h/t to @Magister@lemmy.world pointing out this gem in a comment on HistoryPorn

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/15437311

Global fresh water demand will outstrip supply by 40% by 2030

🎉🎉🎉🎉 It's Friday!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

The topic of this discussion is: anything.

Anything exciting going on in your life? Things got you down? Did you try a new recipe that you'd like to share? etc.

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How Base 3 Computing Beats Binary

Metadata

• Author: Stephen Ornes
• Category: rss
• URL: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-base-3-computing-beats-binary-20240809/

Highlights

Three, as Schoolhouse Rock! told children of the 1970s, is a magic number. Three little pigs; three beds, bowls and bears for Goldilocks; three Star Wars trilogies. You need at least three legs for a stool to stand on its own, and at least three points to define a triangle.

If a three-state system is so efficient, you might imagine that a four-state or five-state system would be even more so. But the more digits you require, the more space you’ll need. It turns out that ternary is the most economical of all possible integer bases for representing big numbers.

Surprisingly, if you allow a base to be any real number, and not just an integer, then the most efficient computational base is the irrational number e.

Despite its natural advantages, base 3 computing never took off, even though many mathematicians marveled at its efficiency. In 1840, an English printer, inventor, banker and self-taught mathematician named Thomas Fowler invented a ternary computing machine to calculate weighted values of taxes and interest. “After that, very little was done for years,” said Bertrand Cambou, an applied physicist at Northern Arizona University.

Why didn’t ternary computing catch on? The primary reason was convention. Even though Soviet scientists were building ternary devices, the rest of the world focused on developing hardware and software based on switching circuits — the foundation of binary computing. Binary was easier to implement.

Oh my goodness, it's so much better than petroleum jelly (and it won't degrade latex/rubber). Put it anywhere, you can even eat it, it's safe for nursing babies.

Other than nipples, it has thousands of uses. I use it under my nose where my CPAP machine rubs me raw. Oh, and it's a great moustache wax too!

Just try it. I costs a bit more than PJ, but it's like owning the best quality product of it's type. Nobody can buy anything better.

It occurred to me that one way to potentially eliminate all filament swap waste from purge towers or Bambu-style filament “poops” is to instead do something similar to a “purge object” or a “wipe object” but where the object is… filament.

The idea was somewhat inspired by Stefan’s video from a few months ago, which first introduced me to the idea of printing filament: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ-N1fr4N0w

If the purge object is new filament, then you don’t need to figure out what to use it for immediately; you can store the mixed-color filament for later use until you have a genuine need for a color-agnostic or structural object. No more piles of fidget spinners you didn’t really want.

A few other thoughts:

• The filament probably needs a minimum bend radius so it can feed into an extruder without breaking. One option would be to print a circle or a rounded square / squircle type of shape toward the perimeter of the build volume (potentially multiple concentric ones, or spiralized shapes). Another option would be to print disconnected straight segments.
• The filament doesn’t need to be printed flat. It could potentially spiral upwards (likely with supports). That could help avoid print head collisions for taller models (in which case you might not want the head to have to get back down to <1.75mm from the print bed). In the most general case, the filament could be printed at arbitrary angles, even vertically, and could start at some height above the build plate (potentially supported by the object itself, for example in an object where color changes don’t start at the very bottom). Maybe the angle could even be optimized to provide the best match between purge volume per layer and volume of new filament printed on each layer.
• A good solution probably requires a good way to connect multiple segments of printed filament together
• Mixing materials rather than just colors seems like a bad idea to me (e.g. soluble supports) but I’m going to mention it as a possibility anyway; you could conceive of something inspired by Stefan’s composite material and intelligently organize the different materials within your new filament.
• You could potentially control the mixes / transition colors that go into your purge filament, or even choose multiple different new filaments for different color transitions. For example, you might have separate new filaments for red-green, green-blue, and blue-red transitions. Maybe you want it create particularly pretty new filament, or avoid particularly ugly combinations.

I don’t actually have a multi-color / multi-filament printer, and I don’t have time to experiment with this (even though the first prototype could be as trivial using a filament shape as the wipe object in PrusaSlicer). I’m mostly sharing this to establish prior art in case someone nefarious seeks to patent something similar in the future (which is also why I added some half-baked thoughts that might make other things become obvious to someone skilled in the art), though it’d be great if the idea is actually good and someone could implement it well. Or for all I know this does already exist.

Thanks for taking the time to read this! Feel free to repost/share/steal the idea if you like it.

