Hacker News: Robotbeat

New comment by Robotbeat in "The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war"

Robotbeat — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 14:24:50 +0000

Nope. Technological possibility of landing on a droneship was claimed to be impossible. And yes, of course it was never actually impossible. The technical expert was obviously wrong even at the time, kind of shockingly so, but you see similar kinds of claims of impossibility today by so-called experts.

New comment by Robotbeat in "FCC Approves Test of Space Mirror to Light Night Sky Despite Outcry"

Robotbeat — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 14:12:13 +0000

Launching a gossamer thin mirror in space is not very expensive. Broad strokes claiming anything launched to space is going to be a more expensive solution has to level with the fact that GPS and quite a lot of telecommunications and Earth observation seem to have incredible leverage if launched to space instead of just using ground based solutions.

New comment by Robotbeat in "FCC Approves Test of Space Mirror to Light Night Sky Despite Outcry"

Robotbeat — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 14:09:23 +0000

Nah. Should have been named after the Two Trees of Valinor, Telperion and Laurelin.

New comment by Robotbeat in "FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky"

Robotbeat — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 14:05:43 +0000

orbital mirrors make very poor weapons because Conservation of Etendue means you fundamentally cannot concentrate very high unless your fill factor is very high (which would require millions of tons in orbit). Lasers are far more effective as weapons as a single aperture launched on a single rocket is sufficient to get high concentration. Microwaves also.

The military application would just be illumination.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Computation as a universal and fundamental concept"

Robotbeat — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 13:58:53 +0000

Yes. Unable to edit it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle

New comment by Robotbeat in "Computation as a universal and fundamental concept"

Robotbeat — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 13:58:18 +0000

I’m aware of the von Neumann joke.

There is, however, a direct equivalence between them derived from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle

New comment by Robotbeat in "Computation as a universal and fundamental concept"

Robotbeat — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 13:57:46 +0000

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Laws of Thermodynamics are pretty d*mn fundamental.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Computation as a universal and fundamental concept"

Robotbeat — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:59:23 +0000

This is a misconception. It’s more fundamental than that. There’s a fundamental connection between (Shannon) information theory and thermodynamics. The Landau Limit, whether blackholes can destroy information or not, quantum mechanics, etc.

Information is actually tangible. It’s not just an analogy or a coincidence that the word “entropy” is a word used in both physics and computer science (information theory). Thermodynamics, mind you, is perhaps THE most fundamental elements of physics and how the universe works.

New comment by Robotbeat in "The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war"

Robotbeat — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:49:28 +0000

Engineers became really jaded by Shuttle and the failure o X-33. Many of them, inappropriately, started claiming it was impossible. You still hear people claiming things are impossible today that are “merely” very hard, like full reuse, getting launch costs same order of magnitude as transpacific air freight, orbital datacenters, terraforming Mars, space settlement in general, travel to other star systems, etc.

New comment by Robotbeat in "The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war"

Robotbeat — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 22:42:58 +0000

Nah, it was everything. Everyone expects aerospace timelines to slip. That wasn’t the issue. I had an aerospace greybeard (guidance and navigation expert… nice guy, btw) from a civilian space agency that you would recognize tell me that booster landing on a droneship was “impossible.”

New comment by Robotbeat in "The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war"

Robotbeat — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 22:40:25 +0000

That’s because there’s no political will for ground forces by the US because it’s a dumb war. If there was political will, then the area around the Hormuz strait would’ve been seized, as well as the nuclear sites secured. Carpet bombing, too, not just surgical strikes.

New comment by Robotbeat in "The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war"

Robotbeat — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:12:04 +0000

Having followed SpaceX since the beginning, this is not true at all. People doubted every single step. Industry experts did.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Dolosse – a South African invention used over the world"

Robotbeat — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 11:14:13 +0000

Or composite rebar. Basalt fiber is sometimes used. Way cheaper than stainless and just as rust proof

New comment by Robotbeat in "New AI tutor achieves 0.71-1.30 SD effect size in Dartmouth course [pdf]"

Robotbeat — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 02:16:07 +0000

New comment by Robotbeat in "New AI tutor achieves 0.71-1.30 SD effect size in Dartmouth course [pdf]"

Robotbeat — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 19:31:42 +0000

Wikipedia doesn’t make much money but is still helpful. LLMs don’t need to make a whole bunch of money to be helpful.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Bring back crappy forums"

Robotbeat — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 18:03:29 +0000

I actually strongly prefer to read such forums WITHOUT "responsive design," even on my phone. Strongly.

New comment by Robotbeat in "AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules"

Robotbeat — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:01:50 +0000

In January 2025. It’s also not a court decision, effectively an executive branch directive.

New comment by Robotbeat in "AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules"

Robotbeat — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:18:43 +0000

That isn’t precisely what was decided in those cases, either (even though this gets repeated constantly on the internet as if it was). Again, the fundamental point of this case (and some similar cases) is just that you cannot assign IP to an AI. It has to be assigned to a person.

New comment by Robotbeat in "AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules"

Robotbeat — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:07:41 +0000

No. The court is saying you cannot assign IP rights to an AI, as this guy was trying to do. They are not saying it cannot be protected (as /r/antiai folk are always claiming). That’s another thing.

New comment by Robotbeat in "AI can't be listed as inventor on patent applications, Japan's top court rules"

Robotbeat — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:06:05 +0000

Because the “AI slop is uncopyrightable” people are misunderstanding court rulings like this. It’s not that AI output can’t by protected by IP, it’s that AI is not a person and so you can’t assign IP rights to it. You CAN assign IP rights to the human who did it (if they can show it’s non-trivial, like a haiku or photographer).