pbazarnik

Subway "bread" had too much sugar to be classified as a bread in Ireland

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/03/919831116/irish-court-rules-s...

When I first discovered OPAMPs I my teen years while self learning the electronics I was astonished by the beauty and power of an abstract opamp: the mythical component with infinite differential voltage gain, zero common mode gain, infinite input impedance and zero output resistance. This marvelous device can only exist, without destroying the world by its infinite output power, by staying in equilibrium defined by negative feedback. /s

You have to appreciate the reason it was invented in Bell Labs: analog computers, which primary applications at that time were in military applications for computing artillery solutions.

Now, as a professional EE, I still think fondly of them, even though I know well about their real life limitations. My advice is to try to stay first at ideal OPAMP abstraction level to appreciate the mathematical usefulness of that abstract construct. This is almost entirely how professionals use them.

I can only lament the educational system, which invariably makes the students miss the forrest for the trees by not presenting well the power of ideal opamp

Emergency Brake Assist would help if the van was equipped with it. Swerving at the last moment and without warning would not be possible because EBA would activate brakes earlier and you would be able to see van's stop lights.

Calculation of battery capacity one can build for 34B

0.3k$ per 1kWh of battery storage [1] (0.3$/Wh)

Battery capacity = 34B$ /(0.3$/Wh) =113.3GWh (1G$=1B$)

The 34B battery capacity will be equivalent to 113hours of operation of 1GW power plant. (4.7 days)

[1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf

This list should also include Charles Stross Laundry Files series. The concept of high math being a gate to higher dimensions and effectively magic powers provides great setting to a witty and humorous sci-fi prose placed in modern England

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundry_Files

It looks like availability of good quality training sets will be a stumbling block for LLM use in Verilog chip design since pretraining with other programming language corpus is not transferable. (see below for quote from Nvidia paper) A lot of high quality Verilog is locked in licensed, close source IP blocks covered by NDAs.

HDLBits problems are a toy level complexity circuits suitable for Verilog 101 course material.

I would set a benchmark for serious HDL design LLM at reaching ability to implement AXI bus components with specified by user functionality, e.g. AXI4 Slave (address, data widths, burst capability) with memory implemented as banked synchronous SRAM.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.07544.pdf

* Despite the fact that multi models undergo pretraining on an extensive corpus of multi-lingual code data, they exhibit only marginal enhancements of approximately 3% when applied to Verilog coding task. This observation potentially suggests that there is limited positive knowledge transfer between software programming languages like C++ and hardware descriptive languages such as Verilog. This highlights the significance of pretraining on substantial Verilog corpora, as it can significantly enhance model performance in Verilog-related tasks *

Can't get better than 0.88sec?

  function controlFunction(block)
  {
  const max_force=1000000000;
  const margin=0.01;
  const friction_comp=0.2;

  if(block.x<-1-(margin/2))
   return max_force*(1+friction_comp);
  else if(block.x<-1.15*margin)
   return -max_force;
  else
   return -block.x;
}

Hardware function implementations deal with multidimensional design space metrics: performance (speed), power and area. These should be taken into account in any work intended for more than just digital design basics.

This paper provides a modern take on these issues:

https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2022/EECS-2022-...

Poland has developed and is producing their own MANPAD system initialy based on Soviet design.

They supplied significant number of these to Ukraine where it performed well.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.armyrecognition.com/polish_...

From the link it looks like it had many changes implemented to improve safety: The EPR is a so-called “evolutionary” reactor, that is to say that its design is based on that of existing reactors, the French N4 type nuclear reactors and the German Konvoi . It thus benefits from proven technologies and operating feedback from its predecessors. It is a powerful reactor with a production capacity of 1,600 megawatts (MWe) compared to 1,450 MWe for the latest reactors built in France (type N4). It is designed for a service life of 60 years . Significant changes have however been introduced compared to existing reactors

Same here: Honda CR-V 2020. It uses single lens (so not a stereoscopic vision) and radar. Never did it brake hard, only warning and few times brake pretension. It will occasionally give false positives on a street curving left with cars parked on the right side. Once it did warn on a highway most likely due to metal comb joint of the elevated road section. (I specifically looked at what could be the cause) The driver reaction within a time window is likely important factor in preventing the system to elevate. I have good reflexes and will put my feet slightly on the brake in such situations.

Honda had a recall for an older AEB system 2017-2019 Accord and CRV:

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-recalls-defects/nht...

Germany keeps expanding coal mines.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2023/01/luetzerath-protest...

