1,733 karma · joined October 24, 2010
In the context of Hacker News, the title suggested to me that someone had engineered a Printed Circuit Board that would interfere with birds' brains, perhaps by emitting magnetic fields to mess with their sense of north, or something.
This xkcd explains this really well. At orbital height, Earth's gravity's pull is still a full 90% of what we experience on the surface. Orbiting objects "dodge" this fall by going really fucking fast.
I think I saw a comparison once that it takes about 15~20X more energy to attain orbit speed as it does to attain orbital height.
If a white guy and a black guy are dressed the same, and the black guy gets turned away...
It would be cool if both the ARM and the x86 cores could use the same GPU.
What? How do you possibly consider built-to-flip companies to be the "pure" startups? Wikipedia defines a startup as "a company, a partnership or temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model" (emphasis mine)
The "pure" startups are companies that will last for decades or more and will actually change the world, such as SpaceX and Tesla. These companies live or die on the revenue they bring in. They are real companies, not some shell built on hype like you describe (barely better than a Ponzi scheme).
Besides, even a built-to-flip company would be better off getting revenue than not. If the revenue numbers aren't high enough, keep building them higher, and don't tell them to potential acquirers until they are high enough to be impressive.
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EDIT: The now-deleted parent comment said:
So much depends on what your goals are/how speculative your venture is.
If you're in business to make a living and build up some sort of business in the traditional sense, selling your product at a profit is probably your top priority.
Alternatively, if you've got the backing and you're just going pure "startup" where your real product is more likely to be the company itself, there is some hazard in making the upside of your efforts tangible. With actual numbers, you risk your valuation being objectively quantified rather than via hype, pro-forma speculation or traffic. Far fewer of these projects succeed, but when they do, they are likely to be the ones making the news.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome
What you said is like saying "software is very good at welding auto parts", when in fact, it is industrial robots that can weld, but a paper printout of the control code would not be capable of welding!
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Although DNA cannot be used for biomanufacturing in the way you describe, if you want a different but still interesting example of DNA being used for mechanical purposes, you could look at DNA origami:
DNA origami takes advantage of DNA's ability to self-assemble fairly predictably into 3D shapes based on the designer specifying 1D sequences of letters, which bind to each other with certain propensities.
"Originally, Verilog was intended to describe and allow simulation; only afterwards was support for synthesis added."
Few actual classes. The only recurring subjects were: World Geography and Culture, Math, and Writing. As one-offs, I had one year of Electronics (because I requested it) and two years of Spanish.
Other than that, I spent the rest of my time mostly working on whatever projects I wanted to. It was amazing! I learned programming from a book and an old DOS machine, I learned basic electronics from a family friend, and I learned a ton of handyman skills such as carpentry from my Grandpa. And I built projects in all of these fields. The projects were open-ended and entirely informal (just for fun). I would typically work on one project for between 3 days and 3 months.
Other than that, I also spent quite a lot of time outside with my brothers (we had a nice backyard, and lived near a creek), and we spent a full day at the library every week, which I enjoyed immensely.
Also, I was not allowed to watch TV or play video games. But we had a ton of good books.
What types of intellectual property did you have that gave you any Chinese legal right to exclusive use of your designs?
Chinese parents? Anything else, such as Chinese copyright or Chinese NDA?
Depending on the nature of your product and your supply chain, you could try to only flash the firmware once the finished products arrive in America (assuming the packaging isn't sealed yet). And do your best to make it hard to completely dump the firmware (maybe make part of it encrypted with a key that's in a one-time programmable memory that can't be read except by the decrypter, if one of your chips has this feature).
Maybe someone with experience using cyanoacrylate in industrial settings can speak to this. All I know is that my hobby-store super glue nozzles (cheap plastic) get clogged almost instantly. :P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanoacrylate
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But, my main concern with any kind of XY gantry (as in an inkjet printer like you describe), is that it would take frigging FOREVER. There's no way you want this glueing step to take 45 seconds per unit or more. That's the puzzle, I think, is how did they create this glue grid so quickly that it rivals the blob approach (1 - 2 seconds)?
Maybe a simpler approach would be to extrude through a mask that has a grid-like pattern of holes? Obviously you could only make isolated dots of glue, but not overlapping lines of glue (you can't have floating islands in your mask layer). So although it wasn't the technique used in this article, I guess it could work just as well, right?
What makes clock gating of SPI & I2S difficult?
As an example component, here's a SPI mux by Maxim that has 8 separately-controlled SPST switches for <= $3.30 (probably much cheaper at scale). http://www.maximintegrated.com/datasheet/index.mvp/id/1281 So, if you utilize this fully, you could clock-gate 8 separate SPI components for < $0.42 each, right?
Is a mux the wrong way to do it? What's the proper implementation?
Also, how are the "fine, intersecting lines" of glue extruded?