Recent content by russ_watters

Can you do that with sound, or any wave? Sorry, but the idea doesn't really make sense (and light isn't really a wave anyway).

A 17' span is pretty big too. This sounds to me like something that's illegal to do without a licensed structural engineer. So I'm locking this, per our rules.

That assumes all of the energy extracted is for condensing water. You can do something like that with a more complicated cycle/system, but for a standard air conditioning unit, if you start with saturated inlet air you still have about 2/3 sensible cooling and 1/3 latent.

This is relatively easy to calculate by hand. Are you familiar with the psychrometric chart? You can manually look up values in the chart (you should at least get familiar with it) or get them from a website with a form. You need absolute humidity and enthalpy. From incoming air enthalpy...

It's not a "holier than thou attitude", it's a true reality. That's not what I said. I said "near zero". It's certainly possible (not exactly zero) but it is so low as to be a waste of physicists' time searching through thousands of bad papers looking for a good one that may not exist...

There's really no way around the fact that the barrier to entry (being educated in physics) is required for practical reasons. There's near zero chance that someone who isn't fully educated and up to date in the subject has anything meaningful to contribute. It would be like a non-doctor...

We've gotten a bunch of such AI-fueled discoveries here. Only the moderators know about them though, since, you know, we're part of The Conspiracy. 😉

No, a "sled". Also, in case your question wasn't addressed; optimal glide ratio is a function of aerodynamic efficiency only. A heavier "sled" will glide at a higher speed, but the same angle.

Yeah, it's baffling that they didn't see it coming or even test for it.

It's really not, unless someone is over-interpreting the concept of freedom of speech, as I described before: it doesn't exist outside of government, so there's no problem if people/companies want to do censorship. There's nobody to require anybody to be impartial. Except, narrowly, for...

It is frequently misunderstood (in the US anyway) to be both absolute and universal. It's a cultural quirk.

Freedom of speech is a government guaranteed right, to prevent government suppression of dissenting ideas. It has nothing to do with social media beyond that government can't do or mandate the censorship. [Late edit] Except protection from criminal abuse/harassment. PF is heavily moderated...

Topic restriction does help, and over time we've narrowed the focus, eliminating politics, philosophy, "theory development" and pseudoscience. But moreso it's a commitment to quality over quantity, and recognition that it's never going to be huge (and I'm not sure it is even profitable at...

Strict moderation is rare because it takes a lot of effort* and reduces user engagement. What self-respecting capitalist CEO/investor wants that? *May be fixable with automation.

CNN article discussing the title question: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/14/business/chatgpt-rollout-problems