Simulation Engineer. Hillclimbs a Van Diemen RF84. Sometimes writes and sometimes researches. Also into history and the arts. https://nitter.cf/t.co/Sv8XcxmX7V
From London, lives in Witney
Joined November 2014
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LaurenceMarks retweeted
To Formula One fans, Sunday 24 October 1976 was significant for two reasons: it was the first time the sport had been broadcast live from outside of Europe via satellite, and it was the day James Hunt sealed the F1 drivers' championship.
Fifty years have now passed; today, 80 million tune into Grands Prix to watch the clean-living, corporate-trained TikTok generation scuff rubber, but Hunt's legacy as the patron saint of Marlboro-puffing playboys shows no sign of abating.
In a competition founded upon bravery and testosterone, with a side order of sex appeal, the tall, tousled, blond, broad-chested Englishman left no stone unturned. He was a man of appetites, as ravenous for claret, cocaine and carnality as he was for speed and glory.
He was Lord Flashheart in fire-retardant overalls, and a national treasure at just 29.
✍️ Adam Hay-Nicholls
Article | spectator.com/article/they-d…
LaurenceMarks retweeted
“you have autodesk products installed locally, do you not?”
LaurenceMarks retweeted
You could safely say my 50-year professional career can be summarized in 4 letters: MBWA.
LaurenceMarks retweeted
All the ramjet aircraft developed by René Leduc had one thing in common: they did not have ejection seats, but rather ejectable cockpits that remained pressurised. Here is a demonstration of how this worked, using a scale model of the Leduc 021 in 1955.
© British Pathé
LaurenceMarks retweeted
I spend a fair bit of time in historic racing, as many know and so I talk to a serious quota of ‘greatest generation’ racing drivers.
Here’s a few things millennials like me should really note - they are in their 70’s/80’s now…
They arrive on time without fail, (I’m talking - to the literal minute) explain patiently and quietly with zero pretence despite objectively terrifying feats/stories.
They minimise their own and maximise everyone else’s contribution to their usually significant results and achievements. And often tell the story from somebody else’s perspective
These are people forged by different world. Roll your eyes as much as you want, we need to grab their view of the world before it’s gone.
LaurenceMarks retweeted
Concluding the previous FOSS CAD convo, here is my summary…
Every now and then, someone suggests that FOSS (free open-source software) CAD should be the future of CAD because:
1. CAD is expensive.
2. Vendors lock in customers with proprietary formats.
3. Customers could fix bugs and improve functionality.
4. CAD is generally terrible, but FOSS CAD will be amazing.
These conclusions are wrong, even if they stem from valid observations.
FOSS CAD is not a feasible solution to some of the very real problems that CAD has, and it's no accident that there isn’t a production-grade FOSS CAD available. Here's why 👇
1. The biggest issue with CAD today isn’t cost, it's clunkiness. FOSS software often struggles with creating high-quality user experiences. Yes, there are exceptions, but they’re exceptions. There’s a high likelihood that FOSS CAD would end up with the same clunky UX as legacy CAD systems.
2. Building a FOSS CAD would require creating a full b-rep kernel from scratch. There are only a few hundred people in the world with the expertise to work on a b-rep kernel, and it would take around 30-40 of them at least five years to develop a usable version. I know many of these folks, and they usually prefer working on novel problems. Convincing them to develop yet another b-rep kernel would be a tough sell.
3. Let’s assume you somehow manage to assemble an amazing team of computational geometry PhDs and secure the necessary funding (hundreds of millions of dollars). Congratulations, you’ve just created a brand-new CAD system that is completely outside the current ecosystem. Are you also planning to build simulation, CAM, etc., from scratch? If your tool is incompatible with existing systems, nobody will use it—not even for free—because the cost of incompatibility is exponentially higher than the cost of the CAD software itself.
4. Okay, you solve the ecosystem problem. You build a CAD stack that’s fully embedded in the existing CAD ecosystem. Congrats! You’ve now spent 10 years building another CAD system with the same issues as every other one, because it received less feedback from real-world use cases. Sure, it might be cheaper, and third parties could contribute to it, but the complexity of CAD technologies means that only a small number of people could actually make meaningful contributions.
5. Well, at least we’d have cheaper CAD, right? While it’s possible we could do better in terms of pricing, I believe that the free market and continued innovation are already addressing this.
6. Data lock-in isn’t a real problem. When Daimler switched from CATIA to NX, they archived all their data in JT format. According to them, the switch was more of a people issue than a technological one.
I believe we should focus on solving the actual problems, such as:
- Making CAD more accessible
- Developing pricing that aligns with the value provided to different customer segments, from SMBs to enterprises
- Treating industry-standard CAD components as infrastructure. This is what I’ll cover in my next piece.
LaurenceMarks retweeted
When Ukraine destroys Russian data centers, hoards of aggressive right-wing bots disappear, and Twitter becomes much friendlier. Isn’t that interesting? So much of our politics is driven by the internet, and so much of the internet is driven by Russians who want to hurt us. Shouldn’t we do something about that, given that we know it?
LaurenceMarks retweeted
WTAF is this from Palantir’s founder Peter Thiel?!
“If you’re evil, you’re at least competent. And if you’re evil you’re not bad. And therefore you’re actually kind of good, because you’re at least getting something done.”
THIS is who the government are selling our NHS data to!
LaurenceMarks retweeted
NASA's @chandraxray has created one of astronomy's richest scientific archives with hundreds of millions of seconds of X-ray observations.
Read how scientists worldwide are using AI to help them comb through these large amounts of data more quickly >> chandra.si.edu/blog/node/973
ALT Artist's illustration of the Chandra X-ray Observatory in space. (Credit: NASA/CXC & J.Vaughan)
LaurenceMarks retweeted
Vibe coding replaces the interesting bit - writing code to solve a problem - and replaces it with the boring bit - reviewing someone else's code to see if they've done it right. It's a shit swap.
LaurenceMarks retweeted
Beautiful new cat species is first to be named in a century newscientist.com/article/258…
LaurenceMarks retweeted
The first F1 race at the Madring definitely didn't win over the drivers... 😬
Are they right, or was the racing better than they're making it out to be?
ALT A collection of drivers, Lando Norris, Gabriel Bortoleto, Kimi Antonelli, Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen and Ollie Bearman being critical of the track layout for the Madring, the first time the track has hosted the Spanish Grand Prix.
LaurenceMarks retweeted
very impressed with this mission as I've been following the JHU APL folks working w/ ntop to keep the weight down for it
Just a friendly reminder that @NASA is building a nuclear-powered drone and sending it to Saturn’s moon Titan to search for the building blocks of life.
Honored to have helped build the laser that will zap Titan samples for analysis by the onboard mass spectrometer (called DraMS).
The actual spacecraft, a rotorcraft the size of a car, is being built by the legendary team at @JHUAPL.
It launches on a Falcon Heavy in July 2028, beginning a billion-mile journey to the outer Solar System.
Mission of a lifetime.