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Comment Re:Here we go again (Score 2) 180

Your scenario is even more obnoxious on awful PC ports (way too many recently) of console games where you're sitting in front of over a hundred buttons and every action possible is mapped to 'E'. Paired with fuzzy interpretation of inputs from your hyper-precise mouse and keyboard, you're constantly fighting the game engine instead of the game.

This isn't a new phenomenon, either. Many Nintendo hard games of yore required input precision greater than the controller was capable of predictably providing. In fact, Nintendo hard is a prime example of what TFS is describing. There was a lot of video game provoked aggression back then (the controllers probably took the brunt of it, but they were pretty hardy things).

Comment Re:It's a start (Score 1) 294

Windows gadgets were essentially borderless IE windows that ran in the local zone. This means they could CreateObject(...) ActiveX libraries via scripting that could do, well, anything to your system. The sandbox didn't matter at that point.

Well, that seems like a pretty easy thing to fix. Why ditch them entirely?

Comment Re:Pseudo-science in the Survey! (Score 1) 470

Good call on the de Broglie wavelength correction. I had misremembered it and if I'd given it a little more thought, it would have seemed obviously wrong.

It does serve to highlight how you're stating this incorrectly, though. The wavefunction doesn't represent the "size" of a particle in any meaningful way. If anything, psi squared describes the probability of finding a particle at a particular location. Analogously, if I describe your location as somewhere within the 1200 block of Broad St, it doesn't make sense to interpret that statement as saying you are actually the size of a city block. The QM wave description of matter has nothing to do with size (in any distinct and meaningful sense) and everything to do with location.

Quantum mechanics describes particle interactions in terms of waves, but it is not a statement that the wave-particle duality doesn't exist. Any actual interaction between particles requires decoherence and a collapse of the wavefunction to a more classical-like particle.

Comment Re:Pseudo-science in the Survey! (Score 2) 470

What you're describing here are pedantic objections, though, of which there will always be some to any question that isn't qualified to absurdity.

For your example, the rest mass of an electron is smaller than the mass of any atom, so the wavefunction of any electron will be smaller than that of any atom at the same velocity (de Broglie wavelength) and in the same environment (the "state" you describe is a function of being part of an atom, it doesn't apply to free electrons). Or simply, since an electron is a component of an atom, any constituent electron will be smaller than the atom it inhabits.

If you contrive a complex and unreasonable enough scenario, you can change the answer to most any question (e.g., is an electron smaller than the Earth). For most exams, reasonable assumptions are expected unless otherwise stated: at standard temperature and pressure, in the ground state, etc.

The correct answer to the question is that, yes, an electron is smaller than an atom.

Comment Re:They talk very big (Score 1) 62

Modern magnetometers in phones are pretty robust. After calibration, the one in my phone works fine right next to a 500 MHz NMR (~12 T [for reference the earth's magnetic field is around 50 uT]). The magnetic locks won't be moving around much, so the field it sees from them will be pretty static.

Comment Re:Here's a thought (Score 1) 303

In that same line of thinking, I'm surprised that advertising to children (specifically, as in ads designed for children) is legal.

It's hard to think of a team of trained psychologists, armed with extensive market research and determined to manipulate minors for their own profit, as anything but despicably evil.

Comment Re:If you take the profits (Score 1) 179

So "low and constant" radiation from potassium is ok (because it's "natural", right, like botulism and being eaten by a bear?), but vague and unspecified Fukushima radiation is bad because it bioaccumulates (which is actually not the case for most of the released isotopes: Cs, for example is treated the same as your well-regarded potassium by animal tissue)? Many of the elements that bioaccumulate are more chemically toxic by virtue of being heavy metals than by being radioactive.

You don't understand your basic and crucial facts very well, either. There are enough real dangers in dealing with radioisotopes; you don't need to keep adding your own hysteria-based ones to the mix.

Comment Re:If only.. (Score 3, Interesting) 176

That's a pretty lame reason, actually. What use case (that's big enough to support an entire industry of "smart lightbulbs") involves:

o light fixtures that don't already have switches installed,

o users who are not industrious enough to move the lightswitch themselves,

o users who are too cheap to just have an electrician move it (this is shockingly inexpensive, by the way... typically cheaper than one of these bulbs),

o users who are fine with accidentally flipping the wall switch and making the whole thing inoperative or covering the switch with tape or something cheesy like that to keep people from switching it (or are industrious enough to rewire the switch and install an ugly blank panel but can't move the switch),

o and users who can afford (or rationalize) spending $60 or up on a light bulb?

I guess the intersection of most of that is gadget-addicted renters. Is that really a very lucrative market?

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