bgnn (u/bgnn) - Readit News

bgnn commented on Thin desires are eating life joanwestenberg.com/thin-d... · Posted by u/mitchbob

bgnn · a day ago

Great piece!

Made me reflect on my own persuasion of thin desires and my struggle to control them.

It also made me see that my hobbies and my career are actually about following my thick desires. I'm in tech, yes. But I chose, among all the possibilities, to be an analog circuit designer. The analog part is what makes it a long hard skill to master, and my day job feels like constant learning from my interactions woth the world. I can't imagine doing anything which isn't interacting with the actual physical world!

bgnn commented on JetBlue flight averts mid-air collision with US Air Force jet reuters.com/world/america... · Posted by u/divbzero

DLA · 2 days ago

Not sure I’d call crossing traffic “within a few miles” a near-miss. Even at full cruising speed of 500-600MPH (less because the JetBlue was still on a climb) the civilian aircraft would cover a mile in 6-7 seconds, so we are talking 18 to 24 seconds to close 3-4 miles.

Also, it a common for military aircraft to not have a transponder on, especially in the vicinity of threats. Without a transponder the civilian aircraft TCAS/ACAS would not warn about traffic.

Not sure how far off the coast of Venezuela this occurred, but there are some very real SAM threats the Air Force aircraft would need to worry about.

(edited typos)

bgnn · a day ago

What if it was dark, or cloudy? Or the pilots weren't looking outside?

bgnn commented on Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons alinpanaitiu.com/blog/dev... · Posted by u/alin23

sfink · 2 days ago

> It's light but dense,

What does that mean? It's tough enough that you can make it thinner? It dries out more fully? Or does "dense" refer to something other than density, like tightness of the grain?

bgnn · 2 days ago

It's indeed the tightness of the grain, but also volumetric density (975 kg/m³) is higher than oak or spruce. What I mean with light is, indeed you can make very thin utensils and they won't break, bemd etc so at the end the product is lighter than the obe made with a softer/less dense wood.

Boxwood was for centuries the choice of wind instrument makers because of its stability and hardness, which made it possible to create thinner more practical instruments (clarinets, flute etc). till humans discovered granadillo wood, which is as dense as boxwood but much more humidity and temperature stable.

bgnn commented on Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons alinpanaitiu.com/blog/dev... · Posted by u/alin23

bgnn · 3 days ago

Great blog post. I like the emd look of the experimental finish.

Couple of years back I went to all wooden spoons in the kitchen. My all time favourite is the most traditional of all: boxwood. This is what wooden utensils are made in my home country for centuries. It's light but dense, hard, and durable. It doesn't absorb color or smells easily as other hardwood. Beautiful too!

bgnn commented on An off-grid, flat-packable washing machine positive.news/society/fla... · Posted by u/ohjeez

infinet · 3 days ago

I am interested in unit cost for mass production. It needs to be significantly cheaper than an old style top-loading washing machine to be affordable. The design of old style washing machine is mature and priced at around $100 for 8kg model. I suspect it can be stripped down further, remove water pump, remove program controlled inlet valve et al. to reduce the cost to below $50. Granted, washing machine like that needs electricity, but solar panel may be cheap enough.

One more thing, the water is not always easy to get in poor places. It is often much easier to carry laundry to a well, creak, or river than transport water to home. The path to the water sources may be a narrow trail often going up and down hills, so even with wheels on the machine, it is impractical to drag the machine to the water.

bgnn · 3 days ago

There are much lover cost washing machines with electricity. This one for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eo4CIHpp28 . It's just a motor, you just need a big bucket or a tub to fill it with water and detergent. Let it turn the clithes in water for half an hour and rinse. It's also handy during rinsing.

