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Sharlin

20,812 karmajoined 17 anni fa

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The Elements of Programming Style

en.wikipedia.org
1 points·by Sharlin·10 mesi fa·0 comments

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Sharlin
·2 ore fa·discuss
The uncertainty principle says that the less well-defined the position, the more well-defined the velocity, and vice versa.
Sharlin
·2 ore fa·discuss
Yeah, but that’s like saying predicting next week’s lottery numbers, or the precise weather exactly one year from now, is a data problem. There’s no simulation that could answer those questions even in principle even if the universe were fully classical.
Sharlin
·19 ore fa·discuss
And hardness. Diamond is hard but exactly because of that you can shatter a diamond with any hammer.
Sharlin
·19 ore fa·discuss
Analogous to the keratinous denticles in a cat tongue, just much smaller in scale.
Sharlin
·ieri·discuss
I can't even fathom how you'd end up with such crazily uncharitable interpretation to think that "Created by Paul Bourke" refers to the fractal itself, rather than those specific images of the fractal.

Each and every of the fractal pages here has a similar attribution: https://paulbourke.net/fractals/
Sharlin
·l’altro ieri·discuss
No engine in the world can make bad assets look good.
Sharlin
·3 giorni fa·discuss
It was certainly cute, but let's not forget that it was always just a "nice extra" to the main Rosetta mission. But it did teach us that landing on (and grabbing onto) a comet surface can be tricky and fail even if you're equipped with several contingency mechanisms.

BTW, ESA is unfortunately not nearly as famous for its public outreach work as NASA, but the Rosetta/Philae PR team was on fire, releasing an incredibly charming series of cartoon animations documenting the mission:

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2016/12/The_amazin...

Be sure to watch until the very end for a very tear-jerking scene :')

And while you're at it, watch the related live-action short science fiction film "Ambition", starring Aidan Gillen: https://youtu.be/H08tGjXNHO4?si=wtEWdv6OmX5y7-eg
Sharlin
·5 giorni fa·discuss
https://thombrown.blogspot.com/2026/07/load-plcbmbasic81-com...
Sharlin
·5 giorni fa·discuss
It's such a tragedy that they're also extremely solitary animals and die shortly after reproducing the first (and only) time.

Almost all other particularly intelligent animals seem to be gregarious, and it's easy to conclude that a social lifestyle tends to select for more intelligence, a sophisticated theory of mind, and so on (I like to think that that's exactly what was responsible for a runaway intelligence explosion in humans). But in the case of cephalopods, there's something else that has been applying selection pressure towards exceptional intelligence.
Sharlin
·5 giorni fa·discuss
Aluminum is honestly a miracle material that has no business being as inexpensive as it is (of course, this is only since the invention of the Hall–Héroult process, before which aluminum was one of the most expensive metals known despite making up ~8% of the crust).
Sharlin
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Obviously. But as of now, AC means burning carbon (~50% of Europe's electricity production). Demand for even more electricity may accelerate the transition, hopefully, but right now the projection is that all the extra capacity and much more will be taken by data centers and consumer electricity bills are going to double or triple. Hopefully that will never actually happen but who knows.

Obviously consuming even more should never be the solution to problems caused by overconsumption. We should be figuring out ways to keep electricity use in check rather than consuming more and more, but that's a fact that people would rather not accept.
Sharlin
·6 giorni fa·discuss
I know. But it is what it is now.
Sharlin
·6 giorni fa·discuss
~50% share (in some countries much higher) fossil-based electricity is still 50% fossil-based electricity.
Sharlin
·6 giorni fa·discuss
Always fun, having to fight a problem caused by X by doing more X. At least there’s the silver lining that solar production and the need for AC go hand in hand.
Sharlin
·6 giorni fa·discuss
That’s very characteristic of highly nonlinear systems, and weather/climate is the textbook nonlinear system.
Sharlin
·7 giorni fa·discuss
In theory you can always have taller mountains if you just have a (exponentially!) wider base. But given all sorts of practical constraints, Earth mountains are pretty much limited to <10 km.
Sharlin
·7 giorni fa·discuss
I was referring to your "500m trees" which would be over 3x taller than the tallest trees ever seen.
Sharlin
·7 giorni fa·discuss
There are no pumps in a tree, in series or not. There’s nothing between the roots and leaves that actively drives water upward in any way. The xylem is literally dead tissue.
Sharlin
·7 giorni fa·discuss
There are obviously other factors limiting tree growth, like compressive strength.
Sharlin
·8 giorni fa·discuss
Call me. When the AI stops writing. Every blog post. Like this.