• 7 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Touching on the second question, since the ship would never actually reach the speed of light, the trip would not seem instantaneous to the people on board. However, the trip would seem much shorter to the people on board than it would to external observers. The people on board the ship would experience length contraction in the direction of travel making their destination closer to themselves, while external observers would notice the people onboard the ship moving slowly, ie, experiencing time at a reduced rate. Either way, the effect is that the people on board perceive the trip to be much shorter (in terms of both distance and time) than an external observer watching their ship. In principle you can get the perceived length of the trip (both distance and time) to approach but not equal zero, though in practice this would involve killing everyone on board and destroying the ship (and maybe even the galaxy).

    I agree with the other commenters that the people on board will experience a consistent acceleration of 9.81 m/s² in your described scenario. It might help, conceptually, to imagine an external observer watching someone on the ship jumping up and down at this near-light speed, taking into account the severe time dilation they’d be experiencing: The difference in perception comes because, from the external observer’s point of view, the person on the ship is moving in extreme slow motion.





  • Your article says:

    As part of a compensation package Tesla finalized in 2018, Mr. Musk received options to buy 304 million shares that are now worth more than $50 billion. While he has met the goals needed to receive those options, Mr. Musk does not appear to have converted them into shares of Tesla. If he had, he would be barred from selling them for five years.

    What are options? Does this mean he didn’t receive this compensation yet, and now he simply won’t receive it, assuming the company doesn’t appeal or move states like the article mentions? It says he had the option to buy 304 million shares - I assume he can buy them at a deep, deep discount compared to their current price?



  • Expanding a bit more on what everyone else says: This strategy works, as long as you never lose n times in a row, where n is the number of bets it takes to bet ALL of the money you currently have.

    So the more money you bring with you, the longer you can make this strategy work - but the more devastating it’ll be once you inevitably lose.

    If you go with a doubling strategy instead of a tripling strategy, that means you have to lose floor(log₂(x+1)) times to realize an unrecoverable loss (you don’t have enough to make your next bet), or one more than that to lose absolutely everything. With your tripling strategy the calculation is floor(log₃(2*x+1)). x is the amount of money you had after the last “reset”.

    So if you go to the casino with $100,000, your strategy will work as long as you don’t lose 11 times in a row - once you do, you’ve suffered your devastating unrecoverable loss. Every time your money triples you can last one more loss. Tripling your money is very difficult with this strategy, as most of the time when you win, it’s a small amount relative to what you’re holding - you need large losing streaks to make a real difference, and large losing streaks make reaching the threshold of an unrecoverable loss easier, obviously.

    Others have said it already, but - you can use this to win in the short term if you have a lot of money and only want to win a little bit more. If you use this strategy in the long term you will lose everything.



  • One that’s gotten me a few times is if you’re typing a reply to someone, either in the comments or a PM, then mid-typing you upvote (or downvote) them (or anyone else), it deletes your comment-in-progress. I’ve lost a few comments that way, one of which took about 20 minutes to write which I just gave up on and didn’t post afterward.

    I also really don’t like that the default language option is “Undetermined”. It makes not labeling the correct language the default behavior, which makes a lot of foreign language material show up in my feed. Your own post and 2 of the 4 comments at the time of me posting are unlabeled.






  • Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

    The leak got a lot worse pretty suddenly - so it’s now leaking something like a few gallons an hour I’d guess (Though water is the one utility we don’t pay for here, so it’s annoying but not world-endingly urgent). So I decided it was time to get around to this - but when I got to the point in the images, which is right after the escutcheon you mentioned, I was no longer certain how to proceed.

    Based on the images, is this still a relatively simple job that I can do with one or two trips to Home Depot? I don’t really know what I’m looking at here - do I grab the white part with pliers and yank it out (Or twist if it’s threaded)? If so, is the rest of your advice still relevant - take the seals to Home Depot and look for as close a match as I can, since I looked and looked and couldn’t find a manufacturer’s name?

    As of right now I’ve re-assembled it and turned the water back on. I did get a look at the pipes at least and they seem to be copper. There’s drywall behind the pipes that I would absolutely be willing to let a plumber tear into to avoid tile work. If I did end up calling a plumber, and nothing went wrong, do you happen to know the general ballpark of what it may cost?

    Also, sorry. I know I’m asking for a lot of information and advice here. If you’re not up for another round of free advice I’d totally get it.

    I went ahead despite the uncertainty and it all seems to have worked out. Instead of finding replacement seals I replaced the entire cartridge - I was able to find what was a pretty-much-exact match. The only problem I had is the set screw for the escutcheon wouldn’t keep it tight anymore - but I found another that worked. The old cartridge was so loose that I thought the new one was subtly the wrong size when it offered a large amount of resistance going in - because the old one would slide in and out with no resistance whatsoever.

    Thanks for the help - your comments in this thread more than any other went above and beyond.



  • I wasn’t really raised into religion - my mom was a believer (Honestly not sure if she still is, I’ve picked up hints that may have changed), but she never once went to or brought me to church, we never talked about religion, etc. I think she got enough of that stuff when she was a kid.

    I do like to go all-out on decorating for Christmas - just last year I spent a whole lot of time setting up and coding my own tree full of individually addressable RGB LEDs, in addition to all the other decorating on the interior of the place.

    Despite that I still love saying “Happy Holidays” to anyone who gets bothered by that phrase. 😁




  • By “less important” I just meant, for example, games that are in the beginning or middle of their respective league instead of the championship game - or shows for a series that are in the middle of a season, instead of a premiere or finale.

    I know every game is vitally important to someone, or that every episode of a given show is important to a dedicated enough viewer - but season/series premieres/finales and sporting league championship games are definitely set apart from the rest. Lots of people watch the Baseball World Series finale games. A lot fewer watch every game leading up to it. Lots of people will watch the series finale for a popular TV show, even if they didn’t happen to catch every episode preceding it. That sort of thing.

    I’m not too concerned about the cutoff for “popular”. If the site wants to tell me about the Curling world cup, then by all means.



  • This absolutely doesn’t come from informed experience, and is speculative drivel, but:

    I think just mentioning that you “designed your own major” may help a lot in various types of job search. Regardless of what the actual process is like (I have no idea), it sounds impressive, and makes it sound like you’re a person with a lot of initiative and drive. That could help make up for any perceived competitive disadvantage.

    Of course your mileage may vary, especially if you’re applying for a job that would heavily revolve around topics covered by a very specific major. But sometimes it helps to stand out, and “I designed my own major” could help you do that.


  • Thank you for the detailed response.

    Is there any way I could accomplish part of my goal without getting into the complex work you described? For example, what if I left the controls alone but tried to replace just the faucet, for the drip issue? Or if I were able to locate the exact same controls, would it still require all of that work to replace them? I ask that question because the pressure knob is slightly broken, after being overtightened in an attempt to slow the drip. I’m concerned it may eventually break more completely.