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cynar

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Why do phone manufacturers use in-display fingerprint readers instead of fingerprint readers on the power button?

I had two Samsung flagship phones, one (S20FE) had an optical fingerprint reader and the other (S22) had an ultrasonic one. Both of them somewhat regularly failed to read my finger, were slower than a fingerprint reader on the power button and are more expensive/complex to build. They won’t work with cheap 3rd party screen...

cynar ,

It became a big thing on android just before covid happened. Unfortunately, masks completely confused it.

I currently have both active on my phone, it’s about 50/50 which unlocks it first. I tend to unlock my phone as I bring it out of my pocket via fingerprint. If that fails, then face ID kicks in.

cynar ,

It’s depends purely on how it’s used. Used blindly, and yes, it would be a serious issue. It should also not be used as a replacement for doctors.

However, if they could routinely put symptoms into an AI, and have it flag potential conditions, that would be powerful. The doctor would still be needed to sanity check the results and implement things. If it caught rare conditions or early signs of serious ones, that would be a big deal.

AI excels at pattern matching. Letting doctors use it to do that efficiently, to work beyond there current knowledge base is quite a positive use of AI.

cynar ,

I can see multiple uses for the tech. Unfortunately, many are a but dystopian, but some are legitimately useful.

cynar ,

Of course not, that would be immoral. They’ll track trollies and baskets, then tag it to the till and your loyalty card. It would be a lot more consistent, and harder to dodge.

cynar ,

It’s worth noting that spacetime isn’t static. Space “flows” into mass. It’s akin to a treadmill, you need to constantly move “upwards” to stay in place.

This is also the reason that uniform gravity, and acceleration are identical. With acceleration, the “ground” is constantly moving upwards into new space, pushing you along. With gravity, space is constantly moving down through the floor, trying to push you into the floor. It’s functionally the same thing.

cynar ,

It was the initial description used in my 1st year physics degree course. Not sure if it has an explicit name. We also jumped fairly quickly from there to the maths.

Basically space time can stretch infinitely, and flows towards mass. Anything on that spacetime is drawn along. It’s functionally identical to a standard force. Straight lines twist into spacetime spirals (aka orbits etc).

Physics has lots of interesting mental models for different things. Unfortunately, most are flawed, so dont lean on tgem too hard. What actually happens is way beyond what our monkey brains can interpret. The best we can do if follow the maths, and try and fit something to the end result.

cynar ,

Nukes and ICBMs are extremely complex devices. They also require extremely specialist servi e work to remain functional. Even worse, the only people who can actually check that work are the ones doing it.

Russia hasn’t detonated a nuke in decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of their arsenal are now duds. The money embezzled, while boxes were ticked. Similarly, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of their ICBMs just wouldn’t launch.

Russia’s nuclear capabilities are likely a paper tiger, and Putin likely knows this. Until they try and use them, they are scary. If they try and they fail, they are in a VERY bad situation.

Putin is many things, but he’s not stupid. It would take a LOT more pressure from nato for him to even consider using nukes.

cynar ,

Ear wounds bleed spectacularly. They are also quite easy to fix cleanly, with appropriate care. A small wound would create plenty of blood, but be effectively invisible after a bit of work from a plastic surgeon.

Let’s face it, which is more likely? A shooter just missed, or Trump had the coordination to play act, without it looking like a 5 year old’s “my first magic act”, and then not brag about it?

cynar ,

For those confused, it’s worth noting the difference between observed as a layman concept and as a quantum mechanical one.

In QM, to observed is to couple the observer to the “system” being observed. Think of it like “observing” your neighbour, over a fence using a BB gun. When you hit flesh, you know where your neighbour is. Unfortunately, the system has now been fundamentally changed. In a classical system, you could turn down the power, until your neighbour doesn’t notice the hits. Unfortunately, QM imposes fundamental limits on your measurements (heisenburg and his uncertainty principal). In order to observe your neighbour accurately, you need to hit them hard enough that the will also feel it and react differently.

QM behaves in a similar way. Initially, the system is just a single particle, and is not very restrained. This allows it to behave in a very wave like manner. When you observe it, the system now includes the whole observation system, as this coupling propagates, more and more atoms etc get linked. The various restraints cause an effect called decoherence. The system behaves ever more like a classical physical system.

In short, a quantum mechanical “observer” is less sneaky watching, and more hosing down with a machine gun and watching the ricochets.

cynar ,

Observer here doesn’t mean the same as the layman meaning. It’s anything that interacts with the system while it’s developing.

Interestingly, it actually can be used for a presence detector, at least in a sense. You can use it to transfer cryptographic information. If no-one is listening in, about half your sent numbers are wrong, but you can agree on what ones. However, if someone is listening in, all your data gets randomised.

