It would be helpful if the event result message remained on-screen until clicked. At least on Firefox, the event result message disappears faster than it can be read (example, what happens after selecting an option for the inspector).
The Great Pulping is the name, or rather names, that modern historians have given to two legendary events which were supposed to have occured early in the Confusion Era. The first of these events was when libraries converted from a primarly paper-based form of information storage to a digital form. A majority of library book collections were scanned, digitized, and then once the information was stored in digital forms, the books were sold to be pulped in order to free up room for library patrons to use the new system more effectively. Of course, the librarians could not know what was going to happen in the future to all this information, what with the viruses, cross-copying, AI hallucinations, archival rivalries, meme wars, and all the other diverse information-distorting causes of the Confusion.
The second event refers to what happened to the librarians who had been responsible for this decision, when the full effects of it became evident.
- A legendarium of the Confusion Era, by Franklin Duane, 192 PCE Edition
You used the phrase "our industry". Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the 'tech industry' concept, simply because a lot of startups are not in software/computing, and a lot of new technology isn't either. But I get what people mean.
I notice that the companies you mention like Costco and Patagonia are not in the tech industry. Does your new book have any examples which show how to stay incorruptible in the face of the network effects that drive monopolization in the tech industry? Alternatively, have you seen workable ways to split network effects amongst networked affiliates, to spread out the market power?
I know that most founders aren't exactly looking to make a startup with a lot of competition (I'm sure not), but it would be nice to know if someone is fixing problems specific to the 'tech industry'.
Always an interesting artist. My favorite of his was 'Amazonia Gothique', used on the cover of White Dwarf 79. Interesting to see that someone made a minifig of it:
I rarely use Google for search, but I've actually gone back a few times just to use the AI search function. Occasionally it is useful, especially when I can't think of the correct term to search for.
But recently I had an entertaining experience with it. I was trying to apply a math technique to an application it wasn't normally used for, and I figured that somewhere out there was a paper or two explaining how to do what I was attempting. So, I tried Googling, and the response was something like:
"You appear to be working with two completely different areas of mathematics, which have absolutely no connections between them. That's fascinating! Would you like to know more about either of these two completely separated subjects which have nothing to do with each other?"
Not useful, Google, but definitely good for a laugh.
I know it's not technically a fast factorial algorithm, but I'm kinda surprised that there is no mention on the site of the AKS primality test (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKS_primality_test). It's operation is sort of like an FFT for canceling out factorials mod N.
I used to work with a company in Somerset whose official address is "The Barn on Church Lane". Never had any problems with shipping or mailing, but had many discussions over the years with American clerks who wouldn't believe it was a valid address.
Rampant consumerism, a United States so dominated by corporations that there is a senator from Cocoa-Cola, and advertising so aggressive you might even prefer the world we live in... published in 1953.
This seems like a good post to mention my old friend Laszlo Baksay.
He was part of the original krautrock scene, being a member of the band Dom (see https://dom1972.bandcamp.com/album/edge-of-time , scroll down to the notes at the bottom). If I recall correctly, he went to school with some of the members of Kraftwerk.
Later, he because a particle physicist at CERN. When I was in grad school he was my thesis advisor, while I was doing a project on the measurement of... radioactivity.
I actually like the recirculation simulation. Although all kinds of cyclical engines have recirculation of power as part of their function, in fusion there is an important difference from what people are used to. In an internal combustion engine, the crankshaft and flywheel in a car recirculate power from the power stroke to the compression stroke, doing the same thing as the recirculated energy does in this simulation. But in fusion, this 'crankshaft' is very lossy. I suspect if you have a model in your head of how an internal combustion engine works, crankshaft losses are not a big thing. Teaching people that when they model fusion reactors that they need to include this because it's important, I think would help people develop better physical intuition. The 'lossy crankshaft' model was an important part of why I opted for partial direct conversion with the design I built back in the '90s. Set both eff sliders high to see how much this helps.
That said, one big missing thing (other than the economic stuff, mentioned by others) which would add a lot to this simulation would be more about 'where does Q come from?'. Obviously this could be too complicated for a little sim, but perhaps a few simple things could be added like showing how increasing the volume/surface ratio for tokomaks/sphereomaks can help, or how getting rid of certain types of instabilities can improve say mirror or pinch designs. This might help people to understand why certain design decisions (like building ITER so big) were made.
I already canceled last year. It's too bad, because there is a lot of Netflix content that I like. It just seems that it takes much more time clicking around to find it, and I don't have time for that. I used Netflix on Roku, and the UX is abysmal.
Question for anyone who works in this space: is the reason why most (all?) streaming services I see have the same exact UI problems because they are copying each other, or is it because of some constraint in the Roku API which doesn't allow them to fix them? For example, on Netflix, Amazon and Youtube, if I click down to a new row, (say, from Recommended for You to Action Movies), many of the icons shown will be for content that was already offered in the rows above. Like, I've already said no to this movie five times in the last minute, why do you keep asking? It's pure waste. I figure at least one of the streaming services would do things differently (and thus gain market share), but I haven't seen one. Is it due to platform limitations?
I used to be the top-level support escalation at a company, and I made sure to brief all the tier-1 support personnel to escalate directly to me any call using "shibboleet" Sadly no one ever used it.
The company had "Nuclear" in the name, and our average customer had at least a masters in physics, so maybe not the typical support situation. But in at least one case, it has been a real thing. It doesn't work at AT&T and Spectrum, I've tried.
This discussion reminded me of my best Diff Eq prof. He would start each lecture by putting a small clock on his podium, and starting at the precise time listed for the start of the lecture. Then he would leap into action, chalk dust flying around him as he explained the subject of the day. He would often go through more than six full-size chalkboards, having a student erase a few chalkboards behind him so he could return to use the first chalkboard when he ran out of room on the sixth one. Then at the precise time scheduled for the end of the lecture, he would take the clock off the podium and leave the room.
You could often see him walking around campus, covered in a fine white dust, looking like a ghost.
It's been 30 years, and I couldn't remember his name, but man do I remember his lectures.
Update: after typing this, I searched for him, and unfortunately found him almost immediately. He just passed away, and there was a memorial to him on the front page of his math department: https://www.math.fsu.edu/DepartmentNews/Articles/Fac_Nolder....
I note this line from the memorial: His students marveled at his ability to draw a perfect circle on the blackboard with a single stroke.
Applied Nuclear Physicist & Inventor [email protected]