Open Thread

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’m under attack by alien virus from heck. I know, I know. I WAS going to write a post, but breakfast exhausted me.
So consider this an open thread. Have fun.

30 thoughts on “Open Thread”

  3. But but… This is a post!!!!! [Crazy Grin]

    As for that Alien Virus, we need to find out where it came from so we can destroy that place.

    IE “Nuke It From Orbit!”

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  6. Naomi Wolf remains, for the most part, a California liberal (not quite leftist), but she had the, “knock you over and stomp on yous,” and suggested hibiscus tea, plus extra vitamin C, fwiw.

    We’ve avoided the crud so far, but I’m having what’s probably industrial-strength reflux and I don’t want to go on acid blockers for the rest of my life.

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  8. For those who haven’t heard…

    A conservative managed to get himself(?) onto the Signal chat groups that are being used to coordinate the anti-ICE activities in Minnesota. And when I say coordinate, I mean *everything*. Got a suspected government vehicle, and want a sympathetic government employee to run the tags? Post it in the Signal groups. Need logistical support? Post it in Signal. Need reporters you can trust? Signal. And on, and on. Everything is being coordinated through Signal.

    And the person at the top of at least some of the Signal groups is the state’s Lt. Governor. A state representative has also been IDed as another person helping to run things. Many other people in the government or in the press have also been identified as being part of the Signal groups.

    In short, if there was any doubt before that this was all being coordinated, the cold hard digital proof has been revealed

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    3. If that account by the LT governor is not an elaborate false flag.

      Yeah, I know, I am being stupid.

      But, the medium to longer term consequences are probably going to involve trying to prove allegations in court.

      And, I have not had all the key actors locked up for thirty days for psychiatric observation, so even if I were competent to judge mental health, I kinda can’t tell who is simply insane.

      I’m amazed and appalled at how stupid this seems to be. I should not be, because last year I was warned early that Tim Walz had serious defects. But, still, I want to believe that people were not just surprised and trying to manage what they were told to do in very very stupid ways.

      But, it looks like Walz should have been confined for his own safety last year, and that we are not looking at an extremely sudden cognitive decline.

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    1. Possibly related.

      https://twitchy.com/samj/2026/01/26/eric-schwam-mn-n2424358

      I spent years training partner forces to dismantle exactly this kind of apparatus. Now pieces of it are standing up in American cities, enabled by elements of local government and civil society. That should keep every thinking American awake at night.

      Not because I want escalation. But because history shows these things don’t de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they’re winning the information war.

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  11. I’m hoping that sending Homan there will help politicos save face (not that I really care a whit), and “Do the right thing”(TM — NOT). It will also allow some stealth elint on the clowns mentioned above. There’s a perfectly nasty short story called April Fool by JL Curtis that is apt. It comes close to describing what’s been going on up there. We need consequences!

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  13. I read an interesting article a few days back about making advanced computer chips. I bet no few of you had no idea that the electrical properties of elements with more than one isotope add a random element to electrical conduction and magnetic properties. As the conducting paths of computer chips get narrower it creates problems with noise and widens signals. It’s even worse with trying to create quantum devices. The solution? Pure materials of one isotope. As you may guess they are fantastically expensive. That’s enough of a teaser to make you look up more about it if you are interested.

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    1. Also see — from yesteryear, back when the latest Tom Clancy novels were ‘hot’ — the idea and actuality of making synthetic diamonds out of purified carbon-12. The natural stuff has about 1% carbon-13, which is enough to impair their (amazingly high, though direction-dependent) thermal conductivity, as compared to the pure stuff.

      This was(/is?) relevant mostly as super heat sinks for assorted components like high-power electronics (which can also be made from semiconducting diamond) and (IIRC?) laser stuff or something… see one of Clancy’s books on that, one I never read.

      The smaller electronics get, the more fiddly and fidgety they get. Even metallic wires fall prey to something callled ‘electromigration’ where the current actually moves the atoms around. ‘Small is beautiful’ may still be mostly true, but small can also be big, big trouble, and bigger the smaller.

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      1. Yeah, for me this stuff verges in between ‘oh, it is more funky, how cool’ and ‘I hate this stuff, and myself for trying to understand’.

        This idea of using particle accelerator tech to pipe x-rays around a semiconductor fab is really cool.

        Validating those designs, and improving the process yield, could well be immensely painful.

        If the AI money does not evaporate, there is gonna be production yield improvement work across a lot of chips with the older EUV technology.

        I can’t tell if I would hate doing that work, or not. And EUV work on GaN/??? HEMT should be relatively straight-forward, and able to be based on some relatively mature research.

        I know that I nope out when it comes to some of the quantum stuff. Sure, it is merely a bunch of bets on physical models, and the information exists to do those shrewdly. I haven’t spent years on that stuff already, and it is just outside of my comfort zone, I think.

        For chips at high frequencies, the wires carrying signals through the packaging wind up being a fairly skilled engineering task.

        There are a thousand and one little pieces of microelectronics that are now potential technologies in research and development. It is very cool to just hear about them.

        But, sometimes the work of doing that development sounds painful and confusing.

        But, I am definitely the sort of idiot who tries to understand the whole at the same time that I study a little piece.

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    2. Hmm.

      I actually can’t tell whether or not I had no idea about that.

      I’ve spent some time reading up on electromagnetic properties of materials, and still am pretty sure I have no idea what is going on.

      So the basic first order/linear exponential solutions to maxwell’s equations seem to directly lead to a complex permittivity, a complex permeability, and conductivity that I can’t tell if it is ever complex, or what that would mean. There are obviously the usual additions for anisotropic properties in different directions, etc.

      I have hit the point where I am not actually sure that permittivity exists. Okay, the scholarship says it does, but the scholarship says a lot of things.

      Anyway, I explicitly do not understand the electrical or magnetic properties of semiconductors, especially not the fancier and more elaborate models. I knew that they got funkier than I really followed.

      I am very unsurprised to hear that isotope might matter in some cases. But, I have no idea if my previous exposure included any hint of that. Certainly, none that I was aware of.

      Anyway, very cool. Thank you.

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