rm445

There are lots of other types of pretty rock available.

I think also if you decide to bow to those constraints, grit your teeth and buy a diamond, you can get ones certified to as less likely to have murder and slavery involved in their extraction. Albeit you'd still be supporting that ridiculous market indirectly. Smashing the stigma against lab diamonds seems like a great idea.

Not seen that name in a while. Matt Ginsberg is a man of many accomplishments, but I had heard of him due to his contributions to computer contract bridge - his 90s-era world computer bridge champion program Gib (Ginsberg's Intelligent Bridgeplayer). In bridge, a game of imperfect information, it used the approach of dealing thousands of hands that opponents potentially could have, analysing them with perfect information, and taking the action that was statistically favoured. Interestingly, bridge programs seem to have somewhat stalled since. No doubt they've been improved but they can't beat world-class players even today. Though that might be lack of resources thrown at the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_bridge

That can't be right. The Normans as a people played a major part in European history from at least the year 911 through the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). I've never seen the faintest indication that they weren't still called Normans after leaving Normandy, by themselves and others, e.g when invading England and Italy.

I guess you meant more that the term fell out of use in England at some point, and Norman-descended people in England called themselves English. But even so, Norman is still a recognisable ethnicity - norse people who settled in France, spread by conquest into England, Malta etc. It could be a useful contemporary or historical label even if those people at a given time called themselves something else.

The hospitals weren't (all) overwhelmed but were focused on managing the pandemic. Fewer appointments scheduled, procedures pushed back, no weekend services, that kind of thing. Perhaps an element of patients huddling at home and being less proactive in their own care.

(Btw I'm not in healthcare. If anything my point is a logical alternative to the idea that overwhelmed covid wards could be the only thing affecting other services. But it's my impression of how things seemed to be, at least in the UK).

A couple who are both in a good income bracket?

(PRODUCT)RED is a charity that Apple has supported since the iPod days: you get a red device and some money goes to charity.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_Red

You're in luck! You can now attach an AirTag to your Apple remote and use the powerful 'Find My' ecosystem to locate it.

If we could capture carbon by itself, we wouldn't bury it, we could make all kinds of stuff with it. The problem, approximately, is that you get energy from oxidising stuff, and have to put energy in to reduce it.

Of course, turning solar energy plus carbon dioxide into sequestered carbon and O2 is what plants do, but evidently not enough compared to human action. I do wonder whether biological (plants, algae) action, aided by genetic modification, could do more for atmospheric CO2.

Tracerco | Lead Embedded Software Engineer | Billingham, UK | ONSITE

Tracerco specialises in instrumentation and detection, particularly for the petrochemical industry. Part of Johnson Matthey plc - excellent pension and benefits. Seeking a lead embedded software engineer in the product development & innovation department. This role will manage a small team of 3-4 embedded developers and work closely with other disciplines, particularly electronics engineers and applications software engineers. Applicant must be able to contribute code as well as lead the team and drive improvement in processes.

Technologies: C. Git, Azure DevOps, unit testing. FreeRTOS. Understanding of electronic design and troubleshooting a plus. Experience of industrial communications protocols (e.g. Modbus, Hart) a plus. Experience with low-power, battery-powered and intrinsically safe devices a plus. Some work-from-home likely acceptable post-pandemic, but needs to be onsite some of the time for collaboration electronics work, and integration testing.

Apply via: https://phh.tbe.taleo.net/phh01/ats/careers/v2/viewRequisiti...

Different connectors. Molex connectors and the Molex company are still around. Not ruling out that you've heard them called the wrong thing, there's a bewildering array of connectors.

Scheme has rational numbers in its number tower, is that the kind of thing you mean?

(= 22/7 44/14) #t

Think of web content in a CMS. All the assets are in a database and they get spat out through a pipeline giving a formatted end result.

I've never written a book in a DBMS(!) but it seems plausible.

It's interesting to see this exchange, though, because it's high-trust: I would bet the professor's initial letter was courteously written, and asked if there were other factors besides purely surface area to volume. The responder wrote a clear technical letter without any marketing flim-flam. We are in a golden age of communication in some sense, with blogs and technical online communities. But I could hardly imagine getting a letter from a corporation of this quality.

So... you're in favour of the current military coup?

Never heard of that, thanks. Jake Garn is a pretty interesting character. City mayor, Senator, navy pilot with thousands of flying hours. Headed the Senate appropriations committee for NASA and wrangled himself a place on a Shuttle mission. Born in 1932 and still alive despite donating a kidney to his daughter in the 80s. Quite a life.

> I was invited to speak at an event (...) One of the apparent organisers of this event contacted me separately to say there was a vacancy for a teaching position and would I be interested (...) I submitted my CV (...) A few weeks later I was "interviewed"

This sounds exactly like the kind of job opportunity that's meant to come about by networking, getting your name out there, public speaking and so on. We are often told that this is how the best jobs are found.