So I was thinking of silly things I've done that pseudo-broke my system, or made me think I had a broken system. Like the time I put the cmd :

exit

in my ~/.bash_aliases file and I had to open a text editor to fix it because that broke all the terminals on my machine.

I'm curious what other silly things users have done to confuse themselves.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/15313778

Officers showed up at the home and found a man struggling with a woman over a knife. An officer opened fire and struck the man, killing him at the scene. Only later did they discover the man who was killed lived at the home and was struggling to fend off the woman who had broken into his home.

Police say Brandon Durham, 43, had called 911 and reported multiple people outside his home shooting, then told the 911 operator that someone had entered his home through the front and back doors and he was locking himself in the bathroom.

He also told the 911 operator that he was home with his 15-year-old daughter, according to police. Officers kicked open the door after arriving on scene and hearing someone screaming as well as damage to vehicles parked outside the property, police said.

Summary

The University of Texas System has approved a tuition-free program for undergraduate students from families earning $100,000 or less, starting next fall.

The initiative, funded by $35 million in endowments and long-term investments, seeks to lower student debt and improve access to higher education.

Qualifying students must be Texas residents, enroll full-time, and apply for financial aid.

While the program builds on previous UT tuition relief efforts funded by endowments and oil royalties, critics, including Texas lawmakers, have called it unconstitutional and proposed cutting UT’s budget.

Share your shave of the day!

Pantheon season 1 is being added to Netflix tomorrow, but season 2 is not (and might never be). Both seasons are on Prime Video but it is region-locked, though I'm not sure which regions it is available in.

Pantheon is a fantastic sci-fi show with really smart themes that has been completely screwed over by streaming services. The writing is incredible and contains some very intelligent satire and critiques of big tech corporations, and even dips its' toes into geopolitics (not even kidding, the Israel-Palestine conflict becomes a plot point in season 2, and this was written prior to Oct. 7).

If you want to watch the series in its' entirety then piracy is a must for the vast majority. Needless to say, I highly recommend watching.

.

Summary

Russia has supplied North Korea with over a million barrels of oil since March 2024, violating UN sanctions.

The oil is believed to be payment for weapons and troops Pyongyang has sent to Russia to support its war in Ukraine.

The transfers, which have been documented by satellite imagery, highlight the growing ties between Moscow and Pyongyang and the increasing disregard for international sanctions.

An online course founded by far-right influencer Andrew Tate was breached by hackers, revealing the email addresses of roughly 325,000 users.

The self-described online university, known as The Real World, offers users “advanced training and mentoring” for around $50 per month. Formerly known as Hustler’s University, the platform focuses on topics such as health and fitness, financial investment, and e-commerce businesses.

“Money making is a skill,” the website states. “We will teach you how to master it.”

On Thursday, the hackers made their actions known by flooding the course’s primary chatroom with emojis they uploaded while Tate was streaming an episode of his show “Emergency Meeting” on Rumble. 

The emojis included a transgender flag, a feminist fist, an AI-generated image of Tate draped in a rainbow flag, another where his buttocks are enlarged, and the cat character used in the “boykisser” meme.

According to court documents, Elizabeth Gutfahr, 62, who served as Santa Cruz County Treasurer from 2012 through 2024, embezzled and laundered approximately $38 million by wiring funds from Santa Cruz County’s Account directly to accounts in the name of companies that Gutfahr had created for purposes of stealing the county funds. Gutfahr then wired the money from these fraudulent business accounts to her personal account, where she used the money to purchase real estate, pay operating expenses for and renovate her family ranch, pay expenses for her cattle business, and purchase at least 20 vehicles.

Pantheon season 1 is being added to Netflix tomorrow, but season 2 is not (and might never be). Both seasons are on Prime Video but it is region-locked, though I'm not sure which regions it is available in.

Pantheon is a fantastic sci-fi show with really smart themes that has been completely screwed over by streaming services. The writing is incredible and contains some very intelligent satire and critiques of big tech corporations, and even dips its' toes into geopolitics (not even kidding, the Israel-Palestine conflict becomes a plot point in season 2, and this was written prior to Oct. 7).

If you want to watch the series in its' entirety then piracy is a must for the vast majority. Needless to say, I highly recommend watching.

"There is an apparently new iOS 18 security feature that reboots iPhones that haven’t been unlocked in a few days, frustrating police by making it harder to break into suspects’ iPhones

...

Apple added “inactivity reboot” code in iOS 18.1 that triggers iPhones to restart after they’ve been locked for four days"