They're nanosecond pulses. The instantaneous power is 8 kW but the power on average is around 5W, and that's only when it actively ranges, which happens for only a short time at each cycle.

And then if it's been asked to range too many times within a few seconds and the number of joules per second delivered exceeds the eye safety limit - some ISO standard I don't recall - the device refuses to range until the eye safety counter "cools off" so-to-speak.

With infrared, it's all about limiting the average power to avoid cooking the eyeball like egg white. The thermal inertia of an eyeball full of water is such that you can deliver quite a lot of power in one sitting for a short time, then stop, and it's perfectly safe.

Retina damage isn't the only eye damage that can be caused by IR lasers. The iris, lenses, muscles and nerves that control them can also be damaged resulting in blindness or serious loss of vision.

If this system can damage a camera, it should not be on the road.

The most powerful devices range up to 32 km and can actually damage their own sensor when ranging something close and reflective. They use 1550nm pumped IR lasers and each pulse pumps out 8 kW. They're eye-safe but they certainly aren't camera safe.

I'm talking cross-platform.

A Python v2 or v3 file will usually run equally well on Windows, Linux, whatever... in the same version of the interpreter.

Python does break stuff on a regular basis and create headaches because they still don't give a very big shit about backward compatibility. But my point is, whatever works or breaks on one platform with work or break more or less the same on another.

Java on the other hand is a complete crapshoot, depending on platform, which JVM and which version you use, whether the moon was blue the night before...

Python is the real no-nonsense, no headache write-once-run-everywhere.

> it's been neither "stable" nor "reliable."

I was going to say the same thing. CenturyLink/Quantum's fiber service has been spotty pretty much since the beginning. Which tracks, since their DSL service wasn't much better.

AT&T may find new and interesting ways to screw things up. But Quantum residential customers have already been getting the short end of the stick for reliability.

it's an experiment entirely divorced from how commercial fusion would work, say in 50+ years

Inflation has reduced the value of the nickel to 1/20 of when it was introduced. It really isn't needed.

With Trump's tariffs set to raise prices up the wazoo, many people will lose their homes. 22% of fewer US homes is less energy than the headline suggests.

DOGE only hires sketchy teenage cybercriminals like him to "handle" our sensitive government data. He would fit right in!

Google is still marginally better at DDG / Bing at finding relevant answers to very precise, very obscure technical issues or error messages. Other than that, I never use it.

My search engines of choice are:

85% DDG for general and technical search.
10% Google for technical search when DDG fails.
5% Yandex for porn - don't bother with DDG first, Yandex knows smut best.

I don't think Pavel Durov would be safe in the US right now.

This would be a horrible investment anyway. I use Affirm, which is similar. You pay for something kind of expensive - minimum is 100 USD - break it into 3 or 4 zero-interest payments, use a virtual credit card they generate, which is tied to your real credit card or bank account, to make the purchase. Every few weeks, they take a payment from you from their automated process to repay the loan from either your real credit card or directly from your bank account. You pay your real credit card balance every month and viola! you have your merchandise and don't pay anyone any interest. I may be an outlier doing it this way, but I don't see how money is being made except possibly through some sort of affiliate program. The other way is to take a plan that bears an interest rate that is similar to real credit card rates, which is not a good decision to begin with. That said, it's no different than using a real credit card and having a balance. Those people have always been a high risk, which is why the interest rates are high to begin with. If memory serves, they have been defaulting at an increasing rate for years, so they may have reached a point where those loans are also unprofitable. In any case, I don't see these services making money. YMMV.

the old 'edit.com' works fine on 32 bit win 10.

no reason it couldn't be recompiled to 64 bit windows either with minor wor

there will be no commercial fusion power for half a century.

besides which we're eating up the commercial tritium supply so we can't even supply the next 20 years of experimental plants, with zero plans to produce more in sight. Research will come to a dead end.

we already have fission power and sufficient fuel for millennia.

we can save fusion for space exploration, when we're ready, say 2125 AD or later