You mentioned that they’re NTFS, which I took to mean they’d been in a Windows machine at some point even if they weren’t the system drive. If they were taken from a system that hadn’t been shut down properly, I imagine, though don’t know for certain, that there’s a chance that might cause an issue for some files that are flagged as in-use by Windows.

I’m basing this on an experience I had trying to move an NTFS partition on a drive, which isn’t the same as just copying, I grant you, and Linux resolutely refused to do that because it detected that Windows wasn’t done with the drive. It didn’t say that specifically though, only that there was a problem. It took me a few minutes to figure that one out.

So, if you were to have trouble copying files, it would be worth a try to mount that drive under Windows, do a quick scandisk from there and then unmount it, which ought to clear any active session flags that might be on it.

Again, this is all in theory, because I’ve not been in your specific situation.

(I did once successfully manage to scandisk and defrag an external NTFS HDD by doing hardware pass-through to a Windows VM running under Linux, but again, that’s not quite the same thing, and that was for maintenance purposes, not as a prelude to backup.)

Extra piece of advice that you might already be aware of: Be sure to shut down Windows fully before attempting the copying of drives.

Windows fast boot can leave an active session on a disk and Linux NTFS capabilities will often detect that Windows session and thus refuse to perform certain operations. This is more for writing to affected disks than reading from them, but there’s no harm in doing the full shut down on the Windows side first to avoid any potential issues.

Oh, and if you have other backup methods other than the one you’re about to attempt, use those first. For example, if you have any really important documents, now would be a good time to get them onto a USB drive, the cloud or other external storage that can’t be damaged if something does go wrong.

There’s no immediately obvious reason that anything will go wrong, but better safe than sorry.

There are too many timeline branches from that one incursion to cover all the bases here. Does someone with my name exist (alternative sperm / egg theory)? Do they live in the same house? Do I get caught and arrested either way? How soon do I realise what’s happened?

I mean I probably realise a lot sooner than the average person because I’ve consumed a lot of sci-fi and am well aware of It’s a Wonderful Life, but it doesn’t really help.

My parents probably live in the same place. I’d go there for help if I hadn’t figured it out yet. Maybe if I had. I don’t know whether they would help for sure though.

My father might think I’m actually a descendent of one of his parents’ relatives. My mother would definitely see the resemblance. Maybe I also look like my “replacement”. That would be traumatic and confusing for all concerned though.

Imagine getting a DNA test done to prove it. That’s a long way off and/or unlikely , but it would conclusively prove I’m their kid. There’d be hospital mix-up investigations. It wouldn’t be the first time there have been twins. Now I must be a long lost fraternal twin of another person who has my name.

If they have no child of a similar age, that just raises even more questions. Did they collectively lose their minds and abandon a child at some point?

But that’s distant speculation. Maybe they tell me to get lost. Maybe I don’t go there in the first place.

If I do realise what’s happened sooner rather than later, maybe I leave my parents alone. I’d probably go to a local hospital and lurk around the cafe and shop until I get help, get my head together with a better plan, or get arrested. I need medication anyway, not that I can prove that. I assume drug names are the same.

I’d probably have to take each moment as I find it and act accordingly. As to how I’d act, that’s very hard to say until it’s actually happening.

This has the same energy as that Tumblr thread* about how all odd numbers (in English) have an ‘e’ in them, and people butting in and saying things like “Nonsense! Eight is even and it has an e in it.”

* The same thing may also have happened on Twitter if not elsewhere.

Since there’s a reasonably strong link to calculus, and mechanics as you’ve already found, it could theoretically help in physics simulations either in a computer or on paper.

As for practical application, well, emulating physics is pretty important in a lot of computer games, or getting robots (assembly line arms, androids, automated vacuum cleaners) around the place and to do what they need without accidentally catapulting themselves into next Tuesday.

How that’s actually programmed might not involve dual numbers at all, but they’re one way of looking at how those calculations might be done.

