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.

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.

Look at my awesome Linux setup you guys! Shows a beautiful wallpaper with almost nothing else. You guys know you can install wallpapers on almost every OS since at least the 90s right?

Sure in general, if a driver can get back on track, it’s better to have a yellow. Not to interrupt the session and get going.

I think after Bianchi (RIP) they changed the rules that if there are people on track or they are needed on track, it needs to be red or SC before it’s allowed. And with the mandatory SC deltas for all cars. Later the VSC is introduced and got incorporated where under certain conditions a VSC is enough for a marshal to be on track. Like for example to get a bit of debris off the track with a brave person running out and grabbing it. With the damage to the barrier, people were required to be on track, so it should have been red as soon as possible to get that going.

And it’s a hard job, I fully get that and it’s hard to make the right call all the time.

But in this case, with the state of the car and the state of the barrier, I don’t see it as something that should depend on what the driver inside the car is doing. And we’ve even seen teams and drivers getting punished for trying to drive back cars in an unsafe condition.

And bring him to a free clinic to see after his bunghole.

Bullshit reason in my opinion. Of course Stroll would attempt to do anything to get back to the pits, that’s his job. And like he said, from inside the car it’s hard to see how broken it exactly is. But for anyone outside of the car is was obvious that car was destroyed and wasn’t going to come back on it’s own in any safe or timely manner. It should have been red flagged right away. Even if Stroll got it going and carried on to the pits, there would still be need for debris clearing and barrier repair. And with the state of that car, he would have put oil and debris all across the track in doing so, requiring even more clean up.

It should have been red right away. There have been so many issues this year where race control is slow to put out a flag or VSC. And weird choices when to use the SC and when to use the VSC. They need to do better in the future.

Good, from a certain point of view

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.

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.

This game is super cool, I love the idea, the concept, the vibe etc. However it is also hard as balls. Be prepared to die often and not really know what to do in order to not die. I’ve started it a couple of times, but even with longer play sessions didn’t get very far.

Well you say that, but near the office park where I used to work there was a gas station that served as the outlet for a local sandwich place. All the sandwiches would get made fresh in the morning and be delivered just in time for lunch. They were awesome, there were lines around the block at lunchtime. They were known throughout the area. The sandwich shop also did deliveries for orders of 50 pieces and up, but the company I worked for only did that a few times a year. Haven’t worked there for over 15 years, but I still remember the taste of those sandwiches.

Wow you didn’t like Planet Zoldath? I loved that game. It reminded me a lot of similar games I’ve played in the 80s. Walking around a lot, puzzling, no focus on speed or combat, just trying to explore an alien ecosphere. I absolutely loved that game, especially the variety in the different (randomly generated) maps and strategies you need to use to solve them. Especially the inclusion of aliens that give hints and trade stuff is really cool I feel.

Sure the walking is slow and the two slot inventory is annoying, but I feel just like with Barbuta, that was kind of the point of it. The walking speed isn’t that slow and the map is very small. And there are strategies you can use to prevent a lot of the backtracking. The game does have the flaw of it being randomly generated, it can give you terrible (or impossible) maps. But I went and got the cherry for this game, I loved it.

How do you know not all glass is cheese flavored?

Crossposted it! Thanks, I didn’t know that community existed.

AI will take jobs when the shareholders think it will make them more money. This has very little if not nothing to do with how good said AI is at the job.

My first computer was an MSX (the model in the vid, not the same one alas) in 1984, it opened up the world of computing for me (hence my username having the 84).

I have DOS 2.0 running on that thing with FAT16 support, so that means folders and it can (in theory) handle 4GB of data. If I would have told my young self that, my head would have both literally and figuratively exploded.