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japanuspus

1,299 karma · joined September 18, 2015

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japanuspus··on Starlink satellites hindering detection of near-Earth asteroids, study finds
My understanding is that all startlink orbital data is available via https://www.space-track.org/.
japanuspus··on Computer scientists eliminate pesky quantum computations
As I read the introduction of both the linked article and the cited paper, the result is mostly of importance to complexity theory, and the intention is not to actually apply this procedure to actual quantum algorithms.

For quantum complexity theory, the result is significant, as it shows that there is no need to distinguish between algorithms with and without intermediate measurement when comparing complexity.

japanuspus··on Format Strings in Rust 1.58
The reasoning behind the rust approach:

- As pointed out by GP, `format!` is a macro and only works for literal format strings available at compile time. This allows the compiler to convert the format string to code _at compile time_.

- What you are talking about is a general string template/formatting engine to execute at runtime. Such a feature can easily be provided by external crates, because it would work at runtime and not require any particular interactions with the compiler.

japanuspus··on Format Strings in Rust 1.58
I appreciate the effort that went into the blog post, but for this forum a link to the release notes [0] and/or the updated docs [1] would have been more relevant.

[0]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2022/01/13/Rust-1.58.0.html#captu...

[1] https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/fmt/

japanuspus··on Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power
I think the correct formulation would be that most nuclear production over the year has been replaced by renewables, but on gray wind-less winter day like today I can see you are taking in all the Swedish nuclear power you can get [0].

[0]: https://energinet.dk/energisystem_fullscreen (Danish grid only, couldn't find any similar tools for the wider grid).

japanuspus··on Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research
Thank you for clearing this up - and apologies for not researching!
japanuspus··on Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research
If the town is "online reference managers," you are probably right, but I would argue that reference managers are one of those areas where you really want something offline:

- Offline ensures that you do not suffer an externally caused downtime just before a deadline

- Offline ensures that you have a path for keeping your database throughout your research career, and to do system updates when _you_ want to.

- Offline ensures that if you leave academia, you will always have access to local copies of the academic papers you have referenced.

My favorite offline/local reference manager is `jabRef` [0] which stores all metadata directly in a bibtex-file. The GUI has an excellent pdf-integration, and everything is local and super fast.

Case in point: after a decade in industry, I am looking to get back into my academic fief. All the papers I ever read are in my Dropbox, and all I had to do to pick up where I left was download a current version jabRef and point it to my database which it read without any issues.

[0]: https://www.jabref.org/

japanuspus··on Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)
Totally agree: the issues raised are not just cosmetic -- several of them address fundamental thread safety issues that appear to be lost on the author.
japanuspus··on Scaling Carbon Capture
Completely agree that CCS is fundamentally challenged by thermodynamics.

You say that storage currently is the weak point. What are your thoughts on the plans to pump into North Sea sand formations via depleted oil wells (e.g. the Norwegian "Longboat"-project [0])?

[0]: https://www.regjeringen.no/en/historical-archive/solbergs-go...

japanuspus··on Ask HN: What are some great engineering blogs?
and don't forget, also by Julia Evans:

* [Wizard Zines](https://wizardzines.com/)

japanuspus··on Corded headphones are making an unexpected return
This has actually changed over the last 10 years: today all but the cheapest on/over ear headphones will come with replaceable cables (2.5mm jack in headphone end).

Background: I have a collection of even older "goodish" headphones which I have kept alive with solder over the years. My teenage son recently started buying similar headphones, and they all have replaceable cables. This was me as well until my Yes, this wasIf you have bought a rea

japanuspus··on M1 Pro 14“ MacBook Pro Running KDE Plasma 5 on Arch Linux ARM
If you read the twitter thread, there is a lot of details on "macs are locked down" posted by OP and others below this comment: https://twitter.com/_Thaodan/status/1458581955688206340
japanuspus··on Designing better file organization around tags, not hierarchies (2017)
This. Hierarchy allows a simple manual traversal, leading to better discoverability.
japanuspus··on People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
There is a theory in evolutionary psychology that consciousness is tightly coupled to inner voices (voices of the Gods) [0]. Personally I find the theory compelling, but I do not know how well accepted it is.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...

japanuspus··on All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected
Working in the strategy back office of a one of the worlds largest producer of renewable power, I feel I have a reasonable grasp of the problem here. Not sure what background you believe I am missing.

The point I was trying to make in my second paragraph is that when hydrolyzers get sufficiently cheap that you can buy enough to cover your peak over-production and let them idle when you are missing power, then you have effectively moved the elasticity from the production side to the demand side -- and then slow baseload does not require you to derate down your renewables.

This is far from the situation today where hydrolyzers are so expensive that you need to run them at pretty high utilization to make the economics work out.

japanuspus··on All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected
This argument does not make a lot of sense without detailing which power sources that can turn on and off quickly you are talking about. The only ones I can think of are hydro and gas-powered thermal? So you want natural gas over nuclear?

