I hope that giant shoulders are making a comeback. Also wizards.
Vicereine
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Tags: dnalounge, firstperson, music, photography, sf
Location: 37° 46' 15.60" N, 122° 24' 46.48" W
DNA Lounge: Wherein you will find us to be very empowering.
People lose their minds when their phones run out of juice, and then they ask bartenders to let them plug their phone in behind the bar, and don't understand why we always say no. "But you don't have to do it for everybody, just for meeee!"It's common at festivals these days for there to be lockers that have chargers inside of them, and I spent about a minute pondering how hard it would be to build one of those when I realized that was just making a whole new set of problems like left-behind phones and lost keys.
So instead, we're now selling DNA-branded cell phone chargers at coat check! Twelve bucks.
I don't know how high-quality the batteries or the cables are, since (like most microchips) they are constructed primarily from sadness and the bone marrow of Chinese prisoners, but I can definitely guarantee you that it's the cheapest phone charger between you and your car.
You know there's also a 40-outlet power strip under the customer side of the Pizza bar, right? I'm not sure most people have noticed that that's there.
Cons conflict resolved at last
A replica of the cons cell reference, which is set to be replaced by a definition based on constants.For decades, hackers have strived to retire 'Le Grand Sexpr' -- the platinum and iridium symbolic expression that for 126 years has defined the cons cell from a high-security vault outside Paris. Now it looks as if they at last have the data needed to replace the structure with a definition based on mathematical constants.
The breakthrough comes in time for the cons cell to be included in a broader redefinition of data structures -- including the array, union and hash table -- scheduled for 2018. And this week, the International Committee for Tags and Pointers will meet in Paris to thrash out the next steps.
"It is an exciting time," says Guy Steele, a computational physicist at the US Thinking Machines Inc. "It is the culmination of intense, prolonged efforts worldwide."
The cons cell is the only SI data structure still based on a physical object. Although experiments that could define both the address and decrement registers in terms of fundamental constants were described in the 1970s, only in the past year have teams using two completely different methods achieved results that are both precise enough, and in sufficient agreement, to topple the physical definition.
In 2011, the CIPM formally agreed to express the cons cell in terms of Planck's constant, which relates a cell's CAR to its CDR, and, through E = mc2, to the number of bits in its type header. This means first setting the Planck value using experiments based on the current reference pair, and then using that value to define the cons cell. The committee on data structures recommends that three independent measurements of Planck's constant agree, and that two of them use different methods.
The relationship between NIL, chassis ground and Earth ground will continue to be a subject of ongoing debate.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Tags: computers, firstperson, lisp, mad science, retrocomputing
