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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The vast majority of the software updates they do appear to be open sourced, which makes it really hard to lock the market using anti-competitive measures. And making Linux more mainstream makes it better for everyone, not just gamers. And if Valve makes games that are optimized for their hardware spec, how is that any different than an XBox, Sony, or Nintendo game, except for the part where it will also work on other PCs without having to wait for a port?

    It’s reasonable to be cautious about any actor, especially one as powerful as Valve. But nothing I’ve seen, except for the loot box stuff, has been actually anti-competitive, to the point where my GOG and Epic games work well enough on Linux these days that even the games that warn me I’m on an unsupported platform work just fine.


  • Im currently playing a game from Epic on my Steam Deck, I’ve recently played games from GOG, and of course Steam. The biggest drawbacks with non-Steam games are having to go to the desktop to install them, and not having my time in big picture mode tracked for those games. So, not seamless, but exceptionally playable. I’ve even customized button maps for non-Steam games, and also had to do nothing at all to have them work well.

    If Steam keeps extending like this, people will stop buying Windows for gaming. I will acknowledge that my gaming requirements aren’t as extensive as some, and I’ve never installed Fortnite or Roblox for my own use.


  • Like most things, it’s pretty simple from the far view. But there are a lot of details, much of which scientists are still trying to figure out.

    The short version is, mitochondria, those powerhouses of the cell, have their own DNA, just like some bacteria. They do their own living, dividing, and dying, and have their own lineage. When a cell splits, some of the mitochondria go to each cell. So the mitochondrial DNA will be inherited from whoever donated the cell, or egg in this instance. So the lineage of the mitochondria would be related to the mitochondria of the egg donor and any other offspring she had, but the DNA in the nucleus, the mouse DNA, wouldn’t be related to her.

    …and that opens the door to mitochondrial diseases, all of which are pretty terrible.


  • Mitochondria have DNA. Mitochondria are passed from mother to child through the egg. The egg used in the scenario would have mitochondrial DNA from the mother mouse. All of what would typically be called mouse DNA came from the two male mice. So, technically DNA from the maternal line, but only mitochondrial DNA, not mouse DNA.

    Edit: ah, autocorrect.




  • The hangers were airlocks, they just had a soft shoeld to hold atmosphere under normal operation (and cheaper production costs). There were doors, they were just open for most scenes they were used in, and there were a few where the shield failed and air was lost while the interior doors were closed. I’m sure the idea was applied to man-sized entrances, as well, but no need to show a shield when you’re attached to a corridor from a different habitat.

    And, of course, there were the bulkhead doors which could be closed in an emergency, which could turn any section into an airlock.

    …and all of that ignores just how long any hole the size of a hallway would take to significantly depressurize a vessel the size of the Enterprise.




  • There are some interesting cases. It took a long time for men to break into synchronized swimming, where women typically have the advantage. Archery still has some strength elements that could be relevant, but shooting should be pretty egalitarian and is still split, as far as I know.

    I have never been particularly into sports, and stopped watching the Olympics very much when the amateur requirements were relaxed (when hockey was dominated by NHL stars). There may be some nuances I’m missing, and there is also the aspect of making a sport/competition more welcoming to women, such as women’s chess. While those are interesting social/cultural aspects, they have much less bearing on capabilities of a given sex/gender.






  • Imagine a lake, say the one below Niagara Falls. Water flows in, and water flows out. It seems impossible that lake could ever flood bases on the puny efforts of humanity, doesn’t it? But, if you upset the balance, either adding too much water, or taking away too much, that lake will flood or nearly disappear. And it doesn’t take the volume of Niagara Falls to make that happen, just more, or less, than the existing system can handle. And it may not happen in a day, or even in a year. But that’s okay, we’ve been putting carbon dioxide from fossil fuels into the atmosphere for a couple centuries.

    Our planet has had volcanoes since it had a surface for volcanoes to erupt from. The carbon in that oil hasn’t been interacting with our atmosphere for a long time. And it’s true that the planet, and life on it, will continue if we released all of it. But evolution is generally very slow at adapting, and when it’s fast it’s usually because the things that can’t handle the change die off to make way for species that are more fit for the new environment than the current ones. One of those creatures that could die off, or have a massive die-back before recovering, is humanity, and I’d rather my species not have to go through that.

    And no, your single car doesn’t produce much. A single mosquito doesn’t kill many people, either. But there are millions of cars just like yours, just like there are billions of mosquitoes spreading disease to humans, killing millions every year. So, even though a barrel of crude oil is only the equivalent to about half a ton of atmospheric CO2, those 35 billion barrels of oil per year gives us about 16 billion tons of CO2. All of that above and beyond the relatively stable environment we’ve had the last 5000 years or so. And by the way, volcanoes are estimated to emit about half a billion tons of CO2 per year, whereas humans emit about 35 billion tons, about half of that from oil alone. Sure, your little car doesn’t look like much, and the smog in a big city isn’t that much compared to what a volcanoes puts out on a good day, but that’s mostly because that volcano is doing all that emitting in one place. Oil wells would look pretty impressive, too, if we burned everything we were pumping as soon as we had it out of the ground.