ceuk

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Quanta is just a word (related to quantity) as in: "smallest divisible quantity of"

So in the case of light we would be talking about photons, which are a quanta of light (e.g. discrete "packets" of light).

Light behaves as a wave, e.g. we can talk about the frequency of light. But it's also pretty different from macroscopic waves e.g. it's not accurate to think of them as what your see on a typical sinusoid graph, as at that level things don't really have a fixed shape or position, we're talking more about areas where they "probably" are (see: superposition, HUP etc)

It's useful to think of light in terms of discrete photons for a number of reasons, e.g. in pair production, 1 gamma photon would be sufficient to create 1 electron/positron pair.

Photons also exhibit other particle-like behaviour despite having no rest mass. But the idea of rest mass becomes less significant at that level anyway as the line between energy and mass (e=mc²) gets blurred. And any sufficiently high energy object will likely exhibit some massive properties (hence why we tend to use MeV - a measure of energy - instead of a measure of mass, even when performing calculations with massive particles such as electrons.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

At about 1m40 it says "erratic policy is hampering Britain's already ailing manufacturing industries" which doesn't really seem to be backed up. Especially since the UK overtook France this week to become the 8th largest manufacturer in the world.

The economy is on its arse for sure but this piece seemed to want to tell a specific story regardless of the nuances/facts.

E: if you read through the comment section on YouTube there are loads of other issues/inaccuracies being called out

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

£32.50 including shipping. I thought that was a mistake. So cheap! Bought one immediately 😁

[–] [email protected] 57 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Sorry but this is such a bad take.

Linux is free to install, free to use and most importantly free to learn

What is the alternative? How many people who are now in great jobs would have been unable to teach themselves the skills they need if IIS or another proprietary technology had won the server market instead.

Something had to fill the space, would you rather it was a technology that created barriers for people with the fewest advantages in life?

(Also as others have said, a lot of OSS development is funded by companies. Linux in particular being a great example)

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Proprietary drivers/firmware. Basically makes it impossible/very hard to develop custom ROMs/operating systems (the lack of openness makes it super hard to extend/modify/verify the software running on these chips).

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago

This is still my favourite vim-related meme. So fucking funny

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I did consider including more detail about maternity etc in my comment but in the end thought it wasn't material to my point. I'm glad you took the time to add some more nuance as an aside though. Thanks 👍

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

The USA had a chance to start again and get so many things right. So why are they so backwards with some things?

We've had legally-protected paid leave in the UK for almost a century now. Granted, we were the first in the world, but most of Europe and many other countries now have similar protections. Many of which are more generous than the UK's.

That's not to mention the myriad of other laws and protections covering unfair dismissal (the "at will" system is fucking dystopian, sorry), a years paid maternity leave, statutory sick pay, mandatory employer pension contributions, working time regulations and mandatory redundancy pay. All of which have no federally-enforced equivalent.

I'm honestly a bit shocked that only 66% support PTO. Surely it's a no-brainer?

Is it a size thing? Is the idea of looking out for each other just untenable in such a large, diverse place?

I can't imagine what it must be like to live in a place where 34% of people have such an individualistic "I've got mine" mentality, that they don't even support mechanisms that virtually every other developed country collectively agrees is the fucking minimum needed in order to live reasonable existence.

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