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sehansen

354 karma · joined March 23, 2008

Mathematician-cum-embedded software engineer. Haskell and Rust, in theory; Python and C++, in practice.
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sehansen··on Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
If they'd done those two things Wordpress would probably have been far less successful. Which certainly is a way of making WP Engine not even want to do what they did. Heck, they would probably not even exist.
sehansen··on Copyright does more harm than good and should be abolished
US and European payers aren't paying for neither R&D nor amortization. They're paying a negotiated price that depends mostly on how much value the drug provides to the patient and the health system. The costs for the producers aren't really a factor.
sehansen··on Babylonian Lamb Stew with Beets (1750–1730 BCE)
I wonder what they call maize in Egypt then?

According to Kagi Translate, a term for maize that's specific to Egypt is "الذرة الشامية" (al-dhura ash-shāmiyyah) which could be directly translated to "Levantine sorghum". Can anyone with actual knowledge of Egytian Arabic confirm?

Also I had the idea that "Maize" might have come from "Mısır", but etymonline claims it comes from the native (Arawakan) name for the plant: mahiz.

sehansen··on USDA recalls 30k pounds of Argentine beef sold in Texas and Florida
800 lbs is 360 kg, but I think you meant 600 lbs per cow. Still seems realistic.
sehansen··on RISC-V: They Should Have Known Better
No, ARM means "Acorn RISC Machine" and was developed by Acorn Computers, a British computer manufacturer, because the 8-bit MOS 6502 they had based their previous designs on was obsolete, available 16-bit processors "a bit crap"[0] and available 32-bit designs too expensive. So the ARM ISA was developed by a computer manufacturer for use in their own chips in their own products, quite far from an "academic exercise".

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf67JYkUCHQ at 7:35

sehansen··on NP-overrated
It't not a matter of generations. There are plenty of old mathematicians who are very interested in applications and plenty of young mathematicians who are only interested in generalized abstract nonsense. It's more of a difference in personality that will always be there.
sehansen··on Norway became a global salmon behemoth. Now it's facing the consequences
Fish and rice isn't synonymous with sushi. Grilled fish, tempura-fried fish and soups with pieces of fish are all popular in Japanese cuisine.
sehansen··on Chinese chipmaker shares surge 470%
I can't speak for the others, but ST has six fabs in Europe and only one in asia. ST's smallest process node is 18 nm and made in their fab in Crolles, France. In any case trying to compete at the cutting edge of process technology seems to be too expensive to be worth it.
sehansen··on Helium escaping from atmosphere of nearby rocky exoplanet in a habitable zone
If "closest star" is Proxima Centauri, we're talking 4.5 light-years. Getting there in 1000 years means an average speed of 0.45% of the speed of light. At that speed less than 0.01 cm of titanium is enough shielding to keep the radiation out according to figure 1c) in my source below. Which makes sense because because this is ~10% of the speed of "normal" alpha radiation which is stopped by just your skin.

"Radiation Hazard of Relativistic Interstellar Flight" by Oleg Semyonov: https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0610030 via Project Rho: https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/slowerlight3.php

sehansen··on Why American ambulance rides are so expensive
Unfortunately that inside source is often coached by the PR department and are just there to say things they can't get away with saying publicly or don't want to have their exact words on record. I.e. just as much a misrepresentation as the official press releases. Or sometimes even more of a misrepresentation since nobody can actually be held accountable for their words.
sehansen··on Every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera
No they didn't. They had a hiccup in 2020 when the transition to electric cars really started accelerating but after they got their own electric cars into mass production they've reclaimed the top spot at 13.9% of the Chinese market. That's just ahead of Geely at 13.8%, Toyota at 7.8% and BYD at 7.1%.

It was hard to find reputable numbers for all of Q1, so my source is only for january and february: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

sehansen··on GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
In a nuclear energy context "closed cycle" just means that the uranium and plutonium is separated out from the spent fuel for future reuse. The loop is only closed in the sense that some of the spent fuel material that leaves the reactor will enter it again in the future. It doesn't imply that new inputs won't be added to the loop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle_in_France#C...

sehansen··on Organic Maps
A lot of normal people I know used to love maps.me but have become dissatisfied with the ads and other unwelcome commercial elements. They would definitely chose coMaps over Organic Maps just to lessen the risk of that happening again.
sehansen··on Long Island's decommissioned nuclear power plant
Yeah, with how much focus there is on the capital costs of nuclear power plants it's easy to forget they also have moderate operating costs. With the developments we're seeing, you're right that the LCOE of solar and wind is or will soon be lower than the operating costs of nuclear. That leaves the only remaining upsides of nuclear being production stability and energy diversity, and grid batteries are making the first less and less important every year. Not to mention that the capacity factor will be pushed down from the demand side worsening the costs even more since not all operating costs are proportional to the amount of energy generated.
sehansen··on OpenPrinter
Quite a lot of open source hardware is licensed under the BY-SA Creative Commons license which is an actual open source license. E.g. the Arduinos and things like the Milkymist One which can actually run linux.
sehansen··on Long Island's decommissioned nuclear power plant
An already built nuclear plant is cheaper than building new solar and wind, which is what this article is about. It had already started operational tests at 5% capacity when it was shut down.

