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Always makes me laugh when you get some dimwit that claims the Earth is flat, but then uses Google maps in his car. Magic!

GPS are amazing. If you understand how they work, and how they reliably know the time etc. you'd think you live in the future; and yet it's everywhere, in our pockets.


If we did drive on a flat surface wouldn't a similar triangulation strategy work? Could be with satellites aka stationary high alt weather balloons?

Yes but the math (which happens in the receiver, so can be replicated by a user with an open source receiver) would be very different. You actually wind up with a 3D position relative to the Earth's center, which then needs to be mathematically mapped to lat/lon - that's what the WGS84 datum is for.

I worked on a system to do train positioning for the NYC subway system using Ultra Wideband radio beacons using the same sort of multilateration that GPS uses to determine position, so it was basically a flat system (obviously not fully flat, elevations still existed, but the UWB radios were roughly on the same plane as the train tracks at least compared to satellites).

...but at the end of the day the ECEF coordinates we used for everything still require a roughly spherical earth, but I don't think flat earthism is a real thing for most people who talk about it. Most of it is joking/trolling. There are surely some conspiracy-minded people who believe it because they don't give any serious thought to how anything works, but the people that publicly push alternate theories (eg. GPS is balloons, not satellites) have got to just be trolls.


The supply of actual people that think the earth is flat and aren’t trolling far exceeds the supply of people that want to mock a group that largely doesn’t really exist.

There are a couple of dozen of people that seriously think the earth is flat, and a billion people ready to mock them for it.

It’s kind of punching down at shadows.


Science illiteracy looks less like someone vocally exposing that the world is flat, and more like someone who has never considered the topology of the earth from a perspective other than their own eyes.

Don't you know, the Google maps team is part of the conspiracy. They calculate everything assuming a flat earth, they just don't tell you that.

I thought this was about running windows 9x within linux. Is there such thing without virtualisation?

You can setup handlers to automatically launch windows executables using wine/proton .

This trickery is called binfmt_misc , which is a linux kernel system to associate random binary files with custom userspace 'interpreters'

I have had it working in the past. And while it is kinda neat I prefer manually running 'wine program.exe' to have a bit more control.

I have seen reports that a binfmt_misc setup + wine is good enough to get infected by certain windows viruses ;-P


Is wine compatible enough with Iloveyou.vbs?

Many companies only have legacy software/server/services running on windows.

Yeah, I worked at a company with a Windows application dating from the early 1990s - I suspect it was a case of them needing to move off some ancient hardware and software and Linux was in its infancy and Unix was probably still quite expensive.

Hear, hear, friend, you might have missed web 2.0. Oh web 2.0. The designers like myself were so sick of this nonsense.

AI is the same, but amplified and affecting a lot more people.

So I just recall Web 2.0 era and know that this too, shall pass.


The old philosophical question remains, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest_an...


Yes, the other trees hear it. Easy :)

Frustrating that the experience changes, and then they retire the better older model because it costs more, although it was better for everyone. The new ones are just geared better towards beating the benchmarks at a cheaper cost!

     The dragon book almost convinced me never to try to write a compiler.
That was the point. That's why it's not a cute beaver on the cover :)

Copilot is so bad that chatGPT is offered to replace it.

    [for] ... users outside the EU.
hmm

Your comment is recognized as low effort, but Copilot has been OAI models behind the scenes. For enterprise customers, quickly being replaced by Sonnet as a default.

Thank you for high effort response!

I would never use Copilot for anything useful, but I do use OpenAI products.

It doesn't matter when you use something else wholesale under the covers, if you botch the token spent...


Token expenditure isn't a concern for Copilot users. They don't see that form of cost model, just a flat monthly (or yearly) price for a user license.

Exactly, and how do you think it's rigged in the setup? You're not getting top tier OpenAI service with Copilot was my point.

Microsoft runs the model, not OAI.

I too don't feel like exercising after work, or at 6 in the morning. And many years ago I determined that without exercise my life is a living hell. Simply, I need to push weights and exert myself physically to keep mentally sane.

So I've found work that works for me, as in, I can go to the gym at lunch, which is when I feel good about working out.

Make your routine work for you, and not the other way around. Prioritising yourself is exactly like the plane safety announcement, place the mask on your face before assisting others, because you're no good to them passed out. Same thing with your health, make it a priority to look after yourself and feel good, or you won't be your be able to help anyone, and you won't be a good version of yourself people will want to hang with.


I found the same worked very well for me, around lunch hour is the best time for me to train.

I managed to go to the gym after work for a few years when I was on my early 20s, I had to force myself many times but I liked the routine and was motivated enough with keeping consistency but over the years I got more drained of energy from work and I couldn't muster the motivation anymore.

I experimented with going early in the morning on my way to the office for almost a year, I realised I absolutely dreaded it since it felt I had to rush to not be late even when there was ample time for my routines, instead of enjoying the meditative state of lifting weights I was always preoccupied with time.

In the end the best approach/routine for me was to start the workday some 30 min earlier, take an extended lunch hour to go train, and extend another 30 min at the end of the day. It always gives me the feeling of living 2 days in one, I feel clear minded and refreshed after coming back from my lunch hour, I don't have to care about waking up much earlier than my usual nor juggle between social activities in the evening and my training, I can do both: train, and go out after work to meet friends without caring that I missed a gym session.

Also the bonus of the gym being mostly empty at these times is also great, I get very unmotivated if it's packed, having to wait for equipment, anything that extends my routines takes the joy of doing them away.


I live off a paved trail, 30 min 8 mi bike ride nearly everyday around for 1-2pm after lunch, fast, no bonk, gives me a mental reset and helps me rescue from any work tangents.

Being in nature is great, we screw ourselves over so much by not orienting around bike path accessibility, they take very little space in the grand scheme and enables population improvement in glocuse tolerance and cognitive function, fortunately for all of Austin's faults they are putting in effort to be affordable and livable. Best of a bad bunch.

It's reversed so much cognitive performance decline I felt creeping up on me in my late 30s.


I was introduced to Masters Swimming programs by a corporate group manager back in the day. There were a bunch of participating pools in Silicon Valley.

Absolutely the best to walk back into work with all that energy. Several co-workers followed after me. It was contagious! Hehe


Some people care about the craft, most care about the output...

Hang in there, there will be a lot of slop to fix in contract work...


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