanks!

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • I haven't read Redemption Space and the White Space books yet. I'll definitely add those to my list now, thanks!

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • Thanks! Added it to my list.

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • Thanks! All of these stories sound interesting. Red Rising has actually been on my bucket list for a while now, but I've been hesitant to try it because the summary sounded like the "stumbling from one flawed decision to the next" thing I was mentioning earlier. Having another person suggest it here, makes me want to try it now.

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions
  • Thank you for the suggestion! I've actually read that one and It's my favorite story from Brandon Sanderson. I loved the characters and the fantasy setting! But yeah... it doesn't really fit the sci-fi/futuristic world that I was looking for here.

  • Your Sci-Fi suggestions

    I haven't had any luck in finding sci-fi books recently. I'm looking for a longer story that takes its time to establish the world/universe and the characters living in it. I like the idea of exploring space or futuristic cities/landscapes and being on a journey together with the protagonist. The story doesn't have to have a happy end or flawless characters, but I also don't like it when everything is hopeless/dystopic and all the characters stumble from one flawed decision to the next one. Some examples of what I enjoyed so far are:

    If you enjoyed some of these stories and have any similar suggestions, feel free to share them here. If not, maybe consider checking out the list above... I highly recommend each of these entries.

    45
    Suggestions to add to my playlist
    open.spotify.com Dance with Asian/Oriental instruments

    Dance with Asian/Oriental instruments · Playlist · 22 songs · 1 likes

    Dance with Asian/Oriental instruments

    I'm looking for song suggestions to add to my playlist. It's meant to be a collection of EDM songs that use oriental or Asian Instruments as the main feature, or at least to a noticeable degree.

    With this description alone, it's easy to get lost in more specific genres like tropical house+Balkan instruments or lofi beats+flute/string-instruments or Indian/Bollywood EDM. When I look at song suggestions from YouTube or Spotify, it's usually focussing on one of these aspects and only suggesting that type of music.

    What I want instead are songs that are closer to mainstream (western) EDM that use these instruments to change things up a bit and add a spin to the standard formula. I'm trying to get a variety of songs that try to achieve this in different ways. I'd be happy if you post songs here which could fit in your opinion, and hope this description wasn't too convoluted.

    4

    Since I haven't seen anyone post this, I thought I'd share the new Star Engine demo video from Cloud Imperium Games.

    65
    Your Opinion on my Game Idea

    cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/7671504

    > For a while now, I had this idea in my head of making a small 2D side scroller game that helps people learn programming, and I'm looking for honest opinions and feedback from others. I know that such a game is niche and I wouldn't expect to earn a lot with it. Spending time on development would only make sense for me, however, if there is at least some interest in playing it. Whether the game will have some success, is not a question that can be answered here, but my hope is, that I'll be a bit more confident in my decision after hearing more feedback from others. > > I have been teaching C/C++ and Python for years now and have developed a small application that gives students, without a specific goal, something to work towards to. It is just a console application that offers various programming tasks to be solved, submitted and compared against previous results. The student just has to run the application, import my interface library and start coding. I usually go over the theory and try to help them while they are figuring it out. Just to give you an example of such a task: > > "There is a sequence of N unsorted and unknown numbers. You can compare, whether any number is greater than any other one by specifying their positions in the sequence. You can swap two numbers, save copies of them on a stash, and replace any number in the sequence with stashed ones. Try to sort the sequence of unknown numbers with as little operations as possible." > > The idea of the side scroller would be, to give that application a compelling frontend and to "gamify" these tasks even more. Aside from the usual game mechanics like "find and fetch items", "talk to this or that person" or "solve simple terrain puzzles", I want the programming tasks to be the main quest which unlocks new parts of the world and ultimately completes the story line. There will be some kind of quest book that goes into more detail and tries to help the player understand the task and to find solutions. Aside from that, the player is expected to use their own development environment (which can be as simple as: Notepad and GCC/Python Interpreter). The quest book is just meant as a starting point, and players would have to do additional research to learn more about algorithms and how to implement them. > > I think, at this point, I have described the rough idea enough, and I apologize for the wall of text so far. For that reason, everything below this is optional TLDR as far as I'm concerned. > > The last thing I wanted to mention here is the rough sketch of the lore I had in mind. A medieval world containing steam punk elements that is slowly but surely overtaken by these alien looking artifacts. You, the protagonist, have figured out that some of these artifacts can be controlled by using the language that can be derived from the carvings on them. > Around the artifacts, a contamination that destroys everything is slowly spreading. No one has figured out how to stop this, but it becomes clear over the course of the game, that interacting with these artifacts and solving the programming tasks, slowly reverses the spread. > The ultimate conclusion is, that an alien species put these artifacts in this world to slowly terraform it. Because they didn't want to wipe out any intelligent species in the process, they created an off-switch. If a species is intelligent enough to figure out these tasks, the whole terraforming process is terminated.

