That's all you need. If you want a better quality image than a cheap USB webcam, use the Raspberry Pi camera, but a $5 USB cam works just fine if you don't need a high frame rate -- and if you're just pointing the thing at a menu, you only need one frame a day
Although that seems ridiculous overkill for a relatively static menu.
Parallel universes are just slices of the "real" universe offset in different timelike directions from the slice we experience. I.e, think of time as N dimensional where N > 1, if time were 3 dimensional we could call the timelike dimensions t, t', and t". Our perception is limited to t (plus x, y and z). Moving in the t' or t" axes, we get to parallel worlds (also known as travel "crosstime" in many sci-fi stories). QM effects can propagate crosstime, but we can only observe one slice of that.
There's no actual "split" when a wave collapses, the parallel world(s) was (were) always there, it (they) just hadn't differentiated yet. (There's also no preferred t-like axis -- an observer travelling along t' (with fixed x,y,z) will see a progression of changes just as one at the same (x,y,z) would see travelling along t or t" -- but they'd be different changes.)
Niven had the right idea with his "All the Myriad Ways", the TV series "Sliders" was close too. The idea that there's only one (or at most a handful of) parallel world(s), like ST's mirror universe, is just silly.
And yes, I'm making this shit up (although not entirely). It's part of the background to my paratime stories.
Hell, I'm still waiting for David Gerrold to release the next in his "War Against the Chtorr" series. The volumes are almost as thick as Martin's, and I don't think he's released one this century. (And I still haven't read the final volume in Tubb's "Dumarest" series, which DelRey dropped with like two volumes left to go. It's now available on ebook, some thirty years later.)
That said, as a writer myself I understand some of the problems in writing a series (one where there's an overarching storyline and character development, rather than just a series of episodes with the same characters and setting.) But yes, in beginning a series you're making a promise to the reader, and the more readers you have, you start to lose the excuses that the publisher dropped the series or that you couldn't quit your day job to write full time.
Vinge is considered one of the fathers of cyberpunk because of his "True Names", which did precede Varley's chilling (and Hugo-winning) "Press Enter[]" (1981 vs 1985).
On the other hand, Varley's much earlier (1976) "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" was also one of the seminal works of the field.
Been a while since I've read it, but the warlocks (hackers) in "True Names" would never have let their identity (true name) be determined from their coding styles.
But "0" being "absolute 0" is what sets it apart.
Well, sort of. There's also the Rankine scale. On it, 0 is also the absolute lowest temperature (0K = 0R), but the units are the same size as Fahrenheit degrees.
The only place I've seen it used is in old rocket propulsion texts and similar non-SI thermodynamics stuff.
Sure, (almost) anyone can code, just like (almost) anyone can string words together on a page. That's a bit different from being able to write a readable story (let alone novel), or construct a useful program.
I wouldn't trust an architect who didn't know how to lay bricks, but even less would I trust a bricklayer to design a house.
That said, to paraphrase Heinlein, everyone should know how to lay a brick, hammer a nail, write a paragraph and code a program; specialization is for insects.
I'd be more interested if my food didn't contain DNA.
Yeah, I suppose highly-refined sugar or equivalents might not have any DNA, but I'm not sure I'd call that food, more of a chemical.
Most run of the mill CPA's are pretty much like the H&R Block guy you'll see at Sears this time of year. They take your data and input it into tax software (like TurboTax!), and ask you some very basic questions.
Well no, I'm pretty sure the H&R Block guys are using H&R Block software
nothing postulated in the search for atomic energy violated the laws of physics "cough"
Isaac Newton would beg to differ.
You've got that backwards (or I'm missing the sarcasm).
Dish has to pay Fox News to retransmit Fox's content (copyrights!), Fox wanted to increase the price and/or require Dish to carry additional Fox-owned channels as part of the same contract.
When Fox (or any other network in negotiations) claims that "Dish pulled the channel", they're stretching the truth. What they really mean is "the contract expired, and Dish cravenly stopped retransmitting our copyrighted content so we couldn't sue them for infringement."
This.
Also, Dish can't retransmit what it doesn't have a contract for, and the contract expired. The disagreement is over the terms of a new contract.
Apparently the various network heads haven't learned, despite plenty of opportunities to, that Charlie Ergen doesn't bluff.
The "hot glue gun" is just a tiny part, namely the extruder hot end. Add to that a precision (computer-controlled) feed mechanism for the "glue", temperature regulation to work optimally with different feed rates and "glue" types, and a precision, high-speed, XYZ positioning mechanism for that "glue gun" (and optionally, additional "glue guns" so you can switch materials in mid print), together with a computer and firmware to drive all, and you're approaching what even the lowest-end consumer 3D printer does.
"Glorified"? Yes, and it is glorious. Perfect? Of course not, not any more than a cheap consumer Epson or Brother printer is compared to an Espresso Book Machine.
If your southern California car dashboard is hitting the 200+ Celsius temperatures needed to melt typical printer filament materials, I'd say you probably have worse things to worry about.
But sure, for some things you need material properties that just don't work well with fused filament deposition.
The PLA (polylactic acid) filament used in many printers is actually made from cornstarch, not petrochemicals. It prints at a slightly lower temperature and doesn't need a heated bed the way ABS* does.
Of course you could probably make a case about the amount of petrochemicals (fuel, fertilizer, pesticide) typically used in growing the corn in the first place.
*And some of the more exotic (for now) filaments like polycarbonate or nylon, which require even higher temperatures.
My local library system (Arapahoe County, Colorado) has 3D printers in each (or most) of its branch libraries for patron use.
I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"
