Welders certified in welding to certain specifications can easily make this much, particularly if they own/run their own shop. Not common, certainly, but someone with their own equipment who can go onsite to a wellhead, oil platform, or nuclear reactor and make certified repairs on demand can pretty much quote their own fee. Welding certifications are very specialized, being able to TIG 1/4" stainless doesn't qualify you for 1/2" stainless, or 1/4" aluminum, etc. As a hobbyist, I find welding to be fun, but suspect the skill required to do larger projects to an ISO or Federal specification would be quite the reach.
Or, better yet, if enough people were actually interested in this sort of thing, we could get the day after such a late-night event a holiday, so we could all guiltlessly stay up late and party with other interested friends, then sleep in in the morning without having to worry about work or school. Also, imagine if we could get people to turn off their lights enough that you don't have to go out into the country to be able to see this sort of event clearly.
I wonder how much of this is caused by the inevitable invasion by missionaries, injecting memes into the local population that conflict with the indigenous culture and cause conflict, confusion, and the other symptoms of Christianity. Not to mention the purely physical diseases they bring with them. I know they mean well, but everything I've read about post-missionary contact of isolated tribes shows an increase in depression, aggression, and lowered quality of life.
If it actually made it to the moon's surface (which I see is contested), I wonder if any of the notoriously insidious moon-dust still clings to or made it inside of the device. It might be worth a thorough disassembly and cleaning to see.
How the fuck were they supposed to prepare? Purchase more snow management equipment on short notice? Maintain a large fleet of trucks for the rare occasions that stuff like this happens?
I do wonder if they could have rented some snow/ice gear from areas not expecting snow for a few days but which had the equipment and supplies on hand. Wouldn't even have had to be government-owned equipment, there's plenty of companies around that keep plows and salters/sanders ready for snow, who contract out to remove snow and ice from driveways and parking lots, private roads and similar. Yes, it would have cost quite a bit -- fuel for the trip from the snowbelt to Atlanta and back, hotels, logistics to make sure salt and sand made it down, time and materials for the vehicles, but if it's only once every 3-5 years, it should be doable with a few calls and cash in hand.
When the natural deposits are gone, we'll mine the garbage dumps where lots of it ends up as bones, sewage sludge, and so on. And, while it would be energy intensive, there are undersea deposits yet untouched, and ultimately the seas themselves can be filtered for phosphorous -- it's where all the runoff, most of the bird guano, and all the sealife-sequestered phosphorus ends up anyway.
And it has also been repeatedly commented that the work that a robot (rover) on Mars can do in a year could be done by a trained human in a week, with better ability to adjust to conditions and potentially discover things that hadn't been planned for. Is the expense worth it? Is the risk of contaminating Mars with Earth's biotics too great? Can human even survive the radiation and other dangers of the trip? These all appear to be questions that future generations will have to decide for themselves, as mine isn't going anywhere outside of LEO.
They've got something on the moon and can get people into orbit this year. The US is years away from being able to put anyone in orbit without buying a ticket on a Russian rocket.
Only because our political class has decided it's not worth the risk. After two space shuttle failures, the writing was on the wall, and Congress collectively decided "Hell, if we're going to get the blame every time a rocket fails and someone dies, let's outsource that." The Soyuz and Atlas lines in their current incarnations are roughly equivalent in capacity (5,500 vs 5,900kg to LEO respectively), if we really wanted to all it would take is some extra QA (last Atlas failure was in 2007, and even so the payload made orbit, just lower than desired), a life-support capsule and re-entry system (old hat, we've had designs for those since the 60s) and the will to accept responsibility for any failure. There's also the systems currently launching cargo (Dragon, Cygnus/Antares) that are known to be able to make it up there, just not certified to carry humans yet. If we had a sudden need, say relationships with Russia go south, I believe we would pick the most reliable, certify it safe enough for human travel, and go for it.
That said, why would our government want to go that route unless it had to? So long as they can outsource, currently to the Russians, probably eventually to private companies such as SpaceX, they don't want the responsibility, the blame when things go wrong, or the negative feedback that luddites always throw at the space programs as it is.
I've been interested in Glass for it's potential utility as a "POV" camera for documenting what I do in the workshop (knifemaking, blacksmithing, etc). I don't view it as a "everyday all the time" tool, but it is one I'd like in my toolbox, and since I wear corrective glasses, incorporating lenses is a step in the right direction. I wonder if they'll offer a "safety glasses" version (side shields and heavy frame construction, they already have the extra-durable lens material mentioned in the survey.)
