Is the USA ok?

YouTube and/or some people who don't like serious conversations tends to disappear comments, so here's a copy of one with links to sources:

It appears that not a day goes by in the USA without somebody shooting multiple people, hence my question since people seem tired of talking about them.

According to a 2012 Guardian article on gun homicides, the average per 100k people gun homicide rate was 4.9 globally, 3.0 for the US, and 0.4 for Europe (not counting Kosovo, Montenegro, and Russia due to missing data).

In for example 1956 when US schools had gun safety classes, Wikipedia only lists a page for Asia. 1954 had one mass shooting in the US Capitol though. The total US population, including Armed Forces overseas, was about 162,414,000 on July 1, 1954, based on the 1950 Census.
1/162,414,000*100,000 = 0.0006 mass shootings (which includes school shootings) per 100k people.

In 2024 however, with only 340.1 million people, there were 586 mass shootings according to Wikipedia, so 586 / 340.1e6 * 100000 = 0.1723 per 100k people. A 280 times increase.

Meanwhile, less kinetically energetic pollution is causing about one human megadeath per year.

Popping speakers instead of expected audio

If your speakers pop (#NotAllSpeakers do, like my 1990s Target ones that unfortunately fell to their death.) like my Logitech that spent more money on excessive bass than buffering input power or whatever, make sure it doesn't sleep (D3) in Windows 11.

By setting the right \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class key descendant's PerformanceIdleTime value to data 00 00 00 00, and perhaps value IdlePowerState as well, preventing power toggles and cut audio. Credit to TenForums.

Start regedit, paste the key, Ctrl+F, paste value, find next value, confirm DriverDesc description in parent key, and modify PowerSettings data, or save and execute this audio_pop_fix.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e96c-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0005\PowerSettings]
"ConservationIdleTime"=hex:04,00,00,00
"IdlePowerState"=hex:00,00,00,00
"PerformanceIdleTime"=hex:00,00,00,00

SVG to WebP converter in JS

Don't forget to check your integer type!

"""PIL/Pillow Image.fromarray() doesn't check your array value types!"""

from PIL import Image

import numpy as np

im = Image.new("RGB", (2, 1))

im.putpixel((0, 0), (255, 0, 0))

im.putpixel((1, 0), (0, 255, 0))

a = np.array(im)

print("Good shape:", a.shape, a)

print("See?")

Image.fromarray(a, "RGB").show()

a = np.array([[[255, 0, 0], [0, 255, 0]]])

print("Bad shape:", a.shape, a)

print("Where'd the green pixel go?")

Image.fromarray(a, "RGB").show()

a = np.uint8(a)

print("Fixed shape:", a.shape, a)

print("If the green pixel disappeared, you forgot to cast to uint8.")

Image.fromarray(a, "RGB").show()

Coal ash contains more energy than was gained from burning the coal.

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-figures/heat-values-of-various-fuels.aspx

Natural uranium, in a fast-neutron reactor	28,000 GJ/kg [so 28e9 J/g]
Hard black coal (IEA definition)	>23.9 MJ/kg
Hard black coal (Australia & Canada)	c. 25 MJ/kg [so 25e3 J/g and 207.25 g/mol according to https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/1-Anthrylmethanolate]
Sub-bituminous coal (IEA definition)	17.4-23.9 MJ/kg
Sub-bituminous coal (Australia & Canada)	c. 18 MJ/kg
Lignite/brown coal (IEA definition)	<17.4 MJ/kg
Lignite/brown coal (Australia, electricity)	c. 10 MJ/kg

mass / molar mass = moles

moles * avogadro = number of molecules

number / avogadro = moles

moles * molar mass = mass

1e6 / 6.022140857e24 * 207.25 = 3.4414672e-17 g of coal = 8.603668e-13 J (25e3 J/g * 3.4414672e-17 g)

1 / 6.022140857e24 * 238.02891 = 3.952563e-23 g of uranium = 1.1067176e-12 J (28e9 J/g * 3.952563e-23 g)

1 / 6.022140857e24 * 232.03806 = 3.8530826e-23 g of thorium = 1.0788631e-12 J (28e9 J/g * 3.8530826e-23)

https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html

"2,000 coal samples from the Western United States and approximately 300 coals from the Illinois Basin. In the majority of samples, concentrations of uranium fall in the range from slightly below 1 to 4 parts per million (ppm). Similar uranium concentrations are found in a variety of common rocks and soils, as indicated in figure 2. Coals with more than 20 ppm uranium are rare in the United States. Thorium concentrations in coal fall within a similar 1–4 ppm range"

So at 1 ppm uranium and 1 ppm thorium, a coal power plant releases only (8.603668e-13 / (1.1067176e-12 + 1.0788631e-12)) = 0.3936559286 = 39% of the available fission energy in coal.

