BC TECH
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

does bubble memory count as solid state?
I guess? I mean, it has no moving parts. but it requires preheating and involves movement of magnetic fields across a surface...

 it's kinda like a traditional hard drive where you don't spin the disc, you just trick all the bits to migrate off the edge
who called it "bubble memory" and not "lemming bits"
(obligatory "lemmings don't throw themselves off cliffs, that's an urban legend")
(obligatory "the idea that disney invented that urban legend it itself an urban legend, they just helped popularize it")
@quartizine has the good point that it's not just about movement. Vacuum tubes aren't solid state!
https://t.co/VG3XdoQ6OZ
in any case, that still probably means bubble memory is solid state.
It has to warm up, yes, but it doesn't melt. The crystal remains solid, and only the magnetic fields move.
interesting this sort of solid-vs-gaseous/liquid distinction means that for optical discs (which aren't normally solid state, because they spin) could conceivably be made solid state... EXCEPT for CD-R/CD-RWs when you're burning them.
because CD-Rs involve a (very brief) one-way state transition from solid->gas->solid, and similarly CD-RWs are solid->liquid->solid every time you write them.
and by "could be made solid state", there's no actual reason WHY a CD-ROM has to spin. It just means you don't need as complicated a laser arrangement
because if you think about how an optical disc works, it's really a 2D surface: you've got the in/out axis (towards the spindle hole or towards the edge) and the around-the-disc axis
and the laser head in your CD-ROM drive has a stepper motor or voice coil that's used to move the laser on the in/out axis.
The other axis is managed by spinning the disc, and waiting for it to rotate around.
but you could totally build a CD-ROM drive that works more like a plotter or 3D printer: you could move the head in two dimensions, and not have to spin the disc.
why would you do this?

there's really not any reason.
although the Lasercard format works this way.
https://t.co/JlCPyOXXzL
I've not opened up my lasercard drive (I was kinda hoping to find some media for it...) but I think it doesn't fully move the head. it's mostly a moving-mirror system.
although that brings up another point worth arguing about for a medium:
does it count as solid state if doesn't move while in use, but it's connected to things that do?
although if you want to get relativity-absurdist with that, you could then argue that, because there are no special reference frames, that technically traditional hard drives don't spin.
they're immobile, and the universe spins around them?
although now t hat I'm thinking about it I'm not sure rotating reference frames count as "normal", because you can feel forces from the rotation that wouldn't be the same if it was the rest of the universe spinning around you
it's too 6am for this physics bullshit
ANYWAY I think the point out vacuum tubes made me realize something:

solid state discs aren't "solid state" because they're not moving. not moving has nothing to do with if they're solid state or not
solid state disks are solid state because they use solid state electronics, and traditional spinning-rust media does not.
"solid state electronics", as a term, was coined to distinguish semiconductor electronics from vacuum tube electronics.
vacuum tubes use a (near) vacuum and a gas of particles/electrons/ions moving within it.
whereas solid state electronics use a semiconductor, which is a solid crystal. It's just currents being controlled by currents within the solid piece of silicon or germanium or whatever.
so "solid state" refers to things like transistors and diodes and integrated circuits.
and what are SSDs made out of?
integrated circuits. all the flash memory stuff happens inside a die of silicon.
whereas traditional discs are a bit circle of rust spinning around with magnetic fields on it, with a little electromagnet on an arm that moves around it to read off or write magnetic domains
which is a lot of things, but it's not transistors, diodes, or integrated circuits. So it's not "solid state" in the same way an orange isn't solid state: it's not made of remotely the same things.
so I think the answer to "is bubble memory solid state?" is both "yes" and "no".
it's "yes" in the sense of: the state of the memory storage medium is solid, and is always solid. at no point is it liquid or gas.
it's "no" in the sense of: when we say "solid state", we mean "solid state electronics", which it isn't.
It's a chunk of garnet, not anything semiconductory
btw, this also means that core memory isn't solid state either, since it's similarly electromagnety, even though nothing is moving.
so I'd argue that you could say it's something like "solid phase memory" but "solid state" has a pre-determined meaning in electronics and applying it to things that aren't made of "solid state electronics" is confusing and incorrect.
ANYWAY this reminds me of something I was talking to @gewt about the other day:
I want to make a rotating solid state disk.
the obvious way to do this is slip rings. I did a whole thread on these:
https://t.co/aVU1sri57P
but I think SATA might be too fragile and complicated to easily put through a slip ring, so I think I'm gonna go for USB.
basically take an SSD, a SATA2USB adapter, and then get a USB slip ring (I think Moog (not that one) sells off-the-shelf ones!) and a motor.
you see?

