danielschreber

>I would guess that the FBI never asks Microsoft for encryption keys without a valid legal order

I keep seeing mentions in the news of FBI agents resigning suddenly.

As I barely passed calculus, I have no idea whatsoever how to prove that the cardinality of the set of legacy media lies is ℵ₁.

In my locale/state/country/timeline, we have something called an "estate sale".

It's like a garage sale, but there are professionals who specialize in doing all the work for a cut of the proceeds, which is nice if you're drained after your parents pass away.

Here is a Wikipedia article on the topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_sale

>use it to make jobs more efficient

I left IT for the time being, but I ask copilot.microsoft.com a question once in a while to see if we've got to AGI yet.

Today's question (I admit not so creative) was what's the market cap of TSLA.

Its answer was "Tesla Inc. (TSLA) currently has a market capitalization of approximately $429.52 billion USD. This figure is based on the latest trading price of $429.52 per share"

It allegedly used a web search to find this out, and it included a screenshot showing the market cap as $1.4B.

On the other hand, chatgpt.com prudently tells me to go look it up myself, because it doesn't have live data.

I guess OpenAI is winning?

They do.

https://www.usps.com/shop/money-orders.htm

"The closest analogy really goes all the way back to slavery, when you began to have northern states passing law saying we’re not going to comply with fugitive slave statutes"

>Seeing "Nato" everywhere is very grating.

Australia's government have a style guide with the example of "Anzac".

https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/grammar-punctuation-and-conve...

Someone with a slide rule:

"I'll give you the answer, but the decimal point is your problem."

>nobody is building machines out of ice

People have definitely tried! Keyword "project habbakuk".

https://jaspermuseum.org/habbakuk-1943-model-ice-sawdust-shi...

The largest HN thread I found is:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40199679

I don't have any idea how flexoelectricity could be used in a machine made of ice. But that's why I wouldn't rule it out. How about medical nanomachines made mainly of ice so they dissolve when their allotted lifespan is up?

The title made me think of piezoelectricity which isn't new and has many applications.

However, it seems that it's a similar but different phenomenon called "flexoelectricity" which was discovered around 1964. It was also predicted before discovery.

Bing Copilot helped me find an article which looks like a good overview of flexoelectricity, although mostly over my head.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.0132

   "First-principles theory and calculation of flexoelectricity"
   Jiawang Hong and David Vanderbilt

First paragraph:

Flexoelectricity (FxE) describes the linear coupling between electric polarization and a strain gradient, and is always symmetry-allowed because a strain gradient automatically breaks the inversion symmetry. This is unlike the case of piezoelectricity (coupling of polarization to strain), which arises only in noncentrosymmetric materials.

It goes on to say that interest has been revived after ~50 years because of finding ways to make the effect ~3 orders of magnitude stronger, and because nanoscale structures also magnify the effect.

The earliest reference is to a Soviet physics journal which I assume is not online:

S. M. Kogan, Sov. Phys. Solid State 5, 2069 (1964)

The article does not seem to say a whole lot except general doubt.

In particular, I don't see anything about whether there is a discrepancy in the heat index formula being used, as opposed to a bad sensor.

I tried the first formula I could google for heat index and relative humidity, and got a heat index of 178, rel. humidity of about 80% assuming 104 F temps and 97 F dewpoint.

Then I asked Bing Copilot and it emphatically said 80% humidity in 104 F weather is very plausible, but the corresponding heat index is not reasonable and my formula was likely outside its range of validity.

I looked at Copilot's reference, at https://www.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/2022-05/heatindex_c... and it appears that, no, 180 F is about the right index.

I wonder if Copilot made the same mistake I did, looking at the relative humidity scale as if it were the dew point and therefore off the scale...

So I'm wondering if people now sit around asking chatbots things and writing "articles" that launder the resulting slop.

I berated Copilot for its inconsistencies until it wrote this:

    Reassessing the AccuWeather Article

    AccuWeather’s claim that the 182°F heat index reading in Iran was likely due to instrument error hinges on skepticism about the dew point of 97°F. But:

    Nearby stations reported dew points in the 90s, which supports the plausibility.

    Dew point sensors can be finicky, but dismissing the reading outright without strong evidence seems premature.

    The NOAA chart confirms that 104°F + 97°F dew point = ~180°F heat index, so the math checks out.

    So yes—the simplest and most scientifically consistent conclusion is that the AccuWeather article was wrong to dismiss the reading. It may have been an extraordinary event, but not an impossible one.

"Our cultural tenants include our intent to Win as One."

Did he really write that?

IMO, it's related to modern technology insofar as it adds depth to a common (or once common) English expression that can be used in many circumstances.

It's for people ("today's lucky 10,000") who might have heard of "Queensbury rules" as a general term for fair play but didn't know about boxing or what a Marquess is or about the connection with Oscar Wilde.

Also, as Wikipedia pages go these days, it seemed to me to be better than average in terms of presenting facts in a non-judgemental way.

The bit about his eldest son adds some depth to his character and context to his conflict with Wilde.

Is it closer to "manna" or to "moolah" in meaning?

I'm unfamiliar with the word "mannah". What does it mean here?

My bet is that cardiovascular problems cause light exposure at night.

Terminator evoked Second Variety for me more than anything else ever has.

Never understood why Harlan Ellison insisted it was ripping off his work instead.

Anticipa...

I apologize for making you feel dumb. Just try practicing some mindfulness.

Wikipedia's page on "just intonation" is, oddly, about music.

Fairphone?

   >none of us can multiply two arbitrary integers in our heads. So we are definitely not running 
   >the general algorithm. Most of us have the multiplication table memorized, which covers all 
   >multiplications up to 100. We might also have some simple heuristics stored that can multiply 
   >any X by 10, 100, or 1000; any X by 0, 1, or -1; multiplications that don’t require carry; 
   >etc. For everything else, we use a calculator.

I am confused whether the point being made is

(a) that no human being can multiply two random five digit integers without a calculator, or;

(b) that no human being can do it in our heads because we need external working storage such as paper, or;

(c) that the post is satire.

>There's no replacement for oil at the moment

Vraiment, pas de substitut?

Not a misspelling of anomie.

I think anomie is coincidentally also an answer to the question, though.

What about stalls?

   >etching out

Could you explain what you mean by etching out small improvements? I've never seen the phrase "etching out" before.

"Beyond the Solar System", about interstellar travel, came out in 1964.

"This is a lighthouse. Your call."

One of the many low/no code systems that existed before LLMs burst onto the scene - now with more Copilot.

When forced to use it several years ago, I thought about writing a transpiler of some reasonable language to the JSON import/export format to avoid the "easy to use" interface.

And make it feasible to have, like, functions and reuse of logic. But I didn't, so no "Show HN".

Has anyone made such a thing or does anyone want it?

I think this headline has intentionally deceived people into thinking it is a transit.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus the next transit is 2117.