Well, not really an issue with the existing paragraph being hard to understand, but I would suggest more explicitly stating which symbol from the “math” section corresponds to each variable from the “code” section, at the beginning of the latter.

Hugely cool! Very clearly written too.

Lately I use it for hobby projects, but also for academic stuff (e.g., interacting with experimental devices, sensors). Rust allows me to write fast code quickly while not spending a long time with valgrind.

I love chumsky and iced. They are still under heavy feature development, but their design feels great.

Either they sent it there on purpose to provocate a respone, which would at least make some sense, or it malfunctioned, which also makes sense since the balloon did not send any communications during that time.

Edit: on further thought, I think if it had broken down, they could simply have reported it. It’s likely they sent a weather balloon on purpose, either to test the waters or create bad PR in the US.

I’m not performing any comparison. The US Air Force destroyed the Chinese balloon, then analyzed it, then destroyed three non-suspicious balloons. I understand the reasons why the Chinese balloon was suspicious, and I understand the reasons the other three balloons were not. Also, one of those three balloons (presumably the one from a research institution, but I could not find any source linking identified balloons with statements made prior about them) was of a comparable size to the Chinese balloon. My point is simply that the US never takes down its own balloons, and much less in such a short time, right after analyzing a balloon that they found suspicious. If you have a better hypothesis, I’ll be glad to hear it.

Since they already state they “suspect it was a spy balloon” and anyone would assume they would have performed such an analysis, them mentioning either that they performed it or that the analysis revealed it was a spy balloon would not reveal any otherwise secret information. But not mentioning either seems like an indication that the analysis was performed and did not reveal anything of use. Also, it does not explain why they destroyed three regular weather balloons right after the analysis.

The article repeatedly uses the adjectives “surveillance”, “spy” to refer to the balloon, even though there is no source confirming that was the device’s purpose, and notably it did not send any data home during its transit over the US. Forensic analysis only revealed meteorological equipment, antennas (which according to leaks were just regular communication antennas), basic steering devices and solar panels. Notably, no firmware analysis was mentioned, which would have easily confirmed its status as a surveillance balloon.

The other three balloons downed a week later were confirmed not to be spy balloons; the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade claimed one, one research institution from the US (I don’t remember) claimed another. They were the kind of balloons that the Air Forces typically don’t take down, but apparently just decided to in a very short timeframe.

Maybe they initially feared it was a spy balloon, discovered in a few days it wasn’t, then tried to alleviate the diplomatic hit by destroying every other “unidentified” balloon in their airspace, Chinese or not. And the PR mitigation for the local population is here: the balloon must have been for surveillance. This is the only hypothesis that makes sense to me (edit: feel free to provide others or point out flaws in my reasoning).