More from foone

foone
foone
@Foone
So there's a class of puzzles called "river crossing puzzles" which involve having to cross a river on a boat/bridge containing some set of individuals/items with restrictions on which ones can be on the boat/left on each shore, right?

and the most common subclass of these problems is the one where you have 3 items/animals to cross with.
This is alternatively called the "fox, goose, and bag of beans" or "wolf, goat, and cabbage" puzzle.

the idea is that your boat can only carry one item at a time, but if you leave the wolf/fox unattended with the goat/goose, the wolf/fox will eat the goat/goose.
and similarly, the goose/goat will eat the beans/cabbage if left alone

so you have to set up a set of actions that never leaves either side of the river in one of the lose-states.

the solution to this variant being:
1. take the goat/goose over
2. return empty
3. take the wolf/fox over
4. return with the goat/goose
5. take the cabbage/beans over
6. return empty
7. take the goat/goose over
GAMES
foone
foone
@Foone
So I got out some CF cards and noticed something odd about this one. Do you see the weirdness?


How the fuck is a CF card "USB Enabled"?


So CF cards are a weird beast that act as either a PCMCIA card or an ATA/IDE card depending on a mode pin.

They're definitely not USB.

And it's not like that weird SanDisk card I have which you can fold in half and plug it in as a USB device.


It turns out the reason for "USB Enabled" is because it's a Lexar drive from the jumpSHOT era.
This is a normal CF card in most cases, you can use it in normal CF card readers and such
FUN
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foone
foone
@Foone
Everyone likes to forget this episode just because it's terrible, but we were really sleeping on inherent comedy in a unfreezing an investor 300 years in the future and having them discover we've transitioned to a moneyless post-scarcity utopia.


it's like a classic twilight zone episode.

in fact, it IS a twilight zone episode.
The Rip Van Winkle Caper, Season 2, episode 24.
Four criminals steal a million dollars of gold bars, then put themselves in suspended animation for a hundred years to hide from the law.

they wake up, then start killing each other from mistrust, then the last one dies in the desert, as he offers a gold bar to the driver of a passing car, asking for water and a ride into town

the confused driver walks back to his car with the bar, and his wife asks what the gold bar is.
he says something like "It's gold... they used to use this for money, before we figured out a way to manufacture it."
He tosses it away, and drives off.
CULTURE
foone
foone
@Foone
So a weird thing about ultraviolet light, like blacklights and UV-C disinfecting light, is that it's invisible. Kinda. And also Kinda.

See there's a distinctive look to blacklights, they look like this.


But it turns out this isn't the ultraviolet that you're seeing.
See, the light produced by the bulb isn't perfectly monochromatic UV. Blacklights are in the UV-A range, which is 315 - 400 nm. The human vision range is 380-nm to 700nm.


There's a little overlap there, between the high UVA and the low end of human vision...
And there's multiple types of ultraviolet lights, but the kinds used in blacklights peak at 370nm or 340nm

so while most of the light coming out of the bulb is in the invisible UV range, some of the light is a bit higher up in the spectrum, which makes it slightly into the visible violet range.

