For my use case I use a hybrid of the two, simulating standard rate limits and doing backoff on 529s. It's pretty reliable that way.

Just beware that the European AWS regions have been overloaded for about a month. I had to switch to the American ones.

I remember that around that time (I was quite young) I was putting it in all my attempts at websites (all hideous, even at the time) and I thought it looked really cool. Funny the way trends go.

In the case of the email it was clear that it just hadn't been updated with the times.

Actually, could they be used to make better AI in games? That'd be neat. A shooter character with some kind of organic tactics, or a Civilisation/Stellaris AI that doesn't suck.

The https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster is pretty interesting.

I doubt they'll have that cadence ready for Starship within NASA's ambitious timeframe, but if they can get orbital refuelling and full reuse working (which are big ifs) high cadence should only be a matter of time. And when you're just refueling it every flight, rather than building a bespoke new rocket (as with SLS), the cost for twelve launches would likely be significantly lower than one SLS launch.

The internal cost for a Falcon 9 is approximately 15 million, and that's including a thrown away second stage, drone ship usage, fairing recovery, and engine refurbishment.

Would we know if they went to space? How long would a geostationary satellite remain?

It's both haunting and brilliant to think about the idea of entire other intelligent species and civilisations having lived on this planet without us ever knowing. Fire and iron and cities and empires and "great people", cultures and religions and stories and families... Civilisations and species rising and falling throughout the eons. It feels a little reminiscent of Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot", but on the scale of time, not space. I wonder if they might have considered this too.

It seems the paper made mistakes, using a non-standard model of the CMB that failed upon replication. It's an interesting theory thoughb.

These are very intelligent people, it's just that my generation is moving away from reading.

I've had discussions with friends who think academic papers should be replaced with videos. They find writing so time consuming and difficult that they think that an informative, animated video could be made with the same amount of effort as an academic paper. They also say that they're frequently distracted from the content due to the effort of reading itself.

I've been surprised by the extent to which people use "person talks to camera" style videos for revision and re-learning, rather than reading condensed notes. They are significantly slower, you can't scan through until you find something you're unfamiliar with, and they're just plain dull. Despite that, they're one of the most popular ways to revise. Perhaps it's because you can zone out of videos, convincing yourself that you're learning without actively engaging with the content. Again, I don't mean 3b1b style animated lectures, I mean someone essentially paraphrasing the textbook to the camera.

An similar phenomenon that also worries me is the lack of distinction between how people speak and how people write, and not in the "use straightforward language, not purple prose" way. People comma-splice entire paragraphs (if they use paragraphs at all) in a stream of consciousness rather than organising their thoughts.