It’s actually a plastic ribbon with a metallic foil in a zigzag pattern on top of it. It’s extremely cheap and does a pretty good job. It usually sits on top of a metal bar that can deflect a tiny little bit.

You can read all about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_gauge

The main effect is that the resistance depends on the geometry. So as that changes, the resistance changes as well.

Source: My ass

That’s because of the way these scales work. They use a material that deforms under stress and when it deforms the resistance changes. By putting current through this material and measuring the voltage drop, it can be mapped to how much stress the material is under and thus how much weight is on the scale.

This is a pretty roundabout way and has a lot of caveats, but it is very cheap. So cheap scales always work this way. That’s why they aren’t super accurate and have deviations depending on things like temperature. Another big downside is any permanent deformation ruins the calibration, giving incorrect results. That’s why you never put more weight on kitchen scales than it says, it will break them.

The issue you are running into is the way it measures. It applies a very specific voltage and current in order to get the result. The lookup table it uses is only valid within a narrow range. When the battery voltage goes outside that range, it can no longer perform the measurement. Even though there’s plenty of juice for things like the little processing chip and the LCD display. They don’t need a lot of power and can do with low voltages. But it can no longer weigh anything so it just errors out with a low battery warning.

So the logic is, because we fucked up the first time, we must be good at fucking up. So if we try to fuck it up a second time, it will totally work and get unfucked?

We have been actively fucking up for about 150 years, so I’d say we have experience. And we’re currently fucking up at record rates, so if we aren’t qualified I don’t know who is.

People will probably just post a Powershell script on Github to make it update directly from the official servers without paying the extra fee. It’s funny how the most popular activation scripts are on Github, even though Microsoft owns Github and could easily just delete them.

Most people who are fed up with Microsofts crap simply don’t buy a new computer anymore. They just do everything on an iPad (maybe pro) or similar without Windows. Gamers switch over to consoles, with Nintendo and Steam deck being preferred. Those things may run Linux like the Steam deck or another non Windows OS, but the user won’t notice or care since they don’t interact with it.

The time of the desktop and to a lesser extent the laptop has come and gone. It’s only for enthusiasts and people at work. At work people probably just use the same couple of apps or even just a browser with a webapp and never really interact with the OS. If it’s even a full computer and not a thin client connecting to a virtual desktop environment. People don’t know or care about OSes. Maybe they’ll bitch about Windows at times, but they bitch about a lot of things at work and they have no influence over any of it.

That would depend heavily on how accessible the computer is and how fat your fingers are. And I can tell you, mine are pretty fat.

And then you add the inflation and you actually just owe money. Got to get that third job at 65

Die Pringles sind einfach traurig, eine riesige Dose und dann so ein Mini-Chip

Back when token ring was designed normally networks would use coaxial cables for communication. No matter if it ran ethernet, token ring or something else, everybody would share basically a single cable. The cable would have T connectors inserted to connect a computer and the end of the cable needed something to terminate it. It didn’t need to be a single line, you could have splits and even a star like design, although there were limitations.

And you are right, any disruption anywhere on the line meant the network would go do. That might be someone removing the termination cap on the end, or simply the line being broken somewhere. However because computers were usually connected using T splitters, it didn’t really matter if the computer was connected or not. But the connection not being terminated properly could be an issue. Especially if there was another cable connected to the T before being connected to the computer.

Normally in a room the cable would be laid out like a ring although it usually wouldn’t be a closed ring, but instead terminated on one end. This meant each computer would be connected to its direct neighbors, but this wouldn’t be an active thing. It wasn’t like the computer could only transmit to its neighbors and then they needed to pass it on. It was like a shared line, where everyone could transmit and every computer would receive everything transmitted.

When everything switched over to the regular twisted pair cables we know today, it didn’t really change from a communications point of view. Every computer wasn’t connected to their neighbors but instead to a hub, but just like before anything anyone transmitted could be received by anyone on the network. It wasn’t until much later when things like switches became commonplace and not everyone got all the traffic.

Well there’s the stuff I personally dislike. Like the Elon cringe skits she does, or the super weird uncanny valley face filter.

But the biggest issue is she didn’t stay in her realm of expertise. She might know a lot about certain things, but then also talks about other stuff with the same level of authority. No caveats, no this is my opinion, she present it as fact. But the fact is she is really really wrong about a lot of shit. And just mixing and matching shit you know and shit you don’t know is a big no-no in science communication.

One of the most egregious thins she did was make a video about trans folk and talked about it like it’s a fad or even a disorder. She was not only factually wrong, she was spouting anti-trans propaganda. When called out she kept the video up and didn’t do anything like a follow up, correction or apology. She has some really boomer views about a lot of things and then presents it like it’s fact. Another panned video was the one about neurodivergence (autism) and there are more like that. There are multiple hour+ video essays about how she is wrong in these cases and they are worth a watch imho.

