retrac

69 ms·

661.
by retrac 3y ago
There's no generally accepted theory for the mechanism of action of inhalational anaesthetics like xenon, which induces a deep coma, somehow, despite being almost chemically inert.
662.
by retrac 3y ago
Yes. Though sometimes LEO satellites use standard hardware. Otherwise, rad hard electronics are quite behind the state of the art. A ~100 MHz 32-bit machine with a few dozen megabytes of RAM is typical of recent low-end rad hard space har
663.
by retrac 3y ago
Systems that use error correcting and robustness codes, checksums, like used on CDs, plus duplication/redundancy. There are resilient file systems that will spread ECC data chunks across multiple devices/media where bit-flips and
664.
by retrac 3y ago
As terrible as the consequences of humanity will be for biodiversity and life on Earth, there is a strange silver lining. We seem to be one of the most intense, unprecedented, sudden, and multifaceted selection pressures life has ever exp
665.
by retrac 3y ago
It wouldn't be needed today on x86_64. The underlying idea - priming the processor with hints about what and when - is now standard practice. There are explicit instructions for manipulating the cache and marking data as needed-soon.
666.
by retrac 3y ago
The inability to compatibly resolve the two most important and basic theories (relativity and quantum throry) means we know either gravitation or quantum mechanics, or most likely both, are wrong, or at least incomplete, in the same wa
667.
by retrac 3y ago
That sounds about right. Though George Washington was probably about average age for his time. I did some back of envelope math once which came to about 10 years. That is to say, absent wars and famines, through most of human history, if
668.
by retrac 3y ago
Is there no forgiveness on US student loans? Government student loans in Canada that aren't paid off after 15 years are forgiven, though they won't give another loan after that.
669.
by retrac 3y ago
The hotter an incandescent element is, the more efficiently it converts heat to light. Think about how something metal and hot glows dull red, while something metal and really hot glows orange-white. Reaching white-hot is a trade-off,
670.
by retrac 3y ago
There's a book on the computers used at NASA from the beginning through to when it was written - late 80s, I think. Whole thing is available online [1] It has a chapter titled "Voyager - The Flying Computer Center". [2] It
671.
by retrac 3y ago
The current sea temperature anomaly is extreme. You can see it plotted since 1980 here: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ The dark black line that diverges in March is this year to date.
672.
by retrac 3y ago
No. You're correct. GPS is the culmination of 50 years of work in radionavigation, and it wasn't the first satellite navigation system either. As so often, the refinement of the technique makes it so widely available and effecti
673.
by retrac 3y ago
I've long thought any supposed economic/technological stagnation was illusory, or at least greatly overstated. The third industrial revolution began several decades ago and we're now in the middle of it. I like to stay grou
674.
by retrac 3y ago
Ada still has killer features that haven't made it into C-like languages. One of my favourite is the split between the abstract/programmer's view of a type, and the machine implementation/representation of the type. Ther
675.
by retrac 3y ago
We do not use unions very often in C/C++ because they are not safe. You have to know how to interpret it; the compiler can't and won't save you if you read the memory as the wrong type. You usually keep a variable set to th
676.
by retrac 3y ago
You are forgetting that it's a 10 minute walk from Forest Hill to one of Toronto's poorest communities. They are part of the same community geographically. Same with Jane/Finch -- within walking distance of very wealthy det
677.
by retrac 3y ago
The latest versions of USB and PCIe are no longer binary digital signalling at all. It is a modulated radio signal [1] carried over a wire, similar to how DSL and cable modems work. Processor and memory busses will be next to switch over.
678.
by retrac 3y ago
I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in Canada, we barely even have "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods. My city is quite well-mixed together economically. Somehow, despite that, the recent dysfunction of
679.
by retrac 3y ago
> why were so many people able to function prior to psychotherapy? Were they? If you look at statistics for harmful behaviours like heavy drinking or interpersonal violence, people in the West were absolute basket cases just 100 years a
680.
by retrac 3y ago
There is no induction, so there is no load. Consider: why does a permanent magnet stay magnetized even in a changing magnetic field? Why do two permanent magnets stay magnetized when you bring them together and apart again? When you move t
681.
by retrac 3y ago
> I assume the argument here is that if you see a huge linguistic expansion and a huge demographic expansion occurring at the same time, you can reasonably conclude that they are the same phenomenon and the expanding language is spoken b
682.
by retrac 3y ago
The fields do not interact in that way. When you move a normal electromagnet through a magnetic field, the electromagnet's field is affected because the the other magnet induces a current in the conductor . Possibly a counter-curren
683.
by retrac 3y ago
I am not quite a prison abolitionist but I am troubled by the same point. Punishment inflicted on an offender is transitive in its pain. Even if suffering is righteously deserved it is shared by innocent people with the capacity to love t
684.
by retrac 3y ago
I phrased it poorly - from an engineering standpoint, the amount of power a superconducting power line can carry is effectively limitless for practical purposes, in relation to the amount of material required. But yes, of course -- as I di
685.
by retrac 3y ago
> than it will start sapping the electromagnetic energy from said superconductor Electromagnetic induction involves the inductor, too. With a conventional electromagnet in a changing field, there is a current (an opposite current, in a
686.
by retrac 3y ago
Well, the ELIZA we all know and love, was just one possible script for ELIZA. With another script, ELIZA could walk you through diagnosing an engine repair. (Sort of, with silly open-ended questions latching on to keywords you used.) It
687.
by retrac 3y ago
Conceivably, though the power density of superconducting energy storage is very low and will likely remain low. It is currently used at grid-scale to smooth out power spikes, since they can charge/discharge their full capacity almost
688.
by retrac 3y ago
Superconductors are in the name. They're ideal conductors. As a corollary, superconductors coiled into a wire, shaped like an inductor, are also ideal inductors. By ideal, I informally mean nearly perfect in a mathematical sense. A
689.
by retrac 3y ago
People are much less likely to litter in a pristine park than in a park already filled with litter.
690.
by retrac 3y ago
The term "biologic" stuck out to me. Its normal use these days is to refer to drugs produced by biological processes - human insulin produced in bacteria is a biologic. It's not that the word is incorrectly used in this cont

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