• 0 Posts
  • 36 Comments
Joined 7 months ago
Cake day: April 11th, 2024
  • brian@lemmy.catoNews@lemmy.world•Police say they can tell if you are too high to drive. Critics call it ‘utter nonsense’
    61·
    17 days ago

    While in principle, I don’t disagree. If you’re impaired, you shouldn’t drive. I lost a parent after they were hit by a drunk driver.

    However, there are monstrously different amounts of impairment. You have reaction times and motor skills, decision making and judgement, awareness and attention.

    Implying any type of impairment to be an unequivocal “no” to driving is short sighted, in my opinion. It’s the easy argument to point at any mind-altering substance: caffeine, tobacco, or antidepressants could be classified an impaired driver.

    It’s also worth pointing out that even different emotions could dramatically alter driving performance. Not that we would ever think about restrictions on crying while driving.

  • brian@lemmy.catoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•How would you enforce a pay-it-forward scheme?
    23·
    2 months ago

    There’s no reason that guilt would be absent from helpinghelp a specific person in need (like your struggling mother example). Plenty of people feel guilty taking handouts and will outright refuse help when they might need it.

    As for the drive thru thing, I think you might be talking about something different than what I’ve seen/done, which is just paying for your own meal and the people behind you. There isn’t any expectation for them to continue some chain, and in many ways it’s a bit of an empty gesture (they are just taking that first person’s goodwill and passing it to the next in line).

    My interpretation of paying it forward is the premise of receiving something when you’re in need, then, when you’re able, to give something back. Not to the one who helped you, as that would be repaying a debt.

  • brian@lemmy.catoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•How can everything be captured in simple data like people's exact voice noise?
    2·
    4 months ago

    When you talk about a sample, what does that actually mean? Like I recognize that the frequency of oscillations will tell me the pitch of something, but how does that actually translate to a chunk of data that is useful?

    You mention a sample being stored as a number, which makes sense, but how is that number utilized? Again assuming uncompressed, if my sample “value” comes up as 420, does that include all of the necessary components of that sound bite in a 1/44100th of a second? How would a sample at value 421 compare? Is this like a RGB type situation where you’d have multiple values corresponding to different attributes of the sample (amplitude, frequencies, and I’m sure other things)? Is a single sample actually intelligible in isolation?