I'm eagerly awaiting Alton Brown's commandeering of a playground roundabout with deep fryers lashed to the bars and an '01 Kia minivan's power wheel providing the input power.
But how to distribute the AC power - rotors and brushes?
Just use a portable generator -- you're going to want something to counterbalance the frying assembly anyway.
Probably, if I ever have children. Flintknaping is fun, easy, the materials are common as rocks, and once you know how to flake out an edge, you'll never be without a tool.
How can anything have a shape that turns into an electromagnetic wave when you're not watching...
The Doctor: Don't blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And don't blink. Good Luck.
I've long wanted something like this, a telepresence bot with a camera, an arm, a few tools in reach, and a supply of cables for use in telco data centers. No more calling remote hands or trudging over to equinix, just sign out a robot, steer it to the cage, do the troubleshooting, then send it back. Sadly, I doubt it'll ever happen, the temptation of engineers to sign out robots and running jousting competitions in the aisles would just be too tempting.
I'm reminded, in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, that the sultan of a fictional country declared that there, at least, there would be no monitoring, government interference, or strongarm tactics on the local Internet infrastructure. While I didn't learn of underwater-tapping submarines until the christening of the Jimmy Carter in 2004, I felt it was a bit of a stretch to assume that any transcontinental underwater cable wasn't tapped and monitored. Still, it seems it's better than the modern world, where I have yet to hear any country declare that here, at least, your communications, data, files, and so on are safe, even at an official level. I probably wouldn't believe it if one did declare itself a data haven, but still, it might help restore some belief in humanity if every single government wasn't essentially declaring war on its own citizens in the name of security. I don't see how this can end well.
I've been working as a network engineer at various ISPs, large, medium, and small, in NOCs, NetEng, etc.
The author seems to be unaware of how the Internet really works. His concerns about how various different types of traffic should have different priorities is addressed quite well by QOS. Most IPS backbones are MPLS based, and use RSVP to keep the tunnels open and uncongested. When an external path gets congested, there are programs (Routescience was my favorite, not sure what the modern equivalent is) to migrate your route announcements over different paths automatically, if your NOC engineers are incapable of doing it manually.
That leaves the overall concern about bandwidth. Fiber is cheap, DWDM lets us pack an ever-larger number of waves, be they 1gig, 10 gig, 40 gig, 100gig, or whatever we come up with to surpass those. In the core, IPv4's routing tables are now handled trivially by modern equipment, and IPv6's implementation is designed to prevent routing table bloat. Of all the problem's I've seen on high-end routers, every time there's been a cpu or memory issue in the last 10 years, it's been due to a bug, not because the router itself couldn't handle it.
Cognitive protocols? No, that's not the problem, it's not why your download is slow, why you have lag in your game, your calls drop or your videos black out. Last mile congestion, lack of infrastructure, and the refusal to build out networks to meet consumer demand are causing that.
I would imagine that setting up political asylum before actually qualifying would be a bit difficult, and many countries, while willing to offer forgiveness for such an act, would hesitate in becoming an accessory before the act by giving implicit permission.
Money. Spain had control of most of the silver and gold mines, the logwood, cocoa, and other natural resources that came from the recently-discovered Americas, and the Church knew better than to push too hard on the ones controlling its purse. Also, Spain was the gateway to the new world, with it's millions of souls, though I doubt that had nearly as much influence as the gold, silver, and related tithes.
Agreed, I've worked for several ISPs and a couple of telcos, and while if the gov't orders a monitor or tap, the capability is there, unless so ordered there just isn't reason, space, power, or spare engineering capability monitor everything. Fiber is expensive, so are telco-grade switches and routers, and space in a telco hotel is not cheap -- and neither is the talent to run all that. I've built backbone systems, there's no mysterious "government fiber out" port on those builds -- and if the government orders a tap, they pay for the wire out, and the configuration to dupe the feed is very specific as to data type and what's being sent out.
As a blacksmith, I just wanted to comment that, yes, metallurgical grade coal mined in the US is much nicer than most of the crap the rest of the world uses, and, yes, like most blacksmiths, I've converted 99% of my operations to propane/natural gas.
Having had much difficulty when making new ethernet cables -- to me there is no real difference between the green and brown wires -- I'm definitely interested, but at nearly $300 for a pair, I'm not sure I'm ready to just buy a set to see if it helps.
Just got back from voting. It was an hour long wait, and according to the poll workers, it was the shortest it had been all day, they had never seen turnout like this before.
