hex4def6

I worry about the demo boards being radically different in terms of layout etc. Even if you're using the same interface and power supply, the PCB may be affecting performance.

Getting full spec performance out of an ADC requires having good layout power supply routing etc.

I would transplant the chips from PCB A to PCB B and vice versa. See if the performance follows the chip or the PCB.

Also check power consumption before / after board swaps. If they are fakes, that would be significantly different.

Counter: Netscape vs Internet Explorer. Netscape had a year lead, but it's hard to compete when Microsoft decided to bundle IE for 'free'.

If profit margins are razor thin, the Apples and Amazons and Microsofts of the world can happily copy an idea and hold their breath far longer than a smaller competitor can.

Yeah, utterly laughable.

I'm not even sure who he's railing against with that. Is it violation of my human rights that I'm "forced" to use IPv4 or TCP/IP by my ISP, or HTTPS by my bank?

As far as being "forced" to use encryption; unless I'm missing something, I can't think of a law that would preclude my transmission of communications with another individual in plaintext. I'm free to use HTTP instead of HTTPS on my website, should I so choose.

And even if there were such a law, I'd be hard-pressed to figure what harm is being done to me (much less deprivation of human right).

It takes a refined form of cynical misanthropy and tanky statism to believe that on balance, people are undeserving of even having the option of their private affairs being unexamined by the authorities, and that to even attempt to hide something from their eyes is to become a criminal.

There is already a tenuous balance in terms of power and consent between the governing and the governed. On balance, more harm is done to me by those in political / financial power than by the average criminal.

I'm not convinced handing governments omniscient surveillance is worth the price it exacts.

FYI: You can force "Plan mode" by pressing shift-tab. That will prevent it from eagerly implementing stuff.

This has been my argument as well. We've been climbing the abstraction ladder for years. Assembly -> C -> OOP ->... this just seems like another layer of abstraction. "Programmers" are going to become "architects".

The labor cost of implementing a given feature is going to dramatically drop. Jevons Paradox paradox will hopefully still mean that the labor pool will just be used to create '10x' the output (or whatever the number actually is).

If the cost of a line of code / feature / app becomes basically '0', will we still hit a limit in terms of how much software can be consumed? Or do consumers have an infinite hunger for new software? It feels like the answer has to be 'it's finite'. We have a limited attention span of (say) 8hrs/person * 8 billion.

Of course it's here to stay. There are models that are --right-now-- great at text-to-speech, speech-to-text, categorization, image recognition, etc etc. Even if progress stopped now, these models would be useful in their current state.

Your argument could just as easily be applied to social networks ("are you still using friendster?") or e-commerce ("are you still using pets.com?). GPT3 or Kimi K2 or Mistral is going to become obsolete at some point, but that's because the succeeding models are going to be fundamentally better. That doesn't mean that they weren't themselves fit for a certain task.

I assume you're on a pretty attractive net metering agreement? That's a huge system.

Unless you're consuming a significant portion of that, the payback rate is going to be pretty badly impacted by having such a large system for most people.

Sure, but as a licensed engineer, you're signing off on the design as being safe and fit for purpose.

What if their manager had insisted they use cheaper concrete or less rebar? At a certain point, you have to refuse to put your signature on to something.

It's not entirely clear how far up the chain of command the suspensions go, but if they're including decision makers in the suspension, I think it's a good lesson to others to not just rubber stamp designs.

If exempting "commercial purposes" from a law results in no harm being done to anyone, then you are arguing the law is shouldn't exist in the first place.

CCPA appears to limitations based on the size of the enterprise, so that doesn't guarantee protection.

So, which state laws prevent someone from wiretapping my communications and then selling it?

That feels unnecessarily restrictive.

Does Jiro and his sushi constitute an artist and his art? Let's say yes, and let's say most people today agree with this. They're cosmopolitan enough to recognize the sophistication and craft. This definition therefore defines it as "art".

I would say if you told the average Brit living in the UK in the 1950s that there's a guy that's really good at slicing up raw fish, you might get a different average answer.

So I don't think art is dependent on the conclusion viewer, but on the intention of the author. If they arrange rocks just-so, because they enjoy the shadows they make at noon, I think that's art.

Hmm, interesting counterpoint.

I think both things can be simultaneously true. There are a million sub-cultures that can now exist, that are no longer tied to a geographic location. This is both good and bad. Good, insofar as if you're in the middle of Ohio in a 2000 person town, and really-really into model trains or whatever, you can find an online community that shares this. But I also think it's bad insofar as we've lost some sense of culture or commonality with our (geographic) neighbors.

