devrandomguy

So, why don't we have these restrictions in Canada, Japan or Europe? Many countries have advanced aerospace programs. The only reason that I can see for those export regulations to exist, is because eliminating them would require effort and PR risk on the part of politicians.

Is anyone here able to compare this FUN3D CFD solver with open source CFD software, such as PyFR, Fluidity or OpenFOAM? In particular, has anyone done any benchmark comparisons?

I'm wondering if maybe NASA would be better off over the long term, if they ported their models to a more accessible platform. It sounds like they are having trouble hiring people who can work on their current stack.

> As a participant, you’ll need to gain access to FUN3D software through an application process with the US Government.

This is not at all ready for a competition. The least they could do, if they want professional volunteer help, is to open-source the platform that everyone would be deploying on. It was probably built using public money, after all.

Sigh, no shame:

> FUN3D is: Code developed by the US Government at US taxpayer expense, ...

I don't think a 0.1g probe would make it through an atmosphere at any speed. The targets I had in mind, were moons, rings, asteroids, much like Deep Impact; I used the term "planet" as a catch-all.

Nevertheless, your point stands, if we consider technologically advanced life a possibility. It would be real shame to clobber someone's moon colony. Perhaps, these impactor missions should not be considered on the first expedition.

IANAS, but does this mean that a set of raw data loses value, as more information is extracted from it? If I use your old raw data to validate my hypothesis, does that somehow also weaken the statistical evidence for your hypothesis?

I really need to go back and study statistics, this is getting embarrassing.

Perhaps, the sail could modulate the reflected beam? That way, all of the heavy communications gear can stay in our own solar system.

Instead of trying to stop at the destination, you could instead send a stream of these tiny expendable probes past the target. Each one would get, say, a microsecond to take a snapshot, and then it would spend the short remainder of its life relaying the raw data.

To do a chemical analysis, some probes could be sent on relativistic collision course with the subject planet, and other probes could watch the impact. It would be a scale-up of NASA's Deep Impact mission from 2005.

Yeah, but look at those joints, though. Big, loose, with lots of smoke just drifting off. Not a problem if weed is cheap, but it does mean that some compensating factor is needed to make a valid comparison.

If you are spending nearly a grand a month on it, then you might as well just grow ~4 large potted plants in your living room. They are beautiful plants, and their timed lights help to keep your own circadian rhythm steady. They also make a nice conversation piece.

They do have a distinctive smell, though, especially once they are budding. If you aren't already growing other herbs and vegetables, then that might be undesirable.

Do you have a source for cannabis -> liver damage? This is the first time I have heard of it. My concern was always lung damage, but of course there are creative and delicious ways of avoiding that problem.

Is this the author, Tae Kim?

IMO, the "fair" part implies a set of rules that promote a more interesting playing field, rather than total war.

Looks like the parent uncovered an HN bug. I'm guessing that they posted an unbalanced asterisk, which resulted in the "reply" link being italicized, and an empty message.

It would be super cool if amateur cubesats could interface with this network. I've always wanted to run a server on orbit, where energy is free and regulations are limited to RF spectrum issues.

The licenses that you are thinking of, are all related to copyright, not patents. Patents are a completely different beast.

I personally think that patents have no place in contemporary society, but that's just, like, my opinion, man.

Webpack handles sourcemaps, and one of us, gajus, has already integrated it. Prepack should be just another stage in the build pipeline.

Having said that, there appears to be a sourceMaps flag in the Prepack source: https://github.com/facebook/prepack/blob/57cc59c07d164e4827c...

I will be attempting to use this as a simple black box, relying on Webpack for features that are only tangentially related to this new optimization stage in my build stack.

Shoutout from Canada! There are 32M of us, 88% of whom have internet. Our banks are archaic and expensive, and as a people, we have a low tolerance for that. My current bank actually believes that the telephony system is secure, compared to email :/

Our banking laws are favorable to startups; I could start my own bank, if I wanted to, for little more than the cost of a business license. Many merchants run their own little micro-banks, partly because of the aforementioned problem. Please help :)

Parent is right, a mix of platforms is inevitable. Might as well take advantage of the opportunities, instead of trying to preserve a monoculture. The school board could quite reasonably insist that all digital school work must be submitted in open file formats. They could acquire a wide range of hardware, continuously, and allocate higher or lower spec machines depending on the actual needs of each class or grade year.