    19
    Your Opinion on my Game Idea

    For a while now, I had this idea in my head of making a small 2D side scroller game that helps people learn programming, and I'm looking for honest opinions and feedback from others. I know that such a game is niche and I wouldn't expect to earn a lot with it. Spending time on development would only make sense for me, however, if there is at least some interest in playing it. Whether the game will have some success, is not a question that can be answered here, but my hope is, that I'll be a bit more confident in my decision after hearing more feedback from others.

    I have been teaching C/C++ and Python for years now and have developed a small application that gives students, without a specific goal, something to work towards to. It is just a console application that offers various programming tasks to be solved, submitted and compared against previous results. The student just has to run the application, import my interface library and start coding. I usually go over the theory and try to help them while they are figuring it out. Just to give you an example of such a task:

    "There is a sequence of N unsorted and unknown numbers. You can compare, whether any number is greater than any other one by specifying their positions in the sequence. You can swap two numbers, save copies of them on a stash, and replace any number in the sequence with stashed ones. Try to sort the sequence of unknown numbers with as little operations as possible."

    The idea of the side scroller would be, to give that application a compelling frontend and to "gamify" these tasks even more. Aside from the usual game mechanics like "find and fetch items", "talk to this or that person" or "solve simple terrain puzzles", I want the programming tasks to be the main quest which unlocks new parts of the world and ultimately completes the story line. There will be some kind of quest book that goes into more detail and tries to help the player understand the task and to find solutions. Aside from that, the player is expected to use their own development environment (which can be as simple as: Notepad and GCC/Python Interpreter). The quest book is just meant as a starting point, and players would have to do additional research to learn more about algorithms and how to implement them.

    I think, at this point, I have described the rough idea enough, and I apologize for the wall of text so far. For that reason, everything below this is optional TLDR as far as I'm concerned.

    The last thing I wanted to mention here is the rough sketch of the lore I had in mind. A medieval world containing steam punk elements that is slowly but surely overtaken by these alien looking artifacts. You, the protagonist, have figured out that some of these artifacts can be controlled by using the language that can be derived from the carvings on them. Around the artifacts, a contamination that destroys everything is slowly spreading. No one has figured out how to stop this, but it becomes clear over the course of the game, that interacting with these artifacts and solving the programming tasks, slowly reverses the spread. The ultimate conclusion is, that an alien species put these artifacts in this world to slowly terraform it. Because they didn't want to wipe out any intelligent species in the process, they created an off-switch. If a species is intelligent enough to figure out these tasks, the whole terraforming process is terminated.

    6
    Showcase of my browser startup page

    I just wanted to show off a cool project I've found recently. Dashy is a very customizable dashboard that works perfectly for self-hosting projects. You can monitor any service that is reachable via http/https and use widgets like the universal web search interface, I've enabled in my installation.

    I only use it as a glorified startup page for my browsers with the search function, but to give you an idea of what's possible, you can take a look at some more creative examples as well.

    7
    Supercuts

    This is meant to be one of those rabbit holes you sometimes find on the internet. If you are interested in movies and movie-making, you might be interested in this one as well. Like Alice, it depends on your curiosity if you actually want to fall down that rabbit hole or not. Anyways... I'm late... So if you're wondering what a rabbit could possibly be late for, you'd have to follow me I guess...

    Just to be clear: I'm not talking about the song by Lorde, although I'm sure it was inspired by the actual thing. So what is a supercut then? According to Wikipedia: "A supercut is a genre of video editing consisting of a montage of short clips with the same theme. The theme may be an action, a scene, a word or phrase, an object, a gesture, or a cliché or trope." This means that a supercut is more than just a collage of random clips. It uses clips, to tell a new story. Often times it is used to show more meta-level aspects of movies but it could be really anything if you are creative enough. Most people have probably seen something that fits this description but If you are still unsure what it is, here are some of my favorite ones:

    Now that we know what it is and what it can look like, the question becomes: Where can we find more of it? Well... you tell me... I'm always looking for new stuff so if you find something good, please share it with me here. There is a small subreddit for it and youtube channels like Now You See It or The Beauty Of make videos in that direction, but I'm sure there is much more out there.

    0
    Netflix adaptation of 3 Body Problem

    Netflix making an adaptation of The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, which is one of the best sci-fi books I've read so far. It'll be released in 2024 and I'm kinda hyped after that teaser.

    8
    SeaOfTranquility Sea of Tranquility @beehaw.org

    I like talking about sci-fi, space, robotics, linux, anti-fascism and democratic socialism. 🇩🇪☮️

    (SeaOfTranquility on libera.chat)

    Posts 9
    Comments 58