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thenobsta

720 karma · joined January 14, 2015

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thenobsta··on Saving Jet Fuel
There's a bunch of other interesting flight path optimization work going on at https://contrails.org/.

It turns out contrails contribute to 2% of global warming power and is relatively easily avoided. The cost might be a bit more fuel consumption though.

thenobsta··on Show HN: NixOS-DGX-Spark – Nix and NixOS on the DGX Spark
This is incredible. I have a Jetson lying around and will try to it out on this. I use it to play with vision models, not LLMs, and have been wanting a better way to manage the machine.
thenobsta··on Writing by hand is good for your brain
I loved reading the writing-setup guidance. After a lot of writing myself (mostly throwaway stuff) I've settled on a fountain pen with a small stack of decent printer paper on top a stainless steel clipboard. I skip the clip and use four magnets on corners of the paper to hold it in place. The magnets are either small enough or slide around easily enough to give me the space I need to write but hold enough to keep the paper in place. Importantly, the magnets don't cause any ripples or rising of the paper as the clip does over it's backing. Writing on this setup feels uniformly smooth.

Once I settled on this method, other writing setups felt unsatisfying. Maybe others will enjoy this setup as much as I do :)

thenobsta··on Factories are just rooms
I loooove the idea of teaching children inspiration instead of intimidation. Everything in the built world was made by a person just like you and me. That person may have had special training or unique experiences, but we too can move towards training and experiences and build/do cool things.

One of the ways I try to do this with my kid, is to try to investigate what's behind what we see and interact with -- with technical stuff it's asking how it works and how things fit together, with social stuff it's asking what's going behind the scenes and getting involved with it. Then reflecting on how cool the technical thing or event/social machinery is and what function it serves. This has been generative of tons of great questions from my kid and great discussion with them.

thenobsta··on Use boring languages with LLMs
I would looove to see an analysis of this.
thenobsta··on The new Apple begins to emerge
This spurred me look at the board of Apple. Not a lot of builders/software/hardware/product people one there.
thenobsta··on Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
Megatron is also a film buff and the enemy of Optimus Prime. Optimus Prime flies well above the mezzanine.
thenobsta··on Pink noise reduces REM sleep and may harm sleep quality
I really like brown noise at night.

My immediate thought about this article was that I'd love to see this study on brown noise (albeit, with more participants).

Second thought was that, I wonder if some A/B testing with my garmin watch would give signal on this. Life is probably too hectic to get real signal.

thenobsta··on I'm returning my Framework 16
Same. I'm very happy with my FW13 too. It replaces the MBA for my purposes -- dev on linux (mostly webdev on this machine, have a remote machine for gpu/heavy work), web browsing, streaming, some very light gaming (portal 2 on steam).

I'm waiting on that test too :) a few more cpu generations and I'll be itching to upgrade. I'm excited to for that to happen.

thenobsta··on The C++ standard for the F-35 Fighter Jet [video]
I wonder how these compare to high frequency training standards. It seems like they'd have similar speed/reliability/predictability requirements in the critical paths.
thenobsta··on China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from thorium
I'd love to see as much electrification as possible.

On the aviation note, sadly, aviation bats higher than its C02 accounting. Contrails add another 1-2% on top of contribution from it's C02 emissions. It's entirely avoidable and could be resolved at relatively low cost.

https://contrails.org/faq/#how-are-contrails-contributing-to...

thenobsta··on Blender 5.0
Thanks!
thenobsta··on Blender 5.0
Is there any canonical literature on this? I've been interested in what's inside the brep kernels recently.
thenobsta··on Think in math, write in code (2019)
Amazing book. I love how he brings math into something tacit and internal.
thenobsta··on Munich's surfers left stunned after famed river wave vanishes
The forced update bricked the wave :(
thenobsta··on The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem
Thanks for the report! This iteration of earphones will be the Honda civic of ears phones, not the BMW.
thenobsta··on The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem
:( I recently lost my APP1 and was going to buy new airpods this week. I guess I'm going to look elsewhere until Apple improves their quality. I'm one of the few that are bothered by ANC, so I don't use it. But I also don't want to buy/support a subpar product release.
thenobsta··on Intercellular communication in the brain through a dendritic nanotubular network
One of the neat and mindnumbing things about the brain is the number of information passing pathways. There are so many and as this discovery evidences, we're still finding new ones.

Not sure our ANNs will ever be able to model them all.

thenobsta··on EVs are depreciating faster than gas-powered cars
This got me curious about tesla prices over time. Turns out someone has a nice spreadsheet of this. I don't know about the accuracy, but it's a cool spreadsheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F5IQOynIawoXiJPVarLD...

thenobsta··on EVs are depreciating faster than gas-powered cars
What a reference. Thanks for taking me back to the 90s. I have fond memories of memorizing Running with Scissors :)

Yeah, tech for this stuff is moving super fast. It's hard to know what will endure, what will be upgradeable, and what will be cast aside.

I recently bought a low mileage used EV for relatively cheap. I'm hoping I'll be able to drive the battery into the ground. Then I'm betting that, in 6-8(10?)yrs when I need a new one, there will be better battery chemistries so I can extend the car's life even further.

thenobsta··on Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications, 2nd ed
It's astounding how much there is to this field.
thenobsta··on Slow social media
Goodreads/book discussions -- the best class of social media.

Requires some (significant?) investment to have an opinion on a book. It's often pretty obvious if someone hasn't read a book and is commenting on it. The interval between comments is hours/days because users are off reading the book.

thenobsta··on Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio (2024)
I got chills reading this. Congrats!
thenobsta··on Altered states of consciousness induced by breathwork accompanied by music
oh so satisfying.
thenobsta··on Altered states of consciousness induced by breathwork accompanied by music
I think many different states can arise. In deep meditation you’re epistemically open and experientially vulnerable. You're softening your priors so much that both your way of knowing and your way of experiencing can manifest in manifold ways.
thenobsta··on Can an email go 500 miles in 2025?
Thanks for letting me be one of the lucky ones.

Obligatory xkcd 10,000 lucky people explainer: https://xkcd.com/1053/

thenobsta··on Engineered Addictions
I was talking with a friend who is a camp counselor for a small summer camp the other day and they said that 4 of the 35 or so kids at the camp left because they couldn’t be away from their devices.

This power intermittent reinforcement in the on-ramp of addiction is scary powerful.

Do we have any ways to innoculate ourselves and the future generations against it?

The author poses changing the game which is support. I guess the trendy “dopamine fast” is a tool against this or weekly screen free time. Maybe more education on intermittent reinforcement or a D.A.R.E-like program for apps (a this one is a little tongue-in-cheek, but not really).

thenobsta··on Biff – a batteries-included web framework for Clojure
I've played around with Biff. It's an amazing project and a great way to get started with web-development in Clojure. Clojure can be kinda confusing because of the community defaults to orthogonal libraries. Biff, makes it easy to see which libraries are useful to connect up.

Thanks for the great work!

thenobsta··on ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
Nuclear physics wants to move everything towards Iron, right?

Lead to gold could be an economically viable target for a fission. Produce a little bit of energy with a final product of gold. Buy the lead, sell the electrons and gold.

This is way better than alchemy. We get real gold and a black gold alternative. ;)

thenobsta··on What Is "Induced Atmospheric Vibration"?
All of it, I guess. That phasor is always complex.
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