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 Discussion on answer by Avery: Did Wi…

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Mark
Jan 17 11:28
"Safety & Inclusion" mostly isn't DEI-related. It's mostly about protecting Wikipedia against legal changes, and protecting individual volunteers from lawsuits.
 

 Discussion on answer by mins: Why bui…

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Mark
Dec 31, 2024 14:57
The specific circumstances of this crash might be rare, but the general type of incident isn't: Aviation Herald has about 300 hits for "overrun".
 

 Discussion on answer by DogBoy37: Sho…

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Mark
Sep 3, 2024 08:38
@Graham, did you actually use the Internet in the mid- to late-90s, or are you just going off of stories? Sure, the lack of ads (and the resulting rapid load times) was a plus for Google, but the big selling point was the near-miraculous quality of the search results. No other search engine of the time would have dared put an "I'm feeling lucky" button on the search box.
Mark
Sep 3, 2024 08:38
@DogBoy37, "best" can beat "first to market" if the best is enough better. That's why we're using Google to search for things rather than Altavista, Lycos, Infoseek, Aliweb, HotBot, WebCrawler, Jumpstation, Dogpile, MetaCrawler, or W3Catalog.
 

 Discussion on question by Knight_of_t…

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Mark
May 7, 2024 16:40
@JBH, tachyons aren't fictional, they're theoretical. Fictional particles can behave however the author wants; theoretical particles are restricted by the known laws of physics.
 

 Discussion on answer by Fallenspacero…

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Mark
Apr 17, 2024 05:31
@Fallenspacerock, in warm regions, protection is mainly from the Sun, and a large straw hat works just fine for that.
Mark
Apr 17, 2024 05:31
@JackAidley, the wild precursor to the domesticated sheep may not produce wool, but a number of related species do -- and they shed it every spring to keep from overheating in the summer.
 

 Discussion on answer by littleadv: Is…

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Mark
Feb 22, 2024 19:10
@SilvioMayolo, I always carry a quarter with me: it's hard to flip a coin without one.
 

 Discussion on answer by Therac: What'…

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Mark
Feb 4, 2024 07:34
Delaware may be a blue state, but the Delaware legal system is notoriously business-friendly. It's why most US corporations are based there.
 

 Discussion on answer by AlexP: What i…

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Mark
Feb 1, 2024 16:24
@Hearth, steam engines can run on anything that'll burn. The problem with charcoal is that it is a very land- and labor-intensive fuel source.
Mark
Feb 1, 2024 16:24
@AlexP, "surface" is relative. Judging from pictures of the mines, a typical surface mine will have around a hundred meters of overburden to remove before you get to the coal -- something that would be considered an extreme deep-level mine by pre-industrial standards.
 

 Discussion on answer by Chris: Why ar…

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Mark
Jan 4, 2024 14:09
@AnonymousPhysicist, Renshaw S. "The visual perception and reproduction of forms by tachistoscopic methods." J Psychol 1945;20:217-32.
Mark
Jan 4, 2024 14:09
@AnonymousPhysicist, back during World War II, they discovered that a fighter pilot could spot and correctly identify an aircraft seen for as little as 5 milliseconds.
 

 Discussion on question by jng224: How…

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Mark
Nov 22, 2023 05:21
Have you tried replacing your irrational fears with rational ones, such as tripping over a root or taking a branch to the face?
 

 Discussion on answer by Mermaker: If …

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Mark
Nov 3, 2023 04:00
@AlexP, if money is no object, you can line the canal with your choice of extremely erosion-resistant materials. There are water pipes that have survived a century or more of high-pressure water flow.
 

 Discussion on question by Therac: Why…

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Mark
Aug 30, 2023 09:58
There were 30Hz LCDs (and even slower -- I think there was one running at 12Hz), but instead of dropping refresh rate to save costs, they did it to boost resolution. A computer can only draw a certain number of pixels per second, so by dropping the number of times each pixel is drawn, a greater number of pixels can be drawn.
 

 Discussion on question by Rhomaioi: N…

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Mark
Aug 17, 2023 04:53
@MichaelFoster, diamond knife blades are mostly a gimmick; if you're serious about using a non-metallic cutting edge, you use obsidian (it's sharper than steel, but not as durable). Diamond saw blades and drill bits use diamond for its abrasive properties.
 

 Discussion on answer by Robert Rapple…

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Mark
Aug 5, 2023 20:50
@RobertRapplean, Wikipedia gives the Pascal B yield as 300 tons. Pascal A (no cover) is listed as having a 55-ton yield.
 

