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176793661
comment
byDerekloffin
2, 2025 @05:56PM
(#65252853)
Attached to: Surprisingly, Some Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds Can Be Stable
Okay, that's fair enough, I was just thinking of the two bodies relative to each other, not external vectors.
176793379
comment
byDerekloffin
2, 2025 @04:46PM
(#65252733)
Attached to: Surprisingly, Some Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds Can Be Stable
Yeah, the theory may work, in practice, no chance in hell. There is all kinds of issues once you start to turn that theory into reality. Even assuming you could find the perfect substance to make the sphere from that had just the right rigid properties and such, and can perfectly place every last atom to be in a perfect spherical pattern, the reality is it still wouldn't make a perfect sphere, just a series of point masses that resemble a perfect sphere, and that's not good enough for the theory to work.
176793289
comment
byDerekloffin
2, 2025 @04:20PM
(#65252691)
Attached to: Surprisingly, Some Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds Can Be Stable
Yes, it is correct, and the very theorem you brought up, shell theorem, proves it.
Here, directly from wikipedia:
Isaac Newton proved the shell theorem[1] and stated that:
1. A spherically symmetric body affects external objects gravitationally as though all of its mass were concentrated at a point at its center.
2. If the body is a spherically symmetric shell (i.e., a hollow ball), no net gravitational force is exerted by the shell on any object inside, regardless of the object's location within the shell.
Part 2 is what I'm talking about. The sphere and sun are stable relative to each other. Again, important to note that's a perfect sphere, not the imperfect ones we'd actually be able to make even in theory.
176793199
comment
byDerekloffin
2, 2025 @03:58PM
(#65252649)
Attached to: Surprisingly, Some Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds Can Be Stable
No, that's not what I was talking about. Inside the dyson sphere, the sphere has no gravitational effect, and likewise the sun has no effect on it. Both will affect any body exterior to the sphere, but that's not relevant here. This has nothing to do with me floating, I'm not a dyson sphere, nor am I on the interior of any sphere. Again, this only true if it is a perfect sphere, which it won't be. Now if you want to live on the inside the sphere you're going to need a gravity like effect, produced by something, often people propose rotation, but that's a different issue from just making the sphere and having it be stable around the sun. Ring worlds have to actually compensate for stability problems because they don't have this property.
176792673
comment
byDerekloffin
2, 2025 @02:03PM
(#65252483)
Attached to: Surprisingly, Some Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds Can Be Stable
Dyson spheres are inherently stable when it comes to gravity. It is a complex integral calc but if you work it out, any gravity body inside the sphere has a net 0 effect on the sphere. Now that said, that is a perfect sphere. In reality it would be an imperfect sphere and thus the calc doesn't give you a net 0, which I am guessing is what they are talking about here as it would allow the imperfections enough leeway to be truly feasible.
176728937
comment
byDerekloffin
5, 2025 @04:56AM
(#65235321)
Attached to: Super Nintendo Hardware Is Running Faster As It Ages
It is actually concerning in general as I'm sure Nintendo wasn't the only one using this tech, so other tech, some of which may be far more critical, might have the same thing going on. Identifying the cause is thus potentially quite important.
176170053
comment
byDerekloffin
10, 2025 @04:56AM
(#65154951)
Attached to: Trump Orders Treasury Secretary To Stop Minting Pennies
As a Canadian, where Canada gave it up years ago, unfortunately I can confirm that's a big unfortunate no. .99 prices remain very much active. Keep in mind getting rid of the penny does not change any of the digital payment method's degrees of accuracy so unless something much bigger is put in place to enforce no pricing in below five cents and a concrete rule to resolve taxes in those 5 cent ranges, you'll continue to see .99s all over the place.
174338853
comment
byDerekloffin
2024 @02:40PM
(#64586039)
Attached to: Supreme Court Ruling Kneecaps Federal Regulators
There is a difference between COMPLETELY unchecked power, and TOO MUCH unchecked power, and you're equating the two there.
