ridgeguy

69 ms·

1. 781.▲
   by ridgeguy 10y ago

   Any reason why you think this is unique to government employment? My experience in both gov't and private sector work suggests it's ordinary human nature.
2. 782.▲
   by ridgeguy 10y ago

   Reason could have been my favorite character. Simple, straightforward, no ambiguity in its dialog. Everybody listened to Reason.
3. 783.▲
   by ridgeguy 10y ago

   On Mac: there's a setting in System Preferences->Security & Privacy that allows you to install and run apps from "Anywhere". It's a walled garden, but the walls aren't as tall on the desktop OS. Yet.
4. 784.▲
   by ridgeguy 10y ago

   There are cold plasmas. Some of these "non thermal" plasmas have been used to disinfect wounds. It's odd to see a column of ionized air exiting a tube and impinging on bare skin, but it's one application in development f
5. 785.▲
   by ridgeguy 10y ago

   More like a sonic absorber. Plasmas are electrical conductors. The electric field of an incident radar wave couples to electrons and ions that compose the plasma and drives currents. This ends up dissipating the radar energy as heat. It&#x2
6. 786.▲
   by ridgeguy 10y ago

   I think the plasma region has a different kinematic viscosity than the un-ionized region. This should change the Reynolds number (ratio of inertial to viscous forces), and that should profoundly affect things like flow separation, turbulenc
7. 787.▲
   by ridgeguy 10y ago

   Agreed. The only proof of consciousness case we have (i.e., consciousness arising from Big Bang gases and getting to this conversation) incorporated sense-motor-environment-sense loops. Don't know if it can happen without such interact
8. 788.▲
   by ridgeguy 10y ago

   They kind of do. Prices for synthetics are typically ~ 75% of the natural equivalent. For CVD synthetics, there's significant margin in that pricing, margin that could be used to initiate price wars. For now, the synthetic vendors are
9. 789.▲
   by ridgeguy 10y ago

   What Hondor said, and it's extremely capital-intensive to develop a mine to production. Even after all the geoexploration to find a deposit, it's on the order of $1B - $2B to get into production. You have to move and inspect hundr
10. 790.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    And DeBeers is suing IIa Technologies, which is arguably the current largest (by revenue) maker of synthetic gem diamonds. I think the dinosaur's brain has finally perceived the mammals chewing on its tail. DeBeers won't prevail.
11. 791.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    Depends on how long ago "they" developed telescopes capable of viewing Earth with good resolution. We know in principle how to build such instruments. "They" may have watched the Romans build roads and sussed out their m
12. 792.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    I appreciate the thoughtful reply, thank you. But it's not a strawman. That's when you advance an argument that wasn't at issue. I supported the article's thesis, that fewer people will be coding in the future, and provi
13. 793.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    Great! Thanks very much.
14. 794.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    I believe she's got a broader view. "All the other milestones found her trailing behind her peers: potty-training, dressing herself, identifying colors." These seem less like specific intellectual milestones than general deve
15. 795.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    Very pure water is corrosive. I built a CVD lab that had aluminum deposition chambers plumbed into a DI water cooling system. The water was fed from a purifier that provided 18MΩ-cm water. The water corroded the aluminum chamber cooling pas
16. 796.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    YMMV. I'm far faster at picking text labels from a list than picking the icons. I see the text label as an icon. The text "icon" is simple and unchanging. I can pick it out much faster than funny pictograms that change with e
17. 797.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    Thanks very much for clarifying. That the 4W didn't apply to a single core fell through a cognitive crack. The power density is impressively low, indeed. Looking forward to more info in Sept.
18. 798.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    I'm curious about the thermal issues. From the article, the power density is (4 W)/ (0.1mm^2), or 40W/mm^2. Intel's Haswell chip has a TDP of ~ 65W, an area of 14.7mm^2, for a power density of 4.4W/mm^2. Is this pow
19. 799.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    While lots of hip and knee prosthetics last longer than 10 years, too many don't. The implants use synthetic materials to replace both sides of the joint, so there isn't for example, a metal femoral ball running against the patien
20. 800.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    I think the author was saying something different, with which I agree. There's a POV from which code is the details needed to get something done, and the less, the better. In my life, the less visible the code task has become, the more
21. 801.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    You beat me to it! Nasal secretions should be good sources of airborne pathogens. Different pathogen profile from fingernails, etc. Wider challenges for a developing immune system.
22. 802.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    I still have a VCR that I very occasionally use to watch some old VHS tapes. Nostalgia nite, with buttered popcorn. The OP article will probably be the kick in the butt I need to send those tapes off for copying to DVD. When my VCR finally
23. 803.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    You were right to use that computer as an example. Here's an MRI probe that's quite literally microscopic. Fig 1 says it's about 3.5µm in diameter. [1] [1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.04238v2.pdf
24. 804.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    I'd also suggest a book by Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation. [1] Not software explicitly, but patterns of behavior, which is pretty close. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation
25. 805.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    Thanks for the interesting link, I'll read Fryer's studies. One thing suggested by the last chart in that story is that use of force stats depends strongly on whether the data sets come from police sources or civilian sources. I g
26. 806.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    Here's a publication [1] which indicates your belief that whites suffer higher rates of death by police action is incorrect. The probability of a black being killed by police is ~ 3.5x the probability for whites. Probably worth your ti
27. 807.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    It's a new motor, not a battery. They've eliminated dysprosium and terbium from the motor magnets, freeing them from a dependency on China, which is the go-to producer for those particular rare earth elements.
28. 808.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    We should get some extraordinary views of Jupiter's polar aurora activity. Also much higher resolution of gas dynamics phenomena because of Juno's perijove altitude of ~3,000 miles. Doubt we'll see depth, unless it's thr
29. 809.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    My anecdote tracks with yours. Ours was a materials startup, no code involved, but totally dependent on a then-new type of plasma chemistry. Intel Capital brought over their Wall of Faces (mostly technologists) for a "tech DD meeting&q
30. 810.▲
    by ridgeguy 10y ago

    Minimum Doppler shift of the cosmic background radiation integrated around the entire sky?