MightBeAlpharius

joined 1 year ago
[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Up until right now, I always thought Coachella was just the name of the festival, not a place - sort of like Burning Man.

I've never been more confused by a headline in my life.

[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

They also usually use some weasel words like "up to." That way, if it doesn't last the full 72 hours (which it won't), they can claim that they stated "72 hours MAXIMUM" rather than just "72 hours." It's basically shifts the statement from "lasts three days" to "definitely won't last four days."

[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I've worked in retail, and... That's not an actual RFID alarm sticker, and it's not just there for the potential theives.

Some manufacturers will actually put an RFID tag on the inside of the box. These tags work exactly like the RFID stickers, and they're deactivated the same way (usually a magnet underneath the store's counter).

This sticker is actually a "chip away" anti-theft sticker. They frequently go on the same products that get RFID stickers, but all they do is tear apart instead of peeling off. They're mostly an internal tool for LP to try to link thefts and fraudulent returns (that number is the store number that it came from). This one just happens to conveniently have "ALARM" printed on it as a secondary feature, letting thieves know that the item will set off the alarm without showing where the RFID tag is.

Edit: I should probably add that they also put them on high-theft non-alarmed items, but they probably didn't get separate sets of stickers.

[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

It's either a typo, or a lot or sass for a PopSci article.

"Look at this huge, unparalleled rise in carbon levels millions of years ago, it's so huge... Psych! We do that every five years! Buckle in, buckaroo, things are about to get bad!"

[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Wait... Y'all are talking about X-Wing: Rogue Squadron and Star Wars Episode 1: Battle for Naboo, right?

I owned those windows ports!

They worked great back in the day - I had such a blast with them that I begged my parents to get me a shitty Logitech joystick! If you want to check them out, it looks like Rogue Squadron is only $10 on Steam; and Battle for Naboo seems to be abandonware, but it seems to be hosted on a lot of "better spread than dead" game sites.

[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago (4 children)

That makes a lot of sense, actually. I also saw "fully electric" and immediately thought of electric/hybrid/ICE cars, and my brain went straight to "hold up, did I miss the fully functional diesel-powered humanoid robot?"

[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You're fine - I grew up in a rural state, and I thought they were super rare until I lived in a city where the public transit system gave them as change.

[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, I think my phrasing might have been kind of weird - I was referring to the weights of H2 and N2 relative to CO2, which weighs a whopping 44 grams per mol.

...Although, I just did some quick estimates last night, and "almost twice as heavy" was still pretty far off. CO2 is much closer to 1.5x the weight of N2 than double the weight of N2.

[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

I'm not a scientist, but one could argue that it's likely that all three planets had nitrogen, but only Earth still has it.

I don't know much about Venus, but I know that part of why we have way more atmosphere than Mars is due to Earth's magnetic field. Earth has a much stronger magnetic field than Mars, and it does a pretty good job of shielding us from the solar wind; meanwhile Mars has been slowly trickling atmosphere into the void for ages because it lacks that shielding.

Given that CO2 is actually super heavy, it makes sense that Mars would lose almost everything else first. You mentioned H2, but it's also almost twice as heavy as N2 - because of this, nitrogen would concentrate at higher altitudes, eventually becoming exposed to the solar wind as lighter gases were stripped away.

As for Venus... Again, I'm not an expert, but a quick search suggests that it has a weak magnetic field as well. With a primarily CO2 atmosphere and a weak magnetic field, one could infer that Venus is in a similar position to Mars, and any significant nitrogen that may have been in its atmosphere has simply been stripped away by the solar wind.

[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

I feel like I would use it voluntarily if it put the sponsors in the "add a destination" menu. I tend to use Google maps for longer trips, and I try to add any stops on the way to my route so I don't miss them - if I hit "add destination" and it offered, for example, Citgo stations, 7-11s, and Dunkin Donuts on my route, then I would probably get gas and snacks at sponsored locations almost every time.

As it is, though... Well, just having a Dunks on the way to the laundromat doesn't make me want to stop in and buy a coffee. Driving by ten of them "randomly" on my way to another state isn't going to make me any more likely to stop at one.

[–] MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

it's like building stuff with Legos.

I got Minecraft when it was still in beta, for exactly that reason. I was in college, I had some free time, and I liked messing around with the demo - it reminded me of all of the fun I had playing with Legos as a kid. I think it cost me maybe $15?

Now, a decade later, I still play it fairly often, and given all of the content that's come out since then, it might be the most worthwhile $15 I've ever spent.

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