174338071
comment
byDerekloffin
2024 @01:05PM
(#64585729)
Attached to: Supreme Court Ruling Kneecaps Federal Regulators
Yeah. I suppose people fall for the 'expert' designation, when in truth the agencies are just political appointees that might, just MIGHT have some expertise on the topic. While this ruling will definitely cause the agencies trouble, the defense should never have been made in the first place as it gave them far too much unchecked power.
168296248
comment
byDerekloffin
21, 2022 @02:01PM
(#63069102)
Attached to: Aviation Regulators Push for More Automation so Flights Can Be Run by a Single Pilot
It is a very incorrect statement to flatly say when things go wrong, automation is your enemy. While yes, there are times when automation has downed the plane, there are far more times when the pilot has downed the plane in direct opposition to the plane's automation, and more times again when automation carried the pilots through a very bad situation which they could not have handled without the aid of the automation. That said, that doesn't make this whole single pilot idea any less terrible. In fact it shows how terrible a choice it is as you're keeping very fallible humans in the loop, but taking away their only redundancy, while simultaneously encouraging them to become more complicate with the technology. They'd probably be better off just dropping pilots entirely which is still a bad idea, but better than cutting down to 1.
167043693
comment
byDerekloffin
4, 2022 @06:07PM
(#62995025)
Attached to: RNC Sues Google Over Spam Email Filters
If so, it would probably show a deficiency in using user specification of 'spam' as it has a clear political bias. It could easily be left leaning people are far more likely to mark something as spam while right leaning are more likely to simply delete, yet they favor the left leaning activity in the labelling of spam. Could be a perfectly innocent difference, but nonetheless a seriously biased one they should address.
166105691
comment
byDerekloffin
r 13, 2022 @06:33PM
(#62879301)
Attached to: Judge Allows McFlurry Machine Repair Lawsuit To Proceed
McDonalds, the corporation, is actually on Taylor's side because they get kick backs essentially from Taylor for the repairs. One thing you have to realize here is McD corp side isn't that invested in the success of individual franchise operations. They get most their income from other sources and their franchise locations having difficulty with ice cream sales just isn't that big an impact on their bottom line. So this means the repair bill kick backs are actually more valuable to them. How much, we don't really know, and honestly given it is a bit of an unknown, they could easily be wrong, but given how in bed the two are, it is pretty clear McD corp feels it is strongly in their favor to let the situation continue. Other companies, for whatever reason, don't have this back dealing relationship with Taylor so their machines work.
166032589
comment
byDerekloffin
11, 2022 @05:22PM
(#62872713)
Attached to: Does Computer Programming Really Help Kids Learn Math?
I could see the argument in higher math, as that deals a lot more with programming like logic, but K-12 math, yeah no. Even in higher math I'm dubious on it. Most programming has little to do with more than the most basic mathematics and when it does get into deep math, you need to know that deep math already, not learn via the programming. Again it is only that programming-ish higher math that I could see knowing programming benefit you in.
161938692
comment
byDerekloffin
2022 @01:02PM
(#62543436)
Attached to: White House Slams Bezos Criticism of Biden Tax Comments
Only way taxing the wealthiest would recover it is if you did nothing with said tax and simply destroyed that income, but since the US is currently spending far more than it receives in taxes, it won't do squat.
161356452
comment
byDerekloffin
2022 @06:47PM
(#62479260)
Attached to: Google, Meta, and Others Will Have To Explain Their Algorithms Under New EU Legislation
You might not be able to explain why it made a particular decision, but you can explain what decisions it is trying to make and why. For instance, if you have a neutral network that is trying to identify images of horses, you could tell people how you initially teach it what is and isn't a horse, and how it continues to improve its horse identification once fielded. You couldn't probably tell people why it saw this particularly tall dog as a horse this one time.
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Re:Ringworld, maybe. But sphere?
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Re:Ringworld, maybe. But sphere?
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Re:Ringworld, maybe. But sphere?
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Re:Ringworld, maybe. But sphere?
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Re:Ringworld, maybe. But sphere?
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