Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Different tools for different skills (Score 1) 28

When I was a young college student I watched a professor working on some code in his office one day and saw how fast he was able to manipulate the text, cutting pasting, duplicating, all without hardly moving his hands. Ad hoc macros with the "." command were so powerful. I was very impressed and learned vi and never regretted it. vi definitely doesn't require touch typing! In fact I think it was designed for non-touch typers.

Now I have used vim for 30 years and am handicapped without it. I don't care if it's vim class, regular vim, neovim, or some IDE binding mode. I'm no vim expert and I really only use a small set of commands and keystrokes, but I appreciate the efficiency. The editor doesn't cause me to succeed or fail as a software engineer, but it does make my life more pleasant.

Comment Re:Blocks ..... (Score 1) 84

Reduction != None. Cities approve them because that even with any incentives offered they'll be raking in the cash, because the value of a datacentre is so high (even if you're in an area that only counts building + cooling + power interconnects + etc, but not the servers within, toward the property tax base)

You cannot simultaneously complain about consumer electricity prices and datacentres being bad neighbors due to having power plants on-site. Take your pick.

Datacentres buying power ALSO equals tax revenue, en masse, because electricity is taxed. And all of the jobs associated with providing that electricity.

A datacentre means a huge amount of income to the locality where it's at, plain and simple.

Comment self punishment (Score 1) 14

>"Without a pen and paper handy, he was stuck texting the idea to himself. Eggers doesn't own a smartphone. "It takes 20 minutes to write a sentence," Eggers said... It's a funny predicament for Eggers,"

Um, if he has a "dumb" cell phone at all that is on, it is tracking his location, essentially the same as a smartphone with GPS off.

He could carry a computer tablet with no cell modem and save stuff to internal storage or SD. It will enable a large on-screen keyboard and with option to voice type/edit off-line. Or a smart phone with no SIM card/data plan and GPS off. There are options.

Comment Re: Data centers in space (Score 1) 84

Honestly, few people on this site are as hilarious as you are. Your main competitors are rsilvergun and drinkypoo.

I have no idea

Obviously. You couldn't be bothered to research the hint I left behind. Or perhaps you missed the hint entirely. Oh well.

Computers chips need to be hardened.

I didn't say they don't.

They basically have to be redesigned so that radiation in space does not randomly flip bits.

No they don't. It certainly helps to reduce it, but only an UnknowingFool would think a flipped bit or two is necessarily either catastrophic or flight ending/endangering. Even somebody with a basic computer science understanding would understand why that may not be the case.

Every space agency takes existing chips and spends years to make them space ready. ESA/NASA are not purposefully delaying components for no reason.

I didn't say that. What I am saying is there's a faster way to iterate, and even though it has been conclusively proven to work, the ESA still sticks to the old ways.

A Starlink satellite can fail because 1) it's a private company 2) There are many satellites.

Actually the private sector has a lot less tolerance for this. Unlike the government, they can't just issue bonds for it and go infinitely into debt.

3) ESA/NASA projects like the James Webb cannot be serviced.

A few things to unpack here:
- Hubble (not ESA) certainly could, and was, so preceding that with "ESA/NASA projects like" followed by exactly one satellite is just something an UnknowingFool would say.
- James Webb (also not ESA) is rather unique because of its location, not because it's inherently unserviceable. What's more is there's no reason this couldn't change at some point. We may even be able to refuel it to extend its service life. For now, the only real limit is one of feasibility.
- NASA lets ESA have some time for JWST because it allowed them to provide the launch services, even though the ESA introduced three very long delays because of repeated launch engineering faults on their part. By the time it was ready, NASA had alternative launch services available, but it was too late to switch because it was already engineered specifically within the constraints of Ariane.

The logistical baggage as you call it is making sure something works for years and decades without failing. 1 or 2 Starlink satellites fail every day. Every day.

Even if that were true, it's still an incredibly low defect rate considering the overall size of the constellation. But it's pointless to entertain this because it's not true. To date there have been no more than 350 failed starlink satellites. Given the time Starlink has been around, that is far removed from even one per day. And we don't even know the cause of most of them, which could very well be from debris strikes or natural phenomenon (e.g. solar weather that once took out nearly an entire batch of new satellites, or micrometeor strikes.)

1 or 2 Starlink satellites fail every day. Every day.

I'd tell you to do some basic research, but that username kind of precludes the possibility of you at least retaining any of that knowledge after you did.

Please describe how that is "good enoug" when there is only 1 Hubble, 1 James Webb, etc.

I think you're one of few people on slashdot who's username accurately describes them IRL.

I see you're unfamiliar with the initial failures that Hubble dealt with, because it wasn't operational at the time that it first reached its intended orbital parameters, and required manual servicing just to get it operational. Or the micrometeor strike that slightly degraded JWST. Though JWST is huge compared to starlink birds. And as you said, there's only one of each.

I fail to see how

I've noticed how you tend to do that.

many telescopes Space X has made.