The annoying thing is, I don’t really know what she actually does know. Because she mixes everything and doesn’t stay within her knowledge base, now everything is suspect. So even the videos about physics where I think she does know what she’s talking about, I can’t trust. And even in physics it seems like she’s very hit or miss, I spoke to somebody at a party once that did his PhD on one of the physics topics she covered in a video. He said she was like 10 years behind the times and was wrong about several key facts. Some of these were just wrong because of simplification, which might be excused given the format, but others were plain wrong. Now I don’t know enough about the subject to make a judgement, but the dude I spoke to seemed to know what he was talking about.

Science communication is really really hard and it’s a skill not a lot of people have. Look at how big the teams of researchers at for example Kurzgesagt are and even they mess up once in a while. But when they get called out, they go back and delete the video or better yet post a follow up or recently even a replacement video. And they qualify things with sources and caveats, mentioning which parts are fact, consensus, speculation and opinion. They also make it very clear at the beginning of the video what a viewer can expect. That way we can qualify the information and know what in what light to put the information presented. Now I realize Kurzgesagt may be one of the best channels when it comes to short form YouTube video science communication out there and it isn’t fair to hold everyone to that standard. But there needs to be at least some level of due diligence involved imho.

I’m sure I left out some other stuff, there is a lot to find if you look for honest critique. I’m sure there’s also a lot of unwarranted hate out there, but also a lot of stuff that’s warranted.

Sabine Hossenfelder can fuck ALL the way off. She sucks man.

And the fun scientific counterpart of the Boltzmann brain. The idea that in an infinite universe (at least in a couple of the spatial dimensions if not also a time dimension) random fluctuations could combine to form your brain. Including all of your memories, thoughts, hopes and dreams. You think you have had an entire life, but in reality your brain was just formed moments ago. And it may possibly stop existing in a few more moments, this moment being the only one the brain has actually experienced.

When taken to its natural conclusion, the entire Earth of even the solar system or galaxy might have just been created by random chance. The perfect storm of randomness. It may have been created longer ago or just nanoseconds before now. There is no way of telling.

Thermodynamics has been used to counter and strengthen this idea. And with infinity on the table anything goes.

Did I say death camps? I meant happy camps!

I swear to god if he gets elected and makes himself king the number of surprised pikachu faces from people who voted for that dickwad better be fucking 0

Und genau wie Homer immer noch im Kraftwerk arbeitet, hat Trump auf die eine oder andere Weise immer noch eine Chance

This thing was in geostationary orbit, that’s a long way away where there is no atmospheric drag. There’s also very little orbital debris there because there is less stuff launched that far out and the orbit is much bigger, so the chances of a collision are vanishly small. Temperatures are an issue, but this thing lived out there for years, so it probably was designed pretty well for that. Same with unexpected movement, any leaks or software errors would have presented way before now.

Something like this breaking up is very strange. It could be a software patch that went wrong and sent the thing tumbling, but there are usually a couple of safeguards against such a thing. Plus any recently patched satellite is monitored very carefully.

So either an extreme fuckup or some kind of foul play. This could be a test of a satellite weapon, a deliberate sabotage for some reason or a software patch that went very wrong. It could also just be extremely dumb luck with it hitting some kind of debris or piece of rock, but like I said in geostationary orbit that’s not likely.

Edit: I just read this thing has had issues early in life, so it might be related to that. So that makes malfunction likely.

Yes, I lied to my teacher in preschool in the first week of the first year I went there. I was also only just 3 as I had my birthday in the summer and school normally starts in September where I lived at the time.

Then I skipped a grade in elementary school, because my reading and math was very good. So that meant for pretty much my entire education I was the youngest in class. Not very tall to begin with, but definitely the smallest and weakest because of my age. I was made fun of a lot because of that and physed was terrible. One time the physed teacher took pity on me and graded me on the girl scale to not give me a terrible grade, you can imagine how that went over with the rest of the class. But it wasn’t that bad really, I did have a lot of friends and all the making fun of me never went too far.

But suffice to say it wasn’t till uni that I really started to like being in school.

I think it used to be like a dark navy blue. I’ve since gravitated towards RAL 7016. It’s a dark grey that appears blue in some light and almost black in other light.

When I was 3 years old in preschool we had to get in line for the teacher who would write down our name, age, favorite color, etc. on a little badge so they could get to know all the kids. When I was in line the kids in front of me were like my favorite color is yellow, mine is pink and other happy bright colors. My favorite color was a very dark blue, almost black. As I heard the other kids I was like hmmm is my favorite color weird? Am I the weird kid? Is there something wrong with me? So when I got to the teacher I lied and said my favorite color was yellow. She painted a big yellow dot with felt tip pen on my badge which I wore for the next couple of weeks. I felt terrible for lying about it to the teacher, but didn’t want to say anything either.

So yeah that’s when I figured out I have anxiety.