• 23 Posts
  • 107 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 8th, 2023

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  • Here’s a hint: if a mirror truly did not flip anything, then when you looked into a mirror you would see your back, and it also does not “rotate” you. So how can you see your front?

    spoiler

    A plane has a “normal” (a direction coming “out of the mirror”), and it basically flips things in that direction (front to back). It might help the understanding (and possibly the creepiness factor) to consider just the outer few atoms of your hair/skin that reflects light… and you are roughly seeing that, in the mirror in the same orientation that it actually is IRL if it were pushed into the mirror…




  • According to GPT-4.1:

    In 1959, Norway achieved a notable milestone by starting up its first nuclear reactor, the JEEP I (Joint Establishment Experimental Pile), located at Kjeller. This reactor was primarily used for research purposes, including early experiments with alternative nuclear fuels such as thorium. While JEEP I itself was not a thorium reactor per se, it laid the groundwork for subsequent Norwegian research into thorium as a nuclear fuel. This early phase demonstrated Norway’s scientific interest in thorium, leveraging its domestic thorium resources and contributing to later thorium reactor experiments.







  • I can get the perspective behind the last one (unauth access). Coming from a closed society it may be unthinkable for someone without authority or authorization to perform an action “unauthorized by the authority”, but in an open society the mindset would be quite different. Much as we might without thought throw a light switch without expecting authorization, or maybe like the hoplophiles that don’t want an electronic lock on their weapons, perhaps what they optimize for (i.e. their security model) could be for even an extreme case such as if “the only survivor” is one unbadged civilian with no bridge/engineering knowledge needing to control the ship (and even weapons) with the usual security case simply being that the bridge/engineering is a secured by persons/staff… IIRC, even knowing who performed such an action is a distant secondary concern (in Voyager it is said that control panels try to log who uses them be the comm badge present), but I know of at least two cases where command-and-control was locked: one in TNG by data (which is presented as quite an exceptional workflow), and one shuttlecraft in DS9 by O’Brien (which might be more of a consideration for scouting operations… to help ensure one has a vehicle to come back to). Conversely, it seems far more frequent that the computer denies access to data in defense of another’s personal privacy.







  • Ackshually… in season three episode seven “The Enemy” it is made clear that Romulan technology is generally assumed to be completely interoperable when Geordi could not connect his VISOR to his tricorder in more than a superficial way… Quote he: “they don’t speak the same language”. :-)