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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • At work atm so I’ll keep it succinct but definitely the giant cast of mostly uninteresting characters. The politics were actually quite ok but I usually like that sort of things.

    Also sometimes he goes on these long paragraphs were he describes all the driving instructions in mars and expecting the reader to have lived on Mars for 10 years as well XD

    He also gave as much emphasis to a teenager-like love drama as to a global scale terrorism operation which is, let’s say interesting








  • The thing that everyone misses in these comparisons is that yes that’s the energy that VISA expended to make these transactions but for a crypto currency the energy use isn’t even to make the transaction. In the end each transaction is a few Bytes of data that have no difficulty getting across the world (much like this post or any comment). The energy use is so “high” because that’s is used to secure the currency. And of course that’s a much harder comparison to make but a fairer one.

    How much energy does the the banking system actually use? How much energy is used to secure the US dollar for example?

    You have to account for the entirety of it. That’s like saying that F1 doesn’t pollute all that much because they use bio fuel and the cars are very energy efficient, completely disregarding the fact that the majority of the pollution is in the constant global shipping of cars and gear, as well as R & D


  • You are way too defensive and triggered for the “authority” you supposedly have. And I do believe you. Also you gotta learn to chill and read. I’m not moving goal posts here, you just like to rant. Also big lol at your first paragraph in this comment. Hilarious irony there. Loved it.

    Answering your comment and trying to wrap the discussion (I’m not gonna block you lol, what are you even talking about about). What I disagreed with your original argument is that doing a bridge inspector isn’t just getting some semi-pro pilot with an expensive but generic drone with a fancy camera. Snap some photos from a few meters distance and bam, job is done and you inspect one side of a small bridge in 1 flight. That’s it. It was pretty clearly laid out in my comments. To get any meaningful data you basically want/need to get as close as possible. And this usually means actually touching the object you are inspecting. You allegedly have experience in this field so I don’t need to tell you that “regular” drones (and by regular I mean not collision tolerant) don’t like to fly very close to large metallic structures. I’m sure you can guess why.

    Not that it matters but yes, I have more than 5 years of experience as a Robotics Engineer working with drones. For my masters thesis I designed, simulated and coded my own control and estimation loops for a drone with tilting motors. You don’t even have to be from a Stem background to tune PIDs. They are stupidly simple but for most cases they are more than good enough. And yes I have a mechanical engineering degree (MSc). Anything that I said is wrong?

    I didn’t disagree about the costs reduction. First these drones are still somewhat new in what I assume is an old school field. Also expensive af. Second usually they are usually performed by service providers. If a bridge inspections costs X and the provider can do it with a drone for like 1/4, then he isn’t going to charge that. He’s going to charge 3/4 because it’s a win/win situation. And because of the first point maybe you don’t have that many providers. Also because the drones need to be specialized, and not just any drone for aerial photography or mapping. Lastly regulation. That is always a PITA and more so with drones.

    Edit: I actually went and read the article and the 30% are not at all related to bridge inspection cost. It’s basically a 30% reduction in some trajectory planning cost function because it takes into account the wind conditions. So yea kind of a useless discussion


  • First of all the other guy that replied to you wasn’t me. With all that rant you didn’t even notice that.

    Second of all I actually work as en engineer in the Drone industry. I’ve written flight control software so I know a thing or two.

    Third I actually know people working with drones in that specific industry in two different companies actually. In both cases these drones aim to get as close as possible to their target in order to do the inspection because that’s required. If a bridge has a crack that hasn’t been spotted and is already visible from a far, that bridge is already in a bad state. You are looking at basically micro gaps in your preventative maintenance. And no these aren’t 1k consumer grade djis (though DJI has fucking amazing hardware). I’m talking 5 to 6 figures and sometimes that just a lease.

    Lastly that’s all very fancy math for vibrations. You should go work in state estimation if you can cancel it that easily. In the real world you have vibrations across the entire spectrum. Yes there are certain peaks and one of them is related to the motor rpm but it’s an extremely complex problem. Gimbals aim to stabilize the feed from a attitude pov with some damping but they aren’t foolproof.






  • Merry Christmas!!! In the end I had to choose one quickly before I went home for the holidays so I quickly read one page or so from these two and decided to go with Red Mars.

    I’m now about 100 pages in and while I’m not in love with it, it is definitely intriguing. The writing style is very sober and not embellished almost at all. He does also go on quite a bit about random stuff from time to time but it’s quite clear that he put a lot of thought into so many things so I’m curious to see how it will pan out. The book is also rather long so I feel ( and in a way hope) that it will pick up a bit more and soon.


  • Thanks a lot for your comment!!

    Yes I understand that the Weir books and Teixcalaan duology are not that similar :)

    I’ll keep that one on my list once I go on another shopping spree. Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve seen all of the expanse and really like it but because I’ve seen it I’m not too keen on reading the books. Even though I’m aware that there are differences.

    Regarding the ones I had, yesterday I read more and yea 3 Body Problem seems like I’ll leave it aside for now.

    I’m currently debating between the Mars Series or the Cyberpunk. I guess the question is if I want hard SF like you mentioned or not. There was this Mars TV show that I watched a few years ago and I really liked it so maybe there’s that, but I watched Cyberpunk EdgeRunners on Netflix and also liked it and made me want to try the game again. So it’s a hard call.

    The Mars series seems quite beefy (in terms of size/pages) while Necromancer is like half the size. Would you say however that the Mars series is an “easy read”? What about Necromancer etc? What I mean by this is that the Weir books are quite easy to go through, especially PHM which both me and my gf devoured. Not only is the story more linear (not necessarily a thing I want it’s just a reason) but it’s also more simple language? The first Teixcalaan book was very interesting but at some point I was a bit lost with all the names and hidden plots.

    As you can see I also like to write testaments in comments so no need to refrain. I will take any info/feedback that you want to share :)


  • As someone that absolutely love the Hail Mary, as well as the Martian and literally just finished the teixcalaan duology (and quite liked it) is there anything else that you recommend? That way I don’t have to ask Bard.

    What I really love about Weir’s books is that he goes quite deep into the engineering and math of his story, and as an engineer that is right up my alley. But I also enjoy good world building and politics.

    In my shelf I have:

    • The three body problem
    • Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
    • Contact by Carl Sagan
    • Neuronancer by William Gibson (and the sequel)
    • Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

    Since I have those I will read one of them next but if you have other recommendations outside of these let me know :)