XKCD: It's more than a comic

In my case the regret hits me like a sack of bricks a couple of months after the intense socializing event and at the worst possible moment. It doesn't really matter what I said, my brain will always find flaws in the opinions I've stated there.

It's fun while the euphoria after having so much conversation lasts, though.

I sometimes have that reaction AS I'm giving an opinion. Not sure if it's impostor syndrome or autism.

M87 Black Hole Size Comparison

So, the news article I read that said M87 was larger than the solar system was understating the case a bit.

Apropos of this, I watched a Veritasium video yesterday discussing what the image of a black hole looks like and should mean to us. They are fucking weird, but the gist of it is that the black central area isn't the entire event horizon, but rather the shadow created by the region within which all photons are trapped and fall beneath it. The actual event horizon is something like two-thirds the size of the shadow that it casts, and we generally define the "size" of a black hole by the radius of its event horizon.

It also depends on how you define the solar system. Astronomically, the heliopause is much, much farther out than the orbit of Pluto: a hundred times or more, easily.

Given all of the above, however, it is clear from the image that the orbit of Pluto would be well within M87's event horizon.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 10th 2019 at 7:29:31 AM

M87. M84 is the troper.

LOL.

Fixed. And that's unintentionally hilarious.

This is that video.

I also didn't realize that Voyager 1 was so far away.

#2136: Election Commentary

"This really validates Jones's strategy of getting several thousand more votes than Smith." Yes, yes it does.

The only thing missing is the commentator using his hands to move the digits around on the screen.

#2137: Text Entry

This is such a pet peeve of mine in TV-based apps. Of course, I don't see an obvious alternative if they can't provide a physical or touch-screen keyboard.

I set my netflix password to a four-word line from a song, complete with punctuation. (Think along the lines of [Crying "spells, Ursula, please!"] but it's not that.) This was a mistake, as I realized when trying to log in to in on PS 4.

You can always attach a keyboard to your TV. And a mouse, unless you have one of those T Vs with a gyroscopic remote. A smart TV should have at least one USB port.

My friend Max once used his TV as a replacement monitor when his previous one broke.

Yeah, I connected a wireless mouse to my smart TV. But then I switched to using my Roku box for streaming media, and I'm back to square one.

Dang it.

There's actually a V remote app for my smartphone, complete with keyboard option. Too bad it doesn't recognize the netflix or youtube search fields as text input. 😑

Ooo, looks like there's a Roku one available for Android. I'll have to give that a whirl.

Edited by scionofgrace on Apr 16th 2019 at 9:03:55 AM

#2138: Wanna See the Code?

I'll say this: while I have always, since my very earliest days of programming, tried my best to make my code structured, documented, and easy to understand, I have looked at many, many pieces of code from other people that would lead me to the sort of skepticism about their work that this lady displays.

No matter at what point in my career I am, if I look at code I wrote five years earlier, I am almost guaranteed to be embarrassed and likely confused at what it actually does.

That is true. It's a bit like Old Shame in writing: your old code is always so much clunkier than your more recent work.

just don't do anything, then you can't ever be embarrassed about the quality of your past work!

Nah, you can do stuff, just never look at it again once you're done.

That's right. The cleansing power of fire will ensure you never have to look at anything you've done in the past.