dark_star

The (also awesome) writer Jo Walton wrote a great celebration of Ursula Le Guin's life. She wrote in part:

She widened the space of science fiction with what she wrote. She got in there with a crowbar and expanded the field and made it a better field… Le Guin expanded the possibilities for all of us, and then she kept on doing that. She didn’t repeat herself. She kept doing new things. She was so good. I don’t know if I can possibly express how good she was.

https://reactormag.com/bright-the-hawks-flight-in-the-empty-...

Would you be willing to post the llm.py code? (Perhaps in a Github gist?)

This doesn't address the ecosystem problems and costs imposed by climate change - but for crops and drinking water, it looks like fresh water created by solar powered desalinization is going to be very inexpensive in the future. [1][2] This is mainly due to the fact that solar power will be almost free in the near future.[3]

1. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/01/09/a-vision-for-t...

2. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/we-need-more-w...

3. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/11/09/solar-and-batt...

It depends on what you are thinking critically about - what is your frame of mind. You don't see a viable business here.

But SpaceX does see several possibilities. One is supplying a US Moon base and US space stations. Since Starship/Superheavy rockets are so inexpensive to build (about 100M in expendable configuration [1] even doing something like that would be profitable for SpaceX.

For Mars colonization, Elon Musk has said his target for Starship to Mars cost per flight was USD 10M. If it can take 100 people, and they each pay USD 200K per person, that's USD 20M, a 10M profit for SpaceX.

It might also be that a nation state might want to fund something like that to establish a base there.

Again, you may see a viable business in Mars colonization. But SpaceX does. So do other people. It was conventional wisdom that Starlink would not work, but it is now quite profitable. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

[2] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/billionaire-elon-musks-new-s...

It's not nonsense. To refuel Starship to land on the Moon like the NASA HLS program proposes [1], it will take 16 Starship Tanker flights [2][3]. So 16 launch, transfer propellant, land, refuel and refill propellant on the ground, and repeat.

For Mars launches, which is what Starship is mainly designed for, it's also 8-16 Tanker flights to fully fuel a Mars Starship. But SpaceX anticipates sending fleets of ships each synodic period (2 years), when Earth and Mars are closest. For a fleet of 10 Starships, that would be 10 launches of the Mars Starships, then 160 launches of Tanker Starships to fuel them.

You might debate whether Mars colonization is possible or desirable, but Starship and the high launch rate is designed for refueling Moon and Mars landing vehicles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Landing_System

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship#Planned_launch...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS

Apple | https://apple.com | AIML – Sr Full-stack Software Engineer, Data Operations | FULLTIME | ONSITE / HYBRID (3 days in office, 2 at home) | Seattle, WA, USA

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200551324/aiml-sr-full-...

Our team builds software to collect and annotate high-quality data used to train LLMs and other AI and ML models for products across Apple. We're looking for a senior software engineer who can design and build mission-critical, large scale, cloud-based distributed systems, web-based APIs and web apps, and can be the technical lead for projects within our team and across teams. The ideal person would have strong technical skills, strong collaboration skills, and strong people skills. See the job description above for details.

I'm the hiring manager, if you apply your application will come directly to me.

More realistic and detailed information is available here: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/02/a-new-era-for-the...

China may be behind the US, Taiwan, and Europe in semiconductor manufacturing, but they are developing workarounds and developing their own EUV machines and EDA tools.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240607011424/https://www.theat...

Check out Jeffrey "JB" Straubel's new company, Redwood Materials[1][2]. They recycle lithium-ion batteries. He was Tesla's former chief technology officer.

They are essentially a lithium mine that's using a very high quality ore, ground-up batteries.

There are other companies doing this as well. [3]

1. https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/

2. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/battery-recycling-redwood-mater...

3. https://li-cycle.com/technology/

Twitter says "@maceip can't be messaged." I don't know what you mean by fc. What's another way to reach you?

Apple | AIML Senior Full Stack Software Engineer | Full-time | Seattle ONSITE hybrid (3 days/week in office)

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200519929/aiml-sr-full-...

Our team builds iOS apps, back-end cloud infrastructure, data pipelines, and does AI/ML model training and inference to support Apple's AI efforts. Native iOS (Swift or Objective C) and cloud infrastructure experience are both required. Apply at the link above and include a cover letter. It will come to me.

But the value is not that we don't need stack overflow, it is that we don't need as many programmers.

I'll believe that when I see it. I lead a team of AI-boosted developers, I'm hiring as fast as I can, and all my company wants out of them is more and more.

If they have 2x, 3x, or 10x output, the company can and will use it all.

Then there is the Tamagotchi Singularity inspired by an XKCD comic [1]. It is a server full of emulated tamagotchis [2] that interact with each other in a simulator, all running code dumped by Natalie's technique. I'm impressed by both these hacks, especially the combination.

All this is via a Hackaday article. [3]

1. https://xkcd.com/1546/

2. https://spritesmods.com/?art=tamasingularity

3. https://hackaday.com/2015/11/24/building-the-infinite-matrix...