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Welders certified in welding to certain specifications can easily make this much, particularly if they own/run their own shop. Not common, certainly, but someone with their own equipment who can go onsite to a wellhead, oil platform, or nuclear reactor and make certified repairs on demand can pretty much quote their own fee. Welding certifications are very specialized, being able to TIG 1/4" stainless doesn't qualify you for 1/2" stainless, or 1/4" aluminum, etc. As a hobbyist, I find welding to be fun, but suspect the skill required to do larger projects to an ISO or Federal specification would be quite the reach.
Or, better yet, if enough people were actually interested in this sort of thing, we could get the day after such a late-night event a holiday, so we could all guiltlessly stay up late and party with other interested friends, then sleep in in the morning without having to worry about work or school. Also, imagine if we could get people to turn off their lights enough that you don't have to go out into the country to be able to see this sort of event clearly.
I wonder how much of this is caused by the inevitable invasion by missionaries, injecting memes into the local population that conflict with the indigenous culture and cause conflict, confusion, and the other symptoms of Christianity. Not to mention the purely physical diseases they bring with them. I know they mean well, but everything I've read about post-missionary contact of isolated tribes shows an increase in depression, aggression, and lowered quality of life.
If it actually made it to the moon's surface (which I see is contested), I wonder if any of the notoriously insidious moon-dust still clings to or made it inside of the device. It might be worth a thorough disassembly and cleaning to see.
How the fuck were they supposed to prepare? Purchase more snow management equipment on short notice? Maintain a large fleet of trucks for the rare occasions that stuff like this happens?
I do wonder if they could have rented some snow/ice gear from areas not expecting snow for a few days but which had the equipment and supplies on hand. Wouldn't even have had to be government-owned equipment, there's plenty of companies around that keep plows and salters/sanders ready for snow, who contract out to remove snow and ice from driveways and parking lots, private roads and similar. Yes, it would have cost quite a bit -- fuel for the trip from the snowbelt to Atlanta and back, hotels, logistics to make sure salt and sand made it down, time and materials for the vehicles, but if it's only once every 3-5 years, it should be doable with a few calls and cash in hand.
When the natural deposits are gone, we'll mine the garbage dumps where lots of it ends up as bones, sewage sludge, and so on. And, while it would be energy intensive, there are undersea deposits yet untouched, and ultimately the seas themselves can be filtered for phosphorous -- it's where all the runoff, most of the bird guano, and all the sealife-sequestered phosphorus ends up anyway.
And it has also been repeatedly commented that the work that a robot (rover) on Mars can do in a year could be done by a trained human in a week, with better ability to adjust to conditions and potentially discover things that hadn't been planned for. Is the expense worth it? Is the risk of contaminating Mars with Earth's biotics too great? Can human even survive the radiation and other dangers of the trip? These all appear to be questions that future generations will have to decide for themselves, as mine isn't going anywhere outside of LEO.
Nonsense, all we need is a self-sufficient underground colony. " Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap! "
They've got something on the moon and can get people into orbit this year. The US is years away from being able to put anyone in orbit without buying a ticket on a Russian rocket.
Only because our political class has decided it's not worth the risk. After two space shuttle failures, the writing was on the wall, and Congress collectively decided "Hell, if we're going to get the blame every time a rocket fails and someone dies, let's outsource that." The Soyuz and Atlas lines in their current incarnations are roughly equivalent in capacity (5,500 vs 5,900kg to LEO respectively), if we really wanted to all it would take is some extra QA (last Atlas failure was in 2007, and even so the payload made orbit, just lower than desired), a life-support capsule and re-entry system (old hat, we've had designs for those since the 60s) and the will to accept responsibility for any failure. There's also the systems currently launching cargo (Dragon, Cygnus/Antares) that are known to be able to make it up there, just not certified to carry humans yet. If we had a sudden need, say relationships with Russia go south, I believe we would pick the most reliable, certify it safe enough for human travel, and go for it.
That said, why would our government want to go that route unless it had to? So long as they can outsource, currently to the Russians, probably eventually to private companies such as SpaceX, they don't want the responsibility, the blame when things go wrong, or the negative feedback that luddites always throw at the space programs as it is.
I've been interested in Glass for it's potential utility as a "POV" camera for documenting what I do in the workshop (knifemaking, blacksmithing, etc). I don't view it as a "everyday all the time" tool, but it is one I'd like in my toolbox, and since I wear corrective glasses, incorporating lenses is a step in the right direction. I wonder if they'll offer a "safety glasses" version (side shields and heavy frame construction, they already have the extra-durable lens material mentioned in the survey.)
I'm eagerly awaiting Alton Brown's commandeering of a playground roundabout with deep fryers lashed to the bars and an '01 Kia minivan's power wheel providing the input power.
