intrepidhero

No. The assumption is that charity and government have roughly equivalent efficiency. Both government and charities have (wildly varying) overhead and government agencies may enjoy economies of scale that charities do not. Yet another area of the world that contains a surprising amount of detail.

I had a similar thought while designing my dream programming language but I also wanted automatic currying and I couldn't figure out an ergonomic way to have both.

Now I'm gonna go read your blog series.

At my first house I built garden beads in the back yard about 4 feet from the house, each with an 8 foot tall trellis for peas and beans. Seeing that lovely green wall outside the window in the summer was the absolute nicest window treatment I've ever had.

I built a simple kivy app a few years. Working with kivy and testing on my (linux) dev machine was great. Even side loading to test on my phone using the kivy launcher wasn't too bad. The pain point was that building APKs that the play store would accept was an ordeal and then when they change requirements you have to hope the kivy folks update their build tools in time to recompile with a new version of the NDK before google delists your app.

A split 48/12 system makes a lot more sense. Run the heater/heat pump, power steering, coolant pump, etc on 48V and keep entertainment and controls on 12V.

I hadn't connected the dots that all the various pumps (and fans) have to switch from mechanically connected to the engine via the accessory belt to electrically driven. That's a fair point.

Why would a car need a 48V system for accessories? In general the things a car's 12V system powers have gotten less power hungry over time (LED's, heat pump) and in particular, an EV loses the highest power electrical device on the 12V bus, the starter. The typical equipment used for the entertainment and control systems are going to be much more available with 12V supplies, just because that's the industry standard.

Obviously the traction system is using much, much higher voltages.

The article cites "complexity" of the wiring harnesses, which is nonsense. The wires might get a little smaller, but not by a lot. Like I said, the 12V bus in an EV isn't driving a bunch of high power stuff. (Is it? Am I missing something?)

The one place I can imagine it helping is for driving inverters so you can provide AC outlets for laptops, power tools, etc.

A phone (or a video) call has no more overhead and is no more of a bother than walking over to someone's cube for a chat. I understand that it feels like more to a lot of people but I don't think it is, objectively, more of a bother for either party. If you need the back and forth interactivity to clarify your question then do it.

Your trick with a shared doc is also a great idea and has two additional benefits. 1. The act of writing is an extra step to help you clarify your question. 2. The question and answer are now documented for the future. Both big wins versus a quick chat that then needs to be written down.

Maybe you're trying to make the point that for very complicated systems with many failure points, the reliability of a single component is less impactful than redundancy and there is some truth to that but I must point out that risk vs cost calculations are definitely happening in both industries you mention.

Triple redundancy is not a thing in general aviation while, for some systems, it is in commercial. That's a risk vs cost calculation.

Semiconductor manufacturers do risk vs cost calculations through the entire development and manufacturing process. Source: I've worked in semiconductor, doing those calculations.

But when the robot uprising comes our killbots will be unstoppable terminators and their killbots will explode the first time they encounter a set of stairs.

One of the most useful classes I took in college was a freshmen level philosophy class that I took because I needed 3 more credits of gen. ed. and it was at a convenient time. The prof spent the entire first lecture on this seemingly obvious concept:

If your ideas aren't clear, your writing won't be clear either.

It was like fireworks went off in my head. The realization that unclear writing (prose or code) was a signal that something was missing in my mental model, that there is a continuous feedback loop between the work I'm setting down and the ideas that I'm refining, became the foundation of all the work I've done since, from system design, to troubleshooting problems, to exploring my internal self.

That kind of clarity, where I knew the thing I was learning was going to be important was rare even in technical courses from my chosen field. But a lot of classes that felt "useless" at the time turned out to have important effects, seen only in hindsight.

I've been playing with making a rust interpreter and reading other people's work. Here's an interesting blog post (not mine) on making a interpreter in rust match the speed of a c implementation. It seems folks often have to resort to unsafe rust to get the performance they want. I don't claim to fully understand that and am looking for more information myself.

http://www.dannyvankooten.com/blog/2022/rewriting-interprete...

best weapon against complexity spirit demon is magic word: "no"

This is going up on every vertical surface at the office.

I dunno it looks pretty fun to me. Did you see the video? It looks like there are plenty of taxi-terrain interactions.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1366560/MiLE_HiGH_TAXi/

The number one use case of `for` in shell scripting is over the output of `$(ls .)` And I immediately run into a problem with filenames that have spaces and then I discover that a stringly typed language has lots of sharp edges.