They actually now use this system to transfer information between banks. They send a random stream of 0s and 1s over a fibre optic cable. They then send (semi publicly) which bits made it properly. If someone spliced into the fibre, they would get the encryption data, but the target bank would not! They know instantly that something is wrong.

cynar ,

We know how it works, we just don’t yet understand what is going on under the hood.

In short, quantum effects can be very obvious with small systems. The effects generally get averaged out over larger systems. A measurement inherently entangled your small system with a much larger system diluting the effect.

The blind spot is that we don’t know what a quantum state IS. We know the maths behind it, but not the underlying physics model. It’s likely to fall out when we unify quantum mechanics with general relativity, but we’ve been chipping at that for over 70 years now, with limited success.

cynar ,

Depends on how you are observing it photons impart energy and momentum. The true, detailed explanation is a lot more convoluted, it’s all wave interactions, in the complex plane. However, digesting that into something a layman can follow is difficult.

The main point I was trying to get across is that there is no such thing as an independent, external measurement. Your measurement systems minimum interaction is no longer negligible. How that is done varies, but it always changes the target and becomes part of the equations.

cynar ,

We can observe the end result. E.g. observing the screen only, and you get wavelike behaviour. When you also observe the slit, the wavelike behaviour disappears, and it seems particle like.

Both end in an observation, 1 has an extra observation.

cynar ,

You could detect decoherence in the system, that doesn’t indicate a human observer, however.

That process is, however, used to protect cryptographic keys, transfered between banks. A hostile observer collapses the state early. The observer gets the key instead of the 2nd bank, which is extremely conspicuous to both banks.

cynar ,

Theories can be a stepping stone to other theories. Until we explore those chains, we don’t know if there is anything useful at the end.

E.g. initially, lasers were a solution looking for a problem. An interesting quirk possible due to some interesting bit of physics.

Maths explores idea spaces. Much of that is purely of interest to other mathematicians. However, it sometimes intersects with areas of interest to other scientists, at which point it becomes extremely useful.

cynar ,

Women were functionally disabled by having children, spending a significant amount of time either pregnant, or breastfeeding. This makes them the natural parent to focus on raising children. Also, in nature, losing 1 parent has a relatively minor drop in survival chances compared to losing 2.

This ends up with men being more “disposable” than women. If 1 group needs to flee with the children, while the other holds off an attack, it’s most sensible for the men to defend. The women would provide a final line of defence.

cynar ,

This also massively effects the risk/reward balance. Ultimately, a woman’s ability to have children is limited by her biology. The limit on men is FAR higher.

For women, once they hit the resource requirements to support 2 dozen children, there was relatively little real gain. A successful man could (in theory) have hundreds of children. Genghis khan being the most egregious example. Taking large risks for large gains makes sense for men, in a way that just doesn’t for women.

cynar ,

The message wouldn’t be to Putin directly. It would be to those both in his power base, or capable of disrupting it.

The goal would be to push Russians to the point they deal with Putin internally, and/or put putin in a position where he needs to end the war to stabilise his own position. It’s all about making the right people feel the effects.

Oh, and as a European, I think the risk is acceptable. If Putin struck at a NATO country, the results would likely be swift and short. The only unknown would be Russian nukes, and even those are far more of an unknown than most people think.

cynar ,

There’s a difference between fear and respect. A child should NEVER fear the adult providing their care.

I would actually wager decent money that many of those little shits have been smacked around quite a lot. They learn to react how they were taught by demonstration. If mistakes are met with violence and aggression, then they learn to do the same to others.

I know a teacher who (unofficially) specialises in kids like those. They are hell on a new teacher. However, once they realise that they are not met with aggression, the veneer cracks. The young scared child realises that there is an adult they both cares and shouldn’t be feared. Very soon, just the idea that they might disappoint her is a far better motivator than any punishment could be.

What stupidly easy tech solution do people gloss over all of the time? (kbin.melroy.org)

For me it's the paranoia surrounding webcams. People outright refuse to own one and I understand, until they go on and on about how they're being spied. Here's the secret - unplug the damn thing when you think you won't use it or haven't used it in a while....

cynar ,

The issue is if you are a) targeted, and b)involved in multiple breaches. If they can get the pattern, they potentially get everything.

Is it worth it? That depends. Are you willing to risk it NOT being worth it to a random guy in Africa earning a few $ a day?

cynar ,

Even if you don’t use it as a password manager, bitwarden has an excellent pass phrase generator. The only annoyance is when I run into maximum password lengths at times.

cynar ,

That’s also my pet peave with situations like this.

Are they searching black people (and so racist)?

