allenrb

5 ms·

31.
by allenrb 7mo ago
There are no few smart, knowledgeable people in the world (perhaps self-educated, perhaps not) who for a huge variety of reasons may be either unwilling or unable to hold a typical job. I’ll bet most of us here know at least a few people al
32.
by allenrb 8mo ago
Seeing this news story made me briefly fear that they’d found a way to replace this glorious mechanism. Thankfully not. In fact, they’re going to shoot more droplets, more often! So much more fun than LEDs.
33.
by allenrb 8mo ago
I actually like that a lot. Does the job without providing a (practical) target for infotainment. TIL.
34.
by allenrb 8mo ago
Give me a backup camera without a screen and then we’ll talk. Doubly so because once you’ve got that screen, no automaker will resist making it do other things.
35.
by allenrb 8mo ago
This makes me genuinely sad. SpaceX was the one thing of his that Elon has largely avoided screwing up. Imho, this is in large part due to Gwynne Shotwell. She seems to have the personality (not to mention, personal wealth) to kick Elon in
36.
by allenrb 9mo ago
Not that kind of bus. A “satellite bus” is more of a standardized platform onto which mission-specific payloads are integrated. Saves having to design an entire spacecraft from scratch and gives you a known-good set of functionality.
37.
by allenrb 9mo ago
Nothing about this struck me as a sign that money wasn’t well-invested. From the headline, I was picturing “we raised and then I blew it in Vegas”. Nothing wrong with admitting to uncertainty and insecurity. I mean, there are two types of p
38.
by allenrb 9mo ago
Did you miss the quotation marks around “upgrading”?
39.
by allenrb 10mo ago
> Maybe they can launch a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram. Ok, but only if one of them is called “EuroVision”.
40.
by allenrb 10mo ago
Notice as well that no mention of efficiency was made. Perhaps I missed it, but I’m somewhat familiar with power generation, and usually efficiency is front and center. Fact seems to be, nobody doing “AI” gives a damn.
41.
by allenrb 10mo ago
To my eye, there are exactly two effective ways of dealing with the state of media distribution today: 1. Piracy 2. Just say no, recognizing that none of this stuff is necessary to live. The alternative of jumping through the ever-changing
42.
by allenrb 11mo ago
I would’ve expected a hardware-based lithium-ion charge controller which would continue to work regardless of what software runs on the main CPU(s).
43.
by allenrb 11mo ago
I have an idea: Take that $1B, invest it sensibly, and use the income to fund the development of an open, free browser in perpetuity. Nah, that’ll never happen.
44.
by allenrb 11mo ago
The typical 1 gigawatt rating for a nuclear power reactor is measuring electrical output. Given the various inefficiencies, the actual reactor output (as heat) is something like 3x that amount. Whereas a research reactor will be quoted as t
45.
by allenrb 11mo ago
Jesus. You had me at “hand-soldered 01005 components”. I’m tempted to try a few of these just to see how disastrous my build efforts are.
46.
How to Kill 2 Monopolies with 1 Tool (X-ray lithography)(newsletter.semianalysis.com)
5 points by allenrb 1y ago|0 comments
47.
by allenrb 1y ago
My knee-jerk response is that they (China) can “make stuff” and we (USA) cannot. And thinking about it a little more, not sure this is all that far from the mark.
48.
by allenrb 1y ago
I’m not even sure what to say to this. They’re barely short of orbit in terms of energy. Even if you believe that’s all they’ve got or will ever have, merely removing the recovery hardware and robustness from Ship gets them to orbit with pa
49.
by allenrb 1y ago
That’s an upper-stage issue — I was talking about the booster (1st stage). A conventional stage could be placed on top, complete with a traditional abort system and/or something like what Dragon uses.
50.
by allenrb 1y ago
And IMHO this AI race will do something Apollo never did, at least not with people aboard… crash and burn.
51.
by allenrb 1y ago
> What do we do if SETI is successful? Beg to be saved from ourselves? Fire up the old electronic thumb? Open a theme restaurant?
52.
by allenrb 1y ago
If they had achieved orbit on any Starship flight test, it would have been a serious violation of their launch license & test criteria. Hint: they’ve never tried to orbit Starship. Yes, they had expected to do more, sooner. So say that.
53.
by allenrb 1y ago
There is just so much wrong with this from start to finish. Here are a few things, by no means inclusive: 1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting. 2. Nothing based around SLS is remotel
54.
by allenrb 1y ago
I… think you’re joking, but I can’t be sure.
55.
by allenrb 1y ago
I’d like a filter to remove all mention of AI and associated performance from copy like this. Maybe I can build it with… nvm. Seriously, can’t you tell me about the CPU cores and their performance?
56.
by allenrb 1y ago
Man, I dream of living in a world in which our biggest (or even a top-10) environmental concern is “debris from LEO burning up in the atmosphere”. Yes, most of us are pretty angry at/disappointed in Elon these days but there are better
57.
by allenrb 1y ago
But what about the effect on cache… oh, wait! ;-)
58.
by allenrb 1y ago
I’ll bid one no-trump.
59.
by allenrb 1y ago
Or would it be the other way around?
60.
by allenrb 1y ago
It’s this. Even when an effort fails, there are no consequences for the politicians behind it. Nobody gets voted out of office. Nobody loses power. All they need to do is wait a year or two or five and try again. Eventual success is almost

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