What the school loses in simplicity, they gain in budget flexibility. What the student loses in familiarity, they gain in resiliency. Change and diversity cannot be stopped or squashed. Open source does take a bit of work, but it pays for itself, partly in lowered risk, especially for large non-profit or low-budget organizations.

If you can predict a cosmic ray strike with great precision, then you might be able to get that bit flipped for free.

This was common back when I was in high school. A bunch of us kids convinced ourselves that we were straight outta Compton. It was so wack, but we had lots fun of breakdancing and threatening to bust a cap in each other. This was before Columbine, and in Canada. The accent was hard for us to get right.

So, now it's called transracial, and we're no longer allowed to dis it? Sure, ok, whatever.

There should be a category for analogy based languages. Rail or the Billiard Ball Machine, which looks like Feynman diagrams on a pool table, are examples of this.

https://esolangs.org/wiki/Rail https://esolangs.org/wiki/Billiard_ball_machine

Did anyone else play with the BEAM robotics circuits back in the early 2000s? They were an excellent introduction to both the basics of artificial neurons, and to the analog side of digital circuits.

Neurons were constructed by passing an inverter's input through an RC high-pass filter. A ring of these would slowly feed a single pulse, or a pattern of pulses, around the network by something equivalent to phase-shifting an incoming pulse. Sensors, and current or voltage feedback from a straining motor, could adjust the timing or even alter the pattern of the pulses. The pulse train would directly power the movements of the robot.

http://solarbotics.net/bftgu/starting_nvnet.html

The paper: http://theorangeduck.com/media/uploads/other_stuff/phasefunc...

Perhaps this whole thing was just a very subtle PSA, designed to raise awareness of the dangers of using your real face as an avatar? If so, it seems to be effective, in this format.

I know you didn't intend that as legal advice, but I sure hope that you are correct nonetheless. From the article:

> It’s also worth noting that in agreeing to the company’s T&Cs Tinder users grant it a “worldwide, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, right and license to host, store, use, copy, display, reproduce, adapt, edit, publish, modify and distribute” their content — though it’s less clear whether that would apply in this case where a third-party developer is scraping Tinder data and releasing it under a public domain license.

I do not believe that it would be possible to prevent this sort of behavior by force. Any script kiddie could pull this off, and there are more born every day. Some of them barely even understand Western values, let alone have an incentive to value them.

Rather than (edit: in addition to) relying on protection, we should rely on personal safety practices. Using our own portraits as avatars may have been a mistake, in hindsight. I will recommend to my friends, that they teach their children to use a photo of their favorite toy or something, instead of their own face.

I guess, I just have very little faith in my ability to get personal justice versus a foreign corporation. The value of the dataset, when applied to an unethical but lucrative purpose, could easily outgrow the cost of getting caught. Especially if the operation is well isolated from the parent company.

It is not the possibility that I might appear in an ad that concerns me, but rather, that the set of photos that contain me in them, could be used correlate way more information than I would ever consent to releasing voluntarily. I would not even notice that happening.

Does this apply internationally? Also, how would you know if your photo is being used commercially? What if the EULA of every major social network and photo sharing service, grants that service ownership and commercial usage of all of the content that you create with them?

This is absolutely correct. Companies are bought and sold along with their data, and the new owners are not necessarily bound by the agreements or motives of their predecessor. Us users generally have no say in the matter. EULA's that appear to promise a bit of privacy, are usually riddled with loopholes.

Identity is a liability, and a favor that we offer to our peers in order to simplify communication. It does not benefit the person being identified, so much. If I cannot have the identities of the people and projects who consume my data, then I will operate as a fresh, expendable identity.

The GP's submission history shows no signs of point-whoring. This was his first submission in nearly a year.

How much of a military presence do we really need, in order to enforce regulations over shipping traffic though? Surveillance by spotter planes / drones, combined with the threat of legal action against the ship's owners, ought to deter all but the most hardcore bastards.

For them, in theory, a rare single cruise missile from Norad ought to suffice. Even then, you could start with a warning shot, and bill the ship's owner for the missile.

For more complicated missions, we could fly out a small inspection or police team in a flying boat. Instead of relying on arrays of 20cm cannons for protection, they would depend on the above mentioned system (which is similar to the Norad system already in service).