I fall back on `for filename in os.listdir():`

I like to say wood stoves heat you 3 times. Once when you spilt the wood, once when you stack it and once when you burn it.

As fun as the nitpickings are, Bret posted some criticisms of RoP to his twitter that I thought even more illuminating regarding the director using the storytelling medium to just lie to the audience. It rings true to me. All the "clever misdirection" just felt clumsy.

https://nitter.cutelab.space/BretDevereaux/status/1617645693... https://nitter.cutelab.space/BretDevereaux/status/1618083297...

Defibrillators are full of capacitors to boost the voltage, not current. They also use carefully located electrodes, and come with a razor to remove body hair to create the ideal conditions to affect the heart because they need to work every time. That has nothing to do with whether residential power is dangerous or not.

I said mains voltage won't kill you every time but it definitely can. We wouldn't put it in residential settings if it was instant death. The problem is that the conditions that can lead to a deadly accident don't trigger any of our ape-brain fear response. Like any risk it should be approached with knowledge and care.

If you think any of the things you listed are fine and safe just because they don't result in "instant death" then I would say we have very different ideas about risk management.

I don't appreciate you calling me a liar for presenting facts and urging caution.

It only takes 80ma across your heart to stop it. Mains voltage, in both the US and the rest of the world, can easily develop that kind of current, especially if there is moisture involved. And yet plenty of folks have accidental contact without lasting effects. Electricity is fickle that way. The difference between, no problem and totally dead can be subtle, random and not obvious. It all depends on the path the current takes. Show it respect.

JWST, SLS/Artemis, Tiangong, and satelite launches are on a hockey stick curve. Very exciting time!

Toggle slider switches are the blue/gold dress of UI design. In a given population roughly 50% will swear with absolute certainty the given state is "enabled" and the other 50% will be ready to start a holy war with the conviction it is "disabled".

The population can be further subdivided into camps which disagree over what enabled and disabled even mean in this context.

Literally any design choice is better.

The article focuses on the UI, which is good, but the number one reason McMaster is the tops shopping experience (IMHO) is that they have a rock solid taxonomy. Every single product is meticulously categorized a dozen different ways, allowing me to drill down the feature tree to get exactly to the part I want. On Amazon even the product categories that have a few filters are hopelessly difficult to navigate. I'm stuck guessing at search terms and browsing "related" lists. If you want to build an Amazon killer, you can let UI, price and shipping slide, but nail your taxonomy and I'm in.

See also digikey, parts-tree and rock auto.

The graphics package removed my big complaint: that trying to figure out what each particular character stood for in which context was not fun.

The complexity is daunting, but also a big part of the fun. Since I started playing the new version I find myself constantly sniped by trying to re-design the UI in my mind.

I'm getting some input lag on Linux, via Proton, but I just pause the game and it gets snappy again. That's been working for me so far.

I'm thinking of personal experience in sub-Saharan Africa. But really, most cultures are less individualistic then the west and have different ideas about the obligations of individuals to the group.

I'm not saying one way or the other is right or wrong and that's the point. What's right is "obvious" in one culture and may well be outright wrong in another. Our ideas here should be challenged and tested and not merely accepted.

There are cultures in the world where the babysitter would expect to share in your windfall and everyone would think it a perfectly reasonable thing. Also, neighbors and extended family. This transactional, one and done sort of thinking that makes perfect sense in the capitalistic west, is not a mathematical, universal truth.

So the obese, elderly and disabled should have no access to the national park system whatsoever? Those people get a say in how tax dollars are spent too.

I wasn't suggesting a cable car to the summit of Denali. Just consider that maybe a hotel in Yellowstone could have a purpose besides profiteering.

How are most people going to enjoy (and therefore care about) this natural land without at least some roads, hotels and restaurants?

Even in designated wilderness areas, somebody has to build roads and cut trail in order for anyone to enjoy it and scientists to study the effects of conservation. I think it's a tough balance and we need lands all across the spectrum of development.

How big is the WASM runtime? If I embed Extism in my application what is the impact on install size and memory usage?

Has the UI even changed in 27 years? The fact that the I don't have to relearn it every time I update it has been my favorite feature.