An “instance” is a server that talks to all the other Lemmy servers, where your account info and login are stored. There’s a lot of benefits to decentralization - even if one instance goes down, like lemm.ee, it doesn’t really impact the whole of Lemmy too severely. The cost of running an instance isn’t super high, which means that if an instance is being annoying about advertising or something, you can ditch it with little cost to yourself and even run your own instance if you want. A single cabal of admins can’t ruin it like Reddit (cough cough Spez) and it can be easier to curate your own experience by choosing what instances you want to ignore completely.

Any given instance is not necessarily a safe harbor, but as long as Lemmy is around, there will probably be multiple instances to choose from. The only thing you really lose is your post history - and you can link to your old account info in your new account for continuity’s sake.

and don’t sweat.

except that the government run land registry can deal with disputes in a flexible and fair manner. A blockchain with smart contracts cannot.

at the same rate of time change

Not true! The faster you’re moving through space, the slower you’re moving through time.

it’s the parties with the majority of the “proof of XYZ” creation hardware. Which are not normal people.

Originally the idea was that it WOULD be normal people using their own CPU cycle time to secure the chain and mint new blocks. Even then, as long as no one party holds the majority of hash power, the incentive is to support the security of the coin rather than subvert it. The moment that changes is the moment that Bitcoin dies, because no one will be able to trust it any more - which also means there is an incentive to make sure there are enough competing BTC farms.

there’s the possibility of developers of a blockchain choosing to rewrite the ledger, causing splits.

The blockchain is upheld by the combination of the developers and the miners. If the developers aren’t acting in good faith and the miners don’t like it, they don’t move to the new chain. Sure, you get a split, but odds are one of them is going to die.

The government will fail you, but Trump will ensure the government fails you even harder and faster, that it fails more people, and that it will bring as much of the world down with it as possible.

Have you fought a goose before? Clearly not considering how you’re mouthing off.

People know to steer clear of Canadian geese for good reason. They’re known to break people’s bones with their wings when they decide you need to be punished. The weight/strength ratio is vastly different for birds than it is for mammals. Birds have to fly, so they’re built ridiculously light for how strong they are - and they have to be strong to be able to fly.

A swan is much bigger and - critically - much meaner than a goose.

The thing missing from most of these bullet points is that extracting energy from rotation reduces the speed of the rotating object.

Even black holes are affected by the gravity of objects near them, same as anything else - which means that the black hole will slow down if you slingshot an object around it.

That’s why it’s called energy extraction rather than energy creation.

So sure, you could make a black hole bomb… but making the black hole in the first place would take as much - if not more - energy than you’ll get out of it. And usually you’re going to do enough damage just throwing a black hole through your target.

LLMs are AI as much as the enemies in a game are AI. It’s not General AI though, which companies really seem to want people to believe it is.

Not even close to all software. There was a broad mix of stuff that used 2-digit years that would have had problems with it, stuff that used 2-digit years where it wouldn’t really impact anything, and stuff that used 4-digit years and so wasn’t a problem.

However, if it drove any sort of critical infrastructure, it had to be audited just in case it fit in the first category.

That depends on if they’re reporting LESS money than they actually made, or are reporting MORE money than the shop itself actually took in.

If everything is in cash, you can inflate it pretty easily without raising eyebrows.

I dropped Reddit when it was announced that you could be banned for upvoting something.

Luigi is also, in all probability, innocent.

Which means the Claims Adjuster is still at large.

Cars shouldn’t jump up and down due to road quality.

I live in a hilly area. Any time someone with projector headlights is on even a slight downward curve that I’m facing, it’s the equivalent of brights in my eyes. Even with adaptive headlights, cresting a ridge would still blast anyone on the other side for the short amount of time it takes for your car to realize there’s someone there.

For point 3… You’re right, and you’re wrong. Light from point sources instead of diffuse sources is worse for your retina. The light gets focused by your eye’s lenses onto a much smaller area, which can potentially damage the sensitive photoreceptor cells. Ideally, there would be regulations that limit a headlight’s candles per mm^2 rather than just overall candles. Astigmatism makes it so the light glares across half your vision, which makes it worse for seeing other things on the road besides the headlight glare, but conversely makes it better for not murdering your retina because the light is spread across a wider area.

You misunderstand the point of an aircraft carrier. It’s not any more defensible than other large, floating objects - but first you have to reach it, and the aircraft it carries are capable of blowing up nearly anything to kingdom come before it gets anywhere close. Carriers aren’t for defense. They’re for projecting power.

If opening up is what caused the marriage to fall apart, it was built on a broken foundation and was doomed from the start. You’re only finding out now because emotional unavailability hides that sort of thing.

The owners of the largest military in the world will make it everyone’s problem before it gets better.

Chaotic neutral: Python

This. I will never support a language that uses tokenized whitespace as ‘Good’ aligned.

A big part of the experience is talking to your buddy about the movie after it’s over. Hard to do that when you go alone.

The problem is that incandescent lights are 1) warmer in tone, which is less harsh for the same candle ratings, 2) have a more gradual boundary than LED projector-style headlights, which means you aren’t suddenly blinded when the car coming towards you goes over a minor bump, and 3) aren’t a point light-source with the reflector design they have unlike LEDs, and thus are less painful. NONE of these issues are dealt with in a vast majority of new cars (adaptive-angle headlamps would do a lot to help, but would only fix one of the three issues - and only when the camera can actually figure out when they should be lowering the angle, which is far from foolproof).

If I could easily replace the LED headlamp in my new car with an incandescent lamp, I would - because I could still see decently with my old car’s headlights, and I wasn’t at risk of blinding everyone in the oncoming lane next to me.