fuser

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Don't look East.

 

Long but a good read. The fascinating life of Joseph Weizenbaum, the creator of ELIZA.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Thank you for the reassurance because I felt like an idiot when the penny finally dropped. Although, admittedly, I've found that I rather enjoy being old and out of touch. My dad would have likely thought it was something about Linus from Peanuts.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago

not having the data of being told to fuck off, presumably.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Never heard of before and dgaf about whoever Linus Sebastion is. All this stuff I've been seeing about what an asshole "Linus" is thinking it must be some kerfuffle about Linus Torvalds but the bits and pieces I read made no sense. Even less now I've figured out it's just some random asshole named Linus. How did I end up here? Take me back to my room, please.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Especially if you were indigenous.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

wunderwaffen

too good a word not to research.... comes from WWII, naturally...

panjandrum (British) - two wheels connected by a sturdy, drum-like axle, with rockets on the wheels to propel it forward. Packed with explosives, it was supposed to charge toward the enemy defenses, smashing into them and exploding, creating a breach large enough for a tank to pass through. But when it was tested on an otherwise peaceful English beach, things didn’t go quite as planned. The 70 slow-burning cordite rockets attached to the two 10-foot steel wheels sparked into action, and for about 20 seconds it was quite impressive. Until the rockets started to dislodge and fly off in all directions, sending a dog chasing after one of them and generals running for cover. The rest was sheer chaos, as the Panjandrum charged around the beach, completely out of control. Unsurprisingly, the Panjandrum never saw battle. the panjamdrum two wheels connected by a sturdy, drum-like axle, with rockets on the wheels to propel it forward

The Goliath Tracked Mine (German) The tracked vehicle could carry 60kg of explosives and was steered remotely using a joystick control box attached to the rear of the Goliath by 650m of triple-strand cable. Two of the strands accelerated and manoeuvred the Goliath, while the third was used to trigger the detonation.

Each Goliath had to be disposable, as each was built specifically to be blown up along with an enemy target. The first models were powered by an electric motor, but these proved difficult to repair on the battlefield, and at 3,000 Reichsmarks were not exactly cost effective. As a result, later models (the SdKfz 303) used a simpler, more reliable gasoline engine.

Being sent back to the drawing board is a disgrace usually reserved for weapons that never saw battlefield action. Goliaths did see combat and were deployed on all German fronts beginning in the spring of 1942. Their role in the action was usually nugatory, however, having been rendered immobile by uncompromising terrain or deactivated by cunning enemy soldiers who had cut their command cables.

solidiers standing with several small goliath remotely controlled (by wire) explosive devices

The bat bomb (American) Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Pennsylvania dentist named Lytle S. Adams contacted the White House with a plan of retaliation: bat bombs.

The plan involved dropping a bomb containing more than 1000 compartments, each containing a hibernating bat attached to a timed incendiary device. A bomber would then drop the principal bomb over Japan at dawn and the bats would be released mid-flight, dispersing into the roofs and attics of buildings over a 20- to 40-mile radius. The timed incendiary devices would then ignite, setting fire to Japanese cities.

Despite the somewhat outlandish proposal, the National Research Defense Committee took the idea seriously. Thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats were captured (they were, for some reason, considered the best option) and tiny napalm incendiary devices were built for them to carry. A complicated release system was developed and tests were carried out. The tests, however, revealed an array of technical problems, especially when some bats escaped prematurely and blew up a hangar and a general's car.

In December 1943, the Marine Corps took over the project, running 30 demonstrations at a total cost of $2 million. Eventually, however, the program was canceled, probably because the U.S. had shifted its focus onto the development of the atomic bomb.

picture of bat attached to small explosive device

Gustav rail gun (German) The railway-mounted weapon was the largest gun ever built. Fully assembled, it weighed in at 1,344 tons, and was four stories tall, 20 feet wide, and 140 feet long. It required a 500-man crew to operate it, and had to be moved to be fully disassembled, as the railroad tracks could not bear its weight in transit. It required 54 hours to assemble and prepare for firing.

The bore diameter was just under 3 feet and required 3,000 pounds of smokeless powder charge to fire two different projectiles. The first was a 10,584-pound high explosive shell that could produce a crater 30 feet in diameter. The other was a 16,540-pound concrete-piercing shell, capable of punching through 264 feet of concrete. Both projectiles could be shot, with relatively correct aim, from more than 20 miles away.

The Gustav Gun was used in Sevastopol in the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa and destroyed various targets, including a munitions facility in the bay. It was also briefly used during the Warsaw Uprising in Poland. The Gustav Gun was captured by the Allies before the end of World War II and dismantled for scrap. The second massive rail gun, the Dora, was disabled to keep it from falling into Soviet hands near the end of the War.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

He said "I know you run the show down here, but give the devil his due...

I'll bet a toilet of gold against your soul that I can intimidate you"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

as I remember, serranos do not start turning red until the very end of the season and the plant is almost done.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Scrolling back through the original news archives is pretty interesting http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/News/9211.html there's a link at the bottom of each for "previous edition".

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Maybe they're just chilling in Mark's metaverse.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I don't know if it helps or not for me to point this out (I hope it's something that gives you some solace), but depending on the circumstances it's also very difficult to go through an investigation and trial. Maybe things are better now, but 20 or 30 years back it was an ordeal for the victim. The "what were you wearing?" mentality was very prevalent within the male-dominated judiciary and they made it so hard on the victims that they often felt like they were on trial - and in many cases they still didn't get justice either, despite their personal lives being dissected in front of a room full of strangers, some of whom were intent on falsely portraying them as promiscuous. After seeing this happen to a friend, I lost faith in the system to deliver justice. I don't have a solution, but an adversarial system just doesn't seem ideal for this kind of prosecution.

 

Copilot is great, but a hundred bucks for what is basically a smart autocomplete seems a bit much - mostly, I hate the fact that the code is constantly transmitted to github (my repos are mostly local) - are there any reasonably convenient options for doing this without github looking over my shoulder all the time? I'm using VSCode but not wedded to it.

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