Are they searching poor people (and so classist)?

Are they searching based on evidence (fair)?

All could reach the same result, but the solution is vastly different.

Unfortunately, 1 points to a simple problem, with someone to blame. The other 2 are complex social problems that require complex solutions and don’t have a simple bogeyman to blame.

cynar ,

If a gang is using children to deal drugs, then it’s an unfortunate, but necessary, thing.

A while back, gangs realised that the police and courts will go easy on teenagers. Teenagers are also notoriously easy to manipulate. This makes them the perfect cover and scape goats for a gang.

The real question is why blacks are being targeted. Is it the police being racist, or are the gangs targeting them, and so the police follow?

cynar ,

It stops a lot of people. Unfortunately, they are also the ones who would actually follow the rules. This just leaves the rule breakers and idiots, giving everyone else a bad name.

I would personally love a micro mobility option. An option between walking and driving my van somewhere would be extremely useful.

cynar ,

More like farming them.

Tend them and care for them so they grow big and strong. You only want to pluck them when they are perfectly ripe.

cynar ,

Most of the work on facturio has been on the underlying engine. Factories that would bring a high end PC to it’s knees, at the start, now race along on a mediocre PC.

The factorio devs don’t play factorio in the game anymore, they play it with the engine. By the results, they are both a team of geniouses and completely addicted.

cynar ,

There are several major hurdles, and no particularly strong evolutionary drive to overcome them.

The first is breathing. Fish “breath” water. Shifting to air takes a huge reconfiguration. It also compromises their ability to process water.

The second is power. “Flying” fish are actually gliders. They build up momentum in the water before launching themselves into the air. They don’t actually have the ability to flap and maintain their flight. Developing the muscles for this would likely compromise their swi.ing slightly. That would be a far bigger issue, compared to a bit of extra gliding.

A flying fish’s goal is to break contact with an underwater hunter, before reentering the water. A steerable glide is more than enough of this. There is simply no pressure to advance it further.

cynar ,

Repeating plastics tends to damage them on a chemical level. The polymer chains break and shorten. This ends with the plastic being more brittle. Since 3d printed parts have already been remelted once, they have even more degradation than injection moulded parts.

I believe the recommended amount of recycled plastic is around 30% for PLA. Any more and the parts lose significant strength.

I personally would prefer us to accept that plastics aren’t really recyclable. It’s better to move towards renewable plastics like PLA, and treat the waste as biomass (either composted or burnt for energy.

cynar ,

Exposure can cause similar effects. However, the act of heating the plastic to the temperatures needed to melt it and defirming it also damages the structure. It’s particularly obvious with pla, but all plastics suffer from it, to an extent.

cynar ,

I’ve found a layered approach is the best bet. A lot of articles have little to no political subtext. These can be read in a relaxed manner. Those that appear to have some bias can then be subject to a deeper analysis.

It’s not perfect, but it limits the cognitive load to something manageable, while allowing you to catch the worst articles easily.

The image posted makes a good 2nd or 3rd pass guide.

cynar ,

I thought I understood the sleep deprivation until I became a dad. The part most people don’t account for is the chronic nature of it. It’s not 1 night, or even a few, it’s weeks and months of it. It’s also combined with having your hormones thrown for a loop (yes, men too!). It jams your brain in ways you would never expect.

It’s so easy to screw up that badly that I’m amazed at how infrequent it actually is.

cynar ,

Some do. However, a more common situation is that the parents have been dealing with a sick baby, and decided to let them sleep, when they finally went down. A phone call waking them, after a sleepless night can be met with inappropriate, but understandable, anger.

Many nurseries err on the side of politeness.

cynar ,

I don’t know if it’s real or just nostalgia, but reddit is massively worse than I remember. I’ve gone back to nose a few times, and it feels like a ghost town, compared to what it used to be.

cynar ,

The executive functions are a tiebreak system, in many ways. It balances the various possible options, both benefits and costs, short term and long.

Procrastination is when this system can’t overcome various situational inertias. I tend to think of it akin to a teacher in a classroom. The kids are perfectly capable of raiding a kitchen, when sufficiently hungry. It’s also impossible to keep them focused on maths, when a dozen labrador puppies are released into the classroom. Within its limits however, it’s supposed to turn disparate drives into coherent action.

I have adhd. The teacher is exhausted from a 3 day bender, and someone swiched their coffee to decaf. Avoiding situations that cause a procrastination lockup are a fact of life.

cynar ,

On the contrary, do not ignore them. People base their feeling on the group opinion almost entirely on how often they hear a particular argument. They won’t remember that 90% came from 1 person.

Secondly, unless an idea is actively disagreed with, people (subconsciously) assume you agree with it.