A lot of “advanced” maths comes from asking “What if this was a thing, how would that work? Would it even work?”, so you could say there’s a deliberate sense of “fake” about it.

Dual numbers come from “What if there was another number that isn’t 0 which when multiplied by itself you get 0?”

Basic dual numbers (and complex numbers) are no harder than basic algebra, shallow end of the pool kind of stuff, but then not everyone is comfortable getting in the water in the first place, and that’s OK too.

Came here to say this, but since it’s already here, I’ll throw in a bonus mind-melting fact: ε itself has no square root in the dual numbers.

1. I have this odd, perhaps part troll, feeling that there are two, and only two, roots of the Riemann Zeta function that aren’t on the critical line, and are instead mirrors of each other at either side of it, like some weird pair of complex conjugates. Further, while I really want their real parts to be 1/4 and 3/4, the actual variance from 1/2 will be some inexplicable irrational number.

2. Multiplication order in current mathematics standards should happen the other way around when it’s in a non-commutative algebra. I think this because transfinite multiplication apparently requires the transfinite part to go before any finite part to prevent collapse of meaning. For example, we can’t write 2ω for the next transfinite ordinal because 2ω is just ω again on account of transfinite and backwards multiplication weirdness, and we have to write ω·2 or ω×2 instead like we’re back at primary school.

Ahh, Liquid Television. Thank you. The other block of odd programmes that ended up on BBC2. It’s been a long, long time, so I’m not surprised I mixed them up!

Aeon Flux (the anime TV series, not the movie)

I want to say it was aired as part of the Def II, teenage audience program slot on BBC2 in the '90s, the original UK home of Ren and Stimpy and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, but the Wikipedia article for Def II doesn’t mention it at all.

Edit: Nope, it was Liquid Television (see reply). Some but not all of MTV’s weird programmes ended up on BBC2, sometimes even under the original parent name, like Liquid Television.

The first Linux kernels were written for the 386 and 486 and single or double digit megabytes of RAM. Early 1990s technology. Before Windows 95 and Pentiums even.

Now, if you want a GUI that runs nicely, at least for some hardware, you probably going to need to hit mid-to-late '90s hardware, and it’ll still be pretty basic.

Did you mean this one: https://imgur.com/iHcSTI5

20th century? The Yalta Conference was a pretty big one in WWII. Churchill, FDR and Stalin all met to determine what was to be done about a certain Austrian and his fan club.

You jest, but on some older computers, all ones was the official truth value. Other values may also have been true in certain contexts, but that was the guaranteed one.

I suspect they’re referencing a story told on Twitter back in the day:

https://www.boredpanda.com/bar-bartender-nazi-punk-iamragesparkle/

TL;DR: If you let the “nice” ones in, eventually their less nice associates will come along and before you know it, your bar is a Nazi bar. Or, in this case, your restaurant/town is now a haven for obnoxious tourists.

It’s not quite the same because you can’t equate a “nice” Nazi with a respectful tourist, but similar logic applies otherwise.

Not literally those words. From what I’ve seen online, various establishments, if not entire towns, have thrown up “Japanese only” or “Japanese language only” to discourage foreigners. They generally only do this after there’s been a trend of tourists making asses of themselves, but since the first places to do it kind of went viral, it’s not too surprising if the habit has sprung up elsewhere.

Sure, it’s only a handful of disrespectful tourists when all the rest are fine, but if you allow any non-Japanese (person or language, pick your preference) eventually you’ll get those tourists.

Like it or not, it’s a simple way to say no to that.

Samsung aren’t exactly good guys either. At this point I’m not sure there is a company who isn’t out to put profit over everything else.

Conjecture: There is a procedure for finding a place-value representation of any positive real number such that the choice of base, and perhaps a secondary representation, yields an infinite number of fours.

Get a 15 puzzle. Or try a digital version.

That was about my level of figuring out. One less dimension to worry about. Never could do the cube.

One such implementation is here: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/fifteen.html

Don’t be so sure. What number is on the side to the right of the 5? Where did the border come from?

Mario’s sorcery knows no bounds.