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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 9th, 2023

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  • You would probably begin by having the police break into canneries and tyre factories to beat dents into any round objects they produce, then end up having to concentrate enough mass in neighbouring states to distort spacetime to the point where π, as measured on a non-Euclidean circle with locally Euclidean constant curvature or radius or something, does in fact equal the number you said it is.









  • To be fair, the ambient temperature being 37°C versus 0°C already makes a significant difference in terms of e.g. the air density and the amount of lift the wings get, how easy or hard it is to start up the engines, whether ice is a problem, etc.

    If the 15% difference in delta also translates to a 15% cost/efficiency difference, then that can absolutely make the difference in whether the technology is economically viable to apply at scale compared to its alternatives.




  • TAPR or CERN OHL, probably— Kit cars do already exist, though are apparently aimed at hobbyists, and usually just partial cosmetic customizations. “Metal box on wheels with motor” ain’t exactly rocket science, although quality could be challenging and that’s especially important when it comes to safety.

    That said, surely the production costs of modern vehicles needed to do their basic job— Efficient-ish and safe-ish transportation from point A to point B­— Can’t possibly be worth their increasingly inflated costs? There’s probably something to be said about the marketability of a sub-$10,000 basic OHL car that you can choose to scratch build or kit-build or buy fully built.





  • Yes. And I’m saying that’s not really a valid comparison, because those phones are generally just monolithic slabs that have been glued shut, whereas Fairphone has to implement a user-serviceable modular design with actual seals and stuff.

    Would giving it both water-sealing and a headphone jack be worth increasing the price by another €20, because it adds a new potential ingress point that the rest of the phone might have to be redesigned around? What if the jack is one of the biggest parts that isn’t replacable? Fairphone 5’s apparently only rated IP55, while Fairphone 4’s only IP54. That’s barely even really “waterproof”, but more like “splash-proof”. Would adding another hole in the frame be worth possibly reducing that rating to IP53 or IP52 (“drip-proof”)? Would it be worth reducing the warranty by 4 years, because some amount of dust and moisture still works its way in over time no matter how robust the rest of the phone is?

    Personally I think I would probably rather have the jack even if it meant no waterproofing at all. But that might not be the direction the market is leaning in, and we don’t know what tradeoffs exactly they’ve considered to arrive at their final design with decent-ish waterproofing and good reparability but no headphone jack.

    They have written about this directly in some detail, it seems. If nothing else, it shows that they have put some thought into the issue, and they’re aware that removing the headphone jack will be disappointing for some users, but overall they see making the phone thinner and adding IP rating as being the higher priority:

    https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/9836188988049-Audio-Jack-3-5mm


  • “I’spose” est facile. “J’suppose” est dur à dire, parce qu’on ne peut pas dire “j’s” comme “i’s”.

    Eh, je ne sais. C’est plus difficile que “I’spose”, oui, mais je pense que c’est ok… Les cowboys fringants dit aussi “j’te”, “j’rentre”, et probablement les autres consonnes aussi, donc, généralement, je l’imagine comme si on bredouille un peu.

    J’ai dû sortir mon français rouillé. Merci pour la pratique. Et oui, j’ai utilisé Google.

    Et la même à toi! Mais j’utilise Google pour traduire du français vers l’anglais, après avoir premièrement écrit la français avec Collins et quelquefois Reverso (mon professeur français a toujours aimé ça). Je fais des corrections alors peut-être. Ainsi, Google me dit si j’ai fait des grosses erreurs, mais je pratique mon français tout seul.


  • We spent more on the Manhattan project than the disorganized fusion projects have spent in a decade, and will spend in the next decade as well.

    That cost was overwhelmingly slanted towards implementation though, not research. The theory for fission was very simple compared to nuclear fusion: Gather enough fissile material in one place rapidly, and it explodes. Once the basic parameters and theory were proven, the actual project cost went overwhelmingly to just enriching enough nuclear material and then, separately, getting the Silverplate Superfortresses ready. They were so sure of the science that they didn’t even bother to test the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima. It wasn’t like fusion research at all, where for over half a century every new device that’s supposed to produce power instead just discovers new plasma instabilities which mean it simply doesn’t work.

    Also, the cost comparison you’ve made is simply false. The Manhattan project cost no more than $20-30 billion, inflation-adjusted. ITER’s cost (from 2008 through to ~2025) is going to be at least €22 billion, and apparently $65 billion if the US is to be believed. That’s of course not even counting the various other “disorganized fusion projects”, like the ongoing operating costs for W7X, the NIF, JET, and whatever the Z machine, Shiva star, etc., and assorted Chalk Los Sandia Livermore national laboratories are doing for fusion research. Still worth it, probably— Hell, if it cost $10 trillion, it would probably still be worth it, as long as it actually works— But let’s not pretend it’s cheap or free or a safe bet or easy solution.

    Thorium is a safe bet, but it also needs significant research.

    On the other hand, why not both?

    That would be far too much foresight, obviously.

    …But there’s also never enough resources to go around, and you don’t want to be the country that sank all its money into a technology that didn’t pan out.