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User: Beryllium+Sphere(tm)

Beryllium+Sphere(tm)'s activity in the archive.

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  1. That's already a problem then on Nuclear Officers Napped With Blast Door Left Open · · Score: 1

    One of the reasons there are two officers there is so that if one goes crazy and rigs a spoon and string to turn the other's launch key, the other can shoot him.

  2. Did you come to it as an adult? on 5-Year Mission Continues After 45-Year Hiatus · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's different if it's something you grow up with.

    Its place in history is easier to understand if you look at how awful mass media sf was in 1966. They were groundbreaking. Others later were able to do cathedra building.

  3. Classic science fiction on Physicist Unveils a 'Turing Test' For Free Will · · Score: 2

    An abbott in "A Canticle for Leibowitz" had a balky piece of high technology in his office and shouted something to the effect "It has a soul, I tell you! It knows the difference between good and evil and it has chosen evil!".

  4. Re:How about just turn it off on How To FIx Healthcare.gov: Go Open-Source! · · Score: 1

    Are you seriously saying that a system which enables people to buy private health insurance from competing private companies, the benefits from which will be spent with doctors in private practice and with for-profit hospitals, is "socialized medicine"?

    Words have meanings.

  5. Re:In The Meantime... on US Should Cancel Plutonium Plant, Say Scientists · · Score: 2, Informative

    Different isotope, different production process, different quantity needs, etc.

  6. Think systems, not missiles on USS Zumwalt — a Guided Missile Destroyer Running On Linux · · Score: 1

    Even if there's an advantage to the offense once the missile has been launched, in order to get to that point the attacker must
    (1) Find the ship (stealthy, under EMCON, and moving)
    (2) Get within range
    (3) Live long enough to fire the missile.

  7. On the contrary, it's an obligation on Silicon Valley Stays Quiet As Washington Implodes · · Score: 2

    Intelligent educated people have a duty to speak, especially about science and technology issues. It's this whole "democracy" idea that only works when people participate.

  8. "Private matter"? on Scientific American In Blog Removal Controversy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's no reason to cover for an abusive person.

    It's not a good bet that it was private in any sense. If that's what they said to her directly, what were they saying behind her back?

  9. Re:A GOOD LANDING !! on Passenger Lands Plane After Pilot Collapses and Dies At the Controls · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes.

    The proverb among pilots is "Any landing you walk away from is a good landing".

    Professional pilots obviously hold themselves to a higher standard than that, but for a first-time flyer that landing met the requirements completely.

  10. Priorities on 90% of Nuclear Regulators Sent Home Due To Shutdown · · Score: 1

    The Congressional gym is staying open during the "shutdown". It is apparently more necessary than regulating nuclear power plants.

  11. Re:Regular Expressions on What Are the Genuinely Useful Ideas In Programming? · · Score: 1

    For one thing, it reminds people of https://xkcd.com/208/

  12. You laugh, but Edward Teller suggested it on Fusion Reactor Breaks Even · · Score: 1

    His idea was to have something like a geothermal power plant, except that the heat would come from periodically setting off hydrogen bombs underground.

  13. What my exterminator said on Asian Giant Hornets Kill 42 People In China, Injure Over 1,500 · · Score: 1

    You can wipe out an ant nest by getting a scout to carry back poison ("Did you bring enough for everybody?") but that doesn't work with yellowjackets.

    I didn't ask about biological controls. A scout bringing back the hornet equivalent of Ebola might work.

    I did wonder about bait with a radioactive label so you could make the nest show up on instruments.

    In practice, there is so much traffic near a nest that it's pretty obvious if you're near it.

    Yes, I got attacked recently. When people asked what was new with me I said "Thousands of my enemies are dying in convulsions".

  14. Specific and immediate threats? on Former NSA Honcho Calls Corporate IT Security "Appalling" · · Score: 2

    Chase those, and you're in a never-ending cycle of reaction because you were so thrilled by the drama of firefighting that you left yourself exposed to the next specific and immediate threat.

    Try to cover broad classes of threat, and you'll get some actual preventive value from your expenditures.

  15. The scale of their preparations on Swiss War Game Envisages Invasion By Bankrupt French · · Score: 1

    If it's still in print, find a copy of John McPhee's "La Place de la Concorde Suisse".

  16. Even publicly they're saying it now on What the Insurance Industry Thinks About Climate Change · · Score: 2

    Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson said last year that AGW is happening. He went on to argue that we should adapt to it rather than preventing it, but a "should" argument doesn't contradict the science.

  17. Would you like to get really really confused? on 'Eraser' Law Will Let California Kids Scrub Online Past · · Score: 1

    The law on "long arm jurisdiction" is a real treat for people who like Fizzbin.

  18. It was called "Airborne Alert" on USAF Almost Nuked North Carolina In 1961 – Declassified Document · · Score: 1

    I don't know exactly when, but it was eventually canceled in favor of keeping bombers on the ground with crews ready to go in no time flat and "minimum interval takeoffs".

    Eventually SAC realized that airborne alert was too dangerous to continue.

  19. That kind of thinking blew up a Shuttle on USAF Almost Nuked North Carolina In 1961 – Declassified Document · · Score: 1

    The engineers had decided that since the O-ring had only burned through partway on previous launches, they had a safety margin.

    The problem is that it wasn't supposed to burn through at all and they didn't understand what was happening.

    If you build a system and 3/4 of mission-critical safety features fail, you take the system out of service for a *thorough* rethink and overhaul.

  20. Radiation on Join the Efforts of a Manned Mission To Jovian Moon Europa · · Score: 2

    It turns out that others have done some real work on this. There may be on the order of a meter of regolith which could be heaped on a shelter much faster than one could burrow into the ice. The leading hemisphere gets less radiation than the trailing hemisphere. I personally would look into a long deployable loop of superconductor to provide a pocket magnetosphere.

    Unfortunately, the number that all those measures are chipping away at is one lethal dose per day. Add in the exposure while getting there in the first place. Lifting enough radiation shielding is probably out of the question for anything short of Orion. Maybe launch from a moon base with a bunch of lunar soil? Intercept a crumbly asteroid and mine it for shielding?

  21. Some examples on Join the Efforts of a Manned Mission To Jovian Moon Europa · · Score: 1

    Being able to fix a stuck wheel has some value, as does being able to make new instruments on the scene from parts in the lab.

    But that line of thought presupposes that gathering data is the only thing humans care about.

  22. Re:Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride... on Join the Efforts of a Manned Mission To Jovian Moon Europa · · Score: 1

    Do explorers flee their home, or rush toward their destination?

  23. How is it throwing your life away? on Join the Efforts of a Manned Mission To Jovian Moon Europa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can die in pain in dirty diapers in a nursing home, or you can die of radiation-induced cancer doing something that's never been done before and making historic discoveries. Either way is an equal level of deadness.

  24. Re:Whyd do we need to send humans? on Join the Efforts of a Manned Mission To Jovian Moon Europa · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because they are orders of magnitude more productive.

    The principal investigator for the Mars rovers said that if he were on Mars he could do in 45 seconds what the rovers do in a day.

    Besides, visiting a foreign country is different from looking at it through a webcam. A robot probe is just an improvement over a telescope. Humans want to go to places.

    What worries me is that the site has only one passing mention of radiation, for a mission to Jupiter orbit. Aren't humans in that region going to be almost literally fried?

  25. At the risk of drifting into conspiracy theory on Secret Court Upholds Phone Data Collection · · Score: 1

    How many telecom executives run sufficiently honest businesses that they could stand up to "Comply or we'll investigate whether you are racketeering?".