Contramuffin

joined 2 years ago
[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

No, that requirement has already been met. The final requirement (which has just been met now) is to reach a total of 1 million signatures. Basically, all requirements are now satisfied

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Circadian biology here.

Internal Time, by Till Roenneberg. Written by one of the "old guards" of the circadian field, old enough that he could be considered a founding father of the field in his own right.

The book is written as a collection of short stories, each one about a real circadian experiment or phenomenon that occurred, and the book invites you to interpret and think about the short stories before explaining the deeper biology and history behind the stories. It's a very fascinating book and quite approachable for a non-scientific audience, though I think it's very appropriate even for a scientific audience

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 38 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Explanation: CRISPR-Cas9 is most commonly known to be a gene editor, but since its initial discovery, people have found that with some minor tweaks, CRISPR can be made to do a bunch of other things, things that biologists could have only dreamed of previously.

If you introduce a mutation that deactivates the Cas9 protein, the entire CRISPR complex still binds to DNA. Then, you can essentially glue whatever you want onto this modified Cas9 to produce a bunch of different effects:

  • deactivated Cas9, no additional modifications: blocks other proteins from touching the DNA, which suppresses a gene without destroying it
  • glue on some transcriptional activators: makes the cell express a gene
  • glue on some fluorescent proteins: makes your DNA glow, lets you see where it is
[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 62 points 3 days ago (4 children)

My understanding is that they misunderstood the petition, so this new one is rephrased in an attempt to avoid another misinterpretation

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

I quite like Strange Horticulture, but it felt too linear for my tastes. This seems like an interesting shakeup of that formula. I'll keep an eye on it

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

We might need a bit more context for why you want to do this. Because as far as I can think, I can't really come up with a reasonable circumstance in which you might want to use an eGPU on a PC

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I vouch for Kubuntu. It uses KDE Plasma, which is the exact same UI as SreamOS desktop mode. It's based on Ubuntu, which is a very popular distro, so there's a lot of support and apps that are packaged for it

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Manjaro vs. SteamOS, likely no benefit. My speculation is that the company probably wanted to develop their own software but didn't have the technical expertise to develop for Linux. Hence, they partnered with Manjaro. As for why they went with Linux in the first place, it's likely because Windows is a mess and they likely considered that Linux would be a more marketable (and cheaper) operating system.

And yes, these products aren't particularly expanding the market, but it seems that companies would still like to throw their hat into the ring, if only because getting in early means that they'll have a more dedicated fanbase for their later handheld products

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Primer, if you like hard sci-fi. It's an indie movie about time travel, and it's got perhaps the most fleshed out time travel mechanic out of all movies I've seen. Last I checked, the director posted the full movie on YouTube for free

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 92 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Many people have a misunderstanding of what the Stop Killing Games movement is about. It's about trying to get governments to pass a law that requires game developers to have a plan in place for when they shut down the servers of online games. In the current gaming landscape, games can be taken offline at any moment for any reason. And when that happens, you're shit out of luck. The Stop Killing Games movement believes that if/when this happens, the publisher needs to have a plan in place to ensure that those games can continue to be played. This can take on many forms: modifying the game to not require an online connection, or releasing the server binaries so that players can host their own custom servers, or something of that nature. Worst comes worst, if none of this is possible, then the movement demands that it's made clear in the game's advertisement that you could lose game functionality when the servers shut down. Essentially, the laws surrounding game licenses are vague, and the movement wants a clarification on what buyers are entitled to when they buy a game.

The primary reason why many people have a misunderstanding of the movement is because a large YouTuber named PirateSoftware made 2 videos where he outright lied about what the movement was about and trashed it. He also made multiple statements on his streams where he purportedly "disproved" the movement, where he continued to lie about the movement and trashed it. His videos and statements were the most commonly viewed coverage on the movement, and this disinformation supposedly severely hampered the momentum of the movement, such that even now, many people still believe that the movement is about forcing publishers to keep their servers online indefinitely (it's not).

PirateSoftware was a former developer at Blizzard and was making an online game at the time, so some people speculate that the reason he lied about the movement was because he had a vested interest in keeping the current vagueness of the laws. As more and more people attempted to call him out on his disinformation, he doubled down and refused to admit that he gave any sort of incorrect information, even when the information is provably incorrect.

Apparently, PirateSoftware has a history of this sort of behavior and has gotten himself into some previous scandals due to his seeming inability to admit that he was wrong at all. This has led otherwise minor, forgettable mistakes to balloon into giant controversies.

Taken together with this recent controversy with Stop Killing Games, his reputation has taken a significant nosedive and many people now believe that he's a narcissist who is willing to take down the movement for the sole purpose that he wants to be seen as the smartest guy in the room.

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No point in being doomer about it. We try whatever we need to in order to get the population to understand.

And for what it's worth, it kind of makes sense. Science communication is generally quite poor. Scientists aren't trained in PR or in communicating with the public. To some extent, it makes sense that the public doesn't understand. In the longer term, it would certainly be better to raise scientific literacy. In the short term, we simply need quippy talking points that can be repeated to get the message to stick.

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

Are you confusing fahrenheit and Celsius? Body temp can't cook food

 

To be pedantic, some MAPK's are activated by mitogens. We're conveniently ignoring that fact because what's more funny is that some MAPK's are not

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