simiones

35 ms·

481.
by simiones 2y ago
Aren't the waves in the walking droplet experiment transverse waves, that do have polarization? Polarization is a property of waves, not particles.
482.
by simiones 2y ago
> Mars is not strictly worse than Everest. It absolutely is. The only way in which it might be slightly more hospitable is that the regolith is easier to bury roots into than rock. > Moss can survive extremely low temperatures as long
483.
by simiones 2y ago
There is no soil on Mars either. There are rocks, dust, and sometimes ice. And my point is that Mars is many times worse than a combination of Antarctica and Mt Everest.
484.
by simiones 2y ago
It's almost certainly impossible. The amount of radiation, the toxic chemistry of martian soil, the lack of any form of liquid water, the long stretches of time with far below 0 temperatures [Edit], the near 0 atmosphere - all combined
485.
by simiones 2y ago
It's not very hard to perform Bell test-style experiments with macroscopic objects, the problem is that the Bell inequality actually holds for them. Many classical physics phenomena produce pairs of objects whose properties must be sha
486.
by simiones 2y ago
Measurement means the same thing in classical and quantum mechanics: you interact with the system using a measurement apparatus. For the particular experiment I'm thinking of, you'd have to interact with the bouncing droplets to m
487.
by simiones 2y ago
The hydrodynamic analogue of quantum mechanics has some behaviors of QM, but not all. It's a nice analogy, and it is a real physical system of course, but it is not how elementary particles behave. If you construct a hydrodynamic e
488.
by simiones 2y ago
I know about the hydrodynamic analogues, and I've seen the double-slit experiment with the bouncing droplet. However, it is unfortunately not a very good model, as it requires changes in the wave to propagate at infinite speed in order
489.
by simiones 2y ago
I'm pretty sure that collecting objects from a field of debris where every object is moving at speeds of up to 30,000 km/h relative to other objects, in random directions, is much more of a scientific challenge before even looking
490.
by simiones 2y ago
Nothing in quantum theory is understood at a level where we can say "this is a physical thing" vs "this is a mathematical abstraction of the physical thing", like we can say for classical physics. In classical physics, i
491.
by simiones 2y ago
The ether was considered to be the physical medium in which light waves propagate, much like air is the medium in which sound waves propagates. The Michelson-Morley experiment (and its successors) proved that it can't be a stationary m
492.
by simiones 2y ago
Well, I'd say using an entirely different collection type than the rest of language (STArray instead of [a]) is already a big complication. It also ends up being more than double the size of the Java code. And, as the author admits, it
493.
by simiones 2y ago
I don't know about other Unixes, but Linux allows the sysadmin to decide if overcommit is allowed or not. I believe Windows does as well, but the default is to not overcommit.
494.
by simiones 2y ago
While shrinking vectors may not be that common, creating and deleting vectors for short lived operations in a long lived program is certainly not.
495.
by simiones 2y ago
Not really, certain problems are just inherently harder to express in a purely functional way than they are in an imperative way (and the reverse is just as true). For example, computing a histogram is much simpler in imperative terms (keep
496.
by simiones 2y ago
Purely functional language is pretty universally taken to mean that the language enforces function purity for all functions [perhaps with some minor escape hatches like Haskell's unsafePerformIO].
497.
by simiones 2y ago
I think Idris is the best example of a pure strict-by-default language (that also supports totality checking, I believe).
498.
by simiones 2y ago
It seems that someone did come up with a formal definition to try to capture the concept [0], though I haven't looked into the details to see whether it really matches the colloquial use of the terms "pure" and "impure&q
499.
by simiones 2y ago
Well, technically that isn't true if you use, for example, unsafePerfomIO in the defintion of x. Referential transparency is still a spectrum, just like purity. Haskell is much closer to purity than the vast majority of languages out t
500.
by simiones 2y ago
There are clear, well documented, notorious cases, some of them even ruled on by international tribunals, of the USA causing direct harm in several South American countries (support and training of anti-government CONTRA torture squads, ass
501.
by simiones 2y ago
Actually, speech-to-text benefits massively from a good language model. It's impossible to do speech to text if you don't understand the language. The better you understand the language and the context of what is being said, the
502.
by simiones 2y ago
So in most of the countries building nuclear power, civilian authorities are using civilian contractors to build civilian-run nuclear power using civilian scientists. They may be doing this with the intention of having the personnel, know
503.
by simiones 2y ago
I have no idea what link you're making between nuclear power and the military industrial complex. The vast majority of nations with nuclear power have no nuclear weapons program - Germany first and foremost, for obvious WWII-related re
504.
by simiones 2y ago
> 1. It's a communication mechanism. Other people on your team should know what approaches you're exploring. If they have the time to do that, they can look at a branch as well. > 2. It is much easier to review small, increm
505.
by simiones 2y ago
Running an app store is completely different than running a games publishing or even development business. Microsoft publishes and develops games, and it also runs some games platforms. Google and Apple are almost exclusively in the platfor
506.
by simiones 2y ago
A day is barely enough time to have even a first go at a more serious problem. Why would you push failed starts into the main branch? And why do you think it's somehow better to have code behind a runtime branch (if) rather than a git
507.
by simiones 2y ago
That doesn't inspire confidence in Levin's research, if it were true. Wolfram's quixotic quest for a theory of everything is something basically only he believes in, with very little shot at doing anything worthwhile, at leas
508.
by simiones 2y ago
Is there any realistic way to dissipate the heat from a datacenter in space, even ignoring the transport costs? Also, the limitations of being in an extreme hostile environment make it completely impossible to get cruise ship levels of comf
509.
by simiones 2y ago
Let's first build a self-sustaining mega-city in the Sahara desert, or in the Antarctic, and then we can use what we learn doing this to start thinking about a colony on Mars. Building new self-sustaining mega-cities on Earth has obvio
510.
by simiones 2y ago
This makes no sense on the face of it. A company that pays its employees more so that they can afford its products?

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