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dboshardy

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Hacking F-117A 4 years ago

Not quite. From the incredible Skunk Works:

"Ufimtsev has shown us how to create computer software to accurately calculate the radar cross section of a given configuration, as long as it's in two dimensions," Denys told me. "We can break down an airplane into thousands of flat triangular shapes, add up their individual radar signatures, and get a precise total of the radar cross section."

Why only two dimensions and why only flat plates? Simply because, as Denys later noted, it was 1975 and computers weren't yet sufficiently powerful in storage and memory capacity to allow for three-dimensional designs, or rounded shapes, which demanded enormous numbers of additional calculations. The new gneeration of supercomputers, which can compute a billion bits of information in a second is the reason why the B-2 bomber, with it's rounded surfaces, was designed entirely by computer computations.

Denys's idea was to compute the radar cross section of an airplane by dividiing it into a series of flat triangles. Each triangle had three separate points and required individual calculations for each point by utilizing Ufimtsev's calculations. The result was called "faceting"--creating a three-dimensional airplane design out of a collection of flat sheets or panels, similar to cutting a diamond into sharp-edged slices.

Tangential to this point, but I've seen firsthand in a limited capacity but also heard of this from other devs, but there seem to be a decent number of devs who go from job to job doing the same thing over and over again. An example I've seen: a junior dev learns Springboot at a job, then goes from job to job converting their microservices to Springboot. When that project is complete (can take 1 to 2 years in some cases), they get bored or change jobs for a bump in pay and do the same thing again. As they do this a few times, they become a specialist in that field and they start self-selecting to only doing that one thing over and over and over again.

Is this widespread? Anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

You don't cite your source for how much land is used for agriculture (and what definition of agriculture you're using). Are you sure this doesn't include land used for growing specifically feed crops and crops to make food oils, wheat, etc.?

Did HN do any kind of survey to demonstrate their user demographics?

And it is absolutely toxic on certain topics, particularly anything economics related or that challenges capitalism and the "line go up" mentality of the VC culture. If you offer anything that criticizes that at all, you're in for an earful.

In this case it would be instead of having premium student dorms on the top floor for wealthier students, or rooms for the student dorm administrators, instead every student gets access to that penthouse common space.

I've never seen any dorms with "premium" student housing, let alone mixed in the building. There are certainly (especially older) dorms with more desirable rooms, but they were never "premium" or unavailable to any student.

Delta Variant 5 years ago

Yes, it will evolve further, but human ACE2 receptors aren't evolving rapidly within a generation any time soon. There's a metaphorical window of possible mutations that will allow SARSCov2 to bind to receptors and a huge swath of that window clearly is taken up by protection from vaccines (especially mRNA ones). There is a finite space in which it could still evolve _and_ evade vaccines. That space is likely _extremely_ small. "Too much" evolution renders it ineffective at infecting humans.

I'm firmly of the belief that if there is genuine social interaction to be had, it will be had for the most part.

Forcing social interaction (corporate mandated fun) is just another tool to tie employees to an employer to make it more difficult/less desirable for them to leave for better opportunities.

Project Cybersyn 6 years ago

And what's to stop national economy planning from distributing decision making in the same manner? It's not like Walmart doesn't do nation-level planning.

They don't _need_ apps but clearly an overwhelming majority _like_ or _want_ apps to track. Not everyone is into carrying a notebook and pen with them to the gym and already have their phone.

You don't learn anything through menial document searching and reading other than menial document searching and reading.

Junior lawyers will still have plenty to do.

Just because you think people are "done" with "social media" doesn't mean Reddit execs do. They are definitely changing look and feel to be more like instagram and facebook hoping to poach users or at least widen their userbase by lowering the barrier of entry. One of the primary goals of the redesign was changing look and feel to make the site more approachable to a wider audience. They claimed after extensive testing that the old site scared off many potential users because it was "hard to use" (IMO it just looked old, and therefor bad/lame).

I agree, it's not more outlandish, but a subway system is a proven and much cheaper alternative.

If people want to try to fix traffic themselves and all they need from the public is permission, why should we stop them?

Public safety, regulation/oversight of construction in city limits. It's also IMHO naive to think Musk will fund this himself and not ask the city to foot the bill.

Chess boxing 8 years ago

Anecdotally, I play chess much worse when resting between sets in the gym than when I'm sitting at my desk or on my couch. After a few profoundly stupid moves while playing chess during workouts, I remembered hearing about chessboxing and it making a whole lot of sense given what had just happened to me.

IMO you can't 1:1 compare running an ad on Instagram and running the same add on FB. Instagram is such a different beast that, you really have to tailor that ad for that service specifically as well as really understanding the audience for that ad.