mrob

No. Designers shouldn't force their own preferences on third parties. Everybody likes different text presentation, so websites should stick to the defaults and let readers configure their browsers as they prefer.

Everybody has some minimum text size they're comfortable with. If you make the text bigger than that, they're forced to scroll unnecessarily, which is less usable. But the size differs from person to person, so it should be configurable. You get this automatically with web browsers and most GUI frameworks if you don't go out of your way to break it (just stick with the default font).

>while I definitely believe that European hospitals and retirement homes sadly need ACs now (thanks global warming), I'm not sure everyone and their dog needs one.

If a 10-day heat wave cuts work productivity by 10% (which is optimistic IMO, it's probably worse in countries where people aren't used to it), that's equivalent to a 1-day general strike. If the workers actually managed to pull off a general strike in modern times, you can be sure the state wouldn't be happy with business as usual.

24fps is the worst part of film for me. I've watched a lot of films, and I made an effort to watch important and critically acclaimed ones. While I enjoyed a lot of it at the time, I don't really have any desire to watch any more, or to re-watch things I've already seen. The low framerate always drags me out of the story. Perhaps the only exceptions are the films of Yasujirō Ozu, which use so little motion that it's hard to see the low framerate.

I have a similar reaction to music from the early 70s and earlier. But if the sound quality is good, I still enjoy listening to new music and re-listening to things I've already heard. I think I'd still be interested in film if they'd actually taken advantage of improved technology like the musicians did.

The most enjoyable film-watching experience in my life was watching 60fps Showscan shorts at Futuroscope in France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futuroscope

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showscan

I'd personally rather watch 480p60 than 1080p30. There's a lot of material in which spatial resolution is mostly irrelevant (e.g. presentations, which involve people talking and slides designed to be legible from a distance), but low framerate always looks unnatural and distracting, even after speeding it up by 1.75x or 2x. 60fps should be considered a bare minimum, not "high framerate".

>I wouldn't expect mint-family herbs to have much hormone modulating effect at all

Mints are closely related to pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium), which was traditionally (and dangerously because of toxicity) used as an abortifacient. Its mechanism of action is still unknown, so hormone modulating effects seem plausible to me.

You don't need to feel the latency difference. You can tell the difference between high refresh rates by keeping your eyes still and moving your mouse cursor. The higher the display refresh rate (assuming the mouse sampling rate is high enough), the tighter the spacing between the phantom array effect images.

CRT flicker is equally visible when frame rate is the same as refresh rate as when it differs. 60Hz CRTs were never good. 60Hz was only considered "acceptable" because people didn't know any better at the time. At least you didn't suffer with 50Hz CRTs using the same fast phosphors like the PAL regions did.

If those input devices are so good, why don't we see people winning e-sports tournaments with them? The mouse (as in a high-end gaming mouse on a high-end gaming mouse pad) is the best positioning device yet invented because it allows very precise positioning with very small movements of the hand. And unlike a pen, you're not constantly fighting gravity.

My arm would get tired quickly if I tried to point to things by pen as fast as I can by mouse.

The most influential work of genre fiction (Lord of the Rings) is written in a literary style by a well-read author. How many people have even heard of "Fourth Wing" in comparison?

You can get away with slower refresh rate if you're using keyboard input only, but keyboard input is annoyingly restrictive for many common tasks. Anything involving graphics (even just looking at graphics, e.g. zooming in on a graph) is much easier with a mouse.

>we have the identity function of type A → A (which reads a value as input and outputs the same value)

That only exists in theoretical computer science. In real computer programming, you always have some bounds to the value of A.

We need faster refresh rates. Slow phosphors also cause unnatural visual artifacts. 1000Hz is roughly the point where you get motion quality that, except for a rare few test signals (e.g. multiplexed displays), is easily mistaken for reality.

If you're running it while idle and don't need the quickest results, reducing the clock speed improves energy efficiency (and in your case avoids overheating the battery). There will be some optimal speed that maximizes computations per joule that depends on the specific load and can only be found by measurement.

On Linux, you can cap CPU frequencies with "cpupower". Does MacOS have any equivalent?

>Everything these days is glass and refresh rates

The higher the display refresh rate the metaphorically "quieter" the computer. Discrete frames introduce latency, phantom array effect, and (on most displays) sample-and-hold blur. These don't exist in real life, so they weaken the illusion of the computer becoming part of your body, like a pencil or a hand tool. A computer that can be operated with minimum cognitive load needs a display refresh rate of at least 1000 Hz.

