throwaway_yy2Di

15 ms·

91.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
The point isn't the absolute amount of mass, but how deep the gravitational wells go -- how rapidly objects can orbit. It's not only about massive objects; it's about compact ones. If you have only one supermassive black
92.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
"For the special case of the ejection of binary stars, described in Section 6, we employ octuple floating-point precision (~64 digits)." http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.5022
93.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
" You can't solve this by using shorter cables, because that decreases your energy capacity at the same rate. If you use cables of 1/10th the length (~100 m), you get only 1/10th the potential energy storage per ton. The
94.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
Actually, the majority of the weight would be in steel rope. For one type [0], the safe limit is a tensile load of about 134-150 MN/m^2 (= MPa) [1]. At a density of 8 g/cm^3, the limiting length of a uniform cable is ~1.7 - 1.9 ki
95.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
I think that's right (also not an astronomer). I looked this up in the Hipparcos catalog [0][1] -- that's one that measures parallax distances to bright stars. It's supposed to be complete to at least +7.3 magnitude [0]. Cutt
96.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
Gravity exerts almost no torque here. Philae has 100 kg of inertia, but it weighs less than a feather. Even if were in a strong gravity field, that still wouldn't orient it, if there's no force like air resistance to attenuate its
97.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
1.7 kg, I think: TABLE I Mass breakdown of Rosetta Lander, including sub-units on the Orbiter. Unit Mass (kg) Thermal Control System 3.9 ...MLI ...2.7
98.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
I guess so. The rated power [0] is 32 watts at 3 AU (current distance from sun), and it's getting 10% of that, for 20 minutes a day. (I'm not sure what a "day" is; maybe it's the comet's rotational day, which i
99.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
"And what is the major power draw that leads to such a short battery life? The heater to keep the electronics warm?" Yes, it's in the other post: "It is very unlikely right now. We have 1.5 hours [of sunlight
100.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
I'm sure there's a few -- the technical term you want is "district heating". I.e., http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024952673_amazonheat... "Partnering with other companies, A
101.
German Cloud Company Offering Free Heat If You Have Room for Some of Its Servers(slate.com)
171 points by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago|83 comments
102.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
It doesn't look exceptionally parallel -- the throughput figures are similar to those in PCIe SSDs. 880 MB/s doesn't come close to saturating even a PCIe bus (4 GB/s, for v2 8x), let alone DDR3 (13 GB/s per channel)
103.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
The read latency is about as slow as the earliest RAM ever used -- tubes of liquid mercury used as acoustic delay lines. (150 us vs. 222 us (microseconds)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory#Mercury_dela...
104.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
So, this seems to be an evolution of Greg Wyler's WorldVu Constellation, Musk's comment follows reports that he's looking into lending support to a small-satellite venture established with the goal of providing
105.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
It's supposed to be a constellation of ~700 satellites, that definitely suggests low orbit. (Rationale: With high orbits like GEO, a single satellite covers half the planet, so there's no obvious reason to have hundreds of them. B
106.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
How does POWER8 compare to x86, e.g. Haswell? Just skimming some of the architecture details... * 4x hardware threads per core (8-way SMT vs. 2) * 1/4th FP throughput per core (8 SP flops/cycle vs. 32) * 3x bandwidth to RAM (230 G
107.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
I'll assume we're selling fractional chickens. The problem has 5 free parameters and 2 equality constraints, and several inequality constraints, so it's underconstrained, and its solution space is a (5-3) = 2-dimensional surf
108.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
38 kilobits = 4.7 kB, but yes. Here's the complete genome of the pandemic strain (scroll down a bit): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KJ660346 Here's the paper sequencing it. ([edit]: I just realized the
109.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
My comment was more about forward-prediction, but you're right.
110.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
Here's all the cost figures in metric, in case you forgot how to handle gallons => acre-feet in your head. cost / cubic meter [ Residential ] $0.63 Fresno $1.69 Boston $2.64 HN'er i
111.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
The CDC spreadsheet is supposed to model a single West African country, and doesn't explicitly model any of those things. It doesn't account for finite medical capacity. It assumes a specified fraction of patients are isolated in
112.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
I think these models are extremely suspect, with nil predictive value. Where you have sustained exponential growth dynamics, as here, the results are fantastically sensitive to the parameters which go in the exponent, which in this case y
113.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
Isn't that for citizens and residents of those EU states? This "e-residency" is for anyone in the world: there's 241 nations in the "Your Country" menu. (which by the way is a few years outdated: e.g. there&#x2
114.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
Would these Cuban doctors be likely to escape to the US via Liberia? Normally it's illegal for them (doctors) to travel outside of the country: http://www.bbc.com/travel/blog/20130116-cuba-lifts-travel-re...
115.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
What sort of existential risk is this supposed to protect against? The articles' examples are all wrong (these aren't Musk's examples): "A billion years will give us four more orbits of the Milky Way galaxy, an
116.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
You're right! My mistake.
117.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
What's your source?
118.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
It's linked in that blog post: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/2g43kw/a_generic_drug...
119.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
[off topic] Wow, his last post created some bizarre drama on Reddit: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/09/12/thiola_retro... His criticism of a biotech CEO provoked a Reddit thread with two thous
120.
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
Here's one of the previous largest outbreak, 2000-2001 in Uganda. (Note unlike the Wikipedia one, it's not cumulative). Looks like a sudden decline in new cases right after a CDC intervention -- very sharp inflection point. The cu

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