I have a related question, how far are you turning the thumbscrews when making adjustments?

I think M3 standard thread pitch is 0.5mm, so to a first approximation that almost 1000 wavelengths (if I have the SI units right in my head, and I'm not 3 orders of magnitude out?). I suspect the left/right and up/down adjustments have as fairly high lever ratio, but I can't imagine you could successfully adjust the in/out distance with any precision (not in the 690nm sense anyway)? Is the in/out distance not important so long as the beams are aligned?

Dunno if you've seen it, but there's a great youtube video explaining how the actuators to align the James Webb mirrors work: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5MxH1sfJLBQ including a 3D printable version of them: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5232214 "This is a replica of JWST's mirror actuators. Six of these actuators are paired into a hexapod / stewart platform arrangement and used to control 6 degrees of freedom of each mirror segment (tip, tilt, roll, x, y, z translation)."

Ooh, great question. Usually fractions (~1/20th?) of a turn for alignment, it’s hard to go below that since the mounts are so small and the springs don’t have the tension to keep it super stable. (This is plenty for such a “coarse” set up like a Michaelson but might not be up to par for more delicate ones. This can be improved very easily but it was enough for this experiment!) If you want to observe something on the outputs, you have to do something like exhale on one of the arms or put a soldering iron near one of them—merely touching one of the screws gives you indiscernible output, even if the mirrors are aligned.

Very interesting re: JWT, I will definitely take a peek, thanks !

I suspect they'd be fairly cheap to get made at somewhere like JLCCNC. Or maybe get them to 3D print them in metal for you?

I wonder if they have enough different metal choices that you could build a thermal expansion compensated version? https://patents.google.com/patent/US8292537B2/en

i’d probably just get it milled only if you had the CNC handy, the complexity isn’t enough to justify 3d printing it in metal (probably a decent bit more expensive too!)

but at “get it done in JLCCNC” prices I think a thorlabs mount is probably in your future :)

I'd be surprised? If you have spare time, I'd be fascinated to see what their website magic quote tool tells you if you just upload your 3d files. Based on other projects I've seen using them I'd guess under $100...

sure ! I’ll give it a try a little later once I’m at a computer !

(you can too, if you’d like, the CAD files are all online as .step files :)

I have proposed elsewhere that for companies like Flock doing surveillance of the public, it should be legally required for every company executive and board member to have their cameras, ALPR systems, audio surveillance, drone systems, etc - installed outside their homes and along their routes to work and along their routes to their children's schools and their spouses workplaces - and all of that data be publicly accessible. And I'd suggest the same goes for senior management at decision makers at every town and police department and private company that signs a contract with them.

"For their own safety", as they'd have us believe.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Wouldn’t matter. The execs of these companies are unlikely to be subject to excessive policing. Systemic bias being what it is.

Interestingly, sail cloth (for sail boat sails) is measured in ounces per square yard, and is just referred to by the weight with the square yard assumed - like "8oz Nylon mainsail" or "4oz ripstop spinnaker". (Or at least it used to be, my expertise here is more than 30 years out of date now.)

I, for one, look forward to the new 5oz "Donald Trump Freedom Nickel". Probably resulting from a deal he did with the Big Trousers lobby groups to wear out coin pockets faster.

(I would have made a gag about a 7g replacement nickel, but you people have already used up the team "quarter" for different denomination. Although the idea of a new 40 cent coin called an "eight ball" amuses me...)

Cheese _is_ delicious.

(But I doubt the cheese I find so delicious is that same as the cheese that's so prevalent in American diets...)

> You just hire more staff.

Every Googler on the planet just laughed and downed another Tequila shot.

I wonder if this needs frontier models?

Or, if it does _now_, how long it'll be before it' will work well using downloadable models that'll run on, say, a new car's worth of Mac Studios with a bunch of RAM in them to allow a small fleet of 70B and 120B models (or larger) to run locally? Perhaps even specialised models for each of the roles this uses?

Last I heard, the QCbros were still trying to find the prime factors of 15.

(I remember using quantum algorithms to find prime factors 25 years or more ago, using the Quantum::Suppositions Perl module.)

I do that on my phone. It's almost as easy to tap an ocr-ed url in my photos app as it is to click a link on a web page.

(On my laptop, I'm just as likely to spend half a day writing a scraper or reverse engineering the javascript and apis to collect a dozen or two urls that I should have just jotted down in my notebook...)

This is probably the best innovation in the last decade as far as I’m concerned.

It has conquered the 20 digit WiFi password in 6 font.