jpatten

I'd be really curious to see if another group of researchers would come to the same conclusions looking at the same data. I read an article about this study when it came out, and it caught my eye. Looking at the paper, I would have liked to see a clearer rationale about why the data was analyzed the way it was. For example, why did they look at a window of +1/-1 days around a nuclear test, instead of some other window? Do the statistical effects they are seeing go away if slightly different windows are chosen? If they only look at the period right before the test, is there still a statistically significant effect? If so, that would rule out the possible effects they mention due to contamination etc from the test.

It could also be that Sherline has much more and tougher competition these days. When I looked at getting a small mill 20 years ago, it felt like there weren't many options. Now every week it feels like there's a new Kickstarter claiming to "finally" make desktop cnc machining of metal (aluminum) parts easy. Some of the software on these looks pretty approachable for beginners, and the prices are often lower than what sherline offered too. I've never used any of this form factor of CNC machine so I can't comment on the quality, but at one point I thought long and hard about getting one and the newer designs seemed more appealing

Yeah I was really excited to see the KiCAD example. Curious how useful it is in practice.

I hope you guys are successful because I would love to see more US options in this space. Realistically, you can get boards in 7 days from China, and competing with them on price seems like a challenge. So that leaves ITAR and people who need boards even faster. Sounds like that’s where you’re focusing your energy already. What pick and place are you using now that you’ve moved on from the Neoden world?

I'm not sure I see the distinction you're making between 3D design and other spatial reasoning tasks. You can use RL to teach navigation or video game play too. Does that mean these tasks are not spatial reasoning? Additionally, 3D CAD is all about understanding how objects "interact with each one another in a highly quantitative way." I mean, not in the rabbit example, but the container Fable designed for me holds around 30 different types of objects. It figured out a way to arrange them that was more space efficient than what I'd originally described. It considered the best way to stack the fasteners in each bin to pack them as densely as possible. It identified the risk that some very thin objects could slide between compartments in transit, and modified the design to prevent that. It correctly solved for the tolerance between objects that needed to snap together. These all feel like understanding how objects interact with each other. The model didn't just talk about these concerns, but created two 3d models for the case and its lid that accurately reflected them. I hadn't seen that before.

Out of curiosity I gave Fable (on max effort) a CAD task yesterday, which was to design a space efficient carrying case for a set of fasteners in my repair kit for work. It used CadQuery to generate a STEP file. The result was pretty much exactly what I wanted, without needing any manual edits. I did go back and forth with it on the design, but was really impressed with the result. Without prompting it included nice touches like ribs on the bottom of the lid to stop fasteners from migrating to adjacent compartments, and the right tolerance for the fit between the case and the lid. This is a dramatic improvement from Opus 4.8.

I don't agree with the conclusion here. The issue in the sports court example could just as easily be addressed by adding granularity. If the system allowed users more granularity in the length of their sessions, the undesirable strategies in the post would no longer work.

haha that's right I'd forgotten about that one!

Reminds me of Put That There https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RyBEUyEtxQo

Love these! On the record player, would be fun to play Morse code “records” where the message was encoded by selectively removing spots of copper from the rotating plate.

I use Thinlinc. It's free for under 5 concurrent users

Thank you for sharing this! The part of this problem that I’ve found most challenging over time is keeping quantities up to date. I wonder about a function where you could say “I built 25 of these modules” and it would deduct the quantities for individual parts accordingly (optionally adding an extra percentage for the 0402s you dropped on the floor) Or, while I’m dreaming, a feature that parses a DigiKey/mouser/etc. order (or reads the barcodes on the bags!) and updates quantities for you.

Would also be curious about how best to support different storage approaches, like reels on a shelf etc.

I’m sure that Apple did tons of A/B testing, focus groups etc. with different image processing parameters to arrive at the settings that their phones use for photos, and from these comments it’s clear that a lot of people prefer the iPhone photos. When I was in grad school (in the pre-iPhone era) I photographed lots of weddings on the weekends, and one thing I noticed during the process was that people often have a set idea of what good photos look like. This idea of a “good” photo is often not tied to what the scene in front of them looks like. For example a “good” photo that includes a sunset will show a highly saturated orange/red sky, even if that’s not what the sky looks like at the moment the photo is taken.

Personally, I carry around a Ricoh GR3, and shoot random shots with the iPhone, but when it really matters I’ll use the Ricoh. The way the iPhone flattens the lighting is what bugs me the most. Recently I was at a kid’s birthday party and each kid had a cupcake with a candle in it. The room was a bit dark, and the Ricoh photo showed that each kids face was illuminated just a bit by the candle in their cupcake… The color temperature of the candle light is warmer than that of the room light. The photo makes you feel like you’re really there. My friend shot a photo on her iPhone at the same time and we compared afterwards. In her photo, every kid’s face is well lit and the candle effect is gone. She likes her shot better and I like mine. Some people want a shot that reflects what they saw, and some people want a shot that looks like what they think good photos look like.

I'm biased but I think the most interesting opportunities involve software that interacts with the physical world in some way. These projects will definitely involve some electrical + mechanical engineering, product design etc., but I'd guess that in terms of number of hours worked, they are still more software engineering than any other single discipline. Probably with a very different set of tools than those used on the web.

Yeah I agree. The market for companies that do something in a web browser may be saturated, but outside of that world it feels like there are more opportunities than ever. For example in the space of AI + robotics we’ve barely scratched the surface.

I wonder if part of what’s happening may be a generational shift in how people in and around the startup world view work/life balance. In my limited experience, GenZ folks tend to place a premium on reasonable working hours, so it’s not surprising they would evaluate the trade offs between startups and big tech differently.

Skimmed it, so perhaps I missed something, but what is the purpose of reputation if negative facts can never be incorporated into one’s reputation?

Seems like the harm caused to a person through true defamation is outweighed by the benefit to society of holding people to account for bad behavior.