What exactly does ampersandnbspsemicolon code for?
non-breaking space
Clever. I tried inserting five non-breaking spaces directly by copying from Windows Character Map, but the editor still rejected those as an empty post. But forcing the editor to process the manual code did it. Bravo.
You can put non breaking spaces between words to keep them on the same line. The typical use case is between a number and its units, like ”6 feet”.
You may take my electrons, but you’ll never take my quark-gluon plasma!
Lest anybody get the wrong idea, I’d intended to say that as one of the more prolific and wordy loudmouths here, I’m responsible for far more than my far share of the wasted electrons all the way down.
We spent so much time preoccupied with whether or not we could, we didn’t stop to think if we should…
I’m pretty sure that Discourse records, stores, and transmits only text characters (and the occasional images), but does not transmit the actual pixels that are finally rendered on my screen. Those, rather, are generated locally in my computer system and the necessary electrons are supplied locally by my local power company.
Moreover, I’m not at all sure that white pixels expend more electrons than black pixels on modern plasma or LCD screens, due to the way they work. (Does anyone here know?) With older CRT screens, of course, that was the case. Still, white space does seem to use up our supply of photons, but I think those aren’t going to be in short supply any time soon.
I’ve been making mostly empty posts for 20 years.
Black usually takes more energy.
LCD screens have a backlight, which is either a fluorescent light or an LED light, which is always on. The monitor displays the image by darkening crystals in the LCD matrix in front of the backlight, so black takes more energy than white to display.
It’s not a huge difference. A typical monitor probably draws somewhere between 20 and 30 watts of power. The difference between an all black and an all white screen is going to be less than 1 watt.
Some monitors have dynamic backlighting so that the backlight isn’t constantly on. White takes more energy in this case, though again, the difference is fairly small.