Nice site, with apt illustrations and mathematical explanations.
This reminds me of an interesting trivia:
For centuries, it was believed that paper could not be folded in half more than 8 times. Until one high school student broke that seemingly impossible limit. And she did so with a giant sheet of paper, and some interesting mathematics.
She won the Guiness World Record for that feat.
"It was an accepted belief that folding a piece of paper in half more than 8 times was impossible. On 27 January 2002, high school student, *Britney Gallivan*, of Pomona, California, USA, folded a single piece of paper in half 12 times and was the first person to fold a single piece paper in half 9, 10, 11, and 12 times. The tissue paper used was 4,000 ft (1,219 m; 0.75 miles) long.
In preparation for the challenge, Gallivan identified criteria for folding and the phenomenon that ultimately limits the geometric folding progression. She derived mathematical equations for single direction – L=πt/6(2ⁿ+4)(2ⁿ-1) – and alternate direction – W=πt23(ⁿ-1)/2 – folding. The equations establish the relationship between the length of paper required (L), the thickness of the paper (t), the minimum possible width of square material (W), and the number of possible folds (n). It is documented in her book *How to Fold Paper in Half Twelve Times*."
And for those who object that a long piece of tissue paper wasn't the intent of the original claim, Mythbusters got 11 folds out of an aircraft hanger sized square piece of regular paper.
They'll look good, work well (from hardware perspective), and you can replace their built-in Windows OS with the Linux flavor/edition of your choice.
By the way, if ultraportable is your idea of laptop nirvana, you can try...
Samsung made awesome AI-powered laptops (the Samsung Galaxy Book5 and Book6), I got the Book5 few months back for my friend's son. It is sleek, lightweight and powerful.
> Samsung Book5 - Internal Speakers not working on linux
Also, it caps out at 32GiB of ram, I feel like these days that's pretty low for anyone who uses javascript heavy webpages. Like, my firefox on linux is currently using 42GiB of memory, and that's with under 200 tabs open, and then when I build my nixos config, that usually takes another 10-20GiB of memory
Don't get any gaming laptop. Some of them are truly bottom of the barrel slop and it really matters that you do your research. (See, for instance, NuclearNotebook reviews on YouTube)
Maybe in current era of skyrocketing prices of memory & storage components (due to mindboggling demand by AI-driven tech industry), I would agree that budget gaming laptops are not worth the value.
But for decades, I have found that gaming laptops (decent brands and popular models) gave best bang for buck, especially with AMD hardware.
My 12+ years old Lenovo gaming laptop is still going strong, and my 15+ years old Sony Viao netbook is also doing well (with SATA SSD and RAM upgrades few years ago).
But yeah, read/check up on the reviews (from reputed reviewers) before splurging for an expensive laptop.
One nifty trick to identify VFM(value for money) laptops is to check Amazon site/app for "Smartchoice" laptops. It is a special keyword that Amazon adds to listings of popular laptops that are VFM (best deals) and having good reviews.
The same scientists who cry about ethics, have happily experimented on mice and guinea pigs in their labs, even if it causes the deaths or distress of those little sentient beings.
Mutations/mutatives like Halo's Master Chief and Marvel's Super Soldier serum won't remain sci-fi for much longer, methinks.
former practicing scientist at an institute whose name you would recognize.
The field may not be fully constrained by ethics, which is just a way of saying that the work is done by people and people have varying ethical bounds, but from what I saw many of my colleagues were highly ethics driven.
I remember one Russian colleague who smuggled blood products out of Russia so they could be tested for HIV. Because the Russian government refused to help these patients. The man risked his life to help HIV sufferers.
Ethics is best when matched with courage, if a person is willing to put their life on the line for their beliefs.
Also noting that in the western world, experiments generally need approval of an ethics board before proceeding. That board's sense of ethics might make different judgments than you on, for example, mice experiments, but there is a big difference between "not constrained" and "some of the constraints are different than what I would choose".
where in this case, the ethics boards decided that provided a certain risk/reward barrier is crossed, and that the animals are otherwise treated well, sacrificing mice to improve human health is just fine.
That is an ethics based decision that was debated for a long time. And maybe should continue to be debated, there is real value in your stance that all beings are sentient and this demands a level of care.
@a_better_world: (apt username for this conversation!)
I do understand what you mean, and I do comprehend that animal testing cannot be avoided for scientific advancements to help and progress humanity.
But I have a simple motto I want to adhere to (it is very hard though, to practice it in principle and action daily):
Ethics is best when it is for the good of humanity, without being bad for Earth.
In recent years, I am starting to feel humanity is sharply veering away from its basic ethics (and the first ethic must be to not shit where one eats - but hey, we are actively aggressively destroying the only beautiful bountiful planet we know of, that can support humanity), and doing whatever the top richest most-powerful elites want.
And this unbridled greed and apathy is going to sow the seeds for the downfall of humanity, I'm afraid. At the cost of our precious Earth and its other denizens who share this planet with us humans.
There has been a catastrophic 73% decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations* in just 50 years (1970-2020), according to World Wildlife Fund‘s (WWF) Living Planet Report 2024.
Our generation is the last one that can still save the wild forests of the Earth, which help us cope with the climate crisis and preserve the biodiversity of the planet. A new study by Greenpeace Russia and the University of Maryland has shown that if urgent and effective measures are not taken to preserve wild forests, most of them will disappear in the next 20 years.
Volkswagen (the same megacorp that did the infamous Dieselgate/Emissionsgate scams) forced monkeys to inhale exhaust from its automobiles, to try to show that fumes from current models (the cars, not the monkeys) were less noxious than previous models.
And those 1% elites are very rich and very powerful.. so they can do whatever they want.. (and that includes funding and controllimng unethical scientific experiments)..
Slight correction: the power others gave them a long time ago, and now nothing can help those others take it back without uprooting the whole civilization in the process. Current power is a malignant formation too advanced to heal without destroying the whole organism.
It's not a slight correction, those claims are the exact problem - the propaganda of the powerful: Give up, there is nothing you can do.
People in democracies can easily vote to change where power lies (that is, power lies ultimately with the citizens), if that's what they want, and it's not hard to see how: The current situation is highly unusual for democracies; there is a long history of what to do and how to do it.
A major reason they don't do it is that they keep reading and believing they are powerless.
The concept of "police" came up through "private militia" hired as.
Most of the world enjoys 5-day workweek (40 hours work per week).
But the world got this work schedule only due to workers (mostly working in mines and railways) and labor unionists who fought and died for favourable work conditions and fair working schedule.
The rich elites even sent Pinkertons to assassinate the "rebel" leaders.
It was Henry Ford who finally saw the writing on the wall, and he announced the 40-hours workweek in his company, and thus ushered in the modern era of work-life balance.
*hired as private army/security for rich powerful elites.
"Police force" was created not for liberty, justice, and public good - it was created to brutally quell poor folks rising against rich tyrants, it was created as a weapon to ensure the rich stayed rich.
Yeah, say goodbye to those the privacy and safety of those documents.
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