 Discussion on question by m123: How t…

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Mark
Aug 4, 2023 21:37
Detection tools are worthless: they have high rates of both false negatives and false positives. If you're trying to decide if a paper is computer-generated, look for the sorts of mistakes that LLMs tend to make, such as made-up references.
 

 Discussion on answer by JBH: Could a …

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Mark
Jul 19, 2023 02:10
@JBH, ChatGPT may require more RAM than existed in the 1970s, but raw storage wouldn't be a problem. ChatGPT requires about 8.7 billion 80-column IBM cards. Sounds like a lot, but Wikipedia's article on punch cards has a picture of a US National Archives data warehouse that appears to contain about 64 million cards. Just 136 such warehouses would be sufficient to store ChatGPT. Switch over to magnetic tape, and you could fit it on just 9000 nine-track reels.
Mark
Jul 19, 2023 02:10
@kutschkem, twenty years ago, the training data would have been different (and harder to collect), but not worse. Instead of training chat on Reddit and Twitter, you'd be using IRC chatlogs. Instead of getting your books from Project Gutenberg, you'd use ebook piracy sites. Arxiv was only about 150,000 articles rather than the current two million, but there were also papers available on professors' personal sites. The biggest issue would be a lack of parallel texts for training translation.
 

 Discussion on question by WarpPrime: …

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Mark
Jul 11, 2023 02:44
Look at the Apollo Lunar Module for what a realistic spaceship is going to look like: a central pressure vessel with bits stuck on wherever they're needed.
 

 Discussion on answer by AncientGiantP…

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Mark
Jun 8, 2023 02:44
@AncientGiantPottedPlant, not infinitely strong, merely strong on the order of the strong nuclear force. An Earth-sized planet is considerably smaller than the Ringworld, so you can probably go down a few orders of magnitude on the strength of your unobtanium.
 

 Discussion on answer by Jamiec: Is th…

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Mark
May 26, 2023 10:03
@user2705196, I prefer this video: youtube.com/watch?v=UN3W4d-5RPo
 

 The Sand Trap

Room for discussions off-topic to CGCC (on-topic discussions s...
1
Mark
Mar 26, 2023 06:46
It's an inherent flaw of LLMs that they can't say "I don't know". They're completely blind to gaps in the training data, so when asked to do something, they'll always do something.
Mark
Mar 26, 2023 06:40
<malbolge>
  <image-size>2048</image-size><loop count="1" from="5">
    <if>
      <compare-to>2097152</compare-to></if>
     </loop>
Mark
Mar 26, 2023 06:40
Anyone here good at identifying programming languages? I asked an LLM to give me a program written in Malbolge, and it came back with this:
 

 Discussion on answer by Mon: At what …

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Mark
Feb 26, 2023 19:38
Skill isn't the only option for replacing strength. Morale works pretty well, too -- in many battles, the losing side was the one that broke and ran first, rather than the side that suffered more casualties.
 

 Discussion on answer by Nepene Nep: M…

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Mark
Feb 24, 2023 03:46
@NepeneNep, 1920s televisions were laboratory instruments, not consumer products.
 

 Discussion on answer by Ben: Why do A…

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Mark
Dec 8, 2022 22:23
@IamCleaver To some extent, yes. The main advantage of paying to go to Harvard is to say you went to Harvard -- the quality of the education is no different from any other top-tier school.
 

 Discussion on answer by Stephen Kitt:…

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Mark
Dec 7, 2022 15:44
@SolomonSlow, how do you propose to handle this keyboard under your system?
 

 Discussion on question by forest: How…

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Mark
Nov 29, 2022 22:52
I agree that bacteria that encounter the active immune system are probably going to lose, but something like a keratin-eating bacteria could cause severe damage to your skin before getting deep enough to trigger an active immune response.
Mark
Nov 29, 2022 03:27
@Alexander Depends on what you mean by "disease". Viral infections will be a non-issue for the reasons you note, but some bacteria simply see you as a moving pile of food, making for a competition to see if the bacteria can eat you before your immune system figures out how to destroy them, and many fungi see your skin as just another surface to grow on.
 

 Discussion on answer by Organic Marbl…

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Mark
Nov 25, 2022 11:12
@TrySCE2AUX, the AGC used metric units, but not SI units. The difference is that the AGC used the "centisecond" as its fundamental unit of time, where SI calls for using the second. (The difference comes from the AGC doing physics calculations 100 times per second; using centiseconds avoids a whole lot of multiplications and divisions.)
 

 Discussion on question by TaoRich: Ho…

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Mark
Nov 9, 2022 15:53
@JonCuster, the company I work for kept using some MacOS 9 software far past its expiration date because of a pricing model change: the old version was sold on a "buy it and it's yours" model; the new version is rented on a per-seat, per-year basis.
 

