mgsouth

8 ms·

31.
by mgsouth 2y ago
IANAChemist, but to extend the cheesy analogies chemical bonds are like joint custody in a divorce; two atoms share one or more electrons. If it's split more or less evenly then it's called a covalent bond. If it's stacked in
32.
by mgsouth 2y ago
For pressure-sensitive-adhesive tape (cellophane tape) it's mainly fuzzy static cling--wetting and van Der Waal's forces [1]. Wetting is when two substances (even solids) intermingle at their interface. van Der Waal's force i
33.
by mgsouth 2y ago
USPS - United States Postal Service (the governmental mail delivery organization). Not to be confused with: - UPS, United Parcel Service (a for-profit; USPS is notoriously not-for-profit). - UPS, Uninterruptable Power Supply APC - Armored P
34.
by mgsouth 2y ago
I'm not a filesystem expert either, but I've done my time building tools that support those who are. Some of the issues with distributed files systems are: * Deliver-at-least-once: Ever had something hang for a very long time whil
35.
by mgsouth 2y ago
And that, or course, is perfectly doable, and is done all the time. Not perfectly, but good enough. However, that's not generalizable to any other particular case. You always need to consider time, processing, storage, network constrai
36.
by mgsouth 2y ago
Vendor: "Exactly once is possible. We do it!" No, as a vendor you're either deliberately lying, or completely incompentent. Let's insert the words they don't want to. "We do exactly once good enough for your ap
37.
by mgsouth 2y ago
On the contrary, that is an extremely useful process, and is the basis for vast swathes of multiprocessing algorithms (such as "has this thing finished initializing", or "has it been freed"). However, it is "at most
38.
by mgsouth 2y ago
So that everyone's on the same page, perhaps you could clarify what "delivery" means to you? For example: * The human to whom the message is addressed reads it on their screen. * The email is inserted into that person's
39.
by mgsouth 2y ago
It's very odd to phrase it as "tensile strength", but capillary action is an expression of surface tension, which is the result of molecular cohesion--two (water) molecules resisting separation. In other words, strength under
40.
by mgsouth 2y ago
While your comment would normally be considered "humor", and thus automatically subject to downvote, the Committee has noted that it seems, based on the numerous replies, to have tapped into an under-served concept in an upscale d
41.
by mgsouth 2y ago
When you turn on the tv/washing machine/car/set-top box/toaster, and the LEDs all light up and twirl around, what do you think the device is doing?
42.
by mgsouth 2y ago
ldr: Shear forces set up a nano-scale front/back electric potential difference. Arxiv: [1] ACS Nanolett paper: [2] [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.16083 [2] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021&#x2
43.
[Dupe] What Puts the "Tribo" in Triboelectricity?(pubs.acs.org)
2 points by mgsouth 2y ago|1 comments
44.
by mgsouth 2y ago
tldr: Shear forces set up a nano-scale front/back electric potential difference. Arxiv: [1] SciTechDaily summary: [2] And a shout-out to DI, where I saw the first link [3] Edit: Dupe [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com&#x2F
45.
by mgsouth 2y ago
Don't forget the the, uh, pink widows? _Rosencrantz_ ("they're pinkish and make you dead, like him and Gildunstern"). Venemous ambush predators, low density (mostly made of this aeogel with hydrogen bladders). About an i
46.
by mgsouth 2y ago
There are many, many developers who are, deep in their hearts, "programmers"--someone who creates a plan of action, a program, for very complex machines to follow. They are skilled at discerning The Right Way to solve a problem. A
47.
by mgsouth 2y ago
What IDE existed for the HP 2000? (Where I learned, too. In Portland :)
48.
by mgsouth 2y ago
Well, it's the gravity that alters the spacecraft's trajectory. If the Earth was massless then the craft would just sail by. Here's a nice short-ish web page from NASA with nice details [1]. Yeah, "back" seems a lit
49.
by mgsouth 2y ago
The magnitude of the probe's "average" velocity relative to the Earth-object barycenter remains the same. If the universe was just the Earth and it, then you'd see the object making nice ellipical orbits around the Earth
50.
by mgsouth 2y ago
Fully automated? I don't think so, and it falls apart suprisingly quickly. To give an example: All variables (well, in "classical COBOL" at least) are global variables. Since memory is constrained, a really common idiom is to
51.
by mgsouth 2y ago
Let's say you've tested this thing 1 million times. Each time the output was automatically checked by five different and independently-developed test suites. You're ready to swear there's no possible way for it to fail.
52.
by mgsouth 2y ago
Haven't seen the paper, but I'd guess the argument is something like "if the domain for x includes 0, then [edit: whenever x = 0] the Turing machine will get into an infinite loop looking for the first inverted bit[1]. _None_
53.
by mgsouth 2y ago
In the U.S., you may have run across Eugene Volkoh[1] on the news, as a constitutional law expert. He was first famous (well, in our circles) as a software developer; he and his father sold a really popular utility for HP3000 minicomputers
54.
by mgsouth 2y ago
Then one day you really wake up, and realize you do have that job. You hop out of bed with a spring in your step, walk into your office, sit down at your desk... and start debugging a misbehaving compiler macro used everywhere in a 1500-l
55.
by mgsouth 2y ago
Way back when the Interwebz were just a twinkle in Mr. Berners-Lee eye, high-speed networks were 56K (when you could use the phone line), and domains without exclamation marks in them [1] were all shiny and new, I was supervising IT at a pa
56.
by mgsouth 2y ago
Not if the additional cost is more than the additional revenue. Let's assume that without binning you get 20% over cost of manufacturing. If it costs 5% more to bin-check all resistors, and you wind up selling 1% of them for an additio
57.
Time and tide: pendulum clocks and gravity tides(hgss.copernicus.org)
1 points by mgsouth 2y ago|1 comments
58.
by mgsouth 2y ago
"Since pendulum clocks were, until the 1940s, the best timekeepers available, there has been interest in seeing if tidal effects could be observed in the best performing examples of these clocks." Edit: Sry, should be [2020].
59.
by mgsouth 2y ago
The Mississipi, Ohio, and Columbia Rivers enter the room, sit down at a table where the Great Lakes are already drinking.
60.
by mgsouth 2y ago
Well, at least the kid can get a meal at school; sure not getting anything at home.

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