And nuclear power doesn't inherently emit CO2 (or equivalents), which is what is meant by zero-carbon in this context.

sehansen··on Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor
If your location already has a well-run nuclear energy sector (Finland, Sweden, South Korea): invest in nuclear energy.

If you don't: stick to renewables.

And it also depends on what you mean by "we". As a Dane, I don't think us Danish taxpayers should invest in nuclear energy, but I'm perfectly happy that private Danish investors invest in Seaborg/Saltfoss and Copenhagen Atomics.

sehansen··on Show HN: Zanagrams
Cool game. Too bad you didn't include "oranges" on #4
sehansen··on Historical memory prices 1960-2026
DRAM hit a barrier at 10 nm a few years ago[0], so 16 nm is actually even closer to state-of-the-art. E.g. Micron newest node (1-γ) is their sixth at 10 nm [1] and their first EUV-based node.

The problem is that DRAM is fundamentally based on storing charge in a capacitor and how much charge a capacitor can store is a result of the geometry of the capacitor. So either someone will have to figure out a way to make the same size capacitor take up less space on the RAM chip (this is what broke the previous 20 nm barrier) or someone will have to invent a practical way of making RAM with less than 1 capacitor per bit.

0: https://semiengineering.com/dram-scaling-challenges-grow/

1: https://www.techpowerup.com/333111/micron-announces-shipment...

sehansen··on Historical memory prices 1960-2026
Hmm, so memory is actually still cheap compared to historical highs. At least cheap relative to other computer components.
sehansen··on Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
France does have parallel gas infrastructure though. It's, funnily enough, at around 10% of their electricity supply.
sehansen··on Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
I don't see that?

France: 4.12 tons CO2 per capita Denmark: 4.34 tons CO2 per capita

and the electricity price for industrial costumers is also close to identical:

France: 0.153 EUR/kWh (0.130 EUR/kWh without taxes) Denmark 0.122 EUR/kWh (0.121 EUR/kWh without taxes)

CO2 data from EUs EDGAR: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025?vis=co2pop#emissi...

Price data from: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

sehansen··on Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
The four APRs built in Abu Dhabi cost $32 billion in total and the two they've contracted to build in Czechia is projected to cost $18 billion in total.
sehansen··on Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants
Just a small nitpick: Renault isn't Stellantis and have been quite competitive (if a bit timid) in the EV space. First with the Zoe and now with the Renault 5.
sehansen··on Running local models is good now
Well, there are no disclosure requirements on Deployers because doing any kind of training or fine-tuning automatically makes you a Provider.
sehansen··on Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
SoftBank "only" lost around $10 billion on WeWork. The SoftBank Vision Fund alone invested more than $100 billion in various companies.
sehansen··on Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
36 mpg is 6.5 l/100km. That's only a smidge better than the most efficient Renault Espace from 1999: https://www.auto-abc.eu/Renault-Espace/g988-1997
sehansen··on I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M
Dropping these regulations won't help the competition either.
sehansen··on I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M
Damn, it sucks that people are allowed to get away with that kind of speed. Here in Denmark the mandatory minimum for doing over 200 km/h is losing your license for 3 years, confiscation of the vehicle and a ~$2000 fine. Unfortunately punishment isn't enough to get rid of this thing as around 1000 cars are confiscated each year. Some of them are confiscated for other reasons, like driving with a BAC above 0.2%.
sehansen··on I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M
That's pretty far from the usual views of fascism. Generally fascism can be seen as a form of right wing collectivism organizing all of society into one big hierarchy, with industrialist somewhat below the top and subservient to political leadership. In a fascist society political decrees override both laws and contracts. This means that fascism is inherently centralized and that what companies receive state support depends on who are political favourites at the moment. E.g. a fascist state might support the independent oil companies if it felt the established industrialists were getting too influential, i.e. classical divide and conquer.

By the way, I'm not claiming the things you describe didn't take place for the reasons you claimed. I just don't think it's accurate to describe it as based on fascism.

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