But to the homogenization point; I still think within a specific sub-culture (sewing circles), you can have global homogenization. The sewing circle might new be global, on facebook and tiktok, instead of 10,000 insular hamlets. Is this bad/good? I'm not sure. There's nothing from stopping you creating a local facebook group. And in theory, good ideas can spread rather than be confined to a specific geographic group. But I can't help feeling that some independent thought and ways of thinking are lost through this globalization.

I think the "homogenization" is the keyword here. It's not that trends are bad, it's just that, in the 'old days' a trend might start as a community-wide phenomena that over time might spread into neighboring communities, finally becoming part of the local / regional zeitgeist.

These trends would spread slowly enough that other trends in other communities would have time and room to grow and develop. The result is you get a bunch of localized cultures, all unique in some way.

The best analogy I can think of is a plant mono-crop. Instead of different species of plant gradually finding their niche, we plant 50,000 acres with corn or soy.

I have to say, even over the last 20+ years or so, it really does feel like you can go anywhere in the world and get a very similar experience. You can go to the local 7-11, buy a coca-cola, hit up your local costco, listen to people arguing about American politics. It just feels like different countries have gradually been losing their unique culture, and we just have this global homogenized version with slight regional differences.

Some of my most stressful times at work have been when I had the least stuff to do. It's nice for a few days, but when it stretches into weeks I start feeling queasy.

Obviously, being buried under an avalanche of thankless work is just as bad.

My ideal life would be some sprints of large effort (maybe pulling the occasional all-nighter once in a while), followed by rest / low work times.

A constant amount of work, all the same, blurs the days together. Too little, and you start feeling useless. Too much (consistently) and you're overwhelmed.

They can make their own ingots and ultra pure chemicals, and turbopumps and ion implantation machines and spin coaters CVD machines and and the HEPA filters for the cleanroom, and the remote servers that control the licensing dongle for the robot arm that movies the thingie from "A" to "B"?

Sand to "hello world" is a tall order. There is a pyramid of industry that supports the entire thing. Even Sand -> 99.9999 % Si (purification & Czochralski crystal growth) needs multi‑story furnaces, vacuum pulling stations, 10 MW of steady power, and months of process engineering. All of have huge dependency chains.

Even modern "mild" events like supply chain disruptions would be enough to shut down any sort of non-toy level production in short order.

So yeah, a university as it currently stands can make a microchip, relying on all of these dependency chains being in operational order. But I don't doubt that would quickly no longer be the case if you had a hot war or societal collapse.

The exponential growth in processor capabilities relied on a global manufacturing infrastructure from the 1970s until today. To do the same level of progression would require much of that infrastructure.

Assuming someone managed to strategically nuke every major foundry / chemical / machine supplier, but leave everything else the same? Sure, maybe we get back to our present tech in 15-20 years.

Assume it's the result of a societal collapse? No way in hell.

Sure, but that means the Roman cost would be even cheaper. If silver was cheaper in Roman times, and iron was 1/300th the cost, then the Roman nail becomes even cheaper (which doesn't make sense)

I'm not sure what the hourly rate for a day laborer would be. $20/hr?

I think the real issues with this calculation are the idea someone can crank out 2,300 nails / hour. I think 1 per minute (sustained) seems much more reasonable. That makes the labor cost 40x more. And maybe it would be a semi-skilled occupation, so $20/hr or $40/hr makes more sense. So now the labor cost is 150x more.

Sure. I guess I was pointing out in a roundabout way that one of the assumptions must be wrong. I don't think 2,300/hr feels realistic. 200 seems much more reasonable (or less). I'd be inclined to believe 1 nail per minute (sustained). If you assume $20-40/hr, now we're up $2-4/nail which seems much more reasonable.

Here we go. Click away :)

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/4d0ddccc-e7fa-4589-94ca-f...

Apples to oranges, but assuming the equivalent of (say) $10/hour, at 2300 nails / hr * 8 hrs, that would be $80 for 18,400 nails, or $0.004/nail.

Quick google suggests iron was 1/300 the value of silver in the Roman empire, so if we say $40/oz, that makes an oz of iron = $0.13.

a 10-penny nail is about 0.2oz, so $0.026/nail.

$0.026 + 0.004 = $0.03/nail.

If I go to home depot, 1lb / ~80 10-penny nails would cost me $9, or $0.11.

So, astoundingly, it was cheaper in the Roman empire to buy nails(??). That doesn't seem right... Modern nails are different material (galvanized / zinc coated), but still.

>Personally speaking, I've never cared whether someone "validates" my emotions (and I often view such attempts as a bit patronizing or insincere). There's a problem to be solved, so let's attempt to solve it or at least compromise in good faith. The resolution to the problem is the most likely way to elicit positive emotions from me anyway.