Take every opportunity to disagree with the idiots. You won’t convert them, but you will sow seeds in the minds of those they might be swaying.

cynar ,

Lightburn (laser cutter software) lets you trial the full version for 1 month free. It doubles as an excellent way to get up to speed on the software without tying up the laser cutter’s computer (community machine).

What do to if I survive a nuclear blast in my city?

I recently saw a comment chain about nuclear bombs, and that led me to thinking about this. Say there is a nuclear explosion in the downtown of my US city. I survive relatively fine, but obviously the main part of the city has been destroyed, while major zones extending from the center were also badly damaged. What would be a...

cynar ,

The frustrating thing is that masks don’t protect you particularly well. What they do is protect others from any infection you are carrying. This is why it was more important to provide them to those interacting with infected or vulnerable people. It limited the risk of spreading it further.

cynar ,

I work with radio camera links. The number of people who get upset over the receivers is depressing. They can make the 5G conspiracy theorists look educated.

Receive equipment is incapable of radiating at all.

The part that radiates is completely safe!

Seriously, any danger would be at the camera end. I am happy to sit with it fully powered and the antenna between my legs. (It stops the camera getting knocked over). It can’t put out enough power to do any harm. It’s comparable to home WiFi and weak compared to the mobile phone you are happy to put to your head!

cynar ,

In short, no.

The water needs to he hot enough to extract the optimal flavour from the tea fast enough. If you leave it longer, the bitter, oil based flavours start to come out excessively.

This was actually a noted problem for Victorian (British) explorers. They couldn’t brew a proper cup of (black) tea up a mountain! I believe there were also patents issued, at the time, for tea brewing pressure vessels!

Basically, you want the water as hot as possible, but not so hot it scolds the leaf. Black tea doesn’t scold (at normal water temperatures), so is brewed at 95°C+. Green tea scolds at around 80, so needs cooler water. White tea is even lower, again. By around 60°C your into stewing temperatures. You’ll get a lot more oils compared to flavour. You want to have your tea leaves out by this point.

You also want to avoid agitating the leaves. Stiring, or squeezing the leaves tends to ruin the flavour. You know you’ve completely F’ed up a cup of tea if it has an oily scum floating on the top.

cynar ,

Not generally. It generally refers to first names more than surnames. It also strongly implies that you actively want to kill the name off, not just move to the new one. It’s changing names with prejudice against the old one.

Refering to someone by their maiden name is generally not considered insulting. Dead naming someone (after you’re aware) is extremely insulting.

cynar ,

Your best bet might be to use a laptop as the basis. They are already designed with power efficiency in mind, and you won’t need an external screen and keyboard for local problem solving.

I would also consider having a raspberry pi 3 or similar as a companion. Services that must be up all the time run on the pi (e.g. network admin). The main computer only gets kicked out of sleep mode when required. The pi 3 needs less power than the newer pis, while still having enough computing power to not lag unless pushed hard.

I definitely agree with SSDs. HDDs don’t do well when rotated when running. Boats are less than a stable platform.

cynar ,

HDDs can be made tolerant to it. Constant rotation still puts significant extra strain on the bearings, when spinning however. The drive will likely fail faster than an SSD.

cynar ,

In short, Facebook are incentivised to increase conflict and hate, it improves user engagement. They have also leveraged their large user base to boost numbers in threads significantly. Threads is already a cess pip of bigotry and hate.

Federating with them would be like connecting your house’s drinking water pipe with the sewage pipe of an industrial pig farm. It would pollute our community to the point of destruction.

They might try and control this initially. Unfortunately, it would almost certainly be part of an embrace, extend, extinguish attempt. ( …wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish ). They play nice till they have control of enough communities, then they stop the controls, to increase profits.

cynar ,

The fact they passed on legit information on d day, is still mind blowing. They relied on delays on the German side to make the information out of date by the time it would arrive. The German radio operator not being on station to receive it just made it funnier.

cynar ,

It’s fascinating the stages children through in drawing. It says a lot about how the young mind develops. The “head with arms and legs” stage seems universal, and amusing.

cynar ,

Wasn’t he also on death row? He was offered a pardon, if he survived.

cynar ,

Interestingly, electron flow is only a few mm/minute, on average. The field propagation travels at around 2/3 the speed of light (200,000,000m/s).

cynar ,

One of Sir Issac Newton’s famous phrases is

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”

This sounds very nobal and humbling. However, its meaning totally changes with a few facts. It was written in an open letter to Robert Hooke. Hooke was apparently quite short, and EXTREMELY sensitive about this. Newton was basically dissing Hooke. Nobody will be standing on your shoulders, shortie!

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