Keep your system and project tidy with a Python virtual environment folder

cees@cees-XPS-13-9380:~/code/space-monitor$ python3 -m venv venv
cees@cees-XPS-13-9380:~/code/space-monitor$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv) cees@cees-XPS-13-9380:~/code/space-monitor$ which python3
/home/cees/code/space-monitor/venv/bin/python3
(venv) cees@cees-XPS-13-9380:~/code/space-monitor$ python3 -m pip install logdna
Processing /home/cees/.cache/pip/wheels/af/ce/e9/fccf04ebc826e8cff5ec031f8ecc0c3b4092b44bc692f22a3f/logdna-1.5.3-py3-none-any.whl
Collecting requests
  Using cached requests-2.23.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (58 kB)
Collecting certifi>=2017.4.17
  Using cached certifi-2020.4.5.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (157 kB)
Collecting idna<3,>=2.5
  Using cached idna-2.9-py2.py3-none-any.whl (58 kB)
Collecting urllib3!=1.25.0,!=1.25.1,<1.26,>=1.21.1
  Using cached urllib3-1.25.9-py2.py3-none-any.whl (126 kB)
Collecting chardet<4,>=3.0.2
  Using cached chardet-3.0.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl (133 kB)
Installing collected packages: certifi, idna, urllib3, chardet, requests, logdna
Successfully installed certifi-2020.4.5.1 chardet-3.0.4 idna-2.9 logdna-1.5.3 requests-2.23.0 urllib3-1.25.9
(venv) cees@cees-XPS-13-9380:~/code/space-monitor$ python3 -m pip freeze > requirements.txt
(venv) cees@cees-XPS-13-9380:~/code/space-monitor$ cat requirements.txt 
certifi==2020.4.5.1
chardet==3.0.4
idna==2.9
logdna==1.5.3
requests==2.23.0
urllib3==1.25.9
(venv) cees@cees-XPS-13-9380:~/code/space-monitor$ python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
Requirement already satisfied: certifi==2020.4.5.1 in ./venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from -r requirements.txt (line 1)) (2020.4.5.1)
Requirement already satisfied: chardet==3.0.4 in ./venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from -r requirements.txt (line 2)) (3.0.4)
Requirement already satisfied: idna==2.9 in ./venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from -r requirements.txt (line 3)) (2.9)
Requirement already satisfied: logdna==1.5.3 in ./venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from -r requirements.txt (line 4)) (1.5.3)
Requirement already satisfied: requests==2.23.0 in ./venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from -r requirements.txt (line 5)) (2.23.0)
Requirement already satisfied: urllib3==1.25.9 in ./venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from -r requirements.txt (line 6)) (1.25.9)
(venv) cees@cees-XPS-13-9380:~/code/space-monitor$ deactivate
cees@cees-XPS-13-9380:~/code/space-monitor$ 

Autocue / Teleprompter

Frame time ms. Scroll step px. Padding Font Transform Text (from here):

You see, a teleprompter is nothing but a piece of glass in front of the lens, placed at a 45 degree angle. This glass then reflects an image from some sort of display below it, allowing me, your host, to see it. Sometimes a teleprompter has its display above the glass, but in this case it’s below. This display can be pretty much anything at all. In my case, it’s just a cheap tablet. The only thing the display must be able to do is reverse the image so that it appears normally in the reflection. You could simply practice reading backwards text; I personally don’t find that to be all that difficult, but it is significantly easier to simply read normal words and not sdrawkcab era taht sdrow. Of course, the key here is that the camera is looking through this piece of glass at me, your charming host. This means that when I’m looking at the words, I’m pretty much looking right at the camera lens.