 Discussion on question by Jefferey Da…

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Mark
Oct 19, 2022 02:55
@AlexP, the "15 kg" is only the critical mass for a sphere of uranium sitting in the open air. There are various tricks such as neutron reflectors or compression to bring it down substantially.
 

 Discussion on question by Paul Omans:…

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Mark
Oct 14, 2022 17:23
Legally, maybe, but no computer system on Earth will handle it properly.
 

 Discussion on answer by supercat: Wha…

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Mark
Oct 6, 2022 08:07
@DanIsFiddlingByFirelight, checking my stock of old hardware, the fastest one I've got is a 52x. There were faster drives out there, but they were accompanied by rumors of exploding disks, where 52x drives weren't.
 

 Discussion on answer by user6726: Is …

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Mark
Sep 25, 2022 22:47
You are not required to take it down, but continuing to distribute copyrighted materials after the copyright owner has told you to stop considerably worsens your position. You can now no longer claim innocent infringement.
 

 Discussion on answer by AlexP: How fe…

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Mark
Sep 20, 2022 23:38
I also wouldn't try to do it in anything smaller than Great Britain, with access to the ocean for materials that aren't available at home. To get an idea of what sort of materials you need, this site has a list of critical strategic materials during WWII. You could probably scavenge the metals, but coal, oil, sulfur, phosphates, potash, and rubber would all need to be acquired fresh.
Mark
Sep 20, 2022 23:36
@ebinbenis I wouldn't try maintaining an industrial civilization with less than a million people: there are too many specialists needed to keep the farm machinery running so that most of your population can do things other than food production. (For example, you'll need to devote an entire factory just to the production of rubber gaskets and similar things.)
 

 Discussion on question by L.Dutch: Wh…

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Mark
Aug 5, 2022 12:28
@Gillgamesh, the two-section type is still in use because it permits tighter turns than single-piece trucks -- I've watched a two-section ladder truck go (slowly) around a corner that I'd consider uncomfortably tight in my Honda Civic.
 

 Discussion on answer by MadHatter: Wh…

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Mark
Jul 10, 2022 09:24
@jobukkit, the problem is that the SSPL mandates the use of open-source software. For example, if you offer MongoDB as a service, you can't use Veritas for backups, you can't use Microsoft IIS to run your management console, you can't virtualize your server using vSphere, and so on. Yes, it is possible to comply with the license, but it requires very careful selection of software to do so.
 

 Discussion on answer by Radovan Garab…

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Mark
Jul 7, 2022 16:00
@EthanManess, putting things into orbit gets a heck of a lot cheaper if you increase the acceptable failure rate -- most of the cost of space flight is reliability engineering, not parts, fuel, or construction labor. Losing 10% of your astronauts at launch may be unacceptable, but losing 10% of your kinetic-strike weapons isn't a problem.
 

 Discussion on answer by Schwern: Why …

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Mark
Jul 7, 2022 13:29
A large part of why space hardware is expensive is because people don't want it to fail. For a contrasting example, look at SpaceX: roughly 10% of all Starlink satellites launched have failed, but they don't care, because Starlink satellites are cheap.
 

 Discussion on question by JonathanRee…

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Mark
Jul 6, 2022 13:42
@ToddWilcox, if we had applied the spaceflight safety standards to heavier-than-air flight, we'd still be debating whether design error or manufacturing flaw was responsible for the fatal crash of the Model A.
 

 Discussion on question by Earman: We …

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Mark
Jun 22, 2022 07:23
"All models are wrong, but some are useful".
 

 Discussion on answer by AlexP: Is it …

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Mark
Jun 8, 2022 20:18
Special relativity is about reconciling mechanics, electromagnetism, and the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Prior to that experiment, the preferred reconciliation was "luminiferous aether", which was a form of distinguished reference frame.
 

 Discussion on answer by BradV: Why do…

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Mark
May 13, 2022 07:35
@DavidHammen, at the time SpaceX started trying to land Falcon 9 boosters, the "Grasshopper" prototype had eight successful landings under its belt, putting it at TRL 6. Further, landing was not in the critical path for success of a Falcon 9 launch, so NASA was willing to go with a low TRL.
Mark
May 13, 2022 07:35
@DavidHammen, they're not going to use TRL 2 or 3, period. TRL 2 is "we think we can build things out of graphene", while TRL 3 is "we have demonstrated that it is possible to use graphene as a construction material". NASA won't use anything less than about TRL 6 ("we've built a prototype or model of a graphene rocket").