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Quorten Blog 1

First blog for all Quorten's blog-like writings

More Coronavirus updates, things look pretty tough

quorten

2020-05-10

Categories: covid19  
Tags: covid19  

Yes, this is the reason for increased spread of Coronavirus cases in Minnesota. People are simply moving around more in public spaces, regardless of stay at home orders.

20200510/https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/10/coronavirus-death-toll-model-247242

Unfortunately, aggressive testing and contract tracing does not look to be a viable exit path for Coronavirus.

20200510/https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/929917?scr=soc_ig_200506_mscpedt_news_mdspc_test&faf=1

It will take a long time for herd immunity to be established with Coronavirus, unfortunately.

20200510/https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/04/30/herd-immunity-covid-19-coronavirus/

Wow, there was a Disneyworld measles outbreak just in 2019 last year? Yes, 2019.

20200510/https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/08/24/tourist-infected-with-measles-visited-disneyland-other-southern-california-hotspots-mid-august/

Read on →

Another article about the issues of under-reporting in the war in Iraq

quorten

2020-05-09

Categories: random  
Tags: random  

This is another article about the war in Iraq, ISIS involvement. Again, the story is the same: The American people “are being lied to” with false numbers understating the severity of the problems in the situation.

This article, in particular, refers to air strikes that hit civilians, but were not officially counted.

20200509/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/16/magazine/uncounted-civilian-casualties-iraq-airstrikes.html

Related, that I found this from, was a Twitter account reporting on deadly drone strikes.

20200508/https://twitter.com/dronestream

Wow! Digi-Key PCB ordering services

quorten

2020-05-09

Categories: raspberry-pi  
Tags: raspberry-pi  

Wow! Now Digi-Key provides a service where you can get PCBs made by a board house and Digi-Key will complete the shipping! Yes, this includes board houses in the United States. I’ve got to see if ordering in quantity of one is available.

20200508/https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/design-tools/pcb-builder

More COVID-19 updates: conspiracy theories, reopenings

quorten

2020-05-09

Categories: covid19  
Tags: covid19  

Two things with COVID-19: conspiracy theories are still a problem, why? It’s one of human ways of coping, playing the scapegoat blame game and making up a reason that feels more controllable.

20200508/https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/what-are-we-doing-doctors-are-fed-conspiracies-ravaging-ers-n1201446?utm_source=pocket-newtab

States are reopening, though that means they’re loosening restrictions, that doesn’t mean it’s any safer. The hope is that people will sufficiently self-regulate, else we’d be in for a really big outbreak problem.

How is it like flying in the midst of this pandemic? “Post-apocalyptic” is the word one reporter describes it with. It will be a long time until people can enjoy social outings like baseball games again. Governments can’t just declare a reopening, citizens need to see trust in other people rather than immediately suspecting every person as a potential virus carrier. And that’s going to take a long time in this journalists’ opinion based off of his experience of flying.

20200508/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/is-flying-safe-coronavirus/611335/

Large sea mammals, heat, surface area, volume

quorten

2020-05-09

Categories: random  
Tags: random  

Why are sea mammals so large? It’s to keep the heat in and minimize heat loss at sea, much more of a challenge than on land. Not because the sea frees them of the constraints of land life to grow bigger, but because it imposes new ones.

Whales are only the absolute biggest because they have the ability to travel long distance and find highly concentrated food deposits.

20200508/https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-whales-got-so-big?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Lessons learned from more soldering, do-it-yourself air filters

quorten

2020-05-08

Categories: raspberry-pi   mat-sci  
Tags: raspberry-pi   mat-sci  

Soldering, solder fumes. Do the solder fumes carry the actual metal itself? Possibly, it does, but only very tiny amounts, so the risk of inhaling lead, for example, is much lower than the risk of inhaling the other fumes. So, what are the other fumes? Those are the flux. Yes, the cleaning chemical designed to remove impurities from your solder work area, and to generally help make soldering easier and more effective.

The problem I’ve discovered about soldering but was never told about before? Not only does the flux clean off your workpiece, it also cleans off your drywall ceiling texture finish! Arg, dang, now I have tiny little “pin pricks” on my ceiling where the drywall paper is exposed, and not only does it absorb water and darken when you try to clean it with water, but it is also distinctively a more “creamy white” “off-white” yellowish color than the surrounding ceiling. Okay, okay, this is unacceptable, although the markings are very tiny and only visible in the thinnest areas of the ceiling texture, if this keeps going on it’s not going to look very pretty at all.

Read on →

Finally, the solution for the cross product in n dimensions

quorten

2020-05-08

Categories: raspberry-pi  
Tags: raspberry-pi  

I really like my geometric integer arithmetic systems of linear equation solver so far, it’s just that the problem is that it can only solve in up to three dimensions, the limit being that I don’t know how to compute cross products in n dimensions. I know it should be possible: a vector is a restriction to one dimension, so n - 1 vectors in n dimensions should define the perpendicular vector to all of them. And indeed, right in the introduction to the Wikipedia article on the cross product, this is stated right there. Now I just need to figure out the details of the math solution that they presented.

20200507/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_product
20200507/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exterior_algebra
20200507/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodge_star_operator
20200507/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_form

Coronavirus misinformation issues

quorten

2020-05-07

Categories: covid19  
Tags: covid19  

This is an interesting article about the issues with misinformation and information hiding during the Coronavirus pandemic, including by government authorities. Government efforts to stop discussion of Coronavirus were especially problematic in the early outbreak days in China.

20200506/https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/13/analysis/truth-about-coronavirus-scary-global-war-truth-even-scarier

John Conway?

quorten

2020-05-07

Categories: misc  
Tags: misc  

Remembering John Conway, the famous name behind Conway’s Game of Life.

20200506/https://immiguy.com/john-horton-conway-death-english-mathematician-has-passed-away/

Mark Gritter, recreational mathematician, and other writings

quorten

2020-05-07

Categories: misc  
Tags: misc  

These are some interesting math question answers by Mark Gritter on Quora, who dubs himself as a “recreational mathematician.” Ah, yes, good thing to be in.

20200506/https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-probability-that-a-whole-pill-is-drawn-from-a-container-on-the-next-to-last-day-if-on-previous-days-any-whole-pill-drawn-is-broken-in-half-with-one-half-pill-taken-and-the-other-returned-to-the-vial/answer/Mark-Gritter?ch=2&srid=uabQ
20200506/https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-example-of-a-left-h-holomorphic-polynomial-of-degree-2/answer/Mark-Gritter
20200506/https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-find-all-rational-numbers-a-2-such-that-if-m-n-0-are-natural-numbers-and-an-m-divides-am-n-then-n-divides-m/answer/Mark-Gritter?ch=2&srid=uabQ
20200506/https://www.quora.com/How-many-triangle-could-be-made-at-most-by-drawing-n-triangles-triangles-may-overlap
20200506/https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-favourite-poker-variant/answer/Mark-Gritter
20200506/https://www.quora.com/q/mathofgames/Is-there-a-method-for-creating-nontransitive-dice-1

And Mark Gritter wrote a Golang memory locality profiling article for Medium. Ah, interesting, so I guess it’s not too hard to get publishing on there.

20200506/https://medium.com/@markgritter/memory-locality-profiling-for-go-3909d3c5238c