Four questions for a Wednesday

dankblog! 2021-10-13, 2227 EDT, at the danktower

i thought of four questions today for which i do not yet have answers:

• why aren't line-based UIs combining proportional (as opposed to fixed-width) fonts with horizontally tabular interfaces and cursor location reports, like, a thing?
• how hard would it be to make an EMP grenade? characterize designs in terms of cost, your kV/m² field, and likelihood of detection by federales
• can you write a program that you put in the background that reliably and continuously draws to some fixed location on the arbitrary terminal in which it was launched?
• if one wanted to retain all the operational advantages of virtual memory, but eliminate the page concept (alternatively, allow pages of arbitrary size) at the OS level (i.e. DRAM interface doesn't change, but let's say you can change your microarchitecture), and not set your MMU on fire, how could it be done, and what advantages would it bring?

it's been! one week since you looked at me.

i also at one point was wondering "if you have two sexy ladies holding onto two ends of a rod, and one lowers herself through the event horizon of a supermassive black hole (where the tidal force difference is totally survivable), couldn't she communicate back to the first with rod-tuggery?" i mean, i know she can't, but why? i cannot find a satisfying answer in all of GRAVITATION.

previously: "advice to an undergraduate" 2021-10-10