DC is actually better at arcing, because the electric field is constantly on instead of disappearing several times per second. This is the reason you find switches and relays rated for far lower DC than AC voltages.

I saw a video on that. They had arrows pointing right, up and front, and connected them end to end in order to make a new arrow that pointed to the destination. Are quaternions the same as making calculations using x, y and z coordinates?

They also used trigonometry to transform back and forth between coordinates and angles.

Cool, what are those good for?

With imaginary numbers. They go up and down instead of left and right. If you combine them with real numbers, you get to do math in two dimensions.

I don't know a lot about what it's good for, but I know it has its uses.

Draw him a number line, with 0 in the middle. Show how adding two numbers moves you right, then right again. Show how subtracting two numbers moves you right, then left. Show how adding a negative number moves you left. Then tell him that subtracting a negative number means turning that last operation around once more, meaning you go to the right again. Every minus is a turn.

Edit: if you really want to fry his brain (alternatively inspire him to become a mathematician), tell him that there's also a way to turn away from the number line, and go above or below it.

The magnetosphere is strong because it is huge. It can deflect particles by nudging at them constantly over a distance of several earth diameters. It won't nudge the electrons out of our puny wires that span a tiny fraction of the planet's surface at most.

Autonomous processes happen by themselves. Cells divide, guts digest, hearts pump.

Reflexes happen in the local nervous system. Eyes blink to protect themselves, hands jerk away from hot stoves, pupils contract or dilate.

Instincts are hardwired into the brain. Hungry - seek food. Horny - seek mate, tired - sleep.

Emotions regulate social behaviour. I like this individual - spend time with it. This is my child - nurture it. This individual wants to hurt me - run away (or kick its ass).

Intellect solves problems. I can't reach this thing, but if I grab a stick, the stick can reach it. That individual is able to eat dirty potatoes by first dipping them in water - imitate it. That animal sure feels scary, but if you look closely you can see it's all a charade - eat it.

Every level is more fine-grained, but also has less control. Your intellect can't control your heart muscle or your cell division, but it can invent a microsocope and figure out how cells divide.

Civilization is arguably yet another level. We can organize in order to solve problems that would be too complex for individual intellects, and the best individuals for a task can devote their lives to it rather than spending a lot of time ensuring their own individual survival.

All of these systems are available to humans. Other animals have them to varying degrees, and even individual becteria have the autonomous processes that keep them alive. Viruses arguably don't even have that, and they're also not alive as such.

The AI singularity is a hypothetical next level, where we've created artificial intelligences so clever that they themselves can design even more clever artificial intelligences without our help.

I leased an EV for two years, because i wanted to try it out. It cost me the same per month in total as my old gas car cost to keep running with parts and fuel. When the lease was up, I had moved and no longer needed a car at all, so I was happy to give it back.

Pure oxygen? I never did play around with that, but I did make an arduino-powered fuel meter which would inject precisely the right amount of propane. That was a big improvement from "spray and pray", even though I did get quite good at it with butane.

Which is also the reason why atmospheres of almost pure fuel, such as methane, don't combust - there's no oxygen there. Without oxygen, all our energetic fuels, such as gas, oil, wood and coal, would be completely useless.

Both Unreal and Unity (another popular game engine) are free to hobbyists and tinkerers, meaning anyone can play around with them.

They, and the front desk, talk to a central server. The lock says, "hey server, I'm lock XXXX and I've just been tagged with card YYYY. The server looks in its database, and if the combination is allowed, it tells the lock to unlock. The front desk makes changes to the database as needed.

I've taken sodium bicarbonate as an antacid in a pinch. It tastes metallic and slightly soapy. I don't know if that's common between all alkalis though, because I don't have any other edible ones.

"Context" is like a room, or more accurately describing how it feels, an angle. When I look at my thoughts from a Swedish angle, I can describe them using Swedish words. When I look at them from an English angle, I use the words that belong there. They're simply stored in different mental places, or states, and jumping between them takes mental effort. I could try to speak a sentence alternating between Swedish and Norwegian words, but it would be difficult. Staying in place is not.

Interestingly, this context or angle hinges on the person I'm speaking to, and I know a few people who speak Norwegian and Swedish in just the same way as me, and with those I can switch back and forth - not on every word, but every sentence if I wish.

No. Every language is a context, and switching context takes conscious effort. I sometimes forget a word in one language, but I never forget which language a word belongs to. I grew up speaking Swedish at home and Norwegian with friends. The languages are pretty similar, and Norwegian has many varied dialects, so being aware from the start that language is just a description of a thing, separate from the thing itself, may have helped.

I grew up bilingual, and in my mind, the things themselves and their words are separate entities. I can imagine a thing without thinking any of the words I know for the thing. I only translate my thoughts into words when I think about saying or writing something.

YouTube measures engagement, not positivity, and more engagement gives you a bigger share of the ad money.

The lecture "What makes a bully" by psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld describes the psychological reasons for people finding joy in the misery of others. It's so good I put it on my youtube channel. Very long, but well worth watching.

The tl;dw is that a need to feel dominant, compounded with a lack of empathy, makes people feel good when they can make others miserable.

The lecture describes how these issues arise, and also how they can be remedied. His work is geared towards childhood and adolescence, but the same things happen with adults too.

EV charger connectors are a bit like that. They don't energize until signaling pins have been connected, and the car has told the charger what it needs (or vice versa). Those pins connect last and break connection first, so the big contacts are always without power when they disengage, preventing arcing.

Yeah, I get those a lot on mobile.

Also, it's showing that we don't take whatever it is seriously. It can be a part of playing and joking, but also a part of distancing ourselves from something or someone.

As for why it sounds the way it does, that's probably just a small trait that randomly got amplified and entrenched by evolution, just like smiling when happy or crying when emotional. Body language isn't nearly as changeable as language, but it still deviates quite rapidly when species differentiate. Just look at how differently dogs and cats use their tails, or how apes show their teeth in very different situations than humans.

Or become aware of the size and position of your tongue.

Now try to forget it.

I recall also often being able to choose between Ad Lib, Gravis Ultrasound, Roland MT-32, Tandy, and sometimes PC Speaker.

If you live in a place that gets cold enough in the winter, you can see this phenomenon on roads when it starts to get cold. The roadway on bridges will be frost-covered in the morning, because they have had cold air all around them, while roadways the ground is still clear.

Ha ha, I'd rather not.

I remember at my first job, the network stack of Win95 rev A would sometimes crap itself, permanently. We had to reinstall Windows on a few computers.

USB printing is still a mess. Windows still defaults to the ancient LPT1 port when it doesn't know what to do, and the USB "port" for printing is a hack.

And don't get me started on network "WSD" ports.

And everything is totally opaque, so when something goes wrong, you can't inspect, troubleshoot or fix the actual issue. Remove, reinstall, pray...