a month ago
> The reason this library was initially written was to optimise the layout of inflatable space habitats which may one day be constructed on the Moon and Mars.
Wow, they even deliver on the “in a vacuum” bit
a month ago
Mars does have an atmosphere. It's much less dense than Earth's, but its enough to have weather. Pretty good joke though.
a month ago
The concept of a spherical cow was also part of Chris Morris’ comedy oeuvre. Possibly in the Brasseye episode “Animals”.
a month ago
>> "I have the solution, but it works only in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum".
I get the joke, but that's not really what modeling means. There's no "only" determination here.
So sure, the researchers devised a model, in which the cows were spherical and in a vacuum. That produced a solution, but there's nothing to show that solution would work less in an air environment with regular cows [1].
I bring this up only because elsewhere here is a discussion of computer fundamentals (and their lack in juniors / self taught folk, and AI output). The quote above is logically flawed (likely on purpose to create the joke) but understanding that it is a logical joke may not be obvious to everyone.
[1] to show that they would have to build a model with air and meat to show the solution fails, at which point the original model would be discarded.
a month ago
This trail of thought is not logically sound. The whole argument is built on the notion of what modeling is and isn't, but the original quote doesn't make the assumptions you imply. Sure, they might have a model that assumes cows are spherical and etc, but it might also very well be that they have hard constraints that make it work only for spherical cows and nothing else. There isn't enough information in the quote to make the argument you're trying to make.
a month ago
> [1] to show that they would have to build a model with air and meat to show the solution fails, at which point the original model would be discarded
You only have to show that it fails for square (or any non-spherical shape) cow in vacuum or for spherical cow in air.
a month ago
Did not over-promise
a month ago
I came for spherical cows. I left with spherical cows
a month ago
In a world full of deception, the spherical cow is a cup of fresh milk.
a month ago
Is the milk spherical too?
a month ago
Why not call it SpheriCOW?
a month ago
An improvement - but to get gov't funding, it has to be a straight-acronym name.
Maybe "Space Performance [something ... something] Optimization for Weightlessness"?
a month ago
Space Packing Heuristic for Efficient Rearrangement of Enumerated Cattle Optimized for Weightlessness
a month ago
This will confuse all Copy-On-Write FS developers.
Moooow!
a month ago
An ideal allegory for Rewrite Everything in Rust Syndrome^WDrive
a month ago
Could this be made no_std/no_alloc?