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Why simulate? Most modern cameras can be controlled through USB. Just actually take each one (except for ISO, which you can easily fake), encode the frames in a reasonable bitrate MP4, then have a lookup for the frame in the video. :D

I don’t know if I follow. You mean to keep a fan moving, take pictures with all the different combinations (aperture and shutter speed). Then merge on an MP4 file that you can lookup somehow the setting combo with the frame?

Sounds… reasonable I guess! I guess it can be simpler than I imagined. The owner of the site just needs a fan :-)


This would require 18000 frames

So what. That's a little over an hour [1], and you're done! Some smallish JPG is all that's presented here anyways, so using a reasonable MP capture to JPG should easily fit on its SD card.

Also, there's around 4600 that are pure white, and something near that that are pure black, for the scene above (although more dynamic range would be very cool).

[1] 18000 * 0.5s shutter / 3600 = 2.5 hours for worst case shutter, /2 for average = 1.25 hours of exposure.


If you consider how long lower speed shutters will take and the aperture combinations, it would take a long time to take all the pictures and would stop being feasible.

How so? Longest shutter on the page is 0.5 seconds. If every single picture was at 0.5 seconds, that's only 2.5 hours of exposure.

I learned very early in my career that being in hardware/software/tech does NOT mean you will be around people that LIKE hardware/software/tech. Then I eventually joined a FAANG, assuming I finally found the nerds! Oof...extreme disappointment.

How much of that performance comes for free, from optimizing for range/efficiency?

What's the obvious "that could be less" in the system that wouldn't negatively impact efficiency?


None of it.

It the motor is smaller, it pulls less current.

If it pull less current, you can use batteries which aren't specced for high amps.

If use use less amps, you can use thinner cabling and split the batteries up i various compartments. That means heat is more distributed. Less active cooling, if any, is needed, of both batteries and motors.

All of the above can translate to less weight, which mean better range.


Weight has nearly no effect on range of an EV. The YouTube channel Aging Wheels has two good videos on this.

Here he talks about towing, and he demonstrates loading the truck to max capacity makes nearly no difference: https://youtu.be/UmKf8smvGsA

He also covered an attempted Cannonball run where they stuffed two extra battery packs into a Rivian R1T: https://youtu.be/yfgkh4Fgw98

Real differences makers are smaller wheels and aerodynamics


That's interesting. It demonstrates that regenerative braking really works. The energy you expend going uphill, you mostly get back going downhill. The energy you expend speeding up, you mostly get back slowing down. His tests were a round trip, so start and end altitude are the same. And he kept a fixed speed on a freeway, so there wasn't much acceleration energy expenditure or energy loss into friction brakes. You don't get drag or rolling resistance back, so that apparently dominates. Those don't vary too much with load.

Nice result.


> are smaller wheels

Looks like rolling resistance decreases with diameter [1]. So, is it from the increased drag from higher stance? Would lowering the car the same work better?

[1] https://www.tirereview.com/science-behind-rolling-resistance...


> from optimizing for range/efficiency?

I meant for normal highway driving, not drag racing.

Optimal highway driving is still lowest resistance and losses. Cold weather driving is what mostly results in a battery capable of the high performance, from what I understand.

Is a "small" motors more efficient than a large one? I suspect no, with the assumption that everything is sized so the "drag race" operating range would be well into the peak, rather than sustained, operating range.


Sometimes that doesn't matter either. That is the valid use case of a plain-text protocol like telnet: doesn't matter.

Sure. But, contrary to what some people seem to think, "it's nothing secret" is not a sufficient justification to use an unencrypted plain-text protocol.

Or, flip the responsibility to what it has always been understood to be, when using open source software from random volunteers (some being bad actors) on the internet for anything remotely critical: audit the source.

Same here, and I also really enjoy the high level design/structure part of it.

THAT part doesn't mesh too well with AI, since it's still really bad at autonomous wholistic level planning. I'm still learning how to prompt in a way that results in a structure that is close to what I want/reasonable. I suspect going a more visual block diagram route, to generate some intermediate .md or whatever, might have promise, especially for defining clear bounds/separation of concerns.

Related, AI seems to be the wrong tool for refactoring code (I recently spent $50 trying to move four files). So, if whatever structure isn't reasonable, I'm left with manually moving things around, which is definitely un-fun.


    > …I suspect going a more visual block
    > diagram route, to generate some
    > intermediate .md or whatever, might have
    > promise, especially for defining clear
    > bounds/separation of concerns…
Can confirm [1]

So can my automaton bud [2]…

_____

MODEL

The Verdict: If you provide a clear instruction like "Before you touch the code, read architecture.puml and ensure your changes do not violate the defined inheritance/dependency structure," the agent will be very effective at following it.

If you just "hope" it bears it in mind, it probably won't.

_The agent is a tool, not a mind-reader; it will take the shortest path to a passing test unless you wall that path off with your architectural models_.

To make it actually work, you need to turn the UML from a "suggestion" into a "blocker." You should add a section to your AGENTS.md (or CLAUDE.md ) that looks like this:

    1. Tool Trigger: By using words like "…"

Why this works:

_____

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46935979

[2] https://g2ww.short.gy/TheMightyBooch


Definitely go for that middle step. If it's something bigger I get them to draw out a multi-phase plan, then I go through and refine that .md and have them work from that.

