Scrapbook

https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2013/the_bootstrapped_compiler_and_the_damage_done.html

https://tratt.net/laurie/transparency.html

https://soft-dev.org/accounting/expenses.html

Researchers occupy a privileged position: we are paid to do a job we enjoy. With that comes the responsibility to identify important challenges and produce quality research when addressing them. We aim to be honourable in our dealings, transparent in our finances, and open to all-comers.

At the time of writing, we are not aware of other research groups publishing expenses online, though we hope this will change in the future. Because of this, we are, by necessity, pioneers of sorts. We will make mistakes, small and large, while we feel our way towards a good solution, and we ask for a degree of patience in this process. We welcome all comments on how we publish our expenses.

(For example, the natural electrical power driving an aurora substorm has been estimated at 500,000 megawatts; the recoverable wind power in the planet’s jet stream has been estimated at 1,700,000 megawatts.)

New book on smallpox inoculation , written in 1741 during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), which shows how the Chinese process had become refined up until that point:

Method of storing the material. Wrap the scabs carefully in paper and put them into a small container bottle. Cork it tightly so that the activity is not dissipated. The container must not be exposed to sunlight or warmed beside a fire. It is best to carry it for some time on the person so that the scabs dry naturally and slowly. The container should be marked clearly with the date on which the contents were taken from the patient.

In winter, the material has yang potency within it, so it remains active even after being kept from thirty to forty days. But in summer the yang potency will be lost in approximately twenty days. The best material is that which had not been left too long, for when the yang potency is abundant it will give a ‘take’ with nine persons out of ten people—and finally it becomes completely inactive, and will not work at all. In situations where new scabs are rare and the requirement great, it is possible to mix new scabs with the more aged ones, but in this case more of the powder should be blown into the nostril when the inoculation is done.

I’ve been really interested in openreview.net for a while - just came across https://scipost.org/, a similar, though the Majorana Fireside podcast.

Joel had disassembled his extruder and lightly drilled most of the filament out of his clogged nozzle with an undersized bit, as I had in the past; then soaked out the rest of the plastic with acetone, as I had also. But when removing the clogged filament, Joel noticed it was quite dirty and made the mental connection with dust on the filament. When he reassembled, he added a toothbrush to wipe dust off the filament on its way in and has also made a point to keep his supply bagged and/or boxed. Since then (and until the expanding heat spreader), he’s had no further troubles with clogging.

http://www.neufeld.newton.ks.us/electronics/?p=1603

Several sources online

I think this might be a base-rate fallacy?

https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/US-Fire-Problem/Home-fires-involving-clothes-dryers-and-washing-machines

The majority of home fires involving washers or dryers are powered by electric line voltage.
Equipment powered by electrical line voltage accounted for almost two-thirds of the fires (64%), while
equipment fueled by natural gas accounted for 18% of fires, and equipment powered by unclassified
electrical power source accounted for 15% of fires, as shown in Table 5. It is important to recognize that
the predominance of electric powered equipment in washer and dryer fires does not imply greater risk.
Data from the American Housing Survey for 2013 and 2015, for instance, indicate that weighted average
number of households using electric-powered clothes dryers outnumbered those using gas-fueled clothes
dryers by a 3.9 to 1 margin.

No matter where your laundry room is located, place a smoke detector on the ceiling above the dryer. I have a 10-year-rated smoke detector above my dryer, and if it sounds, all the smoke detectors in the house also sound.

The condo board had an issue with a washer malfunctioning and causing $20k in damage to a floor. I should put water sensors in my condo.

by god spack is powerful. i don’t know how many hours i’ve wasted manually installing software dependencies and then trying to document the installation process in this way i don’t know how i failed to come across this entire category software.

spack over easy build just because i was going through tutorial the git support seemed to be more recent in easy build - and and assuming that means it’s less mature

Don’t let the pressure of being on a senior position have a negative effect on you. Aim for zero, listen, observe, offer and advice. Something I’ve learned from Chris Hadfield’s “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth”:

In any given situation, according to Hadfield, you’re either a ‘plus-one’, a ‘zero’ or a ‘minus-one’. If you’re a plus-one, you’re actively adding value. If you’re a zero, you’re generally competent and don’t get in the way. Being a minus-one sucks, because you’re a liability and actively cause problems.

