Whoa, thanks for the heads-up. I've been reading news about Zig from time to time, and planned giving it an honest try at 1.0 (whenever that may be) but it seems I'm out of luck.
Do you, by chance, know the reasoning behind this step?
If I were a Rust user, I'd be really afraid of what will happen to Rust when Microsoft gets hold of it in any way. Just look at what happened to C++ after it got popular because of Windows/Visual C++ and the strong ties between Microsoft and WG21 in the 90s/00s.
Microsoft doesn't "get a hold of" Rust by using Rust, any more than you get a hold of it by writing Rust programs.
With C++ they had their own compiler implementation, which obviously diverged. This is common for independent code bases. Whereas with Rust they're contributing positively to the main compiler implementation. Just one example - see all of Ryan Levick's (@rylev) contributions to Rust. Not just with code, or with tutorials, but in regular unglamorous work like running weekly compiler performance meetings.
Microsoft is also a platinum sponsor to the Rust foundation. The foundation uses this money to directly sponsor folks working on the language and library authors.
I can't help it, but reading Dom McLaughlin's testimony (scroll down to the examples) "...let's just say I'm not the most photogenic person..." makes me want to instantly go out and hunt down every picture of me ever made and nuke it from space :-).
Usually EU countries have quite strict rules for layoffs, it's not like US at-will law. In NL mass layoffs like this have to be approved by the unemployment agency, you have to fire people LIFO and you get 1/3rd of your monthly salary for every year you've worked there. The approval is quite difficult to get so usually a higher severance is offered to leave voluntarily.
In Germany any lawyer (or the work council) will block you from getting fired (because Google has no legal reason to fire you). What they do here in Germany is to negotiate to mutually void your contract by you accepting a financial package.
So in theory you are right, in practice however, most companies (especially the ones like Google) have to buy you out of your contract.
Also, IIRC, when actual layoffs happen, in Germany they actually need to look at tenure and family status of fired people (e.g. fire people without families first).
I guess it just means they will follow the law in each country.
In the case of Germany I believe the minimum notice period is one month (unless on probation, 2 weeks), but it is common to get 3 months. So they will pay for 3 months.
In Germany, local practices could include severance pay too. It is common for long-time employees to receive significant severance payments when they get fired.
60 days is the US minimum for a large company doing a layoff (WARN Act). Some states have stricter standards, which is why Amazon had to pay a minimum of 90 days severance in NY state.
in netherlands, for example, they (Goog) has to negotiate w/ the local-employee-backed Works Council. If they didn't bother setting one up, like Meta NL failed to, it will take about 3 months to do that. Then another 1-2 months for negotiations w/ the council. Then if they come to an agreement (they don't have to) w/ the redundancies and severance the affected can _then_ be notified.
for example, technically the meta layoffs back in November have not even happened here in NL and the affected won't even know until at least March-April!!
There is only one point around the whole Oumuamua topic for me, that makes me a bit sad. Extraterrestrial or not is not it, but that we had no means to just fly there (with or without humans) and checkout what it is.
Even worse, it seems no one in the scientific community (please correct me if I'm wrong) stepped up and said "We need to change this!". And it seems we will not have those means in the coming years/decades.
Honestly, if we can't do this in our own neighbourhood, because we simply lack the will power and consensus to do it, it says a lot about the future of space exploration.
It's a really challenging goal. It'd take probably more delta-v than any other spacecraft launched. Oumuamua orbit wasn't characterized until after it was already heading away from the solar system, which makes the requirements even higher and the launch window pretty small.
Budgets have to be allocated and prioritized who will pay for it and prioritize it ahead of other space missions?
Finding a scientist who would love to have this is a lot easier than finding someone to fund and build this. It'd probably require a rocket with more detla-v than any other ever made to be put on standby for years, ready to launch within a few days.
And you're not going to be doing a multi-planet flyby gravity assist trajectory, you're going to have to do it direct, which makes the delta-V budget crazy high.
It probably looks something like having a fueled up Saturn V in LEO with the probe on it (particularly for a lander rendezvous, never mind the insanity of doing sample return) just waiting to go (and nevermind boiloff).
Well https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00945... actually proposes a multiplanet flyby (Venus Earth Earth) followed by an Oberth burn at Jupiter. Would need to launch in 2028 on SLS and has a 15.8 km/s ∆v budget and flyby in 2054. Unfortunately I can't see the full text (sci-hub still down) so I don't know what the details are of the powered flyby of Jupiter or the relative velocity when they intersect.
Thanks for sharing this! Much lower dv budget if you can do gravity assists, but you have the obvious downside of a 30 year mission! High risk of failure.
It has to compete against landing on Titan, landing on Venus, etc.