Or, can still be purchased on Steam for $0.99, during sales. Windows only though.

Eh, I don’t really think that this is an “or” situation. I think that this is an “and” situation. The last time that I set up Xash3D FWGS, I had to copy files from the version of Half-Life that I own on Steam into a different folder so that those files could be loaded by Xash 3D FWGS. I haven’t tried Xash 3D FWGS in a while, but it looks like you still have to do that [1]. Also, are you sure that the Steam version of Half-Life is Windows only?

[1]: <https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs/blob/f0342763547d9bcf486...>


> Also, are you sure that the Steam version of Half-Life is Windows only?

You're right! It looks like Linux has a native build too. Apparently the Windows version, through Proton, runs better though (not that it matters).


What's the point of using this xash thing then?

For whatever reason, Valve doesn't want to open source the engine so some people have taken it upon themselves to build a reverse-engineered engine (which now runs on Android, in the browser etc).

It’s open source and runs on all kinds of platforms. Original HL1 runs on old Windows and IIRC DOS. Nowhere else

Valve updates HL1 every few years so it runs on contemporary platforms. DOS was ancient history by the time HL came out, you might be getting it mixed up with Quake1

the windows version is playable on macos through wine. Even modern version, I got it running on a m2 mac mini on Macos 15 sequoia

EDIT: this was for HL1 I’m not sure about HL2


Its ported to Linux just like cs 1.6. Not sure how good Mac build is though.

Steam version: This product is not compatible with macOS 10.15 Catalina or above.

Yeah Apple's latest round of breaking changes hasn't been addressed (and seemingly won't be).

The Linux and Mac ports happened in 2013 or so (presumably getting one working went a lot of the way to getting the other working, though there is some speculation that Apple poured in some money to help make it happen).


MacOS 10.15 dropped support for x86-32 binaries.

Later it became clear why: the Apple Silicon transition, and Rosetta 2, which is optimised for running x86-64 binaries on Apple's Arm64.

But the same change is looming on Linux: Ubuntu tried in 2019 but was persuaded not to, Fedora has tried more than once.

WINE 11 can run Win32 binaries on a pure 64-bit host OS without 32-bit libraries. So, you can run some 32-bit Windows games on 64-bit Linux and macOS which cannot run the 32-bit binaries of their own older versions.

Apple merely jumped first. I think it's not to be blamed here. It'll happen everywhere in time.


It's a constitutional right to record them doing their duties, in public. That's clear.

Here's a question: Is making a reporting system around that, for the purpose of/approaches/is realtime tracking, also protected? Maybe related to "non-permanence"?

(references welcome)


> It's a constitutional right to record them doing their duties, in public. That's clear.

Less clear than it used to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Guevara_(journalist)


From the wikipedia article: "Guevara was ordered removed from the United States by an immigration judge in 2012"

The removal case was administratively closed on appeal which meant that he was legally authorized to stay in the US while waiting for a green card application to go through.

He was here on a work permit when the police arrested him for filming a protest. Journalism isn't a crime so all the charges connected to his arrest were dropped, but ICE placed a detainer on him to keep him locked up anyway. A judge granted him bond so that he could be released but ICE fought that too and continued to keep him locked up. Finally they reopened the 2012 case and used that to kick him out of the country.


Sure it is. The same way it was legal to track and report on CIA "extraordinary rendition" flights using publicly available information.

What is not protected is actual interference or obstruction, and first amendment protections can be lost if the system’s design, stated purpose, or predictable use crosses from observation and reporting into intimidation or operational coordination that materially interferes or obstructs.

Given how these systems are already being used, and the likely intent behind building one, that's a real risk if you're not careful.


There's all sorts of conversations like this that are genuinely exciting and fairly profound when you first consider them. Maybe you're older and have had enough conversations about the concept of a singularity that the topic is already boring to you.

Let them have their fun. Related, some adults are watching The Matrix, a 26 year old movie, for the first time today.

For some proof that it's not some common idea, I was recently listening to a fairly technical interview with a top AI researcher, presenting the idea of the singularity in a very indirect way, never actually mentioning the word, as if he was the one that thought of it. I wanted to scream "Just say it!" halfway through. The ability to do that, without being laughed at, proves it's not some tired idea, for others.


I'd be more inclined to let them have thier fun if it they weren't torching trillions of dollars trying to lead humanity into a singularity.

They're still profound topics but the high status signal is to be cynical and treat it as gauche

Ashton Kutcher is 48 years old.

I help my kids, but I don't expect them to help me. I want them to save their money to help their kids, otherwise I'm just taking from my grandkids.

Same when I help my siblings. If they pay me back, now I'm taking away from my nieces and nephews. Within friends/family, I think it's completely reasonably if the money flows "downhill".

This is the fundamental concept of the vast majority of taxes, including those that feed the poor/unemployed: that money is gone, somewhere between little and no personal return, but that usually makes sense, increasingly so with income.


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