But how to distribute the AC power - rotors and brushes?
Just use a portable generator -- you're going to want something to counterbalance the frying assembly anyway.
Probably, if I ever have children. Flintknaping is fun, easy, the materials are common as rocks, and once you know how to flake out an edge, you'll never be without a tool.
How can anything have a shape that turns into an electromagnetic wave when you're not watching...
The Doctor: Don't blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And don't blink. Good Luck.
I've long wanted something like this, a telepresence bot with a camera, an arm, a few tools in reach, and a supply of cables for use in telco data centers. No more calling remote hands or trudging over to equinix, just sign out a robot, steer it to the cage, do the troubleshooting, then send it back. Sadly, I doubt it'll ever happen, the temptation of engineers to sign out robots and running jousting competitions in the aisles would just be too tempting.
why we keep spending money interfering with civil wars 1/2 way around the world??
To keep the insatiable maw of the military/industrial complex well fed, that's why.
I'm reminded, in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, that the sultan of a fictional country declared that there, at least, there would be no monitoring, government interference, or strongarm tactics on the local Internet infrastructure. While I didn't learn of underwater-tapping submarines until the christening of the Jimmy Carter in 2004, I felt it was a bit of a stretch to assume that any transcontinental underwater cable wasn't tapped and monitored. Still, it seems it's better than the modern world, where I have yet to hear any country declare that here, at least, your communications, data, files, and so on are safe, even at an official level. I probably wouldn't believe it if one did declare itself a data haven, but still, it might help restore some belief in humanity if every single government wasn't essentially declaring war on its own citizens in the name of security. I don't see how this can end well.
I've been working as a network engineer at various ISPs, large, medium, and small, in NOCs, NetEng, etc. The author seems to be unaware of how the Internet really works. His concerns about how various different types of traffic should have different priorities is addressed quite well by QOS. Most IPS backbones are MPLS based, and use RSVP to keep the tunnels open and uncongested. When an external path gets congested, there are programs (Routescience was my favorite, not sure what the modern equivalent is) to migrate your route announcements over different paths automatically, if your NOC engineers are incapable of doing it manually. That leaves the overall concern about bandwidth. Fiber is cheap, DWDM lets us pack an ever-larger number of waves, be they 1gig, 10 gig, 40 gig, 100gig, or whatever we come up with to surpass those. In the core, IPv4's routing tables are now handled trivially by modern equipment, and IPv6's implementation is designed to prevent routing table bloat. Of all the problem's I've seen on high-end routers, every time there's been a cpu or memory issue in the last 10 years, it's been due to a bug, not because the router itself couldn't handle it. Cognitive protocols? No, that's not the problem, it's not why your download is slow, why you have lag in your game, your calls drop or your videos black out. Last mile congestion, lack of infrastructure, and the refusal to build out networks to meet consumer demand are causing that.
I would imagine that setting up political asylum before actually qualifying would be a bit difficult, and many countries, while willing to offer forgiveness for such an act, would hesitate in becoming an accessory before the act by giving implicit permission.
Money. Spain had control of most of the silver and gold mines, the logwood, cocoa, and other natural resources that came from the recently-discovered Americas, and the Church knew better than to push too hard on the ones controlling its purse. Also, Spain was the gateway to the new world, with it's millions of souls, though I doubt that had nearly as much influence as the gold, silver, and related tithes.
This sort of legislation, combined with my area's complete lack of public transport, is why I hope self-driving cars come sooner rather than later.
Agreed, I've worked for several ISPs and a couple of telcos, and while if the gov't orders a monitor or tap, the capability is there, unless so ordered there just isn't reason, space, power, or spare engineering capability monitor everything. Fiber is expensive, so are telco-grade switches and routers, and space in a telco hotel is not cheap -- and neither is the talent to run all that. I've built backbone systems, there's no mysterious "government fiber out" port on those builds -- and if the government orders a tap, they pay for the wire out, and the configuration to dupe the feed is very specific as to data type and what's being sent out.
As a blacksmith, I just wanted to comment that, yes, metallurgical grade coal mined in the US is much nicer than most of the crap the rest of the world uses, and, yes, like most blacksmiths, I've converted 99% of my operations to propane/natural gas.
Having had much difficulty when making new ethernet cables -- to me there is no real difference between the green and brown wires -- I'm definitely interested, but at nearly $300 for a pair, I'm not sure I'm ready to just buy a set to see if it helps.
Just got back from voting. It was an hour long wait, and according to the poll workers, it was the shortest it had been all day, they had never seen turnout like this before.
They know there's hot water down there, eventually someone will have the idea to drill down and let it out again.