So the light you see from UV lights is either the not-UV light it produces as a side effect, or something else fluorescing.
TECH
foone
foone
@Foone
Bad news:, everyone: I got my next keyboard


The front folds down


Honestly I've seen much worse keyboards


It's got buttons on top


The back is molded but has no functionality except the battery compartment
FUN

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Josh Constine
Josh Constine
@JoshConstine
Facebook lost another 1 million daily users in Europe and stayed flat in North America as scandals and low engagement with teens come back to bite its business https://t.co/O7tfyIw7Fd tip @Techmeme


Facebook still added 37M monthly & 24M daily users thanks to big gains in the Asia-Pacific region, but those users earn it 1/10th as much as US/Can users


The real story dragging on Facebook's share price is that yearly revenue growth has fallen from 59% 2 years ago to 33% today. It's run out of lucrative Western users and News Feed ad space.


Let's remember that Facebook doubled its security staff & cut back on viral videos/clickbait. That drags on its profits & revenue, but are crucial to society. And while Twitter shares soar, it has made no such commitments to fighting harassment & misinfo.
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getify
getify
@getify
Java was first released in mid-1995, just 6 months before JS.

By 98, when I went to college, Java was already used for all the first level courses in the CS program.

How did it catch on so quickly (just 3 years) to shift university curriculum, which is usually so slow/behind?

I wonder why Java was so respected and JS was not? Why/how was Java already seen as such a stable and mature language?

Not just Java, other languages (like python) were also released around/near 95, and also seemed to get to "mature" respect status. much quicker.

I bring all this up because my impression of Java in 98 was that it had been around "forever" (as had C++ first developed in 79, but not standardized until 98!), but that's not. true at all. These were all new languages around the same time.

I'm sure the language designs had different merits, and the target applications meant a different perception and reception, but...

it sure seems like the industry (and academics) just decided Java and C++ were the stable mature ones and langs like JS were toys.

BTW, before you assume JS was nascent/immature b/c the web wasn't much of a thing yet, remember that JS was actually released as LiveScript on the server before it was released in a browser. So "server-side JS" was always part of the story, not just Node 15 years later in 2009.
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Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr
There are only 3 real challenges to free speech at the tech level a) the need for CDNs at scale b) distortions of net neutrality c) nation-state firewalls.

All other claims are about social governance on private sites, where applying free speech doctrine is a stretch at best

Baseline free speech has expanded modestly since 1776 or whatever your reference point is.

About 20% beyond core case of government-critical speech in formally public spaces and media I'd say.

You can (for example) have more kinds of conversations in a bar without getting punched or kicked out by other patrons or management. You can teach more things in colleges than 100 years ago.

That's a genuine de facto increase in practical, informal free speech/expression.

But online free "speech" is, as @reneed has pointed out, not an expansion of free speech at all, but an expansion of reach. It is like the secondary freedom of the press to print as many copies as they can afford, not primary freedom to say what they want

If a newspaper wants to print more copies it has buy more printing equipment and front more upfront costs. Reach for a paper publication is not "free", but a function of desired circulation, which in turn is a function of demand prediction etc. But that logic is obscured online.
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Zed A. Shaw, Writer
Zed A. Shaw, Writer
@lzsthw
When you complain about an open source project's management you'll get the reply, "Use something else if you don't like it!" That'd be true except for the tiny problem that *many* projects also strive for complete monopolistic dominance.

Let me tell you about Java in early 2k:

I was programming in Java since it's release, and all through the late 90s into the early 2000s. At first Java was very determined to unseat C++ and it used various propaganda tactics to turn C++ and malloc into a weird enemy for all of us to hate. This worked great!

Everything was fine though because there were plenty of jobs in tech because of the dot-com boom, and then suddenly there were not jobs because of the dot-com bomb.

Overnight it seemed as if the *only* way to get a job was at giant companies, and they *loved* Enterprise Java.

Now, this is the golden ticket for many open source projects and corporations. They all want to be the top dog #1 in the industry for their particular use, and once they gain that position they become abusive by ignoring user needs and extracting wealth from them.

With Java the dominance was so insane that *every* language had to copy Java's weirdness to survive. If you wonder why a language has some odd CamelCase things it's because early Python, Ruby, and others had to copy Java's semantics and style to even be considered "serious".
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Qiao Wang
Qiao Wang
@QwQiao
People sometimes ask me what my vision of DeFi is. This is a very tough question. DeFi is very messy with thousands of experiments happening. But high level, I think DeFi will go through 2 phases:

During the 1st phase (next 2-5 years), we'll continue to build games, casinos, and speculative products.