I just found out about the Comet Interceptor - designed to remain parked in space, ready to fly to a new target at short noticehttps://interestingengineering.com/innovation/esa-mission-la... - but it's not the same as a few like that being already in motion and between slingshots at different corners of our system (if something like that could be at all possible..)
If you want to intercept something that will quickly leave the solar system you have to get on a trajectory that will quickly leave the solar system. And you have no idea of what the correct plane will be in advance.
I wonder what range of velocities you can sustain and how close to planets (suns) you can come to catapult or slow down to stay in the system (starsystem) moving fast, and how many jumps for how many probes moving such fast would be needed to at least be able to pass by visitor/suspect at some point or time really close even if not matching speed or direction.
It wouldn't need to be all that big. Park something out beyond geostationary orbit where it can sit ready to go on a few days notice. It doesn't need to be complex. A GoPro atop of a bathtub of xenon, with some big solar panels, would have the necessary deltaV. Slapping an srb on it for the initial oberth kick away from earth should speed it up too.
Not sure why this would make you sad. There are an arbitrary number of events in the universe that could warrant attention. There's no possible way we could create means to "fly" to all of them. Trying to create these means is futile, unless you arbitrarily pick "intercept big space sausage floating through the solar system".
Neglecting the obvious question of priorities considering all the shit we could be fixing on earth, better observatories would be much more useful than spaceships to take Bruce Willis out to inspect stuff. And there is a lot of funding going towards capabilities in that direction.
It seems to me that "the universe" is not an appropriate term for our close planetary neighborhood.
There is a difference between an interstellar object passing within 85 times the distance to the Moon (so closer than Mars at closest approach to Earth) and say a supernova thousands or millions of light years away (and hence thousands or millions of years ago).
I don't know where the universe begins, but I'd say Low Earth Orbit and the Moon don't qualify while Proxima Centauri does. For reference:
Distance from ground to space: ~100 km
Distance from California to Australia: ~12,000 km
Distance to the Moon: ~400,000 km
Distance to 'Oumuamua's closest approach: ~33,000,000 km
Distance to Mars at closest approach: ~55,000,000 km
Distance to the Sun: ~150,000,000 km
Distance to Neptune: ~4,500,000,000 km
Current distance to 'Oumuamua ~5,000,000,000 km
Distance to Sedna: ~13,000,000,000 km
Distance to Proxima Centauri: ~40,000,000,000,000 km
There are still plenty of other possibile curiosities than interstellar rocks in closer proximity than Proxima Centauri. Each would require highly specialized instruments.
Not sure what the window of opportunity was for O6a, but it's doubtful that it would have been possible to prepare a mission in that timeframe. It follows that such "spaceships" would need to be prepared ahead of time and maintained indefinitely for an event which may not occur again for centuries ...
There will be plenty of other interstellar objects that pass through our solar system. Oumuamua wasn't some special once in a lifetime event, it's just we are just getting the capability online to see these objects. We will see these objects earlier and earlier, we will see a lot more of them, and in all likelyhood future missions will intercept such objects. Maybe even sample return someday.
Science fiction has skewed people’s perspective of what’s possible or practically achievable in space travel.
The issue is not willpower and consensus, but what’s economically and physically possible.
You’re right, though, that this says a lot about the future of space travel. We’re unlikely to have successful colonies on other planets within the next century or so, and sending live humans to other star systems is even less likely.
Most people don't know how a pressure cooker, a microwave or a radio work, we have a lot of much more important things to teach before teaching space travel
From interviews of scientists in places like John Michael Godier’s YouTube and similar, I do sense scientists see the value and some demand to be able to investigate such things. I think one recent interviewee even mentioned having drawn up plans for building up some readiness and a project to do a fly by of Oumuamua.
Further, rocket launches seem to be an emerging market in that the price to launch comes down as more capability ramps up. So it’s possible the market might answer this before government.
We absolutely have the capability to send a flyby mission to visit 'Oumuamua. We just don't have the money or inclination to do so, given other priorities.
This has nothing to do with C, and everything with its intended problem domain.
You can get into pointer and memory errors in C++, Rust and Ada. All of them low-level system languages. Sure, those errors might be harder to produce, but not impossible, and definitely easy enough to still trip you up.
I programmed in all of those languages, except Rust (just don't like it). At least in C you pretty much now WHY (not necessarily where in the code) things went south, without consulting a thousand page specification or having to remember the myriad of language feature interactions that could have triggered those problems.
Moreover, C being small, it's a good on/off language. Try doing a code review for a C++/Rust/Ada code base which uses features heavily after not having touched the language for a year. I bet it is not as easy as C.
You know, some things in life are just hard. And low-level programming is one of those things. C is only honest about this.
Do you, by chance, know the reasoning behind this step?