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Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

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  • You now need to remember his velocity, his position on the map, the direction of his flight, his altitude, his plane’s weight and who knows what else, I’m not a pilot.

    You’re not wrong per se, but I’m having trouble fathoming gigabytes of data being consumed by these types of parameters. You could probably track hundreds of thousands of airplanes with that much space. The only thing that I could imagine taking up that much memory is extremely detailed airflow simulation.

    However, as a rule of thumb, the vast majority of memory data for video games is in most cases textures and geometry, and not so much the simulation. Based on the article, it seems this game streams high resolution geometry data based on your current location on earth, which I would say is the most probable reason it asks for so much memory.


  • Nonprofit environmental organization the Ocean Cleanup has announced that it’s on track to eliminate the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by 2034.

    If it can get the necessary funds, that is. In a press release, the organization claimed that eliminating the patch once and for all would cost a whopping $7.5 billion

    The title seems rather misleading. “We’re on track if someone just gives us 7.5 billion USD” is a really big if. It doesn’t seem like they are close to raising those kinds of funds either.








  • sushibowl@feddit.nltoScience Memes@mander.xyzLaunches
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    14 days ago

    So, yeah, bottom line: you only need a delta-V of about 12 km/s to get out of the solar system, but a delta-V of 30 km/s to get to the sun without going into orbit.

    This is true, but the possibility of gravity assists mostly nullifies the difference. If you can get out to Jupiter you can basically choose: either let it sling you out of the system, or let it cancel out all your orbital velocity so you fall into the sun.


  • sushibowl@feddit.nltoScience Memes@mander.xyzLaunches
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    14 days ago

    These are all technically correct but fairly inconsequential. Even just to graze the sun you need to lose 90% of your orbital velocity. And although everything orbiting the sun will eventually fall in, the friction is really low. It will take billions of years to lose enough velocity to fall in.






  • sushibowl@feddit.nltoScience Memes@mander.xyzMoss
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    25 days ago

    Note that although species can be described as tree-like, they didn’t quite look like modern trees do. Also, much of the world was swamp, and much of the dead plant material sank into these bogs and decayed into peat.

    The amount of CO2 trapped during this period caused the atmosphere to be around 35% oxygen. This allowed life with inefficient respiratory systems to grow much bigger in size without suffocating, mainly insects. Think woodlice 6 feet long, spiders the size of dogs, millipedes as big as cars, and dragonflies as big as eagles.


  • sushibowl@feddit.nltoScience Memes@mander.xyzMoss
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    25 days ago

    Nowadays, trees absorb CO2 and produce oxygen, and when they die and rot the opposite happens, releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere.

    However, during the carboniferous period, when plants first developed the ability to produce lignin (i.e. wood, essentially) there was not yet any bacteria or fungus that could break this material down. The result is that when trees died they would kinda just lay there. For 50 million years, trees absorbed CO2 and then toppled over and piled on the ground and in water. Most of the world was swamp and rainforest. Millions of years of plant growth all dying and laying on top of each other

    So much CO2 was turned into oxygen that O2 levels were 15% higher compared to today. This allowed some truly large lifeforms to develop: trees 150 feet tall, dragonflies with wings 13 inches long, millipedes the size of a car.

    The trapping of so much CO2 led to a reverse greenhouse effect, cooling the planet, and eventually an ice age. The forest systems collapsed from the climate change (we think) killing about 10% of all life on earth. Eventually a species of fungus developed the ability to eat lignin, and cleaned up the dead trees that remained on the surface within a few generations. The millions of years of tree material that sank into the bogs eventually turned into coal.

    Now we’re digging all that good stuff back up and are burning it, yay!


  • It’s a shame 'cause SC2 had some genuinely awesome ideas, like the Allied Commander mode. Probably the best casual online gameplay of any RTS, which frankly every other RTS ever made should copy.

    Unfortunately every other RTS only tries to copy the sweaty multiplayer 1v1 experience. Like playing guitar hero on expert mode on your mouse and keyboard while also doing strategy at the same time.

    Even more unfortunately no one seems to be able to execute even that part half as well as Blizzard did.