This sounds uninspiring. But it has two main important consequences.

1) This will ultimately lead to hundreds of millions of users to install wallets and get uncomfortable with the UX.

2) This will force the tech (especially scaling) to mature.

Once we've achieved these two goals, phase 2 begins. In phase 2, products that serve real economic activities / integrated with the real economy will be built and flourish.

Right now, such products barely exist. @terra_money comes to mind. But this is the kind of products that I really look forward to. They are more economically sustainable, and create more value.
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Share for the benefit of everyone.

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So when it first appeared in Normandy, the Sherman Firefly and it's meaty 17 pounder represented an ideal combo of reliable chassis, great gun and devastating firepower right?

Ummm...

Truth is a bit more complex. /1
#WW2 #SWW #History


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THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVI BEEJ / BIJA MANTRA.

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There this story was discussed.

In that gathering of such great sages, Rishi Jamdagni asked a question to all the eminent luminaries. He wanted to know which diety is the most revered and gets satisfied easily with our prayers. So Lomash rishi replied that Devi

Bhagwati was one such diety. She will be satisfied and is ready to grant you a boon even if you just say the first letter of her beej mantra. In this context he narrated the story of Satyavrat. The story is as follows.

There lived a Brahmin named Devdutt in Kosal.

He was childless. He arranged for an elaborate yagya for a intelligent son to be born. He invited all the eminent rishi's to conduct this Yagya. Rishi Suhotra, Pael, Brahaspati Yagyavalka were assigned different tasks. Rishi Gobhil was asked to sing the Saamved.

He sang the verses very well, but he had to take respite in order to breathe between two verses. This angered devdutt. He spoke his thoughts to Gobhil rishi.

The rishi got very angry as devdutt did not realise the practicalities of singing. He cursed devdutt that
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Vibhu Vashisth
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@VIBHU_Tweet
शमशान में जब महर्षि दधीचि के मांसपिंड का दाह संस्कार हो रहा था तो उनकी पत्नी अपने पति का वियोग सहन नहीं कर पायी और पास में ही स्थित विशाल पीपल वृक्ष के कोटर में अपने तीन वर्ष के बालक को रख के स्वयं चिता पे बैठ कर सती हो गयी ।इस प्रकार ऋषी दधीचि और उनकी पत्नी की मुक्ति हो गयी।


परन्तु पीपल के कोटर में रखा बालक भूख प्यास से तड़पने लगा। जब कुछ नहीं मिला तो वो कोटर में पड़े पीपल के गोदों (फल) को खाकर बड़ा होने लगा। कालान्तर में पीपल के फलों और पत्तों को खाकर बालक का जीवन किसी प्रकार सुरक्षित रहा।

एक दिन देवर्षि नारद वहां से गुजर रहे थे ।नारद ने पीपल के कोटर में बालक को देख कर उसका परिचय मांगा -
नारद बोले - बालक तुम कौन हो?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चहता हूँ ।
नारद - तुम्हारे जनक कौन हैं?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चाहता हूँ ।

तब नारद ने आँखें बन्द कर ध्यान लगाया ।


तत्पश्चात आश्चर्यचकित हो कर बालक को बताया कि 'हे बालक! तुम महान दानी महर्षि दधीचि के पुत्र हो । तुम्हारे पिता की अस्थियों का वज्रास्त्र बनाकर ही देवताओं ने असुरों पर विजय पायी थी।तुम्हारे पिता की मृत्यु मात्र 31 वर्ष की वय में ही हो गयी थी'।

बालक - मेरे पिता की अकाल मृत्यु का क्या कारण था?
नारद - तुम्हारे पिता पर शनिदेव की महादशा थी।
बालक - मेरे उपर आयी विपत्ति का कारण क्या था?
नारद - शनिदेव की महादशा।
इतना बताकर देवर्षि नारद ने पीपल के पत्तों और गोदों को खाकर बड़े हुए उस बालक का नाम पिप्पलाद रखा और उसे दीक्षित किया।
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