Growing up in a developing country in 90s we used to use this type of machine for bigger loads because our normal front loader machine was only 6kg capacity. This + a bathtub was the way to go for washing the blankets, bedsheets etc. It costs now sth like 20-30 usd.

bgnn commented on Using e-ink tablet as monitor for Linux alavi.me/blog/e-ink-table... · Posted by u/yolkedgeek

somat · 4 days ago

I don't really want an e-ink "monitor" as that does not really play into the advantages of an e-ink display. By the time the e-ink display is uprated enough to act as a monitor It feels like a lot of the advantages of e-ink are lost and the display server does not really downrate enough to utilize e-ink's strength.

But an e-ink "terminal" would be nice, not an actual tty but something more like a tablet form factor that has a few buttons, little to no internal smarts and you can push images to it.

bgnn · 4 days ago

this would do? https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-paperlike-103-the-wo...

bgnn commented on Scientists create ultra fast memory using light isi.edu/news/81186/scient... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico

bun_at_work · 7 days ago

Is it prohibitively larger? And is the size a fundamental constraint of the technology, or is it possible to reduce the size?

bgnn · 6 days ago

Previous reply is correct.

To give a feeling: micro-ribg resonators are anywhere between 10 to 40 micrometer in diameter. You also need a bunch of other waveguides. The process in the paper uses silicon waveguides, with 400nm width if I'm not wrong. So any optical feature unfortunately isn't going down as much as CMOS technology.

Fun fact: the photolithography has the same limitations. They use all kinds of tricks (different optical affects to shrink the features) but fundamentally limited by the wavelength used. This is why we are seeing a push to a lower and lower wavelengths by ASML. That + multiple patterning helps to scale CMOS down.

bgnn commented on Scientists create ultra fast memory using light isi.edu/news/81186/scient... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico

pezezin · 7 days ago

Would it be possible to use something similar to DWDM to store/process multiple bits in parallel in the same circuit?

bgnn · 6 days ago

It isn't unfortunately as the physical size of the resonators need to match a given wavelength. So for each wavelength you need a new circuit in parallel.

bgnn commented on Scientists create ultra fast memory using light isi.edu/news/81186/scient... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico

vlovich123 · 7 days ago

From the paper

> footprint of 330 × 290 µm2 using the GlobalFoundries 45SPCLO

That’s a 45nm process but the units for the chip size probably should have been 330um? However I’m not well versed enough in the details to parse it out.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.19544

bgnn · 7 days ago

I'm very familiar with this process as I use it regularly.

The area is massive. 330um × 290um are the X and Y dimensions. The area is roughly 0.1 mm2. You can see the comparison on table 1. This is roughly 50000 times larger than an SRAM of 45nm process.

This is the problem with photonic circuits. They are massive compared to electronics.

bgnn commented on Accepting US car standards would risk European lives etsc.eu/accepting-us-car-... · Posted by u/saubeidl

stokedmind · 14 days ago

> I can agree with the most of this, but the large families being pushed out of existence is plainly wrong. How much the school is costing you? Healthcare? How much do you save by being able to cycle with 4 kids to short distances, where most of your daily travel comprised of?

Oh I love cycling. I know it's hard to find even remotely comparable cycling-friendly locations in the States, even if growing up (also in a large family) we were fortunate enough to live walking distance to schools in a suburban area.

But for education and health, health care isn't "free" in the Netherlands. We pay hundreds per month for the whole family for health insurance on top of the high taxes that support the "system". Public education is also tax-supported in the USA for K-12, although indeed higher education is more expensive.

I'm more referencing policy that is intentionally "squeezing" everything to make it all smaller and more frugal in a way that makes a <5 family size far more practical. It is not the same in the States.

bgnn · 14 days ago

Yeah I totally see that. What I struggle with with a single child is to be able to work full time for example. You are expected to work part time, but then how do you sustain your income, with multiple children. The problem will be bigger once they grow up though. It's really tough to find housing, to rent or to buy, for the youth. I'm working on getting a second house somewhere else so my child can use the house here when they grow up. Can't imagine the stress of raising 4 children.