Richard Nicklin

As Brexit madness gets worse, who do you want to put in woodchipper first? This is round 2. Retweet if possible.

@pinstripedline In fact, I’m not sure Forrestal went back into action, she was pulled out to the Philippines for temporary repairs having lost most of the air group and the stern portions of the flight deck buckled by the fire and explosions, perhaps you’re thinking of the USS Oriskany fire?

@pinstripedline No she wasn’t, Enterprise returned to Pearl that afternoon for 50 days of refit. She wasn’t in action, there was no need to take risks with the damaged equipment. USS Forrestal had a similar fire (Zuni rocket induced) in 1967 off Vietnam. That’s the accident you’re thinking of.

A sad event, but also worth noting that within hours the ship was back in action. Carriers are surprisingly resilient.

@GoddammitZammit this week’s Baseless Speculation hasn’t dropped - everything ok?

@Conservatives @michelledonelan Get out of science. By announcing this you are politicising us.

NEW: Conservatives are safeguarding scientific research from the denial of biology and the steady creep of political correctness. @michelledonelan announces plans to depoliticise science at #CPC23

With many 🧩 dropping recently, a more complete picture is emerging of LLMs not as a chatbot, but the kernel process of a new Operating System. E.g. today it orchestrates: - Input & Output across modalities (text, audio, vision) - Code interpreter, ability to write & run programs - Browser / internet access - Embeddings database for files and internal memory storage & retrieval A lot of computing concepts carry over. Currently we have single-threaded execution running at ~10Hz (tok/s) and enjoy looking at the assembly-level execution traces stream by. Concepts from computer security carry over, with attacks, defenses and emerging vulnerabilities. I also like the nearest neighbor analogy of "Operating System" because the industry is starting to shape up similar: Windows, OS X, and Linux <-> GPT, PaLM, Claude, and Llama/Mistral(?:)). An OS comes with default apps but has an app store. Most apps can be adapted to multiple platforms. TLDR looking at LLMs as chatbots is the same as looking at early computers as calculators. We're seeing an emergence of a whole new computing paradigm, and it is very early.

While looking for the history of Bloch's theorem for my course I stumbled upon this memoir by Bloch. He explains the historical background of solid-state physics in the early twentieth century and the motivation behind his research. Such a poetic title. #solidstate #condmatt

@CovertShores There have been proposals to drop sonar buoys from F/A-18s and F-35Cs (although no programmes of record afaik). Whomever draws sonar on an F-16 has the easier challenge…

@RoyalAirForce @P8A_PoseidonRAF @RAFLossiemouth Mighty Hunter

Nine @P8A_PoseidonRAF operate from @RAFLossiemouth, and many of them have names: The Pride of Moray The City of Elgin Terence Bulloch DSO* DFC* Spirit of Reykjavik Fulmar Guernsey's Reply William Barker VC If you could name one, what would you name it? #TopGunsC4

@SanspantsRadio @GoddammitZammit Hey, there’s been no extra PtDS content released on the Apple version of Bad Brain Boys + for two months now. Are you guys ok?

@Hush_Kit How are we counting the Harrier and its variants?

Quiz question: last British aircraft to have a production run exceeding 1000?

@Hush_Kit Hunter?

@Alldogsaredead How long would you stay for a regular ape? If we chained up a gibbon, tonight, and let you come in shorts and T-shirt, would you pay $5 for 10 minutes?

@Alldogsaredead How long would you sit in the audience, dressed up in black tie, boiling (because black tie is always hot), watching a giant ape scream in chains before you thought “well that was great, I wonder what’s on the wireless tonight”?

Behold! Brought here to New York all the way from the mysterious and deadly jungles of Skull Island. I present to you the eighth Wonder of the Known World: Big! Ape!

@SanspantsRadio Oi! Got a Bad Brain Boys+ subscription on Apple, no extra PtDS episodes this month (so far)! Is this and attack of stupid or is something afoot?

@Aviation_Intel Why are Germany and Sweden buying AIM-120-C8s rather than Meteor? Janes has news of deals for both countries in the last week. Is MBDA unable to expand production? Cost?

@R_P_one Reinforcement learning to train to play war games endlessly and cheaply with varying initial conditions and platform configurations.

The final lecture of my undergrad module tomorrow is on the future of maritime design. The is an NVIDIA DGX module. GPU derived hardware optimised for AI applications. What can we do with this in the maritime and maritime design space?

@ChuckPfarrer I still think someone modified MLRS for air launch.

LONG RANGE PUNCH: A series of explosions have occurred at the RU airfield at Dzhankoya in occupied Crimea. It's noteworthy that no ‘confirmed’ weapon system in UKR’s possession could have reached this target. But ATACMS could. Just sayin’. txtreport.com/news/2023-03-2…

@Tank_Archives Czechoslovakia, surely. Or was Slovakia detached as a puppet state?

Weakened by the Munich Agreement, Czechia was fully annexed by Nazi Germany #OTD in 1939. This move handed the Germans an advanced arms industry, including the LT vz.38 light tank that greatly surpassed Germany's own light tanks in performance #tanks #history #WW2 #Czechoslovakia

Very proud of this work!! Took us 3 years to build AlphaFlow but it was totally worth it! It is time to use Self-Driving Labs for new discoveries!

@R_P_one @krakek1 Do you have a reference for that? (I’m sure you’re right, but I can’t cite a tweet in a memo….).

@krakek1 Soviet vs NATO submarine design and operational practice was the exact real world example I was using with the students :D all that automation comes at the cost of shorter patrols if you want it to work.

Aha! I found a reference to the phenomenon I was describing to students thinking about automation in naval vessels. Assuming you fix the initial faults before going to sea (OPDEF wot that?) there will be a period when The Machine Will work - so saving you personnel labour 1/2