German TUV director on nuclear power plants: "The plants are in a technically excellent condition," Joachim Buehler, managing director at TUEV, told Reuters, adding that an extensive check, which is usually done every 10 years, was necessary but could be done within a few months.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-gas-crisis-...

The keywords are: EMI (electromagnetic interference), signal integrity, power integrity.

Memcpy can have second order effects due to EMI radiated by CPU, motherboard or coupled via power fluctuations.

There are audible and measurable effects of audio system clock jitter which in turn depends on oscillator power quality.

Someone mentioned that ethernet has isolation transformers. But isolation transformers have parasitic common mode coupling which can inject the noise to ground plane if interference is strong and device is susceptible enough

Watch the EEVBLOG on company which designed scope capable of measuring 1kV common mode signals. (present in EV electronics) https://youtu.be/I7ppDNLlEL4

Audiophile stuff is a weird mix of real effects and snake oil.

Not teaching history of mathematics, science. Teaching STEM with total disconnect to the historical developments of these disciplines. Perfect theories out of the blue. (Not teaching the dead ends: phlogiston, ether etc)

The "cores" are becoming more specialized and optimized for domain specific tasks. Compiler technology advancements are needed to take advantage of such heterogenous architectures in a transparent way. LLVM MLIR started that already.[1,2] The alternative is being stuck with each silicon vendor's proprietary solutions like CUDA.

[1] https://mlir.llvm.org/ [2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/04/compiling_the_future/

It is about rendering colors of the scene within the bounds of physical limits of display device color space.

Rendering to the display device screen uses perceptual intent: a conversion of color space of the display under some assumptions about screen viewing environment etc. [1]

With better models we can improve this conversion. Article mentions that large color differences are not perceived as acute as the current models (Riemman etc) suggested so new model could boost the color difference to achieve that higher acuity.

[1] https://blog.colorgate.com/en/rendering-intent-explained

If anyone is interested in more in depth treatment of automotive transmissions [1] provides overview of transmission technologies (AT, DCT, CVT) and analysis of their effect on fuel efficiency. It includes detailed descriptions of power losses and their sources.

Manual transmissions have one of lowest losses but their gear ratio stepping incurs engine operating point inefficiencies.

[1] https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/21744/chapter/7#200

Possinly by replacing fat tissue with muscle?

I guess it will depend on protein vs sugar and fat content in the diet.

One notable exception is Verilator which is growing fast and competes welll with commercial Verilog simulators (https://github.com/verilator/verilator) It has industry support notably Wester Digital.

At deep submicron technologies even analog circuit layout must be done by CAD tool in order to meet DFM (design for manufacturing ) rules. These rules (due to interference effects used in photolitography) are too complex for manual layout of even medium size designs within reasonable schedule. Manual layout results in lingering rule viloations and larger utilized silicone area than CAD tool output.

It depends on criteria.

For example, USA early vaccination ramp up is second to only United Emirates in the world. Taiwan was late in this particular aspect and quite panicked when some virus broke through quarantine measures (contained by quite heroic contact tracing efforts)

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

I'm in Taiwan and was here for a whole pandemic. Article is spot on but this response efficiency, visible now, was acquired over last 2 years of improvements.

Taiwan had a luxury of foresight due to earlier experience with SARS, back channel information on virus developments in China thanks to proximity and countless business contacts and a favorable geographical location. Being an island it was very easy to isolate itself from the rest of the world. This may not have been possible for other countries.

Zero COVID was a goal when efficiency of vaccines was still believed to be able to prevent transmission. Omicron appearance put an end to that.

Taiwan's response was competent but there were several hickups: Taiwan was late to acquire vaccines due to their reliance on border closures. Delta variant sneaked through border controls due to lax airline stuff quarantine rules and some rule breaches (pilot going AWOL). There was cross resident infection in quarantine hotels due airborne transmission (red elevator) There were many overreactions: closed off outdoor parks, beaches and hiking routes despite evidence that outdoor transmission is very unlikely.

Overall, solid B+ performance.

Regarding more deadly variants: we can hope that evolutionary pressure we put on virus by isolating serious cases will not allow it.

I hope Taiwan and rest of the world will learn from this experience so we are ready for a next outbreak (bird flu likely)

Exposing eyes to sunlight (or high intensity light) is a very important factor preventing and reversing myopia [1]

There was also Australian paper I cant find now, showing that prevalence of myopia in Asians in Australia is much lower due to school systen encouraging more free time and play outdoors. (not explainable by genetic factors)

Children must play outside in the sun or they become myopic.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29371008/