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[Bofferbrauer2]

JEMC said:

And the weirdest, not PC related news, to close this round up:

The solution to space junk might be space lasers because lasers solve everything obviously
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-solution-to-space-junk-might-be-space-lasers-because-lasers-solve-everything-obviously/
As any child running around the park holding a plastic raygun will tell you, most issues can be resolved by the correct application of a suitable amount of lasers, preferably of the pew-pew variety. However, one startup is aiming to solve the very real problem of orbital debris by using honest-to-goodness satellite mounted space lasers, which may end up proving once and for all that our childhood instincts were correct. 

The satellites are planned to be operated by Orbital Lasers, a startup backed by Japanese satellite operator SKY Perfect JSAT, and have been jointly designed by the operator in collaboration with the Riken research institute (via The Register). The plan is to use a technique called laser ablation to emit a powerful laser beam that vaporises the surface of a targeted piece of debris, and it's the impulse emitted from this vaporisation that can not only prevent it from rotating in its current trajectory, but also be used to decelerate it, causing it to fall into Earth's atmosphere and burn up.

A bunch of powerful lasers pointing to Earth? What could go wrong?

That's been in the works for over a decade now. It's generally called a laser broom.

The lasers are not pointed to Earth, and wouldn't do anything if it did btw, due to light dispersion in the atmosphere.

The idea is to melt and literally pulverize debris in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), which is getting REALLY cluttered, to the point that any collision with a satellite of sufficient size could spell the end of spacefaring for the forseeable future until those debris have fallen back to earth. Keep in mind that even just a loose bolt in space is so fast that it has about the same energy than modern anti-tank rounds fired from a battle tank, so anything hit by debris will get obliterated. I mean, just look at this picture when a Space Shuttle got hit at it's cargo bay:

If the piece would have been just a bit larger, it would have punched a hole right through the entire space shuttle, meaning the astronauts would have been stranded in space, as their heat shield would have been too damaged for re-entry. There's a reason why satellites and the ISS have to make avoidance maneuvers if there's even just a 1 in 10000 chance of an object hitting them, they're just that devastating.

The laser broom is supposed to slowly take out those little objects. Even if they are not obliterated, it will slow them down, meaning they'll get faster to re-entry. Just for reference, in 2019, out of 20k objects catalogued in space around earth, only 11% were actual working satellites, all the rest were debris and derelict satelllites...

Jizz_Beard_thePirate said:

Lol Apple

Apple is selling a $300 USB-C dongle for its $3,500 Apple Vision Pro headset 🙃 https://t.co/SRQ9zcdXwY pic.twitter.com/s4GujO0Wm9

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) February 3, 2024

People are already using the Apple Vision Pro in the most unsettling ways, like while driving a Tesla, for instance

JEMC said:

For most of us, myself included, the following article will look like some kind of gibberish, but for the few that are tech savvy, this could be an interesting read (if you haven't read it before, of course):

Examining AMD’s RDNA 4 Changes in LLVM
https://chipsandcheese.com/2024/01/28/examining-amds-rdna-4-changes-in-llvm/

Nice read. Most interesting is that AMD seems to intend incuding a prefech, like CPUs do, and more fine-grained tensors. This could have a big influence over it's performance if done right.

Last edited by Bofferbrauer2 - on 05 February 2024