Very interesting indeed. This reminds me of a (relatively) recent standard for distributed industrial process control.

For industrial process control, the IEC-61499 [1] standard introduces an architecture where the program and its function blocks are independent of where the components actually run.

I don't believe automatic distribution of the components to different devices is included. But, it allows setting up function blocks and their interconnections, and then distributing function blocks between devices. Inter-device communication is included in the standard.

Compared to standard PLC programming (IEC-61131), 61499 adds events to the function block diagram paradigm.

I don't think this standard os popular yet, but I've always wanted to give it a try.

4diac is an open source implementation.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61499

[2] https://www.eclipse.org/4diac/

I mostly agree with your points except to say that, even if Oracle is not active in the project, the risk is real as long as Oracle owns any of the copyright for any ZFS code.

The USL vs BSDi litigation over BSD ultimately came down to a handful of source files out of 18000. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Berkeley_Soft... )

I wouldn't talk badly against ZFS, but I would not roll any dice with Oracle as a copyright holder.

Someone will probably need to correct me, but here's how I understand it.

Proteins naturally fold into a shape where they have the lowest "potential energy". There are several useful metaphors to explain what "lowest potential energy" means and why the proteins are attracted to the shape with the lowest potential energy.

In "the real world", an object's "altitude" is a form of potential energy. A ball on a hill will roll down hill until it settles into the lowest valley it can — the place where its potential energy is lowest. Balls roll downhill to the place of lowest potential energy, and proteins fold into the shape in which they contain the lowest potential energy.

You can also think of a fresh protein as a stretched out spring. The stresses in the spring from being stretched out of shape are a form of potential energy. The spring will contract until it is completely relaxed so there is the minimum amount of "springy" potential energy remaining. Springs contract into the shape that is most "relaxed" and has the lowest potential energy, and proteins fold into a shape having the lowest potential energy.

If the protein was to fold into any other shape, there would still be some potential energy left in the protein that could be relieved if only the protein could get itself folded into the "correct" shape. If the rolling ball gets stuck on a rock or the spring gets snagged and can't completely relax, both objects would be stuck with a higher potential energy than they would if the ball reached the bottom of the hill or if the spring were allowed to fully relax.

Hopefully this explains why there is a single shape that proteins are most attracted to when folding. But, it doesn't explain why other shapes are somehow "invalid".

Proteins are like pieces of cellular or chemical "machinery". Like the parts of a mechanical machine, the protein's shape is part of what defines how the protein works, what it can "do", and how it fits together with other pieces of the cellular machine. And, since "correctly" folded proteins always have the same shape, "machines" can be built with them.

When proteins are misfolded, they have a different shape from the shape that all of the other machinery expects. Like a gear without teeth cut into it, the misfolded protein doesn't perform the function that it, as part of a cellular machine, is supposed to perform. The protein might "jam" the machine up or even cause the machine to malfunction and start doing something completely unintended.

I hope this comment is correct enough and clear enough for an ELI5 — though it might be more of an ELI15.

To expand on that (great explanation btw) and to get at something the original question was asking:

A protein can have many different, stable conformations. Those conformations depend on the chemical environment, and any interactions the protein is making. Basically they alter the lowest energy to be a different arrangement.

However, basic elements of the fold, with a few exceptions, will never change. We call these secondary structure elements, and they are limited by phi and psi angles on the dihedral C-N peptide bond. These secondary structure elements are thought to form before the protein is even fully synthesized, and are extremely difficult to undo. However, the spatial relationship between these elements is much more dynamic depending on what the protein is doing.

The ELI5 version is basically that proteins will have a basic shape, and they can wiggle around that shape, but can't really radically change because it would take too much energy

I've got two hobby projects on the go.

I'm building a steam power plant simulator for students and trainees that won't cost upwards of $100K for a site license. It also has a plant builder interface, which lets anyone place and connect equipment, piping, instrumentation, and controls. Then, they can run the plant like a real operator would from a control room.

When I was at school for power/stationary engineering, we all wished we could use something like the school's simulator at home. So, maybe I'll get to fill that niche. (And, nothing out there has a do-it-yourself plant builder!)

I have mostly-complete prototypes done for the builder interface and numerical simulator. I like that it keeps the theory that I learned at school nice and fresh.

Also, I bought a gas turbine engine on eBay, and I'm working with a friend to get it running. We got an oil system hooked up yesterday, and we spun it up with the starter motor and a car battery. Lots of fun!

First of all, I love this.

One nagging thing in my mind, though, is how easy it seems it would be for a Three-Letter Agency to backdoor LE to pieces. Then again, I guess that's nearly just as true for any CA out there.

(I don't mean to pooh-pooh this useful service! And, if there's any interloper-mitigation going on that I don't know about, I'd be happily put straight!)

You appear to be assuming (not being a mind-reader, whether you actually are or not is of course unknown to me) that QNX would automatically be used in server farms if it was high throughput; and, since it's not visibly used there, it is not high-throughput.

(As an aside, I'll grant that even a high-throughput microkernel seems likely, to me, to have a lower throughput relative to a more tightly-coupled monolithic kernel. That's just one of the architectural trade-offs involved here.)

As I see it, there are technical (e.g. hardware drivers, precompiled proprietary binaries) and social (e.g. relative lack of QNX expertise = $$, proprietary licensing) reasons for many people to choose one of the more popular OSes, running monolithic kernels.

I can't say what's technically superior, but even if QNX was, nobody's a dumbass for choosing something else -- and I don't think the fellow you're replying to was saying so. There are, of course, reasons and trade-offs.

An OS's adoption is a social thing, and proves nothing technical about it. If it wasn't for licensing (a social problem), BSD might have taken off, and Linux been comparatively marginalized.

Just sharing my perspective here.

From that article, I get the impression that the 6-month limit only applies to direct submission of prior art to the Patent Office. Patents can still be invalidated by prior art in court.

One friend of mine essentially refused to take breaks after school. He'd get home and immediately start working on the day's homework. It would frequently take him until after 9 o'clock to finish up work that shouldn't have taken anywhere near that long. I know he's an intelligent fellow, and not prone to distraction. He'd just get stuck.

I'm /certain/ taking a break would have gotten him into a fresh mindset, and let him finish it all up faster. And, if I had /not/ put some hours between getting home and doing my homework, that it really could have taken me many hours to finish.

Just one speculative data point, but there it is.

Hey, that's a really cool idea! Using an asteroid as its own propellant.

Yeah! Has anyone actually investigated this or written about it??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance#Hist... - Project Icarus is almost 50 years old. There was a paper about laser ablation 2 years ago. Lot of literature on many different collision avoidance strategies.

There was a talk this year at LLNL showcasing a few methods, each with high resolution mesh-based simulations. Hopefully that's enough information so you can find the slides online.

Agreed. Posix xargs is bafflingly inane. GNU xargs, at least, supports `xargs -d '\n'` to regain some line-oriented sanity. I prefer to use GNU parallel these days, though, since it's line-oriented by default and a bit more ergonomic.