> there is no such thing as a PLC accessible from Internet in a real production site.

That is so massively optimistic. I don't doubt you know your stuff, but manufacturing is a huge field, widely distributed, it is done by small companies as well as large ones, and specifying and purchasing a PLC system can be done to satisfy operational needs without necessarily having suitable network infrastructure and security expertise. The number of PLCs "accessible from Internet in a real production site" is probably in the thousands.

This sounds very plausible. I have a Dell Windows laptop with an ordinary barrel charger port which can also be kept charged by a dock plugged into the USB C port. It seems a good arrangement. I haven't tried charging the laptop from a USB C wall wart rather than a dock, but it seems plausible it would work and it could be a handy feature if you forgot the charger somewhere.

What about lasers for emitting waste heat? Obviously there are practical issues with having powerful-enough lasers essentially powered by a heat engine, but are there thermodynamic reasons it couldn't work?

This question is not 'Expanse'-related but inspired by David Brin's 'Sundiver'.

Yeah the N64 was great, but in total worldwide console sales totals, PS2 = 155 million, N64 = 33 million, Dreamcast = 9 million. Partly the enormous total was because the PS2 stuck around for so long (and, cyclically, kept getting games for ages because of the installed base) but my point is, for most gamers, it's more like they didn't have a Dreamcast because they had a PS2.

That console generation had a clear winner, despite Nintendo doing its own wonderful thing as usual. Sega were out of the running, due to bad previous consoles, price, Sony's frankly dishonest publicity about what the PS2 would be able to do, some great hits coming to PS2 first, the DVD drive, and just the general network effect that means the winner of a format war sells many more units.

Great post, but in the context of "Where is everybody?", each 'we won't' or 'we could', where we haven't actually done it yet, is potentially part of the solution to the puzzle. Perhaps filling the universe with undying, exponentially-spreading probes, that don't stop spreading due to values drift, is harder than we think. (Personally, an early filter feels more likely to me, but if it's not that, it's gotta be something).

I've heard it, and said it, pertaining to not having a fourth child. Semi tongue-in-cheek but having to buy a van would be one extra inconvenience.

That's a great story. I remember being blown away by Descent - probably the second 3D-type game I played after Doom. The thought of free spaceship movement through caves with 6-axis control was amazing - though IIRC the level design was carefully done to keep mostly 2D-ish with a clear up-down orientation. Must have been mind-blowing in VR in 1995.

All that said, I think people playing alone is a big enough demographic to support a VR breakout, if the killer app comes along.

I don't know how old you are, but based on the comment it seems likely you haven't travelled all the way along the journey yet. People can be retired and alone a long time - it seems such a potentially lonely existence that it's worth taking some actions earlier in life to reduce the possibility. I don't know whether the best way would be cultivating friendships or focusing on family.

As a parent without nearby family, I think you're right. It's hard work. We went away to university, got jobs, settled down and bought a house. To move back close to family now would be an upheaval - there was probably only one short window of time when it wouldn't have been as much effort. Persuading our parents etc to downsize and move close to us might have a better chance.

It would be nice to live around extended family. People definitely do, but, here in the UK at least and excepting big-city-dwellers, it seems linked to lower economic status - people for whom one job is much like another.

Maybe eventually the link between where you work and where you live will be weaker, for more specialised jobs.

Oddly, this article made me understand the case that exists for deletionism (though it's still awful). It always seemed to be one of those weird things that keeps happening despite nobody being willing to stand up for it. I think I see now, that to the people who consider themselves the self-appointed guardians of Wikipedia's quality, each extra page spreads the work of guarding a little thinner.

The counter to which is, of course, that Wikipedia doesn't have to be run by a relatively-tiny number of highly-dedicated editors. Over the hill somewhere just out of sight is a set of technologies, policies and social norms that would lead to still more people participating.

Microsoft maybe?

Literally dogs and horses? With the level of craziness under discussion here I can't quite tell.

The norms for doxing in media are going to have to change. It's a tenet of traditional journalism that everyone in a story must be doxed. A local newspaper wouldn't write a story about someone being burgled without describing them along the lines of Julie West, 53, unmarried, formerly of Westford but now living in Sackville Close, Eastford... I don't know the underlying reasons, I think it derives from principles of reporting truthfully combined with NOT having a principle of not giving personal information. But it seems weird as hell compared to more recent views on privacy an online anonymity.

My guess would be employee fraud. Nothing against the people mentioned in the article, just where I'd start looking. There are umpteen posts in this thread already about potential interesting ways to game lotteries, but the historic way to get an edge is to have an insider.