I wonder if this pattern is considered similar to fractals? Or would that work even better? I recently learned that we have figured out how to produce fractal light from lasers as well which sounds quite interesting and useful.
Maybe the reason radio waves travel poorly through trees is due to the leaves having a fractal-like structure as well? And since light is also just electromagnetic radiation too, it makes sense that this phenomenon could also be used to absorb light itself, if I'm understanding correctly. I wonder if this is how stealth paint on aircraft works?
I'm way out of my depth here, but I think this comparison to the birds of paradise feathers makes the most sense in terms of me visualising what Nxylon would look like with a thin metallic coating
I think it started with Apple when switching from OS 9 to OS X, I couldn’t explain it at the time and still feel disappointed with so much waste of expensive screen estate.
It's a weird turn of event that OS X stayed a much more classic os than what Windows 8 was becoming. I remember that for a long time OS X was wasting less screen estate than Windows 8 and all that mix that was Windows 10.
But since Big Sure it means that it got even worse than what It was with the first version of OS X.
I remember how crazy it was it setup a mac emulator, set it's resolution to my mac's resolution, full screen mode, and see how much space you could have with classic Mac OS, it's just crazy and everything remains legible.
Suddenly the windows desktop metaphor makes more sense because you can actually have many windows next to each other.
OS X has almost always tried to diverge from than, that lead to great things like exposé, spaces and then mission control but it looks like they never considered to reduce elements size.
I faced a similar problem as my wife had a chorionangioma, a placenta tumor. Or it was my son, it’s even hard to tell who had it as placenta is external to both. In the hospital where we were, they were doing their best to keep the baby alive despite all the issues with the rupture of the amniotic sac and body damages that he already had, which I understand. What I didn’t understand, and still don’t, is how they were getting ready to try and keep him alive once he would be born, most probably at the 6th month and with probable brain and other physical damages. I respect doctors who can’t choose between their patients life and death, and most of all parents who love their to be born kids so much that they are ready to face a life or hardship. I just think that medicine should not just focus on keeping patients alive, but also consider the quality of their life before taking a decision together with the relatives.
I’m not a child psychologist but I observed how my daughter became almost instinctively scared of the wolf. I think that less sanitized fairy tales can be a bridge between children’s imagination and the real world. Modern versions of fairy tales where the wolf becomes good give me more cringes than the ones where he is shot by the hunter.
Looking at the constellation of satellites, is anyone else concerned about Starlink being allowed by a single nation’s agency to fill the sky, which belongs to no one or to everyone, with their satellites?
It’s an appalling situation IMHO - watching the lack of regulations for “space litter” and ignorance of one man combined ruining earths orbit for generations to come is a disgrace.
I get the point of providing global connectivity and it might be useful, the implications don’t make up for it though.
Scientific research should be the only reason anyone should be allowed to put human made objects into space.
Musk shooting a damn car into space just for the fun of it should have been a warning for everyone - seeing the majority treating it as a “cool” thing to do just shows how much mire education about space should be done.
Clearly you don't understand Elon's Starlink. If they did nothing from today literally every satellite will re-enter and burn up of it's own accord within 5 years - not generations. They have to actively boost it keep it in orbit and counter the drag for the atmosphere. ( Which is quite different from most other satellites out there)
What I’m saying is that this is here to stay and once fuel for keeping them in orbit is depleted they’ll be replaced - hence that whole mesh won’t go away.
I agree with you in terms of how it feels. I haven't yet made up my mind about the balance of benefits and drawbacks. When I get cross about them I try to remember that I've never really minded airplanes crossing my path when stargazing and they're a lot brighter and more distracting. And I think I'd like to keep my righteous anger powder dry for when some gigantic asshole tries to show adverts in the night sky.
It requires active investment to maintain the contsellation, so at least the null case is that they'll all burn up within a few years if SpaceX fails. (And that's something that I think even many fervent Elon-haters don't particularly want to see: given the choice between betting the next 50 years of access to space on Starliner or Falcon and Starship, I know which I'd pick.)
No. Starlink isn't 'filling the sky' — there's plenty of space left for everyone else, and they're not preventing anyone else from sending up satellites.
Also, the benefits of Starlink's satellites are immense.
If there's "plenty of space left" then I dread to think what the sky is going to be like in the future! I never imagined I'd be part of the last generation to see a night sky that isn't full of satellites.
I'm starting to think more and more these problems with mental health we are seeing in young people are due to them being raised essentially in captivity. There's nowhere to go, no frontier left to conquer. Everything is full: the land is full, the sea is full and now even the sky is full.
As for the benefits, access to information and services is obviously a good thing, but we all know that it's really going to be access to social media and ads. I'm no longer convinced access to the internet is an absolute good.
> I never imagined I'd be part of the last generation to see a night sky that isn't full of satellites.
Are you also worried about the sky being full of aircraft? There is fewer than 10,000 satellites in orbit, but more than 30,000 civilian aircraft flying, and around 140,000 commercial flights per day. [1]
> There's nowhere to go, no frontier left to conquer.
> Are you also worried about the sky being full of aircraft?