I assume ads don't work on you either, right? You buy purely based on a logical calculus of requirements and whether a product is fit-for-purpose. I assume the obverse must also be true; if they invalidate your emotions it doesn't affect you either?

Imagine you lose your parking receipt and have to pay for the whole day. An attendant that says: "You were stupid for losing your ticket. It says in 1-ft letters at the entrance 'lost tickets pay full day.' We don't make exceptions for people that can't keep track of their stuff."

vs

"Damn dude, that sucks. You're not the only one today -- previous woman had her wallet stolen as well. Sorry I can't help, boss doesn't let me make exceptions"

Of course people validate other's emotions. You are affected by it. You only notice when someone does it poorly. Your perception of whether an exchange in which you had to compromise went well or not is highly colored by the attitude and "fluff" that the other person presented.

Question -- why not go with liquid oxygen? Does that push the danger-meter too high? On the plus side, you're not dealing with 3000 psi compressed gas.

I'm assuming the costs involved in making engines capable of withstanding cryogenic temperatures probably make that impractical (?)

+ Bleem for your PS1 emulation needs :)

Unless I'm misunderstanding, this solves for the problem in which someone wants to put a skyscraper in the middle of suburbia. In other words, based on the assumption that developers will always want to build bigger, but the locals don't want that.

Interesting to imagine what this city would look like. If it spread out evenly, you'd get a strange "bowl", with the original SFHs in the center, and high-rises on the periphery.

I guess in reality you wouldn't have such even growth; high rises would still potentially want to clump together for business districts, etc.

As buildings get torn down, you could do the recalculation; each new building can be x% above or below the local building density "slope". So over time, even the SFH areas could grow upwards, just at a slow pace.

Do you emulate the ~1 sec latency a real moon rover would have?

I assume you mean 2kW not 2kWh. And you can; look up "Non-export addition". These are solar panels that are set to zero-export; they will either charge a battery or the current house loads, but never backfeed into the grid.

> The return current on the back is free to spread out, but in practice, it will prefer the path of least resistance — i.e., the shortest line between the two vias.

This is a bit misleading. It does preferentially flow along the shortest path, but not exclusively. It will indeed spread out. It takes all paths with a current proportional to their resistance, not just the shortest path. The percentage of total current that isn't flowing directly along the shortest path is still very significant.

Think of it as a bunch of resistors in parallel. The shortest path might be 0.1ohm, and the longest path 10x longer at 1ohm, but current will be flowing along both of those paths. If 1A is flowing down the shortest path, you will still have 100mA down the 10x length path.

I think it has its place. For 'background filler' I think it makes a lot of sense; stuff which you don't need to care about, but whose absence can make something feel less real.

To me, this takes the place / augments procedural generation stuff. NPC crowds in which none of the participants are needed for the plot, but in which you can have unique clothing / appearance / lines is not "needed" for a game, but can flesh it out when done thoughtfully.

Recall the lambasting Cyberpunk 2077 got for its NPCs that cycled through a seemingly very limited number of appearances, to the point that you'd see clones right next to each other. This would solve that sort of problem, for example.

I'm not so optimistic.

Yes, you can never "plug the analog hole" completely, but you can definitely lock stuff down to the point it's impractical for 95% of people.

For instance, imagine some sort of audio / video fingerprint system that resides in Intel and/or nVidia's GPU drivers. Content gets played through the on-GPU HEVC / h.264 decoders already. Doesn't seem like a huge stretch to add a fingerprint authentication system to that stage.

Have a list of content IDs that are protected, and require a valid license to play.

Yes, your source file is unprotected (video camera in front of monitor), but all of your devices are unable to play it. Yes, your ancient, circa 2024 desktop PC will still play it, but your new 2030 model TV implements this fingerprint system as well so you can't just cast this file to your 100" display in your living room.

This is to say nothing of other forms of content (applications / games / web pages) that actually could require attestation / DRM HW / always-on internet to run.

Another good example of hilbert curves as visualization is this online bin file analyzer:

https://binvis.io/#/view/examples/elf-Linux-ARMv7-ls.bin

Supposedly they compensated for that. They have a "Limitations" section in which they discuss some potential pitfalls, including how most alzheimers deaths start after age 65.

I will say, it doesn't inspire confidence when Figure 2 of your paper has an enormous typo on it ("Aircarft [sic] Pilots").

I'm not really convinced personally, especially as stuff like Aircarft[sic] pilots seems to be significantly above the average occupation's risk factor. But they also tend to live significantly longer (78 ish?).

It seems to me that navigation is still a reasonable amount of a pilots workload -- just look at the effort to navigate the taxiways at a big airport for example.

A bigger factor in my view would be quality of care -- an airline pilot probably makes significantly more than a taxi driver, and is more likely to have good medical care, in which someone is more attentive to their situation.