Profile pic is from Jason Box, depicting a projection of Arctic warming to the year 2100 based on current trends.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: March 3rd, 2024

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  • It was fun to learn how things work, and when things worked as planned (finally). It’s when they didn’t work that got annoying and frustrating, and with assembly language with basically no error codes or any help, it was just…nope, that wasn’t right. Maybe followed by cycling the computer off and on because it locked up. Still have my old Mapping the Commodore 64 book on the shelf. Huge resource.



  • Real, totally heavily simplified answer. All atoms could be magnets, but most don’t have a force because the electron orbitals aren’t out enough. In fact just about everything can be explained by what the electron orbitals are doing. Even why the chair you’re sitting in feels solid. It’s the orbitals. See Richard Feynman's bit on magnets and the deeper lesson on knowing the right questions to ask.








  • Quotable line there for any time someone uses the “we’re in Idiocracy now”. We’re in the first draft version of the movie, where they realized no one was going to watch such a depressing dystopia.

    I’m beginning to think Matrix was right in some scope. We are in a simulation, only we are AGI in that world (all or maybe some of us only) and the creators are messing around with variables to see how much can be taken or modified from a realism setting before we break. And they’re finding that we’re very resistant to breaking, accepting the most ludicrous scenarios.





  • I can’t help with the problem since you’ve covered most of the things I would know about. Last carb I worked on was my beloved VW Beetle, and I understand how things can run fine and then suddenly just stop for no reason. But in the end, there IS a reason, somewhere.

    I just commented to point out if it helps, a carburetor is just a mechanical computer. It changes the input of fuel and air based on other variables. So somewhere in the code something is now not calculating the same as it was, or the variables themselves are different. I know that doesn’t answer the problem, but it’s something I’ve always been in awe about since being told my my dad that a automatic transmission is just a fluid computer. Which is funny, since he could tear down one of those, but never could “get” how an electronic computer worked.