Author Archives: gx

asciiMol: Curses based ASCII molecule viewer for linux terminals

A basic molecule viewer written in Python, using curses; Thus, meant for linux terminals. This is an alpha version, featuring: Opening default cartesian .xyz files Displaying one-letter atom labels Orthographic view Navigation Zoom, Rotation, Auto-Rotation Bond detection and display Read more…

A Chip To Bridge The Usb 2 – Usb 3 Divide

On Twitter, [whitequark] has found and highlighted an intriguing design – a breakout board for the VL670, accompanied by an extensive yet very easy to digest write-up about its usefulness and inner workings. The VL670 is a chip that addresses a surprising problem – converting USB 2.0 signals into USB 3.0. If you have aContinue reading “A Chip To Bridge The Usb 2 – Usb 3 Divide”

Parallel Grouped Aggregation in DuckDB

TL;DR: DuckDB has a fully parallelized aggregate hash table that can efficiently aggregate over millions of groups. Grouped aggregations are a core data analysis command. It is particularly important for large-scale data analysis (“OLAP”) because it is useful for computing statistical summaries of huge tables. DuckDB contains a highly optimized parallel aggregation capability for fastContinue reading “Parallel Grouped Aggregation in DuckDB”

Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles

Several Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) encountered by military, commercial, and civilian aircraft have been reported to be structured craft that exhibit ‘impossible’ flight characteristics. We consider a handful of well-documented encounters, including the 2004 encounters with the Nimitz Carrier Group off the coast of California, and estimate lower bounds on the accelerations exhibited by theContinue reading “Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles”

Microsoft Flight Simulator’s cloud debut comes with upsides for devs

Microsoft is announcing the debut of Asobo Studios’ Microsoft Flight Simulator on Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming–an announcement that wouldn’t normally catch our eye but for one additional fact. In addition to launching the game on its subscription platform, Microsoft is debuting a series of new APIs for game developers working on gamesContinue reading “Microsoft Flight Simulator’s cloud debut comes with upsides for devs”

CPython, C standards, and IEEE 754

Perhaps February was “compiler modernization” month. The Linux kernel recently decided to move to the C11 standard for its code; Python has just undergone a similar process for determining which flavor of C to use for building its CPython reference implementation. A calculation in the CPython interpreter went awry when built with a pre-release versionContinue reading “CPython, C standards, and IEEE 754”

The Writers Who Translated Goethe into English Became Some of the Best Writers in English

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) is the central figure in the German literary canon. Poet, novelist, playwright, and scientist, he is to the German language what William Shakespeare is to English-speaking cultures, only more so. The fact that such a protean, polymathic, and “great” figure emerged on the doorstep of the modern world, rather thanContinue reading “The Writers Who Translated Goethe into English Became Some of the Best Writers in English”

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