Very much so. But with aircraft we at least have the ability to regulate where they can and can't fly and when etc. via local governments/democracy. The satellites can affect anyone in the world and there's absolutely nothing they can do about it.
> Which is precisely what SpaceX is trying to fix.
I grew up satellite watching, and I've never seen a sky not filled with satellites. The Iridian constelation has some of the brightest objects in the sky, and the company went bankrupt in 1999.
Many in our generation will never see the Milky Way, let alone Starlink.
I'd like to see the ratio of volume used up by satellites vs. volume of the earth's atmosphere between the highest and lowest flying satellite.
I wonder if it's something like the volume an ant would take up in an average American house, where nobody would care about it.
Apparently it's like colliding with one specific ant in a place much bigger than the Empire State Building. Or against one of thousands of pieces of an ant in such a building while being the size of a very tiny fraction of an ant.
The risk isn't the night sky becoming a blob of manmade tech, that probably won't ever happen; the real problem with these satellites (and other things we launch into the atmosphere like telescopes) is that when they get damaged, their debris effectively becomes dangerous, fast moving trash that has to be taken into account for every future space object launch. (Which has a compounding effect since if something goes wrong, you now have new and exciting debris to monitor and be careful with.)
Launch too many and you can essentially create an invisible blanket for the next 15 or so years (depending on re-entry time; without some technical innovations in this field, this used to be upwards of several centuries, but that's gotten better - Starlink's re-entry is 5 years for it's satellites if memory serves me right, but the industrial standard is 15-20 years - this has the extra downside that apparently their satellites don't burn up properly, having damaged properties and people in the past. Their fleet size also apparently risks halting the recovery of the gap in the ozone layer with the mass re-entry) that will prevent any kind of space exploration simply because there's no safe zone in which you can launch anything without crashing into a space object/space debris.
It's indeed like colliding with an ant, but that ant also moves at a speed comparable to a fired bullet. Even something as tiny as a screw that got loose and is now orbiting as debris can absolutely wreck other space objects at the speed those things move in the atmosphere.
The main downside outside of increased risk for space debris is that Starlink is messing with weather prediction/measurement. Apparently the satellite dishes they use register on weather reports as permanent rain spots[0].
Its not just a matter of having enough room for more crap up there. The enormous and growing number of satellites have an impact on ground based astronomers and astrophotographers
Which they have taken steps to mitigate. But in any case, the long-term benefits to astronomy of having cheap heavy launch capability (which SpaceX is funding through Starlink) will far outweigh the short-term costs of a few satellite streaks on images.
I’m sure even in the fictional worlds of Star Trek and Expanse there’s still someone in their back yard with a telescope, despite the skies being filled with not just satellites, but the constant traffic of space ships and the oppressive presence of megastructures.
Singling out starlink is unfair. Satellites are so obviously advantageous that it is a sure bet that the sky will be filled with them very soon. Chinese, European, and others.
Tragedy of the commons I guess, but it's not exactly a new idea [0]. As long as they keep control of those satelites, keep them in high decay low altitude orbits and are able to deorbit them if necessary it's not exactly a huge problem, unlike random ASAT weapon tests or collisions that litter tiny untrackable particles that will stay there for centuries and rip through anything like butter.
That horse left the barn years ago and spends its time snuggling with "We Respect Your Privacy"
Try the opposite take. Stars are extremely boring both with and without a telescope, and planets are entirely uninteresting without it. ISS aside, there's finally something interesting and dynamic to look up and admire with our eyeballs.
Agree, the thing I hate most is people saying that it's "not user friendly", not realizing that it might be a subjective thing, and it's a very generic way of putting it, and how hard it is to satisfy hundreds of idiotic conflicting requirements. And most of all that it's them not wanting to put any effort in learning a new tool and asking developers to smoothen every possible use case, which is impossible.
Gianluca Nicoletti, an Italian journalist, writer and radio speaker, is training a LLM with all writings as a support for his autistic child for when he won’t be here anymore. The software will speak with his voice.
Since presumably "all writings" refers to all his writings during his lifetime, I'd hope it can account for those times in his life at which he changend his mind on certain topics?
Yes I guess that “all writings” (sorry I meant all of his writings - not an English native) means everything he wrote and also his speeches, taking into account the times when he changed his mind. Knowing how meticulous he is I would be surprised if this wasn’t the case. Worth considering that he was recently diagnosed a mild form of autism himself.
Not the op but I don't think it blends better than others. What I really don't like is the little split in the removable blade where food sticks into and you can only remove using a dental floss or a folded piece of paper. Knowing that I would have got one with a fixed blade.
I just throw the blade in the dishwasher and it has come out clean every time.
You're right that it isn't as fast as some other blenders, but I think it makes up for it with the simple and durable design. I can live with having to run it for a bit longer.
When I was a kid I used to take a bus from East to West coast of Italy in Summer. Despite my best efforts to calculate the side with minimum sun exposure, I always ended up on the sunny side. This also happened when doing the opposite of my predictions. An app like this would have helped me a lot, but it would be nice to have the possibility customize the route.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02088-w