I can remember reading Robinson Crusoe (1719) back in my youth, and thinking to myself "dang, these are really freaking long sentences." Made my tween head spin. Example:

After I had solaced my mind with the comfortable part of my condition, I began to look round me, to see what kind of place I was in, and what was next to be done; and I soon found my comforts abate, and that in a word I had a dreadful deliverance; for I was wet, had no clothes to shift me, nor any thing either to eat or drink to comfort me; neither did I see any prospect before me, but that of perishing with hunger, or being devoured by wild beasts; and that which was particularly afflicting to me, was, that I had no weapon either to hunt and kill any creature for my sustenance, or to defend myself against any other creature that might desire to kill me for theirs; in a word, I had nothing about me but a knife, a tobacco pipe, and a little tobacco in a box; this was all my provision, and this threw me into terrible agonies of mind, that for a while I ran about like a madman.

That is ONE sentence.

But this kind of many-claused style is hardly new. Here is the first sentence from the Gospel of Luke:

Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us,a just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.

Apparently this kind of structure was not uncommon in Greek of the time.

Exciting, yes, and it lead to interesting new distributions of life.

However, it also took over 10,000 years for the ice sheet to retreat. Flora and Fauna along the retreating ice sheet could live out their entire lives and barely notice any change. Here: we're eliminating an ice cap over 100-200 years. Creatures in the Artic today are having their entire ecosystem upended within a single generation.

Meanwhile: lots of renewable energy projects (solar and wind farms) can't move forward without first 1) waiting months or years for the utility to asses the impact on the local grid (see "interconnection queue backlog"), then 2) ponying up tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in "grid improvements".

But data centers with city-sized demand can hook up, no problem, and all customers bear the burden. Sounds like a double standard to me.

Missed a perfect opportunity for a better headline: "The Rack is Too...Damn...High" [ref]

Careful now, with an attitude like that you'll end up with Jesse Eisenberg coming after you with a chainsaw.

An alternate (although mathematically similar) approach would be:

Select a unit of time: let's say five seconds. Call that the Trade Time Slice. Within each Trade Time Slice, all trades are settled equally. If you happen to arrive a nanosecond sooner than the next guy, but you're both within the same 5-s interval (Trade Time Slice), both trades get the same timestamp and price, rather than the strictly FIFO behavior we have now.

Yes, there'd still be an incentive to show up sooner than the next guy, because that makes it slightly more likely that you'll end up in one Trade Time Slice, while the other guy just misses it and ends up in the next Trade Time Slice. But quibbling over 3.2 ns makes that a less than a one-in-a-billion proposition for a 5-second Trade Time Slice. That may still matter to some, and they can try to game it if they'd like, but it'd make High Speed Trading a tiny niche of the market, rather than a major player.

Some purists might say "but that'll add needless friction to the market; they'll be less efficient at finding the optimal price!" To which I would say: prove to me that ordinary investors are harmed by markets marching in 5-s intervals rather than nanoseconds. It may harm high-speed traders, because they won't be able to play their games and siphon their profits from all other traders, but that's hardly the same as saying the market is no longer functioning "correctly".

That may explain it. I have a Qrevo S, which is from 2024, while yours is from 2022. The only thing that it ever gets stuck at is one spot where, from under the couch, it can see out the ground-level window, and get stuck between the couch and window ledge (not actually stuck, just confused), because the LiDAR sees out the window. And I fixed that just by setting a small exclusion zone there. It never "gets lost" - maybe your house has some vast open spaces that it can't handle? But the LiDAR seems to see pretty far. The only other issues I've had are things like where I'll have a loose cord on the floor or some large piece of debris or whatnot, and even then, it's usually good at not getting stock on them. I'm also impressed with how well it deals with doors vs. a Roomba - my Roomba used to always get itself locked in rooms by accidentally closing doors after it entered, while the Roborock really tries to avoid ever touching them.

The Qrevo S has actually rotating mops, and they do a superb job with the floor. Spotless. My robot has the hardest mopping job in the world, too - it has to clean under my parrot's cage, and he poops off the edge onto a plastic mat under it ;)

I've never had to contact support - hopefully I don't need to :)

Do NOT try to play games with the beach-ball-sized nuclear device.

Regardless of the isotope used, plutonium in any form is a toxic heavy metal. The radioactivity just makes things worse. Leaving the RTG behind could cause all kinds of problems in the future.

Or give you mutant superbacteria. Perhaps with ninja skills.

I forgot to mention: the subsequent mission installed on a different, easier-to-access peak.

A subsequent mission did install a similar listening station and RTG. But each time they visited it thereafter, the RTG had buried itself deeper into the surrounding snow. So the thinking now is that the one on Nanda Devi, after falling in an avalanche, gradually melted its way down deeper into the glacier until it hit rock.

although map editing sucks and it often gets lost and can't properly reset its position. It needs to be rescued pretty often which is a major fail.

That's very distinctly not my experience. What version do you have?

A real vacuum cleaner just about maxes out a standard residential 120v 15a circuit, as anyone who remembers the incandescent bulb era can attest to. A circuit with a few lamps shared with a vacuum cleaner could easily end with you flipping a breaker or replacing a blown fuse.

When you look at the absolutely tiny lithium ion pack these robo-vacs come with, ...

Sitting on my kitchen table right now is a drone pack. It's 57,5Wh, smaller the batteries of most modern Roombas. It's 50C - thus it can output up to 2,9kW. And there's even higher packs available than that. Lithium ion cells can handle some truly high power outputs. It's *energy*, not *power*, that is their limitation. Run a pack at 50C and it'll be empty in a bit over a minute. That said, on hard floor surfaces there is absolutely no reason why you should be drawing more than 300-400W or so, and you can get by with well less than that. High powers are for like shag carpeting and the like. Also, the head matters more than the power (though of course contribute) - for a hard floor, for example, a fluffy roller head is ideal.

Pet hair has never been an issue for me with robots. My long hair always is. It's way longer than any pet's.