ChicagoBoy11

This reminded me too of Jim Lovell's reaction when they switched the Apollo 8 plan at "the last minute" to actually be the first TLI mission. Something about the way he tells it, and just the sheer (and apparently extremely genuine) reaction of awe, wonder, excitement, mixed with a seeming complete lack of worry, concern, self-preservation instinct, just kinda signals to me those guys were just built different.

If Artemis goes on as planned, hopefully you'll just have to hold on at least a few more years!

Can't more emphatically recommend Collins' book. Having read my fair share of Apollo stuff, this, and the Blye Cox Apollo books are easily the best.

Also, I'll add that apparently Charles Lindbergh spoke with Jim Lovell at the 11 launch and also expressed that, in his mind, the most significant leap was also 8, which I have sympathy for. There's something about being on that spacecraft for the first TLI, having nothing but the math to trust, that is deeply exhilerating, incredibly scary, and awe-inspiring.

Between things like the Apple watch, and the upcoming glasses-based interfaces, this seems to kinda do nothing well and some of those things, just more poorly. It's beautiful, definitely interesting, but seems pretty dead in the water.

The MIT wearable demo from a few years ago which used a similar concept to project an interface in the real world was incredibly compelling, but mostly because it assumed near flawless real world AI object recognition, along with flawless projection onto said items. They'll need to demonstrate this on this particular device, before this becomes remotely interesting. Yes, it's a "detail", but I think for a lot of this kind of tech, demonstrating just how DEEPLY you can go into the interactions is sort of the whole point if they are thinking of replacing the kinds of devices that we depend on.

I'll take this opportunity to promote to the technnically inclined, that it is so worth checking out a beautiful Apollo-related project called NASSP which has been trying to faithfully allow you to simulate all the Apollo missions. The computer in the simulator, even, is running a port of the real apollo guidance computer, matched to their exact version for each mission, thanks to the work of volunteers and incredible folks who not only have gone through the effort to find and document all of it but even to bring a real apollo guidance computer to life (check out the CuriousMarc youtube channel... just mind blowing).

Like many people, the 13 movie obviously sparked my curiosity and wonder about the whole ordeal, but despite habitually visiting the Smithsonian, all the reading, etc., nothing has brought me as close to an appreciation for just how remarkable the whole endeavor was than to try to live it in this simulation.

I can see it being do-able with some kind of VATSIM-like integration, where you would just need to get the live plane movement data across, and then use that as the AirportSim plane traffic...

Ha, yeah, that's it. And, the quote in question, from David Segal, apparently:

"Everyone wants to be the king of the hill. That's international. But the number of aspiring kings always dwarfs the number of available hills. So in this country, we build more hills. We're geniuses, in fact, at building more hills."

I'm an immigrant myself, and I share this sentiment deeply as well. The best description which I ever heard, curiously enough, was on a really old episode of this American life. My memory could be playing tricks on me, but I think it was some small story of folks doing car audio competitions, where the point was to build the car with the loudest possible speaker. It was absurd, silly, and for a nerd, obviously enthralling.

But at some point, I don't know if it is the narrator or someone in the story, but they say something to the effect of: "Everyone wants to be king of the hill, but there aren't enough hills to go around. The US is particularly great at creating more hills."

I ran a non-profit website in Brazil where schools could look up a question-by-question breakdown of how their students did in the high-school exit exam. I was a bit flummoxed by the process of maintaining a decently sized database with that data, and realized that there were only so many visualizations I'd need for it. So, over a week, I just had an algorithm compute everything I would need for each school for the several million students in the db, and then handily save a file for each institution with that data in an S3 bucket. No databases, no complex logic, just a few pennies of cost for S3... and it made building out the visualization such a breeze!

I've been trying to "learn" the missions more thoroughly by flying them on Orbiter and NASSP, and just the sheer amount and depth of documentation that is accessible today is truly astounding. There's something awe-inspiring about sitting and my computer and looking at the mission plan, only to then not understand the "why" of this particular switch that I'm throwing, to then open a pdf with a "astronaut training booklet" which explains the overview of the thing I'm using, to then open another pdf with the detail technical documentation of it, to then a schematic of the equipment should I at any point (but prob not) ever try building one myself.

If you feel that way about this, I would highly recommend "Carrying the Fire" for you as a tremendous read. Out of all the Apollo-era books I've read, I'd say this one does the best job of mixing in really interesting technical details to really get you to peek at just how much complexity there really was (and may I even suggest giving NASSP a go so you can even try it yourself) while also doing a fantastic job at connecting it to the human and meaning side of the whole endeavor. Just a fantastic read, and sounds like you'd be the perfect target audience for it!

The A16Z bit cracked me up. Especially because it probably does function as a valid signal, at this point.

In earnest: Could you help lead me to a different perspective? Happy to seriously engage to see if there's a blind spot I'm missing

To all the parties involved, I'd argue.

