[-] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The most basic way to measure movement is with an accelerometer. It's a little component inside your phone that has a small weight with a known mass connected to springs. When the phone moves or rotates, the weight moves, and the tension on the springs changes. The tension is either constant (you rotated your phone and are now holding it in the new position) or temporary (you moved in a direction and stopped). There are other ways this can be done, but this is the most conceptually simple.

Steps, length of step, distance moved, and heart rate can be estimated from analyzing the movement in various ways.

For example, to detect a step, your phone might see movement slightly up and forward, then down, then a jarring impact. Heart rate can be estimated based on your entered weight in an app, your speed of movement, how long you've been moving, and averages for people of your weight moving in those ways. This is a very inaccurate way to measure your heart rate, however. A better way would be by a sensor located on your wrist, arm, or chest, which is what smart watches often do.

Movement measured by an accelerometer can quickly become inaccurate, because small errors add up over time, so for movement over longer distances, phones generally use GPS (communication with a satellite positioning system) which is accurate to within about 5 meters.

If GPS isn't available, but the phone is connected to multiple cell phone towers, then it's possible to triangulate the position of the phone given the tower locations. If we know the distance and direction to the towers, and the position of the towers, then we can find the location of the phone by basically adding an offset to one of the tower locations.

There are other, more niche ways to measure positions without triangulation or GPS, but they're generally used for autonomous robotics - laser positioning with reflectors, ultra-wide-band positioning with special sensors, or visual positioning with cameras surrounding the region in which the robot will be working.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

[-] [email protected] 44 points 3 months ago

I agree. While we're at it, we can also make election day a holiday and require employers to give workers at least a paid half-day off so that they can vote, and create a citizenship ID that is free and easy to get rather than using ID with requirements like a driver's license. Then maybe we can try out ranked choice voting and eliminate the electoral college. You know, since we want the election to be fair.

[-] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago

I started a business with a friend to automatically identify things like this, fraud like what happened with Alzheimer's research, and mistakes like missing citations. If anyone is interested, has contacts or expertise in relevant domains or just wants to talk about it, hit me up.

[-] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago

You definitely won't get the chance to peg him with that attitude

[-] [email protected] 44 points 6 months ago
[-] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago

Might want to add River Tam from Serenity as well.

[-] [email protected] 39 points 7 months ago

I used to have a power shell script that a coworker gave me that would uninstall a huge number of services and apps on windows, change a bunch of config settings etc.

I've always wished there were a way to roll out a stripped windows release as an open source project without getting sued.

[-] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

Yep. Defederate.

[-] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago

It's not clear exactly why Hanzo has such a bad reputation, but it probably has to do with the fact that he's a character who requires a highly skilled player to really be effective. Unlike other characters, Hanzo tends to work best as a lone wolf, so there's often the perception that he's not really contributing to the team's composition as a whole. This becomes particularly irksome when a team has a hole in its composition that so desperately needs to be filled, but that last person on the team decides to go for Hanzo instead

Article here. I don't play overwatch, so I didn't get it.

[-] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Honestly, I don't think it's just money. It's a baseline of support that means you never have to worry about your kids eating or having new clothes, coupled with a vast social network. That network is made up of friends, coworkers, people who went to the same school as you, your parents friends and coworkers, your extended family, and just random-ass acquaintances who go to the same fucking gelato place as you.

I'm a good software developer- I interview well, have broad experience, and pick things up quickly. I've repeatedly leveraged my contacts from school, their contacts, and even people I've dated in the same industry - to get jobs and opportunities that my family couldn't provide because they're desperately poor. It's absurd how many opportunities I've gotten that way. I've seen equally talented developers grind along in shit jobs because when they look for work they do it by applying to hundreds of openings on indeed or wherever instead of hitting up all of their current and past acquaintances and asking if anyone is looking.

Now draw the same comparison, but between someone who has a network of contacts that are wealthy, and me. That's why these people can do what they do. They might be smart, they might work hard, but at the end of the day, they've got access we don't.

(Edit to add conclusion)

[-] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I don't think I've ever met or heard of anyone literally claiming that kids are identifying as helicopters. The "I identify as an attack helicopter" thing was originally used as an absurdist critique of gender identity, not as a serious claim, if I remember correctly.

Edit: Also, there was a pretty good sci-fi short story that took the idea seriously.

[-] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago

I think I looked this up at one point, and weirdly, none of them died from the asbestos. I seem to remember several of the actors died relatively young, so maybe something else got them first.

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blackstampede

joined 1 year ago