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joebig

1,301 karma · joined February 18, 2023

Kernighan's outlaw
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joebig··on Claude partial outage
The general drove on. "At the present time our chief bottleneck is the fact that missiles are limited in intelligence. The computer controlling them can only be so large, and for that reason they can meet the changing nature of anti-missile defenses in an unsatisfactory way. Few missiles, if any, accomplish their goal, and missile warfare is coming to a dead end, for the enemy, fortunately, as well as for ourselves.

"On the other hand, a missile with a man or two within, controlling flight by graphitics, would be lighter, more mobile, more intelligent. It would give us a lead that might well mean the margin of victory. Besides which, gentlemen, the exigencies of war compel us to remember one thing. A man is much more dispensable than a computer. Manned missiles could be launched in numbers and under circumstances that no good general would care to undertake as far as computer-directed missiles are concerned . . ."

joebig··on Biology might not be quantum, but its math is quantumlike
There is some inaccuracy here I think. Decoherence means washing out of interference phenomenon, viz. you will observe no fringes in the double slit experiment with incoherent source pair (they switch so rapidly as to end up plain grey). What is erased or overwritten in tiny timescales cannot have a residual resultant or guiding gulley effect, or as you say, freezing the pattern/steric landscape in a preffered state repeatably. It would be tantamount to observing the fringe pattern with incoherent sources, for all timescales.
joebig··on Silicon Valley 'sex assault list' with 'over 100' names circulated
Converse in good faith.
joebig··on Black Holes or Black Hole Stars? Astronomers Spar over 'Little Red Dots'
Appreciated. May I ask regarding the determination of the magnitude of correction to apply? Is it a case-to-case basis? In other words, is it very sensitive to the distance assumped for the LRDs?
joebig··on Black Holes or Black Hole Stars? Astronomers Spar over 'Little Red Dots'
Wouldn't objects this ancient (following in the wake of the big bang, essentially) be redshifted anyway, on account of cosmological expansion?
joebig··on We built our house for LAN parties (2024)
You are likely engaging as a good sport (and the anecdata are fun) but you don't really need to explain yourself, if that's what you are trying to do.

Life is all shades of precarious, unfair, galtonboard-ish, windfall-ish. Pareto-powerlaw-nonergodic-pissed off pikachu-ish. Have fun. Somebody's got to.

joebig··on Compressed Sensing in Python (2016)
Thanks
joebig··on Splash-free urinals (2025)
'Cornucopia' looks hard to clean. Though with that name someone may be willing to dig through it.
joebig··on 'You Can See Everything' Review: Nathan Fielder's Doc About Elizabeth Holmes
Sorry, I just automatically turn on reader mode everywhere.

Taking the article at face value, I get the sense she got away with it. That's all.

joebig··on 'You Can See Everything' Review: Nathan Fielder's Doc About Elizabeth Holmes
Elizabeth Holmes Thanksgiving Visit: Family Time in Prison

https://www.memesita.com/elizabeth-holmes-thanksgiving-visit...

And wtf is even a "prison camp?"

