no-s (u/no-s) - Readit News

no-s commented on The Lunacy of Artemis idlewords.com/2024/5/the_... · Posted by u/feross

PaulHoule · a year ago

That might be Heinlein's most annoying quote ever and boy does it have competition.

It is very expensive to change orbits. If you had two space stations like the ISS with ascending nodes 180 degrees from each other it would be about as expensive to transit between them as it is to launch a rocket from the Earth to begin with. See

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/02/there-are-no-g...

You've got the advantage in space that you can use electric rockets with a high specific impulse. Back in the 1950s folks like von Braun imagined that manned space flight might use electric rockets but after they discovered the Van Allen belts they discovered this is much too slow to make it through the magnetosphere.

no-s · a year ago

> If you had two space stations like the ISS with ascending nodes 180 degrees from each other it would be about as expensive to transit between them as it is to launch a rocket from the Earth to begin with.

1+1 = 2 2/2 = 1; technically halfway.

To interpret “halfway to anywhere” that way is missing the point. Going from LEO to LEO wasn’t the point of “halfway to anywhere”. Yes a bit exuberant but not far off.

no-s commented on Ask HN: What are you working on?(Non-software projects only) · Posted by u/avgDev

no-s · 2 years ago

I want to build a low cost but comfortable small earthen house in the Sonoran Desert. Currently conducting a series of experiments to discover process that will be effective for my build:

- Comparing lime versus Poland cement for stabilizing poured earth. These mixes have a cure time measured in days and multiple experiments are in progress... - Research into latex cement for panelized wall and roof coverings over exterior insulation, mostly for temporary shelter structures. - Modular forms lined with geotextile fabric to minimize surface cracking in poured walls. - Other techniques to assure reliable performance of earth structures. - small mechanical projects to help make DIY practicable, e.g. auger mixers I can run from my tractor PTO, DIY trommel for grading materials, etc.

no-s commented on You’re probably using the wrong dictionary (2014) jsomers.net/blog/dictiona... · Posted by u/bcbrown

no-s · 2 years ago

A tear came to my eye when I read this. When I learned to read, Webster’s and Encyclopedia Britannica were my touchstones. I would roam the pages for hours discovering powerful and cogent associations. Most modern readers of English are not fond of nuanced prose; they cast a suspicious eye towards it and assume for the author a trivial fustian intent…

no-s commented on Rust Is Dead to Me gavinhoward.com/2023/04/r... · Posted by u/stargrave

scoutt · 2 years ago

> Guns have no place at a programming language conference

I don't have anything against a rule about not carrying weapons... but why mention it in a trademark draft?

I am sure we both can think about a lot of things that "have no place at a programming language conference", but surprisingly these are not included in that draft. Why?

no-s · 2 years ago

> a lot of things that "have no place at a programming language conference", but surprisingly these are not included in that draft. Why?

Rly. Why should petty tyranny or totalitarianism have a seat at a programming language conference?

no-s commented on Rust Is Dead to Me gavinhoward.com/2023/04/r... · Posted by u/stargrave

obarthelemy · 2 years ago

The danger is well known, not unknown: it's people with guns.

no-s · 2 years ago

> The danger is well known, not unknown: it's people with guns.

well, apparently not well known to you. The danger is criminals with guns. Law-abiding people carry guns everyday and demonstrably present no significant additional threat to the public. The thesis that law-abiding people could suddenly become dangerous gun criminals at a Rust event simply because they possess a firearm seems unsupportable.

Apparently the Rust Foundation wants us to accept the premise that lawfully armed people are intrinsically dangerous to fellow Rust enthusiasts, doubly so if they dissent.

I’d like to know what is it about Rust that makes lawful behavior and public dissent over Rust foundation dicta so hazardous...? Can someone address this directly?

no-s commented on Sig Sauer P320, a popular handgun with police, is firing on its own washingtonpost.com/dc-md-... · Posted by u/martey

lemcoe9 · 2 years ago

Product reviews, trigger specifications, and such. It really is just a matter of personal preference. Firearms like Glocks don't have "active safeties" where you enable/disable them with a lever, but they do have a variety of "inactive safeties" which prevent the firearm from discharging when dropped/rattled/whatever.

no-s · 2 years ago

> Firearms like Glocks don't have "active safeties"

gosh, there’s always some argument about the defn of “safety” when discussing Glock. A Glock trigger has a little spring-loaded tab which is depressed when you hold your finger on the trigger. When it is visible the Glock can not fire. This they call a “safety”, seems a little sketch but ok, I get the point. There’s some other internal features backing it up, but the trigger is most obvious.

