It’s interesting that, with Python, the reference implementation is the implementation — yeah there’s Jython but really, Python means both the language and a particular interpreter.

Many compiled languages aren’t this way at all — C compilers come from Intel, Microsoft, GNU, LLVM, among others. And even some scripting languages have this diversity — there are multiple JavaScript implementations, for example, and JS is…weird, yes, but afaik can be faster than Python in many cases.

I don’t know what my point is exactly, but Python a) is sloooow, and b) doesn’t really have competition of interpreters. Which is interesting, at least, to me.

Did the developer use any version control though? SCCS has been around since the early 70s, RCS and CVS since the 80s. The tools definitely existed.

Also, it was a single dev, which makes SCM significantly simpler!

No doubt related to Johnson noise.

Your numbers seem reasonable — more intuitive for me to work in terms of pressure. Atmosphere is (roughly) 1e3 Torr, good UHV can be around 1e-10, so that’s 13 orders of magnitude, which is (roughly) the same difference that you calculated.

Aluminum foil is very common in physics labs. And a main use for it is “baking”! To get ultra high vacuum (UHV)* you generally need to “bake out” your chamber while you pump down. Foil is used same as with baking food — keep the heat in and evenly distributed on the chamber.

Sadly, it’s usually not food grade aluminum foil, as that can contain oils, and oils and vacuum are generally a big no-no.

*Just how good is UHV? Roughly: I live in San Francisco, which is ~7 miles by ~7 miles (~11km). Imagine you raise that by another 7 miles to make a cube. Now, evacuate every last molecule of gas out of it. Now take a family sedan’s trunk, fill it with 1 atmosphere of gas, and release that into the 7 mile cube. That’s roughly UHV pressure.

From TFA:

“I have failed you completely and catastrophically,” Gemini CLI output stated. “My review of the commands confirms my gross incompetence.”

99 what you did there…

(I know, IC isn’t valid Roman numeral representation of 99, but it was the only joke I could think of.)

Because it’s not an X at the end, it’s a Greek chi. Same with the arXiv preprint distribution — it’s “archive,” not are-ex-iv.

(…I think you may have gotten whooshed…)

Open, or standards-compliant local-only gear is the way to go for smart home stuff IMHO. Never had a problem with a Zigbee, Matter, or ESPHome device suddenly deciding it would stop working because manufacturer said so.

Yeah it’s missing the text, “…then the Planck X would be…” for the first two.

And a big plastics shill, unfortunately.

For back-of-the-envelope or mental calculations, pi is often 3 or 10^(1/2).

The latter is better than 1% accurate, and has nice properties when doing order-of-magnitude/log space calculations in base 10.

…are Turing Complete, so what you can do with them is exactly equal.

But they’re only equal in the Turing complete sense, which (iirc) says nothing about performance or timing.

Yeah, though it looks like the cyan (which would be ~500nm) is actually false color UV image, judging by the same color scale as this https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/5-3-2024_sdo_x1pt6_flare_131/

Some numbers are missing…[due to] out of memory error.

The S7+ seems to have 6 or 8GB RAM, but the iPhone 7 only has 2, yet it seems the iPhone ran the test and the S7+ didn’t. I wonder if the iOS implementation is that much better, or Android isn’t set up with any swap, or…?

I know the “attack helicopter” bit is a transphobic trope, but given how hard those fans are probably working, I think this computer might actually identify as one.

(If this comment is offensive I can remove it/mod can obviously remove it — not trying to be a dick!)

Human gestation is 10 months

“Full term” pregnancy is ~40w from last menstrual period, or ~38w from conception. There are ~4.345 weeks/month, putting full term at ~8.75 to ~9.2 months. Note the 9.2 months includes ~2 weeks before fertilization.

(Not sure if I’m being whooshed or not…)

People praise the female reproductive system as miraculous because it can make a baby in only 9 months. Like that’s neat and all, but my reproductive system can make a baby in approximately 13 seconds, so I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

Yep, you’re right — I was just responding to parent’s comment about fiber being best because nothing is faster than light :)