Every visible UI animation is visibly slow. I've used MacOS computers before, and despite having hardware that benchmarks faster, they all feel slower than my old Linux desktop. The biggest reason for this is the animations.

>If you only use 99% it means there are small particles you can't catch.

Air filters don't work like sieves. The smallest particles are easier to block than the mid-sized particles. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_filter_(respirator)

Clean Air Delivery Rate is often specified for specific pollutants. One is smoke, which is mostly small particles.

HEPA filters are counterproductive in standard air purifiers. Air purifiers pump their cleaned air directly into the dirty air of the room. It doesn't matter if that cleaned air is extremely clean, because it's immediately mixed with dirty air. What actually matters is how much clean air you produce: the "clean air delivery rate" (CADR).

The more effective the filter the more it restricts airflow. If a filter is only 99% effective instead of 99.99% but allows double the airflow, it provides nearly double the CADR. To benefit from HEPA you need a clean side and dirty side, like in a clean-room setup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_air_delivery_rate

The obvious countermeasure is adding tamper detection to make it automatically trigger if they try.

Yes. Correct software is more important than developer convenience.

I don't have to open the article to be confident it's not worth reading. Anybody knowledgeable in the field should be familiar with AI writing tells and the message they send. It only takes a few seconds thought to transform the title into something like "AI beats mathematicians by out-remembering, not out-thinking." Regardless of whether the article is slop or not, I expect any competent writer to avoid slop phrasing in their titles. To do otherwise signals laziness.

>Every intelligent being knows not to hurt others for no gain.

As the article clearly explains, an ASI has plenty to gain by killing you. You cannot help it, but you can potentially hinder it, so the optimal choice is removing the risk.

If I run an unsharp mask filter I'm not making any decision about what individual edges mean. I might look at the result and decide to apply more or less sharpening, but that's still not "semantic editing", because the edit itself only sees derivatives.

The line I draw is at semantic editing. Manipulating images based on abstract geometric or statistical features like edges or color histograms is acceptable. Attempting to guess what those features mean is not. Traditional sharpening, color balance correction, focus stacking, lens distortion correction, etc. is fine. Red eye removal, skin tone correction, traditional dodging and burning, replacing a detected moon with a higher resolution photo, etc. is not. Unlabeled semantic editing is dishonest. AI image processing does not distinguish between geometric and semantic features, so it's always unacceptable, even for simple tasks like sharpening.

The one exception I make is cropping, because photographers have always had the ability to choose where to point the camera. Cropping based on meaning is not dishonest because it's inherent in the process of photography.

You probably have a SVG renderer in memory already, and you already have a frame buffer and/or compositor buffer(s). Why should adding a graphical representation of the weather require more than a few KiB?

It is absolutely the government's job to regulate externalities. Otherwise, personal virtue is just subsidizing third party vice. Energy is fungible. Every joule you save lowers the cost for people who don't care.

Lower color rendering index than incandescent lights too. High CRI LEDs are available, but they're still worse than incandescents and less efficient than the conventional LEDs.

There are only two routes to preventing the climate disaster we've already set in motion:

Risky geoengineering projects like stratospheric aerosol injection.

Direct atmospheric capture of CO2.

The latter is the safer option because it's just restoring the atmosphere to a known good state. Direct atmospheric capture of billions of tons of CO2 per year will take enormous amounts of energy. We're going to need a lot more nuclear power plants if there's any hope of pulling this off.

Alternative is World War Three when large parts of the planet become uninhabitable.

British ice cream is generally terrible because our laws are too lax. Previously (from 1996 until 2015), "ice cream" required a minimum of 5% milk fat and 2.5% milk protein. This is still low compared the the USA's requirement of 10% milk fat and 6% milk solids-not-fat (proteins and carbohydrates combined), but it at least met the common-sense definition that an ice cream must contain cream.

In 2015, this requirement was abolished, and now you can sell anything sweet and frozen as "ice cream" even if it contains no dairy at all.

Big generators in power plants use alternators with field windings, not permanent magnets. Wind turbines use either permanent magnet generators or induction generators. Permanent magnets generators are more efficient, especially at low wind speeds, but we can do without them if necessary.