The P320 had an internal lock-out widget that would disengage when you pull the trigger a wee bit and a spring loaded sear (? do they call it that for strikers?) one trivial whack away from releasing even if the trigger was not pulled to the break (the expected release point). I would call that absurdly wrong. The upgrade fixed this similarly to the P365.

The P365 has a similar lock-out widget to the P320 (they call it an internal safety in the manual), but it doesn’t disengage until the trigger is pulled into the break. The “striker” has a tab on it which is blocked to that point by the widget. You can disassemble it all and measure the distances the parts move to release, but I actually looked at a SolidWorks 3d model someone in the aftermarket industry shared with me and verified my pistol had the same dimensions at a critical point. I think if the striker tab or the widget broke it could fail silently. I check it about weekly or less.

no-s commented on Sig Sauer P320, a popular handgun with police, is firing on its own washingtonpost.com/dc-md-... · Posted by u/martey

no-s · 2 years ago

I stressed over this and finally gave in and got a P365, which I tore down and measured various things to assure it wasn’t as naughty as a P320. I wouldn’t even carry (EDC) a nice Glock which some PD reverted to, because of the unfortunate possibility of inadvertent discharge when re-holstering. For the P320 there was no real visibility of the risk from a slight trigger movement - for the Glock you know anything that moves the trigger safety opens the envelope.

no-s commented on CRDT Papers crdt.tech/papers.html... · Posted by u/luu

no-s · 2 years ago

Is trying to be the “essential CRDT”? CRDT didn’t spring from the quivering Internet jello fully formed in 2006. I feel this should go further back. I recall doing CRDT-like things for distributed message threading in ’97, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t original work. E.g. I recall some reading some paper[1] at the time which referenced Lamport’s 1978 note on distributed time[2].

The Awesome CRDT[3] references earlier material too.

[1] https://fileadmin.cs.lth.se/cs/Personal/Amr_Ergawy/dist-algo... [2] https://www.ics.uci.edu/~cs230/reading/time.pdf [3] https://github.com/alangibson/awesome-crdt

no-s commented on Suing to protect right of incarcerated people to receive physical mail eff.org/deeplinks/2023/03... · Posted by u/glitcher

JohnFen · 2 years ago

Yes, which is why I don't give money to organizations outside of a few exceptions. EFF is one of those exceptions.

no-s · 2 years ago

> EFF is one of those exceptions.

For me too. Though they test my patience regularly with leftist shibboleths. I’m pretty arch-conservative too, but we’re all in this together…my zeal knows no limits when it comes to defending against overbearing government.

In my mind it doesn’t matter if they’re innocent or guilty. If the government wants the privilege of treating people as guilty before due process then the legitimacy of government is automatically in disrepute. I’d rather let all the prisoners go free and let vigilante justice prevail than put up with this.

no-s commented on Woman with tuberculosis ordered to jail for refusing treatment arstechnica.com/science/2... · Posted by u/laserlight

Ixiaus · 3 years ago

It is your understanding failing you.

What you've said here is both true and moving the goal post from your first claim while also ignoring the other fact: they were approved for emergency use which means they still were subjected to rigorous testing and trials.

They did not have least testing, they underwent parallel trial testing.

no-s · 3 years ago

> They did not have least testing, they underwent parallel trial testing.

yes, let us quibble: not tested to the degree required for regular FDA approval as safe and effective, hence “Emergency Use Authorization”. I think maybe piling on the OP is unwarranted here.

IIRC in the UK the vaccines were touted by fact checkers as having “stopped hospitalisation and death from covid”, even though this was clearly not true from ONS data (yet more controversy abounds[1], predictably government statistics are intrinsically flawed because official agendas take precedence over reality[2]).

[1] https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com

[2] "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” - R.P. Feynman, 1986, Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, vol 2, appendix F.