Wow. Good to see this here. At age 17, having an Apple ][+ and this book got me started on the path to being an electronics engineer.

Direct link to paper with the X-ray images of the bee nests:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001670612...

The quote is talking about emulating the white oppressors, who oppressed people to gain wealth and power.

From _A Wizard of Earthsea_, the first book, near the end:

And he began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life’s sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. In the Creation of Éa, which is the oldest song, it is said,

   “Only in silence the word,
   only in dark the light,
   only in dying life:
   bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20230716210954/https://duskos.or...

Comment from Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA:

"Every engine, elex box, COPV, etc, gets an Acceptance Test (ATP) as they come off the line to verify good workmanship. (The one time Qual verifies the design. BE4 is qualified). The BE4's on Cert1 have passed ATP, as have many others. This engine failed ATP." [1]

1. https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1678865222604574720?s=2...

From the Wikipedia article:

At 07:55 UTC, when Vostok 1 was still 7 km (4.3 mi) from the ground, the hatch of the spacecraft was released, and two seconds later Gagarin was ejected. At 2.5 km (8,200 ft) altitude, the main parachute was deployed from the Vostok spacecraft.[43]

Gagarin's parachute opened almost immediately, and about ten minutes later, at 08:05 UTC, Gagarin landed. Both he and the spacecraft landed via parachute 26 km (16 mi) south west of Engels, in the Saratov region at 51.270682°N 45.99727°E.

An indoor marketplace with shelf space you can lease is actually the business model of most large grocery chains. [1] Food manufacturers rent shelf space to display and sell their products. But these stores are run by corporations, not by the government.

1. For instance see: https://www.vox.com/2016/11/22/13707022/grocery-store-slotti...

https://web.archive.org/web/20230109122455/https://www.newyo...

Practically speaking, "farther ahead" may mean different things to different people. I tried to find a list of boards, systems on a chip (SoCs), or CPUs that Genode supports. There's no master list [1] but you can go digging through the handful of architecture-specific github repos. [2] The number of actually supported SoCs and boards is very limited.

NuttX and Zephyr both support a large number of SoCs and boards [3][4], and they each have a single git repo with a configuration system that lets you build different boards from that single repo. In terms of practical ease of use for hobby and commercial projects, I would say these projects are both far ahead of Genode if your hardware is not supported by Genode and is supported by either NuttX or Zephyr.

[1] https://genode.org/documentation/platforms/index

[2] https://github.com/orgs/genodelabs/repositories

[3] NuttX supported platforms: https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/platforms/index.html

[4] Zephyr supported platforms: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/3.2.0/boards/index.html

In my opinion NuttX is like a secret weapon. RTOS, good hardware support for many boards and CPUs, and a very high performance TCP/IP stack that can be interrupted by hard realtime tasks.

It's also growing in popularity now– I would say it hasn't reached mainstream popularity yet. :)

Maybe choose it if your embedded board, system on a chip, or CPU is supported. NuttX has a lot of supported boards, SoCs, and CPUs, and they differ from Zephyr's supported hardware.

[1] NuttX supported platforms: https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/platforms/index.html

[2] Zephyr supported platforms: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/3.2.0/boards/index.html

Software development is creative work. Creative insight can come anywhere, any time. Better ideas can make difficult things easy. And make the impossible– possible.

So the most important thing on a software team (or really any team creating high technology products or services) is an environment where team members feel safe to be themselves– psychologically safe, where they can try out new things, make mistakes, fail, and not be punished or belittled. Say their ideas and have them improved by others, not criticized. It's an environment where team members take care of themselves so they can be creative– sleep enough, exercise enough, be with friends and family enough, play enough.

You have to be at your keyboard or lab bench or whatever enough to make things. But if you are there too much your creativity plummets. This is what I try to get across to my teams.

Bunnie Huang is working on Betrusted [1], a communications device that is designed to be secure from state actors. The first step is Precursor (about: [2], purchase:[3]) the hardware and OS that will be the platform for the communications device.

It's designed to be secure even though it communicates via insecure wifi, for instance via tethering or at home. The CPU and most peripherals are in an FPGA with an auditable bitstream to program the device to ensure there are no back doors. Hardware and software are all open source. It has anti-tamper capability.

It looks well-thought-out.

1. https://betrusted.io/

2. https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5921

3. https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor

https://web.archive.org/web/20220610131709/https://www.econo...

In the Art of War Denma Translation (excellent BTW!) the text says:

And so the method of employing the military—

When ten to one, surround them.

When five to one, attack them.

When two to one, do battle with them.

When matched, then divide them.

When fewer, then defend against them.

When inadequate, then avoid them.

Thus a small enemy's tenacity ~

ls a large enemy's catch. ~

The chip shortage means I can't manufacture electronics products so I see a long period (potentially of unknown length) of no income for my business, so had to put the electronics business on hold and find a regular job. Decided to do this proactively before I actually had to.

I am grateful that it was relatively easy to find new fulfilling work. This seems like a good time to look for a job.