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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 20th, 2023

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  • It’s the distance from the lens to the focal point, as in where the picture focuses on the sensor behind the lens. If you have a very long focal length like a telescope, you can see things further away but the range you can see is very small. With a short focal length you can’t see as far but you can see a much wider view. Check out this chart:

    If you get very close to something with a short focal length or far away from it with a long focal length you can get essentially the same picture of a main subject (although what you can see in the background will be different), but even then a short lens will sort of taper your subject closer to a single point and a long lens will widen it. You can see this effect easily on faces: see this gif or this gif or this picture for an example.





  • It’s a nice idea but I don’t think it would’ve changed much. There are plenty of otherwise intelligent people who buy into conspiracy theories, like remember how the pandemic made us aware that antivax nurses exist? Not many for sure, but I didn’t even think that was possible. And there are also people who are smart in their field who think that makes them smart in everything so they spout a bunch of bullshit. Add in the smart grifters and I really don’t think very much would be different with a slightly more difficult internet.





  • I’ve been wondering if ads never got more intrusive than the simple banners on the side or top of sites if there would’ve been a huge push to block them. I think most people would figure that, especially on small sites run by people instead of huge corporations, that web hosting isn’t free so a banner on a page was a fair tradeoff.

    But of course that couldn’t be enough for the ad folk who started ramping things up with their flashing ads and pop-ups, eventually culminating in the autoplay video malware hellscape the net has turned into today.