It seems they were able to parse out all of the claims and readily dismissed the vast majority of the ridiculous stuff that the cops were claiming, while acknowledging that the assertion that the officer was a "wife abuser" could veer into defamation was plausible and merits a trial (where both sides are perfectly entitled to build their case). Seems reasonable!

This kinda strikes me as obviously the "right answer", in the sense that if you could have a reader traverse the code and "translate" it into English, surely you could then go the opposite router. No need for "func parentheses a comma b close parentheses"

But rather

"function definition func, two parameters, a, b"

Sorta like a prettier for blind coding

Is there something of the like but for orbital mechanics? Out of all the engineering that is nearly superhuman to get us to do everything we do in space, there's something about the knowing that "if I point it at this direction, in 3 days time, going this fast, it'll hit this object in 4 days" that I just find utterly fascinating but am hopelessly ignorant about.

It's so wild to me that the code is just... on github. Like, there's something to be said for all the effort going into these technologies and how freely available it is. A few years ago we would think this was almost undistinguishable from magic, and you'd be excused for trying to raise millions of dollars in VC money to turn it into a company.

Now I can just go run that on my computer.

insane.

On that note, I also did not understand the post about H1B workers. Ostensibly a primary reason for the existence of the visa category in their first place is to fulfill the need for foreign talent that needs to be PRESENT in the US.

I know a family of a nobel prize winner, and everyone in it is just insanely talented -- like, if you were to caricature the experience of a super genius family you'd actually probably get pretty close to them. And, your point is spot on. For them, the sheer creativity and output (in writing, science, and music) of the whole family was kind of seen as table stakes and something rather unremarkable. Whenever I was over for dinner I felt like a kid in class who hadn't done the reading haha (just in terms of how hard it was to keep up... they were all super gracious and I have many many cherished memories from the time we hung out)

I was one of the ridiculous-looking people who had a Google Glass when it came out. It was clunky, and lasted a very short time, and your face would get hot, and it had no real AR interaction with the real world.

But. If you could squint at the rough edges, and project forward what this could be like with more advanced tech, it was a no-brainer for me that it will be a far superior form factor for what we do with the phone. For 2 weeks, I tried hard NOT using a phone and just using it. While it was difficult (mostly because I couldn't have a conversation with anyone that didn't begin with them asking what was on my head), when I went back to the phone I so strongly noticed how much I was craning my neck, how annoying it was to interact with tech like that, and it kinda felt terrible.

How do you avoid the misaligned incentives in this case in terms of asking whether or not thing X needs protection to the person whose job is justified by thing X needing protection? If the answer were a resounding "ohh no, that's silly," do we think someone in his role would ever utter it?

I... did mean that. And, I have a suspicion I may have written it incorrectly many other times in the past, so thanks for pointing it out!

This has gotten so ridiculous to the point that I actually feel bad for Neimann.

He has admitted to cheating, there's no debate about that. But he maintains that he has cheated in two isolated incidents, at age 12 and 16. These are mistakes, and given he is a titled player, very serious mistakes.

But, beyond barring him from chess.com (a platform with whom his chief accuser has significant business ties), they've absolutely dragged his reputation through the mud many times over. All of this, it seems, based on a "feeling" that Magnus had OTB on a particular game (for which no evidence of cheating has been found).

It wreaks of witchhunt, and has damaged his reputation in a likely unrepairable fashion. I understand he's made mistakes, but it seems we've all tacitly agreed that it is ok to drag someone through the mud because he seems a bit obnoxious and made mistakes while a child. I hope we'd be better than that.

Did you even watch the video? It specifically addresses the noise pollution question, and is one of their very significant engineering feats. Obviously, it is yet to be proven at scale, but if it works as the vision and developments so far indicate, it would be a net reduction in noise pollution compared to our current infrastructure which executes these deliveries.

That's an incredibly good point. I would think you'd need a pretty modest operation when it comes to that for a site like lichess, and the fact that it is the biggest expense really puts into focus the kind of scale the problem likely is at the bigger social media sites.

Kind of fascinating that their biggest cost is site moderation! This seems... odd for a site whose main mechanic really isn't social networking.

Between stuff like this and the prototype NBA basketball, seems like fabrication techniques are getting us slowly to the point that inflatable-anything of all sorts will be things of the past, no?

I had to deal with issues with the Saturn app for teenagers at work, and then I learned he had done some consulting for them. Dude's got the magic touch!

Wow I'm really surprised I missed that!

Google sure gets a ton of flack (and deservedly so) for unceremoniously axing beloved products that don't quite bring Google-scale revenue, but this sunset sounds beyond incredibly respectful to their users and really shines a positive light on them. The controller thing is such an unnecessary but trust-promoting thing to do!

Wait... if you got a stadia/bought games, etc., all of it got refunded when they folded?!