joebig··on How to Create a Tor Exit Node (2015)
Um, if you don't mind sharing,are you the maker from mitxela.com?
joebig··on Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]
Gates plays the long game. The man dodged multiple requests over decades to publish this og code that launched MS as a company (pretended he had misplaced the same or forgot to reply or something): only to perfectly time it for a jubilee release.
joebig··on Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]
And all of it within ~4 Kbytes too!
joebig··on Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth (2018)
I myself walked the longest path to 1200 karma. It was painful. Blisters of delta_karma=f*vote_points, where f could be 0.5 or 0.3 or unknown lower no. I'm tired, boss.
joebig··on The Killer Cable Snap – MythBusters (2006) [video]
My favorite episode. Just sharing my delight here.
joebig··on St Lucie Nuclear Reactor Unit 1 manually shutdown, 3 control rods drop into core
I'm already getting downvoted to oblivion for my gp comment, but whatever: what I was trying to convey based on my limited exposure is that a single rod will have a zone restricted shadow or local effect and multiple uniformly distributed rod banks are therefore needed for a an effective control or emergency shutoff. Additionally, on the flip side, I feel a single rod capable of shutoff will insert excessive positive reactivity in case of an ejection (could be a local steam overpressure, idk, don't hunt me down with hounds).
joebig··on Printytron – Describe a part, get a printable STL
Aye, it was a limit test: one that it passed swimmingly. You planning to keep the service up, it must be costing a pretty penny under the hood?
joebig··on St Lucie Nuclear Reactor Unit 1 manually shutdown, 3 control rods drop into core
I think you said it: it's a non-event. It's the reactor reactor-ing within the design basis. But, I think "single rod-drop" will not shut down a reactor. That's a crazy amount of rod-worth. My opinion is that reactor safe-shutdown margin entails "single rod-stuck" scram to be feasible.
joebig··on Guiding Ships with Moire Patterns (2018)
I don't think optical flats operate based on moiré gratings. The former is an interference/diffraction effect while the latter, is you underpinned earlier, is a sort of spatial heterodyning effect. For instance, you can generate moiré rulings (which effectively an optical illusion) with two angularly misaligned combs, but the comb spacing is order of magnitude larger than optical wavelengths, leading one to conclude it's not a wave interference phenomenon.
joebig··on Printytron – Describe a part, get a printable STL
I'll like to extend my compliments to the creator (is it op?). Generated a 17*17 MURA mask within 3 messages.
joebig··on Leaflet.js
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30551006 Earlier discussion ^
joebig··on Marfa Public Radio Puts You to Sleep
Wdym... this is riveting stuff!
joebig··on Sciences Physiques
https://www.jf-noblet.fr/eclipse-2/index.htm
joebig··on Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hello-world/
joebig··on Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
https://artemis-tracker.netlify.app/
joebig··on Siclair Microvision (1977)
I need some help if you happen know your way around flybacks? I have a grime encrusted flyback transformer harvested from a crt set which I would like to hack around with, iff I had some inkling of the internal wiring of the coils, rectifiers etc. All it says is "FOK14A001 REV.0 ANYON T11520VO" and web searches refuse to surface an exact schematic; even though a lot of general information is available. But piecing together a schematic for this specific model is proving a drag from these nebulous floaters.
joebig··on You are not your job
Well put. It's also eye-opening to watch some exceptionally lucky/gifted individuals exude an unmistakable air of deep contentment that only comes from being "time-rich" i.e. possessing complete command of your time. They get to strictly curate the projects and people around which their livelihood revolves. They can't stop gushing about it. It's like even they cannot believe that they are forming lifelong friendships and having meaningful experiences AT work; b/c everyone had told'em that life exists 'outside of work'.

Of course, that's a ride inaccessible to rest of us plebs, but it's nonetheless insightful to see what that ticket buys.

joebig··on The Physics of Misunderstanding: When "Gaze" Almost Cost Me My Career
Is this even real?
joebig··on The Tocharian *klewos: nom-klyu
https://www.etymonline.com/word/*klau- https://www.etymonline.com/word/autoclave http://www.vaticanhistory.de/kon/index.html

Just some research dump (3-7-26)

joebig··on Exploring Different Keyboard Sensing Technologies
Minor physics nitpick in the article "...and a gradually widening conductor lets the inductance increase proportionally with key travel instead of jumping abruptly as the metal traverses the field. As the key is pressed, more of the cone moves into the field produced by the coil, inducing eddy currents in the metal. Following Lenz’s law, those currents oppose the original field, which increases the coil’s effective inductance..."

L, the inductance, is reduced, not increased due to insertion of a conductor, unless the conductor is ferromagnetic. A non-ferromagnetic conductor will expel flux due to generated eddy currents, lowering flux-linkage, therefore L, assuming driving coil current is held at a steady rms magnitude.

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