Even something as "simple" as a kitchen knife - the same basic concept found in ancient roman everyday kitchens - can't be made to the same quality by a machine as per hand. CNC can't do the tolerances needed behind the apex. Even ignoring the story attached to a specific maker and going solely by cutting ability the really top end hand-made stuff noticeably outperforms everything mass-produced.
The point was to show that machines can produce knifes with precision. The other commenter stated that "CNC can't do the tolerances needed behind the apex.", whatever that means exactly.
Long story short, your point was that machines can do many things better than humans and I argue they can't even do kitchen knives better. How easily and well you cut through things depends on the thickness of the blade wedging them apart. Especially noticeable on denser food like carrots. The apex is the actual pointy part of the blade, and the thickness of the part after the apex and overall blade geometry dictate the cutting experience. Getting the front part thin is usually done via hand-grinding even in the video you shared, a fully controlled process would use something like C&C, but that tech currently can't get things thin enough to be a good knive.
I'd wager that razor blades and scalpels and many other things sharper than kitchen knives are made by machines. Sometimes we don't automate fully expensive things because handmade is also a premium, not necessarily because if we were to dedicate engineering resources to the problem it would be impossible to automate. That said there are things that machines currently can't do despite good efforts to solve the problem. That's true
The whole Coding Standards talk has always felt like an own goal. Don't get me wrong I have extensive C++ experience and wouldn't work on a project that doesn't have guidelines. But the fact that one _needs_ plain english and hard to check in an automated fashion guidelines when using the tool that is C++ implies something about the deeper culture and issues at play.
Sir you're holding the wrong handle. <The audience looks at a hammer with 17 subtly different handles>
I very much agree with you, but also consider that there has not been a single instance (I can think of) that violence was able to stop the spread of a new technology. The human race is just a moth to the flame, and it simply cannot resist.
It goes both ways. Afrika Had eight military coups since 2020. Many of its countries are plagued by civil wars and terrorism.
I'm not arguing any points how these conflicts will ever be solved, but it shows that violence hasn't solved anything until now, for decades over decades.
Obligatory 'war is a continuation of politics by other means' Clausewitz -- the act of forcibly compelling others to adopt ones position doesn't have an inherent 'acceptable vs not-acceptable' line in method, other than that which we socially layer on top.
Every time I hear his name I have to think of "America needs to build more" but just not in my backyard.
> “I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton,” the two wrote in their email, signed by both, as reported by The Atlantic’s Jerusalem Demsas. “Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY increase the noise pollution and traffic.” [0]
Pointing out hypocrisy is easy and not necessarily damning. But looking at all the -100 for everyone but +2 for me fabric of society abusing startups he funds I can't help but think he is a pretty whack person. Let's stop listening to him.
I've been thinking about this for a bit and there are a variety of reasons why it can be appealing for PMs to push for apps over webpages:
- No search competition, when you search on duckduckgo or google for the page a competitor can bid to show up, won't happen with an app.
- Notifications, this is a big one. We live in the attention economy and apps are more likely to slide into push notifications - with ads - than webpages.
- Some users have a mental model that more easily maps to "this app is my go to for this task" and struggle with webpages. That's a psychological and incentive issue. Apple support PWAs but just barely and don't like them because they don't partake in the 100 billion dollar revenue 30% payment processing extortion.
- More intrusive access and "better" targeted advertisement.
- Once an icon is on the home screen somewhere, chances are some users are going to use it because they notice the icon and would not have done so if it were just a tab inside the browser. The attention economy strikes again.
- Companies _love_ to build a relationship with customers. It's usually a very one sided and jealous relationship where getting the user to install an app is perceived as a step in that direction.
- Users are more willing to create accounts for apps than webpages (citation needed, this is just a gut feeling)
- On mainstream iOS and Android it's much harder to block ads in apps than it is in the browser.
I'm sure there are other reasons, but those alone explain why we see them so often.
Lasers. No really, near-future laser systems with adaptive optics and good spotting - for example distributed SAR satellites - dramatically shift that balance [0].
I doubt a MW laser can reliably intercept a reentry vehicle. A lot of energy is lost through the atmosphere when intercepting a warhead in space, from a land based laser. Once it reenters the atmosphere there might not be enough time. You also need to burn through the heatshield that the warhead is equipped with for reentry.
Even if you can can deliver enough energy for long enough, there is no fuel to burn and it might not be easy to detonate or disable the warhead.
For ICBMs, one idea was to use orbital, nuclear powered lasers to hit the missile on the boost phase.
But that's very much not near-future.
Lasers might still be useful for rockets, drones and cruise missiles of course.
> For ICBMs, one idea was to use orbital, nuclear powered lasers to hit the missile on the boost phase.
Author here. Thank you for your insight.
I took some time to read about the recently proposed "Golden Dome" defense system, and what you laid out seems to be the end goal [0]. It's difficult to tell how realistic this actually is. The size of the constellation of satellites needed seems prohibitive, to say the least.
I get the impression you didn't read the linked post. It goes into the details, atmospheric absorption for different wavelength, weather conditions, tracking time, interception time based on warhead hardness ratings and many more details. It's paper based, so in practice it will be more complicated and there are things it will have missed, and things we don't even know yet as being operational challenges for such systems. At the same time, it does present a compelling narrative and I'd much rather discuss individual assumptions or sources than dismiss it entirely based on a gut feeling.
Maybe for subsonic, high end missiles I'm extremely skeptical. Need 5-10MW to get useful dwell power on high end hypersonic inherently shielded against reentry thermals. Speculative laser defense are infra size defense, not mobile trailer size. Factor in duty cycles (i.e. shots per minute) and it seems dead end. Half of economics of missile defense is mobility - building density relative to threats by moving platforms. Last 2 parts real constraints, high-end adversaries coordinate salvos to arrive in time. Interceptor magazine depth limited = still throw 100s of interceptors to engage multiple targets if required. Lasers = serial visual range engagement. Figure out dwell time + duty cycle to saturate. Hypersonic can go from over horizonal to hit target in 10 seconds, a laser couldn't engage more than 1-2 missiles in that time. Technically 1, because by the time you fried 1st target the 2nd is so close the shrapnel will hit on momentum.
The recently announced "Golden Dome" project intends to get around this issue by putting a vast constellation of satellites into orbit. Each satellite would likely need a serious source of power in order to use its laser. Assuming that's just an engineering problem, then the issue becomes coverage. That is, depending on the adversary's capabilities, you'd need an absolutely massive constellation in orbit [0].
This is such an insane plan, and I don't mean that in a good way.
For one thing, it can do little to nothing about low flying nuclear tipped cruise missiles, especially in less than ideal weather. These already exist, so the Golden Dome system is already inadequate on day one.
The linked article covers that in depth, it's not implausible to punch a hole through a storm with pulsed laser of that class. Honestly we don't know enough about these systems to know their operational limits but we know weather will play a role.
I find that writing good tests is my ticket to understanding the problem in depth, be careful about outsourcing that part. Plus from what I have seen LLM generated tests are often low quality.
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