pfdietz

22 ms·

601.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
The Unreasonable Annoyance of Cliches But then, this thead is all about proteins incorporating structural cliches, isn't it?
602.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
It could also mean "evolutionarily accessible". The basin of attraction in sequence space has to be sufficiently large that evolution could stumble across it.
603.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
That's the product of math from the point of view of mathematicians. But is it the point of view of those funding math? I suggest if one looks at the history of funding for mathematics and science, the product of these efforts is not
604.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
I'm reminded of the universal computer viruses of Steve Barnes' SF stories, which ended up infecting people too.
605.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
Sure, politicians are going to be happy with less economic power, and as a result less political and military power. Seems exactly like something politicians would go for. /s
606.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
I will add that if we're talking about abnormal operation, say in a reactor meltdown, uranium dioxide can reach its melting point, 2865 C. Anyway, it's a promising comparison, since the core of a PWR can reach volumetric power d
607.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
Sure, but the center of a PWR fuel rod reaches high temperature in normal operation. Uranium dioxide is not a great conductor of heat. Chips have the advantage that the workings are right at the surface, mere microns from it. So the heat
608.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
> Sophie Wilson has famously said how easy it is for active silicon to get hotter than a nuclear reactor. The center of a fuel rod in a PWR reaches more than 1000 C. Perhaps Wilson was talking about the thermal power/area of chips v
609.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
Well that seems reasonable.
610.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
"Was" It shut down earlier this year.
611.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
Now someone needs to develop GMOs that safely immobilize cadmium and the consternation will be epic. Or just plant alpine pennycress, which is reported to be able to extract Cd from soil at a rate three orders of magnitude higher than it is
612.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
I was noticing on my last trip to Europe that telephone/power poles were made of concrete, not wood. This was near Budapest.
613.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
The underlying problem, I think, is that homes are used as displays of wealth. Veblen goods.
614.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
> Does anyone else find it surprising that rockets are a century old[1] and yet still seem to fail spectacularly with amazing regularity, often due to some small flaw? Not really. The performance metrics on rocket engines are utterly in
615.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
Necessary and sufficient are different concepts.
616.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
I believe the safety factors in Falcon 9 are 1.4. NASA credited SpaceX with using safety factors larger than normal for aerospace.
617.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
It suggests we need to find cheaper materials from which to build homes.
618.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
"Do as we say, not as we do."
619.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
Now consider all the horror it has prevented. But that requires seeing things that aren't there, so superficially you don't consider it.
620.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
I think it would be useful for experimental construction of individual new molecules, for example for providing data for molecular simulation codes.
621.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
From a US law perspective it's an immediate nonstarter on constitutional grounds.
622.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
Time and again Europe makes me appreciate the First Amendment.
623.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
It shows free trade was a hypocritical charade even before Trump. Europe spent years inventing reasons why US grain and soybeans had to be excluded. GMO witch hunting, for example.
624.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
Cooking condensed beyond the point of usefulness. It's another book for Zach Weinersmith.
625.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
That's the cool thing about the God Theory: any events can be explained by it.
626.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
I had thought that too, but the funding was kept there by Congress.
627.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
No, because some killing is necessary for the economy to function. Reduction to zero means elimination of the product. The way this statistical background of economic death is handled is by assigning a finite value to a human life. In the
628.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
US government actions demonstrate the value placed on a life in another country can be much lower than the statistical value here in the US. We could save a life for a few thousand dollars with malaria nets (or so it's claimed); domes
629.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
At global distances a fraction orbital trajectory would use less total rocket delta-V. More practical would be a trajectory that was a series of small suborbital arcs with skipping off the atmosphere (perhaps with some airbreathing propulsi
630.
by pfdietz 5mo ago
We shouldn't anthropomorphize LLMs. They hate it when you do that.

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