Because the only thing that ever goes to space are telescopes. And they get there entirely by themselves. I also believe you don't understand the entire purpose of Ariane, or why it won't actually fulfill that purpose. But do go on.

Comment Re: Congrats to Mr. Musk (Score 1) 294

Ban? No, how about we just tax more than a pittance of it

We already do, by the billions. Whether you're aware of it is notwithstanding.

and also disallow it from being spent in outsized amounts (relative to every one else) to control our political processes?

Controlled how? Money doesn't and indeed cannot control it. This has been proven time and time again. We've seen many, many elections where the side that had the largest campaign warchest lost handily. In the case of 2016, it was 11:1 in Hillary's favor. See also Scott Morse, who was literally directly opposed to exactly what his constituency was asking for, outspent the competition handily, had incredible amounts of PAC spending in his favor, and lost handily. Below, I'm going to say "you" and "you guys" because I don't have any political affiliation:

You guys flat out refuse to accept why your guy lost, or at least, that it might, just might be based on the loser's campaign being completely tone-deaf to an issue that's been eating away at its core base, (which I'm not part of, by the way, given I've been doing quite well for myself) if not flat out ignoring and/or telling it its core base to just shut up and deal with it, complete with the most ridiculous advertisements that makes them want to hate the campaign even more than they already did. You can't accept that you just might be wrong on a lot of shit, so instead you want to place the blame somewhere else. Not only does that do you no favors, you guys are hell-bent on breaking the constitution when it's not only totally unnecessary, but it will bite you even harder in the long run than this ever could have.

While you're doing your populist "rah rah rabble rabble" shit against billionaires like morons, some people have done the right thing, and have been trying to figure this one out by actually talking to the base rather than ignoring it (or telling it to shut up, they don't matter, etc) and gathering data. They eventually discovered something, which big shock, has nothing to do with Elon, and nothing to do with billionaires. Instead it has everything to do with what the Harris campaign got totally wrong, which was already following the existing rhetoric of the democratic party at the time:

https://pdxscholar.library.pdx...

Note this bit:

A qualitative empirical analysis, including interviews with a politically and demographically diverse sample of men aged 21-26 in Oregon, supports this argument. Participants felt unjustly excluded from the left based largely on identity-related concerns and initially appreciated Donald Trump’s separation from traditional politics.

Emphasis mine. In other words: Science. That's also to say nothing of this: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/fiv...

If you don't understand why something like these come off as condescending:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Then you really have no idea why your guy lost. These may as well have been Trump ads. Data wins over ideology any day. You can deny it all you want, but that doesn't win elections.

Your strawman is obvious.

It was a question, followed by a statement borrowing context from another thread, which I erroneously thought this thread followed from, namely the one where a bunch of people were having a populist "rah rah rabble rabble" about how nobody should be allowed to have a net worth of $100M. So yeah, I'll admit that mistake.

Comment Re:Silly. (Score 1) 72

The point was quite obvious in context. You stated, and I quote:

"Two years of testing and development doesn't seem unrealistic."

I pointed out the obvious. It's been over 50% longer than that.

But beyond that, "solid state battery is eternally a few years away" has been a thing for well over a decade at this point. It's the same marketing category as "fusion on planet's surface is 50 years away" and "lithium air batteries are 20 years away".

Comment Re: Congrats to Mr. Musk (Score 1) 294

I've been offered exactly this for my shares, and yes, the terms aren't as good as progressives usually think. The motivation behind it primarily is to give you liquidity for everyday expenses without having to sell your shares, which also means you get to keep any gains on them, which tends to benefit you a lot more in the long run, but is not even remotely guaranteed.

You only get somewhere around a fifth or a quarter of the current price of the stock, and if the stock falls in value so much, you'll get socked with a margin call. If you can't pay it, the bank then sells your shares, which violates your equity agreement with the company, which will probably make you ineligible for more shares from your existing grants, and assuming you're eligible for more share grants, your future grants will be lower, meaning you also lose future income.

It's a calculated risk, not a tax dodge or a handout. If you treat it as those, you'll probably be disappointed. In a few posts above, rsilvergun was complaining about how this isn't available to him and people like him -- and that's really for his own good. Same reason the SEC won't allow him to buy into private equity, even if it was offered to him. The law is designed to protect him. In theory, he could do it eventually, but he'd have to somehow prove that he's not a total moron when it comes to finance. But given he's a moron when it comes to virtually everything...good luck with that.

Comment Re:Congrats to Mr. Musk (Score 1) 294

Once the 180 day lockout ends

His lockout is 366 days. For 100% of his shares. Full stop.

The employees and early investors get to begin selling shares in as little as a month from now, with the rest gradually becoming available over time, and all of it by 180 days.

Any shares "based on hitting certain performance objectives" are in addition, and would dilute the existing shares.

This is how it's done everywhere, including for regular employee shares.

Slashdot Top Deals

Any given program will expand to fill available memory.

Working...