The crazy thing to me is that as you look at galaxies further away, they become bigger in the sky. Obligatory xkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2622:_Angular_Diameter_Turnaround There could be huge dragons out there occluding half the sky, but they’d be beyond the last scattering surface of the cosmic microwave background.
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TauZero@mander.xyzto
Ask Science@lemmy.world•What is the strongest theory in science?English
6·4 months agoA fact is something that has specifically been observed, zero inference. It is a fact that this apple I dropped fell to the ground. It is a fact that Earth orbits the sun. It is a fact that the solar system orbits the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.
I wouldn’t even go that far. We didn’t even know that galaxies existed as a concept until about 100 years ago, believing that spiral smudges we saw in the telescopes were just weird nearby nebulae. It was at the Great Debate of 1920 that the consensus shifted into believing in multiple galaxies spread across large distances. Galileo notably got into trouble for promoting the other mentioned theory. If you start calling these “facts”, you yourself are giving into OP’s world view that a theory becomes fact if it is strong enough.
TauZero@mander.xyzto
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What things should I do in NYC next weekend?
2·4 months agoBrooklyn Bridge is fine. They moved the bicycle path down into the roadway, so there is twice as much pedestrian space now.
Fuck, I would have personally benefited from these bike lanes! Whenever I’m in Astoria and want to bike on 31st Street, I always have to do this slalom between the columns. When lanesplitting in the driving lane there, there is not enough space for cars to pass safely, and New York drivers WILL NOT suffer the indignity of driving behind a bicyclist. So I have to slalom into the parking lane whenever a rush of cars approaches from behind, then slalom back when they have passed to stay out of the door zone, because there is not enough space in the parking lane to pass safely either, again because of the columns and also double parkers. It’s challenging but tiring. Ironically the reason I want to be on 31st Street is because that’s where all the businesses are! For now it’s just too annoying though so I usually just go eat elsewhere.
TauZero@mander.xyzto
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What is your personal threshold for being grossed out by owning an object that was once part of a living being, and why?
62·5 months agowas once part of a living being
When you drink a glass of water, about a hundred molecules of that water come from the pee of Isaac Newton from the specific day the apple fell on his head. Generally, every single atom surrounding us has been part of some living being or other thousands of times. Only drink pristine water harvested from interstellar comets!
Literally one block away:

TauZero@mander.xyztomicromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility@lemmy.world•Shimano crankset court case settlement moves forwardEnglish
12·5 months agoIf anyone was planning to try reading the article to figure out wtf is going on: don’t. The headline is the entire article.
Even the house under a rock got satellite TV.
TauZero@mander.xyzto
News@lemmy.world•'I don't care about Direct File': IRS chief says agency plans to end free filing program
6·5 months agoGood luck then! Actually curious to see how it will work out.
TauZero@mander.xyzto
News@lemmy.world•'I don't care about Direct File': IRS chief says agency plans to end free filing program
18·5 months agoAlmost all taxes are collected from the paycheck before you even get your hands on it. The filing is mostly for the tax return on the overpayment. They’ve already thought of it. How you gonna stop paying?
TauZero@mander.xyzto
News@lemmy.world•Less than a second before hitting a passenger jet, helicopter instructor told pilot to change course, NTSB hearing reveals
253·5 months agoThe helicopter route at the time of the collision allowed the Black Hawk to fly as close as 75 feet below planes descending to land on runway 33 at Reagan National Airport, according to the NTSB. With allowable errors in the helicopter’s altimeters and other equipment as well as Army rules expecting aviators to hold their altitude within 100 feet, it could end up being much closer.
“How much tolerance should we have for aviation safety whenever civilian lives are at risk?” asked Todd Inman, NTSB board member. “How much is that tolerance,” he continued. “I think it should be zero.”
Sounds like the tolerances weren’t big enough! Odd interaction putting those two paragraphs next to each other. NTSB demanding zero margin for safety…
TauZero@mander.xyzto
Showerthoughts@lemmy.world•Life Expectancy is the age at which 50% of the of the population is expected to die before.
3·5 months agoThe very wiki article quoted says average to mean mean (made explicit later). OP showerthought was calculating life expectancy in a way different than commonly understood. The first nitpick was correct.
TauZero@mander.xyzto
Public Health@mander.xyz•COVID vaccines saved 2. 5M lives globally—a death averted per 5,400 shots | ScienceDaily
11·5 months ago1 life-year saved per 900 vaccine doses administered
To flip the ratio, you getting the vaccine extends your life by 1/3 of a day. This might even be a wash if you had to take a day off work or wait on line for several hours. More effective if you’re elderly, but then also you got fewer life-years to save. Hmm.
The numbers in the meme are off. One sperm is 750MB, or about 1 CD, so full human is 2 CDs. Or a couple 1.4MB floppies if you only store the diff from the reference genome.
TauZero@mander.xyzto
Technology@lemmy.world•Polish Train Maker Is Suing the Hackers Who Exposed Its Anti-Repair TricksEnglish
371·5 months agofraud
Sabotage. Property made unusable. Passengers were literally stranded in the middle of a journey.
TauZero@mander.xyzto
Technology@lemmy.world•Polish Train Maker Is Suing the Hackers Who Exposed Its Anti-Repair TricksEnglish
22·5 months agoIt’s worse. They are saying that the EU copyright law, as written, only allows decompiling/reverse engineering to “fix bugs”. A bug fix would involve a software patch of some sorts. But the security researchers did not have time to write a patch yet, what they did is tell the customer “Yep, it’s fucked. Your vendor put in a killswitch to make the trains brick themselves.” So that does tell them where the problem is, but it is not a bona fide bug fix from the Bugfix region of France, and therefore illegal.
TauZero@mander.xyzto
Technology@lemmy.world•Polish Train Maker Is Suing the Hackers Who Exposed Its Anti-Repair TricksEnglish
56·5 months agoNewag [train maker] claims that the Dragon Sector [whitehat hacker] team endangered passengers’ safety by modifying the software without proper experience. But Newag then turns right around and claims that Dragon Sector did not modify the software at all. They point out that EU law only allows reverse engineering of software in order to fix bugs. And if Dragon Sector did not actually modify the software, it cannot have fixed any bugs, in which case their reverse-engineering must be illegal.
Robin Hanson is in the house!








What’s worse is that there is a witness statement - the OP standing there loudly complaining about being run off the road. We were able to investigate crimes even before video cameras existed. Yet now neither the video nor the OP victim statement is somehow sufficient.