On the other hand, your comment presumes that there is such a thing as too much power. Once hydrolyzers mature, we could use all of the current renewable power in Europe just for producing hydrogen for steel production to replace coal there.

japanuspus··on How Microsoft reduced Windows 11 update size by 40%
Not OP -- but parent of three.

The primary reason for using specifics ("dad", <name of child>, <name of sibling>, ...) is that pronouns are one of the last things a child will pick up. Think about how a child will always hear themselves referred to as "you" -- and end up assuming that "you" is like a name form them and start using "you" instead of "I"/"me".

In reality, you will be using both specifics and pronouns, and often repeat the same sentence with both versions to teach that they are identical.

japanuspus··on We set up an offshore company in a tax haven
Can confirm. My son was born in the US (and still holds on to his citizenship), and it has been quite a bit of work to set up bank accounts for him.
japanuspus··on A World Without Sci-Hub
I believe your argument misses a critical point: The practicing researchers have no difficulty judging the value of articles appearing in a given venue. The whole "fake journal"-thing only really took of after new public management moved the decision power on hiring and grants from scientists to MBA's who could not judge publications on merit.
japanuspus··on Jellyfin: Free Software Media System
For serving local music, the free and open source "Logitech Media Server"[0] is a great solution -- main weakness is the lack of a central organization promoting it. In addition to working smoothly with dedicated ("squeeze") clients which can be Logitech-brand or DIY[1, 2], it has a massive plugin catalog that allows e.g.

- airPlay integration: stream to your squeeze-clients via airPlay, stream to your airPlay clients from squeezebox.

- chromeCast integration: stream to chromeCast devices from squeezeBox.

- upNp integration: stream to upNp clients.

The system was originally developed by "SqueezeBox" who also made (awesome) physical devices. SqueezeBox was acquired by Logitech many years ago. Logitech put out one or two devices before giving up, but they are actually playing really nice by continuing to support development on the server (see [0]).

[0]: https://github.com/Logitech/slimserver [1]: https://github.com/ralph-irving/squeezelite [2]: https://www.picoreplayer.org/

japanuspus··on Google Docs in a clean-room browser
My biologists friends on twitter were all up in the air about a "Vault Organelle"[0] the other day. Knocking out this organelle doesn't seem to do anything, but everyone seems to agree it must have some corner case function to still be around.

The vault is not a new discovery, but since it doesn't exist in yeast or fruit flies it has somehow not gotten a lot of attention...

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_(organelle)

japanuspus··on WAGI: WebAssembly Gateway Interface
Not just for web either: if you ship WebAssembly bytecode as part of your python package, you can push your platform dependencies out to a wasm runtime and skip most of the build matrix.

A runtime like wasmer-python [0] is only 1.5MB.

[0]: https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-python

japanuspus··on Lunar Crater Radio Telescope on the Far-Side of the Moon (2020)
Signal strength. Synthetic aperture might match the spatial resolution of filled aperture, but signal strength still depends on collected area. For radars you can compensate by upping the transmitted power, not so for passive listening.
japanuspus··on PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device
Related: Discussion yesterday on "E-Ink Typewriter":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28426741

japanuspus··on E-Ink Typewriter
Sorry - missed the fact that it could coexist with the reader. Thank you for pointing this out.
japanuspus··on E-Ink Typewriter
On the reMarkable tablet you can access the linux firmware directly, which should make this kind of use possible without dropping other functionality.

See for instance this post by Nick Temple: https://nicktemple.com/blog/remarkable-keyboard/

japanuspus··on Podman: A tool for managing OCI containers and pods
Also: Julia Evans has a great writeup along these lines:

https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/04/27/new-zine-how-containers-work...

japanuspus··on The dream of carbon air capture edges toward reality
A lower-hanging fruit would be to reduce methane emissions since methane decays naturally in a decade or two.

According to the Economist's summary of the recent IPCC report, the current forcing effect of methane around 30% of that of CO2.

japanuspus··on Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support
Similar experience here: the paid options are way too expensive for private use, when none of the new features has any value to you.

Seems to me that the correct strategy for Dropbox would have been to be super focused on the core product and on not hiring in too many people/taking in too much capital. That would of course have introduced a market cap, but if 1% of everyone had ended up on a reasonably priced personal plan it would have been a roomy cap.

As it was, Dropbox has grown into yet-another ms-office-in-the-sky and there is no way they will make it against their competitors who can burn the cash, and who are slowly catching up on sync technology.

This is really a shame too: Dropbox is just the gold standard for sync. Before Dropbox I was using unison[0] and tried every other sync product, but nothing came close. TBH I am still using Dropbox every day, getting around the device limit by sharing stuff with multiple free accounts...

[0]: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

japanuspus··on Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
I completely agree that hydrogen is fundamentally flawed, but from a commercial point of view it makes sense in the EU where the "Green deal" has allocated upwards of 500 billion euros for establishing a hydrogen economy over the next decade.

See e.g. https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-h...

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