Rational Thinking 101 – Page 2 – Making Sense of It All

How to Get Firefox to Play Amazon, Netflix and Hulu Vidos on Archlinux

The main reason I always install Google Chrome on any linux distro I happen to be running is that Chrome will by default play videos from Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu without a hitch, whereas Firefox will not. In fact, neither will Chromium.

This is because Google has built proprietary flash graphics inside of Chrome.

However, after listening to several podcasts about how Google is sharing our information and how tracker cookies are being placed on our machines without our knowledge or consent by Chrome, I decided to have another look at the problem of getting Firefox to play online video content from the above mentioned providers.

Here’s what I discovered: It’s an easy fix.

First of all, I recommend you to install yay, which is an alternative to yaourt. To do this simply go to the command line and type in the following:
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git $ cd yay $ makepkg -si

Once yay is installed then you need to install flash as follows: yay -S flashplugin
$ sudo pacman -Syyu firefox

Next, if you haven’t already, install Firefox as follows:
$ sudo pacman -Syyu firefox

At this point, I needed to reboot and/or logout and login. I then loaded Firefox and navigated to Amazon Prime videos. Try to watch a video and it will give you an error, but you’ll notice in the upper left corner of Firefox a little message will appear that says something like “Enable DRM content?” Click yes, and from that time on you’ll be able to watch Amazon Prime videos, Netflix and Hulu all from withing Firefox.

Now you can ditch Chrome. They’re tracking you.

Will our military save us from alien invasions?

Definitely not. They will be completely incapable.

Knowledge of the speed of light, however, will save you.

Light speed cannot be exceeded in a vacuum no matter what. In fact, for aliens and Earthlings alike it would take thousands of years just to travel to our nearest star system. To travel from distant stars to ours would take thousands or millions of years, as it would take us to travel to them.

Fortunately, there will be no alien invasions. In fact, we may or may not know of any alien civilizations out there. So far we have discovered none.

Which Linux Distro is Best?

Archlinux is best, but difficult. It’s what I run.

I didn’t install it with the Arch Wiki. I used YouTube videos. It worked, and I’m inside Arch writing this article. I’ve been using Arch for awhile now. I like it.

I’ve used ’em all. Mint, Antergos, Manjaro, Ubuntu (all the flavors), Zorin, everything else you can read about on DistroWatch.com. I first started before the turn of the century in the late 1990’s.

Eventually, I managed to install Archlinux by watching YouTube videos on my phone, and that’s what I’ve been using for the last year and a half.

The next step would be Linux from Scratch, which I don’t think I’m interested in trying. It definitely should not be tried by someone who is not thoroughly advanced in Linux.

If you don’t know Linux, or don’t like command line interfaces, then the recommended Linux Distro would be – I just hate to say this – Ubuntu or Manjaro.

Just my opinion.

Crappy dirt, hot Serrano

The universe is full of mystery. A garden in a not so ideal place is producing surprising results: hot Serranos, jalapenos, red and yellow bell peppers, tomatoes and zucchinis (pictured above).

They are close to the north side of the house, and receive only marginal sunlight because of that, yet they are growing profusely.

Sarranos are hotter than jalapenos. I picked one and chomped down on it, and it was so hot I had to sip ice water for a half hour.

It’s mysterious. The ground is crappy – clay and mud. The sun isn’t as much as it should be. The vegetables are growing out of control.

Did I mention the pumpkins that sprung up in the back yard without planting them?

What do you think would happen if the entire internet would just suddenly resets itself and all the data vanishes?

When I was born, and when I grew up, there was no Internet at all. We had cars, and even (eventually) color TV. We had landlines, albeit party lines (you had to share your phone number with an unknown partner).

We sent a man to the moon.

It would be idyllic if shutting down the Internet would just revert to the good ol’ days.

Unfortunately, that would not be the case. Now days we’ve become so dependent on the Internet in so many ways, shutting it down would be catastrophic and lead to a total financial and political collapse.

If a person fell from a plane and could land feet first on a steep downward slope could the person possibly survive?

