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.

We have this awesome thing in a lot of places where you can use a scanner and scan as you shop. You can put the bag in the cart and bag while you shop. When you get to the self checkout, you can use the scanner and instantly pay for everything and be out within seconds. I pay with my phone so just a touch is needed and I’m out of there. If you are the carry bags kind you can even take the bag out of the cart, return the cart to the correct place and walk to the car with the bag. It’s so fast and efficient.

I’ve become so spoiled I actively avoid places that don’t have such a thing. And I hate people who have a full cart at the self checkout and scan everything much much slower than the regular checkout with a person who’s job it is to do that. It’s fine if you have like 5 items and just scan them quickly at the self checkout. Anything beyond that really should be scanned during the shopping or just go to the regular checkout which is designed to handle a lot of stuff.

Yeah it shouldn’t be an excuse. Sure the billionaires are terrible per person compared to a regular person. But they are still a minority. Most of the air traffic is regular folk traveling for work or fun. And freight being hauled by plane or trucks because of all the useless stuff people buy. Most of the cars driving every day are regular folk. By far the worst thing are cruise ships, dumping out huge amounts of pollution just for people to go on holiday.

Billionaires are terrible and should not be allowed to exist as they do today. But it isn’t a reason not to do something yourself. If enough people do it, it will make an impact.

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

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.

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.

And then you add the inflation and you actually just owe money. Got to get that third job at 65

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.

Great, now I’ve lost two screws. Any more ideas?

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.

Yeah I’ve had that one happen. Big team, more than a year of work, thousands of hours, over 1500 of my own hours. Internal presentation to the team at the customer end, they loved it and couldn’t wait for actual launch day. We were all so proud and everyone was happy.

Alas that day never came, the customer went bankrupt due to one of the investors pulling out. Nothing to do with us, just some bean counter did the math and decided they were better off letting the company fold.

I spoke to one of the people at the customer we had worked with throughout the project. She was devastated it was all for nothing and she lost her job as a result. By the time a new investor came around to pick up the pieces, she had found a new job. Spoke to the former ceo of the customer, he had a new job for a couple of days a week at the company that bought up the remainders. He fought to get the project going again, but the new company is very non IT focused, oldskool. So they vetoed it. I later found out one of the project leads was consulted and he had pretty much killed any chance. I always disliked that dude, but he got a pretty good deal out of it or so I’m told.

That’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

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.