dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables
Right, because there's no reason at all to regulate a shared medium like RF bands except to make money.
dermesser's comments
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables
It's not peanuts at all, given that it's an entirely different technology. Free space optics will have different applications, of course, but those applications where fiber is currently not feasible stand to profit quite a bit from this.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables
I know about two newspapers who regularly say "ETH Lausanne", and I suspect these articles are written by similar pedants as some commenters here appear to be.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables
...yet, when saying "ETH" everyone knows what is being referred to. Except for crypto bros.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Dynamic programming in Haskell: automatic memoization
This appears very similar (my Haskell is a bit rusty) to the problem description in Real World OCaml (https://dev.realworldocaml.org/imperative-programming.html), although made easier by the use of non-pure functions there.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: The Rust I wanted had no future
I read this as wanting a different "feeling" for the language. Go uses this approach, with maps and arrays being baked into the syntax, and things work just fine. Implementing Vec in user code is rather the C++ "feeling".
Personally I'm happy Rust took the C++ route, it makes things more interesting, but I can see his point.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Why do railway tracks have crushed stones alongside them?
The rocks also need to be able to move a bit for elasticity, and have sharp edges. For that you also replace a part of the ballast every few years. That's hard to do when everything is sealed. Even with such "glue", the lifetime couldn't be eternal, after all.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: Do Americans write better software than the rest of the world?
Can you elaborate on "not technically solid"? Or is this notion also based on a single experience?
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: Do Americans write better software than the rest of the world?
Yet it is you who first made a sweeping generalization across continents based on what sounded like your inability to use one tool vs another.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Rheinmetall pilot project for curb stone chargers for EVs
In Cologne, like many German towns, ice and snow is an issue about two weeks a year (in a cold year). And even then, that's what the city's road clearing services are for.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: GPU vendor-agnostic fluid dynamics solver in Julia
It turns out that Julia is ~a lisp, just with a weird syntax. If you look at the metaprogramming facilities, all expressions are first turned into s-exprs while parsing. There is no problem having a LISP syntax for Julia, and in fact this has been implemented! (https://github.com/swadey/LispSyntax.jl)
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers
Yes, I'm not saying it's not possible, but real time abilities were likely one of the least important aspects of Julia's design... So why shoehorn it into something it's not been designed for
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers
Of course, but other than in C++ you need to use ways and means to achieve this - never hitting u compiled code - that are not very natural to Julia. Yes it may be possible to compile Julia code to binaries, but it obviously is neither straightforward nor widely used.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: Mojo – a new programming language for AI developers
This is not true at all! Julia usually being JIT-compiled makes it very unsuitable for real time applications (and there's no reason why it should be great for it). GC is the least issue here, and I say that as a fan and daily user of Julia.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company
The idea that news could be "unbiased" is wrong. The fact that this is run by AI and called "unbiased" borders on ridiculous.
dermesser | 2 years ago | on: How close are we to the holy grail of room-temperature superconductors?
MRIs or anything with very high magnetic field requirements become a lot easier to build once you don't need to cool them down as much. Inversely, Generators etc. would benefit.
Magnetic levitation (Meissner-Ochsenfeld) would also not require such low temperatures.
Even Quantum computing using superconducting qubits might become easier (although there, superconductivity is not the main reason for low temperatures).
"Only" better conductivity is a big deal, after all.
dermesser | 3 years ago | on: The four-horse race to decarbonise steel
Had they done what you say, by now they still would not have decided on a location. Just look at the delays and cost overruns with Finland's reactor - and that's with popular support.
dermesser | 3 years ago | on: The four-horse race to decarbonise steel
Yes, the confusing issue is that iron-in-your-house or as a building material generally has a higher carbon content than steel, making the latter more elastic and less brittle (generally).
dermesser | 3 years ago | on: Switzerland Weighs Full or Partial Credit Suisse Nationalization
This is backwards. The government created the money, it is us who need it (to pay taxes). The government doesn't need taxes, as it is the origin of the money.
dermesser | 3 years ago | on: Switzerland Weighs Full or Partial Credit Suisse Nationalization
This is false, and doubly so in this case. There is no taxpayer money involved that would go missing elsewhere. Central bank money - which is free - is what props up the deal.