idlewords

16 ms·

91.
by idlewords 2y ago
I've noticed a fun split among people I know—those who grew up on a farm will move heaven and earth never to deal with chickens again, while people who grew up in cities or suburbs are really into the idea.
92.
by idlewords 2y ago
Bird flu is what's going on.
93.
by idlewords 2y ago
If your threat model is tracking, then worry about carrying around the 24/7 tracking device more than the specific software you run on it.
94.
by idlewords 2y ago
Yo mama so fat...
95.
by idlewords 2y ago
All of them!
96.
by idlewords 2y ago
Alcohol in cocktails is like MSG in cooking. Sometimes you just have to sneak some in there to tie everything together.
97.
by idlewords 2y ago
It is very scary. Oddly that makes blogs kind of a good place to start, since almost no one will find them or read them. It's public writing, but a lot less nerve-wracking than putting yourself out there in other formats (like forum po
98.
by idlewords 2y ago
There was a fatality on a Southwest flight in 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380
99.
by idlewords 2y ago
The best writing advice I ever got was from a college professor—"everybody's got 100 bad essays in them. You just have to get them out." I feel like this is what blogging is especially good for. You can clear out the awful st
100.
by idlewords 2y ago
Yeah, or create a CAPTCHA that is something like "what transmission components did this car need replaced before reaching Kinshasa" and hide your Tier 1 support reps behind it.
101.
by idlewords 2y ago
When people say stuff like this I like to test the claim by kicking them in the shin.
102.
by idlewords 2y ago
I'm too ignorant to answer that, but the technical paper here [ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.11871 ] goes into a wealth of detail, and includes an image of Earth as it would appear to such a telescope (before and afte
103.
by idlewords 2y ago
There's also that thread about the Belgian couple who drove across the Congo: https://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/democratic-republ... I call these kinds of forum threads "afternoon destroyers". I
104.
by idlewords 2y ago
A different stab at this is to ask what it would take to build a telescope that could image some of these Earth-like planets, a project that turns out to be easier (in a very loose sense of that word) than sending cameras there. The idea
105.
by idlewords 2y ago
In space culture this is widely considered a dick move.
106.
by idlewords 2y ago
That's been the status quo since Concorde. The problem is it's hard to make a supersonic jet that has decent subsonic performance, you kind of have to pick one flight regime or the other to optimize for. And the market for busines
107.
by idlewords 2y ago
It's not pessimism to correctly describe reality.
108.
by idlewords 2y ago
Remember that the biggest technical challenge to passenger supersonic flight is hacking Congress. People really don't like plutocrats in private jets cracking their windows and scaring their dog.
109.
by idlewords 2y ago
Baldly accusing someone of bad faith is serious business, and I believe against the rules of this forum. It is way worse than calling out what you believe are bad arguments, as it's a slur against someone's integrity and character
110.
by idlewords 2y ago
Nominative determinism. There's also the pithy Latin phrase nomen omen .
111.
by idlewords 2y ago
A specific Mach number is what airliner airframes are designed to fly at; it's absolutely the correct unit to talk about in this context. If airplane A is designed to cruise at 0.94 mach, it is faster than airplane B that cruises at 0.
112.
by idlewords 2y ago
You're saying planes have a top speed faster than their cruise speed; I'm saying it doesn't matter which of the two metrics you compare on, older jets are faster on both.
113.
by idlewords 2y ago
You can't tell someone you respect them in the same paragraph where you're accusing them of bad faith.
114.
by idlewords 2y ago
If you want to go by top speeds, for the 787 (entered service 2011) it's Mach 0.9, for the A-350 (2015) it's 0.89, while for the 707-120 (1958) it's Mach 0.91. The 747 (1970) can go Mach 0.94. Modern jets are built to fly sli
115.
by idlewords 2y ago
The real product Boom hopes to offer is regulatory capture, so that restrictions on supersonic business jets can be lifted. Then the bizjet itself can sell as a luxury status symbol.
116.
by idlewords 2y ago
They are not; the 707 flew noticeably faster than modern airliners (525 knots cruise, compare to 485 knots for the Boeing 787).
117.
by idlewords 2y ago
The sky was also noticeably darker.
118.
by idlewords 2y ago
Here is a monster pilot forum thread on Concorde that ends up pulling in senior engineers, pilots, aerodynamicists and even a former flight attendant. They lovingly go over every detail of the plane's design and operation. WARNING, ser
119.
by idlewords 2y ago
Calling his firm "Tools for Humanity" shows an unusual level of self-awareness for Altman.
120.
by idlewords 2y ago
Unfortunately this is a topic that attracts LARPers. Remember that if things get spicy, you are not going to settings nerd your way out of a bad interaction with the police. Tech advice for legal and illegal protests is pretty much diametri

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