However, if you’re a plus-one and you walk into a situation trying to prove how great you are, you can go from a plus one to a minus one – your ‘I got this’ mentality might easily irritate and prove detrimental to the dynamic.

So the best thing to do in a new situation? Aim for zero. Listen. Observe. Offer advice. Don’t try to take control of everything. If you know what you’re doing, you won’t need to tell people you’re a plus one. They’ll know it.

Ever wonder why Utah is the epicenter of the “dietary supplement” industry (and thus why Senator Hatch was its champion)? Thank Joseph Smith for Mormonism’s prohibition of “hot beverages,” which forbids drinking coffee and teas other than herbal teas. One herb the early settlers found growing abundantly in Utah was Ephedra viridis, which produced a tea every bit as energizing as coffee or black tea, if not more so…and whose common name to this day is Mormon Tea. In the 1980s, companies like Herbalife saw an opportunity to bypass the inconvenient brewing process and simply package ephedra in capsules. Selling them through multilevel marketing pyramids, they made a ton of money, and when the FDA threatened to take action against their products as dangerous unapproved stimulants, a lot of that money found its way into Senator Hatch’s campaign coffers. Hence the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.

(It’s worth noting that a similar regulatory carve-out for homeopathic “remedies” was written into the 1938 FD&C Act by Senator Royal Copeland, who, as a homeopathic physician, also had a dog in that hunt.

Supplements, Examined | Science | AAAS

“In addition to the activities of the Ephedra Education Council, Metabolife spent more than $4 million between 1998 and 2000 lobbying against state regulation of ephedra in Texas.[30] Business Week reported that efforts to regulate ephedra and other potentially harmful supplements had been “beaten down by deep-pocketed industry lobbying.”[31”
Ephedra (medicine) - Wikipedia

“The critique was not fair. Since leaving Biosphere 2, I have run a small business for ten years that sent experiments on the shuttle and to the space station, and is designing life support systems for the replacement shuttle and future moon base. I do not have a degree, not even an MBA from Harvard, as John [Allen] had. I hire scientists and top engineers. Our company’s credibility is not called into question because of my credentials: we are judged on the quality of our work”.[92] H.T. Odum noted that mavericks and outsiders have often contributed to the development of science: “The original management of Biosphere 2 was regarded by many scientists as untrained for lack of scientific degrees, even though they had engaged in a preparatory study program for a decade, interacting with the international community of scientists including the Russians involved with closed systems. The history of science has many examples where people of atypical background open science in new directions, in this case implementing mesocosm organization and ecological engineering with fresh hypotheses”.[93]"

“In fact, the SAC was dissolved because it had deviated from its mandate to review and improve scientific research and became involved in advocating management changes”
Biosphere 2 - Wikipedia

“I was at Scaled when we built the structure for the prototype Kistler. Like the Roton, it was a fantastically naive design that we had no design role in except to build structure. The primary structure of the prototype was complete when one of my colleagues, out of sheer frustration, and having done his PhD in hypersonics, did some back of the envelope calculations and in 3 hours proved that this design was incapable of overcoming its own transonic wave drag. As a courtesy, we shared this with the customer, which had us scrap the prototype about a month later. Its really incredible to me that investors are willing to put tons of money into things like this and Roton that haven’t even passed basic analysis while economically viable, less sexy concepts, remain unfunded.”
reuse - Unknown Kistler Spacecraft - Space Exploration Stack Exchange.

when

the

wave

seems to ride

'till your horse gets

a-tired

that’s soliton…

when yoooouuu get all surprised

group before light arrives

that’s soliton!

when a broad-bandwidth pulse meets dispersive milieu

back in old Napoli, that’s soliton!

Cern table of fire-retardant plastics

Screenshot from 2023-08-28 00-02-53

This manual for an instrument from Stanford Research Systems includes a 7-page bibliography. I friggin’ love stuff like this.