In the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana, a woman and a kid jumped from an airplane in an inflatable raft, inflated it while going down, landed on a steep slope, and survived.

This premise was tested on Mythbusters and found to be feasible.

Now, your question is whether you could do it with your feet depends on three things. 1) That you land feet first, 2) the speed you are falling at the time of impact, and 3) how steep the slope is.

This takes it to a whole other level. I wouldn’t try it personally. It’s not likely you’d survive, but there is, undeniably, a very slight possibility you might.

If we discovered an alien civilization 50,000 light years away, what do you think our top 3 priorities as a species should be?

If we discovered an alien civilization 50,000 light years away, we’d be looking at that civilization 50,000 years in the past, since that’s how long it took light and radio waves from there to reach us. They might not even be there by now. Will we still be here 50,000 years from now?

Also, it would create conspiracy theories. There would be those who say it was a hoax because it challenges the very idea that God created life on Earth alone. Discovering even a fossil of a microbe from another planet would be an enormous find for science in the age-old battle between science and religion.

It would revolutionize science, but from the average Joe on the street, it would mean nothing at all.

And that’s sad, but true.

So we would remain, as a species, not united as we are not united at present, and therefore we would remain without the ability, as a species, to come up with three top priorities. But if the scientists of the world came up with three priorities they might not be much different than they are now:

Save the planet
Find our origins
Feed our people

Why have humans never been back to the Moon after 1972?

By Richard Muller, Prof. Physics UC Berkeley, author “Physics for Future Presidents”

There never was much value in going to the Moon in the first place, so there was no good reason to return.

When J.F. Kennedy proposed we go to the moon by the end of the 1960s, his goal was to raise American spirits, to return us to a belief that we could win in a competition with the surging Soviet Union (which was not only beating us in space, but even in the Olympics!).

When Kennedy died, I think we were determined to get to the Moon in the now sacred deadline of the late 1960s, to fulfill Kennedy’s dream.

Scientists liked the Moon shot, primarily (this is my observation, not based on a careful poll) because it injected a lot of money into science in space. If the same money had been made available for science in space, but not involving human transport, then most scientists would have favored unmanned experiments, including unmanned exploration of the Moon. It made much more financial sense, but most people (especially at NASA) believed that without the human involvement, the public would not support high levels of spending.

Once we met Kennedy’s goals, of restoring the US spirit and self confidence, then the financial considerations took over. There simply is not much value added by putting men on the Moon; arguably, there is much science value lost. (Science experiments that have to be man-safe are far more expensive.) On the other hand, you’ll notice that not a lot of money has been spent on sending robots to the Moon. Some, and they’ve done some remarkable things, but not the many billions that go along with a man shot.

Instead, we have spent our resources with unmanned exploration of the solar system, with truly spectacular results. We’ve discovered that every moon of every planet appears to be different from every other moon! (That’s only a slight exaggeration.) The great glory of NASA in the last few decades has been its unmanned program. In comparison, the Space Station has accomplished very little. (Again, that is my personal evaluation.)

One False Move and I’ll Shoot

What is a false move? Is it the opposite of a “true move?”

My wife and I are watching an old 1954 movie called “The Snow Creature” on YouTube. Sometimes I like watching silly old time black and white science fiction movies. This one is also under the genre of “horror.”

At about 35 minutes and 40 seconds into it one of the men says, “One false move and I’ll shoot.”

So my wife asks the obvious question: What is a false move? Is it the opposite of a “true move?” Sometimes you hear this phrase in old Hollywood movies, but think about it… does it have any meaning? Would anyone ever really say it? If someone said that to you while having you at gunpoint, what would you be careful not to do? For sure, don’t do a “false move!” Only do “true moves,” I guess!

What Color Are The Balls?

Your brain is tricking you. All these balls are brown. No kidding.

Our brain often interprets what we see incorrectly. In fact, all the balls in this picture are the same color, but we think they are different colors based on the lines in front of the balls.

At first I had trouble accepting this fact. I had to zoom in and look very closely at the balls. Here’s what the balls look like if we simply remove the color of the line in front of the ball.