pacificmint

> you can fire a THAAD at a Starlink satellite as well.

You can fire a THAAD at one Starlink satellite, but probably not at 8000 of them.

For comparison we’re currently producing THAAD interceptors at a rate of 96 a year (though Lockheed is aiming to increase it to 400).

I mean, it’s not quite that simple, is it? Did they do everything they could to make drivers and passengers safe? Or did they put profits over people’s safety?

From the article:

> internal company documents […] showing that Uber had flagged her ride as a higher risk for a serious safety incident moments before she was picked up. Uber never warned her […]

Uber actually had a whole project that produced systems that determine the risk of incidents happening. Could they make rides safer but chose not to? That’s at the core of these lawsuits.

I agree. I wish it would tell me the password, there is a good chance I could identify the service that it came from based on the password. This way it doesn’t feel that useful.

> but a leading member of the parliament

I think ‘a leading member’ is underselling it a little. He is the “Fraktionsvorsitzender”, which is comparable to the majority leader in the US Senate.

> it's sold in pill sheets (is that the name?)

They are often referred to as Blister Packs.

> Made of polystyrene and with an internal steel skeleton,

They weight 1.2 tons total. If they are made of polystyrene and steel, it stands to reason that a significant part of the 1.2 tons is contributed by the steel.

The Air Force never had a space shuttle, though NASA flew missions for the Air Force and the NRO.

But at this point none of the remaining shuttles are in an operational state.

Maybe you are thinking of the X-37 which is operated by the space force?

They’re called Coffman engine starters [1].

Random fact: Those starters are a plot point in the 1965 film The Flight of the Phoenix, where the protagonists are trying to start a plane that’s stranded in the Sahara, but only have a small supply of starter cartridges left.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffman_engine_starter

There was also that 4k block of memory at $C000. It was in between the ROM blocks, and by default it was totally unused.

Basic couldn't utilize it, but in assembly it was a great area of extra memory, and you could use it without even switching the ROMs off.

It stands for "Cover Your Ass".

Wikipedia explains it as "an activity done by individuals to protect themselves from possible subsequent criticism, legal penalties, or other repercussions, usually in a work-related or bureaucratic context."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_your_ass

When people say “Lithium batteries” in this context, they mean lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.

AirTags contain lithium primary batteries, which are a totally different thing (other than both containing the element lithium).

Lithium primary batteries present no more a risk than alkaline AAs. Probably less.

Case in point: When Daimler and Chrysler merged, they had a law firm (with no other ties to either company) register the DaimlerChrysler domains weeks before the merger was made public.

I don’t recall if anybody noticed before they went public, but as this thread shows, today it would be noticed for sure.

I think it might be a typo that was supposed to say VIP Movement.

I've heard ATC use that term when Air Force One was in the area. They won't say who specifically is there, or even that it is AF 1, but instead just say that air space is closed "due to VIP Movement".

I don't think it means they care more about safety when a VIP is around, rather that a VIP movement might shut certain other operations down, which increases the overall workload for ATC.

For example they sometimes (or always?) stop all ground traffic from even moving while AF 1 is taxiing, landing or taking off.

You know how there is the cliche that old people are always ranting how everything was better in their day?

Personally, I'm not quite there yet, but the older I get, the more I see their point...

Of course milk doesn't mean milk anymore either, now that we got oat, almond and soy milk. Along with less common alternatives like coconut, hemp, rice, cashew and macadamia milk.

The dairy industry is actually pretty annoyed with that and tries to get the rules changed so those beverages can not be called milk.

If you ask the model what the color of grass is, and it answers blue, then that would indeed be false (or maybe a lie). I think most people wouldn’t call that a hallucination.

But if you ask it for a court case, and it makes up a whole false case file with fake names and fake facts and everything, then calling that ‘false’ seems to be an understatement. Hallucination seems a good label for that kind of thing, imo.

> cost 3x the amount to develop

With cost plus contracts that’s unfortunately a feature and not a bug.

I think Boeing has just been unable to pivot to behaving differently for fixed price contracts, which is not surprising given corporate inertia.

I realized at some point that when people at work draw on whiteboards it usually ends up as boxes and lines between boxes.

But after thinking about it, it feels natural, because usually we talk about "Things" and the "Connections" between them.

Could be a companies org chart, a family tree, a network diagram, abstract things like processes. It's all "Things" and "Connections".

Maybe that's why graph theory has so many applications. Because at the end, it's all just graphs with vertices and edges.

> Germany, one of the most progressive nations on the earth, went and shut down all of its nuclear plants as a knee jerk reaction.

Anti nuclear sentiment had been building in Germany since at least the 70s. Then Chernobyl happened in 1986 and it got even stronger. It was part of what propelled the Greens into the administration 1998.

That administration reached an agreement for the nuclear exit in 2000 and the first plant went offline in 2003.

Merkels cabinet tried to extend the planned runtimes for the remaining plants, and it was that extension that was rolled backed after Fukushima.

Now, you can think that it was a big mistake, but it certainly was not a knee jerk reaction. It was a decision that was 50 years in the making.

That’s right.

You can use a number as a unique identifier for each person that everybody stores. You can also use a number as a secret code to authenticate yourself.

But you can’t use the same number for both purposes.

The idea is to cast much larger pieces than before. Traditionally it might have been dozens of pieces. Tesla is currently doing the underbody in only three pieces, and they were trying to cast it as a single piece.

Does that warrant a new word? I don’t know. But there is an innovation here in how it is manufactured.

It would be common to say 7000 pounds. It’s less common in everyday usage to say 7k pounds.

An imperial mile is 1,609 meters. A nautical mile is 1,852 meters.

Isn’t that how all locks work? Or at least most?

I’ve always assumed the energy cost to pump the water would make it cost prohibitive, but I wonder how it compares to rerouting ships or moving containers over land.

The government didn't call it Star Wars, they called it SDI. Some lobbyists used that term and they were the ones that Lucasfilm tried to sue.

The lawsuit was dismissed, btw.

> On November 26, 1985, the suit was dismissed by Judge Gerhard Gesell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, on the grounds that the lobbyists' use of the mark in a noncommercial and non-trade context fell outside the jurisdiction of trademark law. [1]

[1] "Lucasfilm Ltd. v. High Frontier, 622 F. Supp. 931 (D.D.C. 1985)". Justia Law. (via Wikipedia) https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/6...

Case in Point: I really like Costco, but if I ever cancel my membership then it is because of how they seem to reshuffle significant parts of the store every few weeks.

I don't know if they think I will buy more if I run around for fifteen minutes looking for something, but man it's annoying.

They probably think of it as 'increasing engagement'. To me it's just wasting my time.

Plus you’d take a great step towards solving our energy problems.

> you can tell the growth rate of the company.

You can even do this when you don’t know the exact interval by using probabilities. The Allies used this method to estimate German tank production in World War II by analyzing the serial numbers of captured or destroyed tanks.

This is know as the German Tank Problem [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

If I ask it what color an orange it and it says blue, that would be wrong.

If you ask it a question and it makes up a completely fabricated story, like for example the case files in that recent legal case [1], then saying it was “wrong” doesn’t really seem to capture it.

Calling it a hallucination is a great analogy, because the model made up a plausible sounding, but completely fabricated story. It saw things that were never real.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-c...

Employment in California is ‘at will’, which means they can fire him without a reason.

Wrongful termination only applies when someone is fired for illegal reasons, like racial discrimination, or retaliation, for example.

I mean I’m sure they can all sue each other for all kinds of reasons, but firing someone without a good reason isn’t really one of them.