2022-02-04 Nerd Roundup

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It was a solo week for me this week on the roundup. Why is the Navy building railroad cars? Is Havannah Syndrome real or just a bunch of hooey? Are we looking in the wrong place when we talk about disinformation, cancel culture, and the like online?

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links
STORY BUT WHY?
The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

HN conversation with many similar stories
Probably much more common than we suspect. I've talked to people who have interviewed "fake" applicants
Deconstruction

From another splainer blog, just to make sure I got it. Looks like type comes in, arbitrary (somewhat) structure comes out. It's not a copy constructor AFAIK, since private members don't exist here?!?
What fresh hell is this? Anonymous temporary types. Look, it's a struct or a type. Pick one. I know the word "tuple" sounds cool, but it's a struct, not a type. Mixing this shit up is a good way to get coders fucked up
Nearly 1k mysterious strands revealed in Milky Way’s center

Amazing mixed frequency pictures, never seen like this before. also https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/science/milky-way.html
This stuff is basically in our glactic backyard and we're still finding new things. What a great time to be alive and for astronomy!
Things we finally know about network queues Did not have time to dive down on this, but the comments made it out to be a great resource/essay
It's time to preserve our right to transact privately Spot on. I have no idea why any politican would not be behind this
What if quantum computing is a bust? Directly related to last week's NR. Interesting to see more commentary like this coming out
Spotify’s Daniel Ek Panics Over Rock Star Defections: “Personally, there are plenty of individuals and views on Spotify that I disagree with strongly”

Ignore the morals, politics, and grandstanding. Follow the money. Here from the right:
Not my politics, but a good example of how even when you try to spin things just to be about money, your politics still get in the way. It's wrong, but it's wrong in an interesting way
Toyota heading to moon with cruiser, robotic arms, dreams Pickup trucks on the moon!
Cyberattacks target Belarus train networks

Cool idea, bro. "Decision-Centric Warfare". Wonder if this is applicable to other areas besides Great Power competition?
I get the feeling that we saw a major battle just play out on the internet. What if Russia attacks? What if it doesn't? Looked to me like a whole run-thru of our response, much the way we'd fly next to the USSR to see how their air defenses responded. Not a good place for us to be
Chinese Satellite observed grappling, pulling other satellites

Looks like in the last 10 years or so, satellite swarming is finally becoming a public thing
How did we observe this? We're not talking about directed energy weapons, we're talking about some kind of LEO wrestling match. What the heck?
The Navy's New Train Car Navy's building super cool railroad assault cars. What's not to like? Another example of modern warfare looking like nothing we'd expect
Washington’s “Havana Syndrome” Promoters Have a Lot to Answer For If this is supposed to be a refutation of Havannah Syndrome then I'm missing it. Sure, speculation was probably widely overstated. So what? Why are some folks really, really determined that there's nothing to see here? Weird
An unearthly spectacle: The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb "It would set fire to an area roughly the size of France". Both good history and nerdiness. And just what in the living hell would a 10GT nuclear bomb look like exploding? I don't think we have any frame of reference

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Navy railroad car


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