I read a comment somewhere indicating SpaceX have more landed boosters than they know what to do with at the moment. The Block 3 stages seem to need a fairly large amount of work to refurbish for another launch.
Nothing I've seen so far indicates the Falcon Heavy will replace the Falcon 9. A Falcon Heavy is far too large for most payloads: a Falcon 9 can launch most payloads and still have enough margin to land the first stage (and soon, the fairing). FH will be used for those payloads that an F9 could only launch in expendable mode. There might be some US military/national security payloads that are too heavy for F9 altogether. Plus the occasional interplanetary mission, perhaps.
The savings is mostly in the fuel. You still have a $60 million rocket, using $200k - 10% worth of fuel. You'll need a very large number of launches before the $10B tunnel system pays off.
Gun launch (incl rail guns, hyperloop etc.) is a dead end. Getting to orbit is about speed - and you can only gain a (relatively) small amount of speed using a gun, because you're limited by air resistance in the lower atmosphere. Going to a vacuum tunnel removes the speed problem, and introduces a new one: you have to exit the tunnel at some point. Even if you can create a vacuum seal that the rocket can pass through, it'll slam into the atmosphere at 5 km altitude - which is still significant. Building the tunnel exit at higher altitude isn't possible either (building cost is prohibitive). Going by your own numbers, you could save 300 m/s of delta-V out of about 9000 m/s. 3% savings would make the rocket a few meters shorter, and you might be able to remove 1 engine, but the rocket doesn't become significantly cheaper.
A few years ago, Apple replaced its Mac OS iPhoto app with Photos. This removed a lot of functionality in order to have a more consistent experience between Mac and iPhone photo apps. If that's the future of more Mac OS apps, I'm not looking forward to it.
I pity the company that employs you if that's how you react to customer feedback. Double-size mode may be large text, it's significantly less readable than the Verdana 10pt at 75% zoom factor I have no trouble reading from 75 cm away.
My eyesight is fine. Yet e.g. the word "stereo" is a green blob at first glance, thanks to the unneccessary 5x7 pixel bitmap used and the noise around the letters. Same goes for the track name. The W in 'Llama whip' is antialiased into '||||'. All of the text in the interface takes more trouble/time to decipher than it should: reading should be effortless. If I wanted low-resolution graphics, I'd work on a ZX Spectrum.
as far as I remember (I ditched winamp a long time ago), "double size" mode just magnified the low-resolution art by 2x, so the interface looked like the screenshot here or see the comparison here. The text in that screenshot is barely legible.
I've never caught VLC distorting audio. It depends a bit on the source material, if the source is quiet you can turn up the volume in VLC way past 100% without ill effects. A source that's recorded at near 0 dB has less headroom. Point is, Winamp started distorting at much lower volumes than VLC.
the huge additional burden of ongoing maintenance all of the wiring and chargers entail.
I'm typing this blind due to the amount of eyerolling this ridiculous statement caused, you insensitive clod!
Ongoing maintenance is necessary for equipment with moving parts that gets used heavily. The only part subject to wear in a wall charger is the cable that connects to the vehicle, and as long as you manage to avoid driving over the cable, it'll last a decade or more. I'd expect a charger to last for 25 years, after that you may have to replace the high-power electronics at some point. So no preventive maintenance, and negligible repairs over the life of the charger.
Winamp has several drawbacks: 1. it distorts the sound at high volumes (anything near 100%). 2. stupid, low-resolution fonts make everything hard to read. 3. its use of a non-standard window means screen management apps like UltraMon can't place its controls in Winamp's top bar.
I replaced winamp with VLC which solves all of these problems, and is infinitely more configurable to boot.
Imagine if you were sold a car for example that had a design flaw in the locking system allowing anyone to remotely unlock the doors with an exploit, or start the engine. Obviously you'd want it fixed, but unless these things are brought to public attention the company could just claim that it's bad luck that your car got stolen and they've nothing to do with it.
This guy "called attention" to the flaw by setting fire to every car with a flaw in its locking system, inconveniencing the owners and NOT INDICATING why he did that. His "cure" was worse than the problem.
A bricked device is not harmless: it has to be replaced. If the average price of those devices was as low as $10, he caused $ 100 million in damage. And he left the owners of those devices with no clue as to what was going on. The user only noticed his device had become unusable, and would be far more likely to assume a hardware problem than someone remotely disabling his device (let alone divine WHY someone chose to do that).
a. secession b. situation now: catastrophe happens, state emergency services are overwhelmed, state calls Federal government for help. FEMA comes in and may or may not fuck up.
situation after secession: catastrophe happens, state emergency services are overwhelmed, ???
This is a prime example of a situation where a state is better off as part of a union.
Obviously this pays homage to the Roadrunner cartoons, which seemed to have a large amount of power lines for such a deserted place. They also made nice twangy sounds when Wile E. Coyote ended up being catapulted by them.
Slashdot: News about bitcoin. Stuff that's boring. You can copy and paste the comments from the last 100 BTC stories verbatim, there's nothing new to say at this point.
I accept not being able to run software that relies on new hardware features or increased processing power. But that's only a fraction of what's supplied in an OS update. There is no excuse to stop providing security updates and bug fixes after 6 months (or not provide them at all, abandoning the device at launch).
Slashdot Mirror
I read a comment somewhere indicating SpaceX have more landed boosters than they know what to do with at the moment. The Block 3 stages seem to need a fairly large amount of work to refurbish for another launch.
Nothing I've seen so far indicates the Falcon Heavy will replace the Falcon 9. A Falcon Heavy is far too large for most payloads: a Falcon 9 can launch most payloads and still have enough margin to land the first stage (and soon, the fairing).
FH will be used for those payloads that an F9 could only launch in expendable mode. There might be some US military/national security payloads that are too heavy for F9 altogether. Plus the occasional interplanetary mission, perhaps.
The savings is mostly in the fuel. You still have a $60 million rocket, using $200k - 10% worth of fuel. You'll need a very large number of launches before the $10B tunnel system pays off.
Gun launch (incl rail guns, hyperloop etc.) is a dead end. Getting to orbit is about speed - and you can only gain a (relatively) small amount of speed using a gun, because you're limited by air resistance in the lower atmosphere.
Going to a vacuum tunnel removes the speed problem, and introduces a new one: you have to exit the tunnel at some point. Even if you can create a vacuum seal that the rocket can pass through, it'll slam into the atmosphere at 5 km altitude - which is still significant. Building the tunnel exit at higher altitude isn't possible either (building cost is prohibitive).
Going by your own numbers, you could save 300 m/s of delta-V out of about 9000 m/s. 3% savings would make the rocket a few meters shorter, and you might be able to remove 1 engine, but the rocket doesn't become significantly cheaper.
A few years ago, Apple replaced its Mac OS iPhoto app with Photos. This removed a lot of functionality in order to have a more consistent experience between Mac and iPhone photo apps.
If that's the future of more Mac OS apps, I'm not looking forward to it.
I pity the company that employs you if that's how you react to customer feedback.
Double-size mode may be large text, it's significantly less readable than the Verdana 10pt at 75% zoom factor I have no trouble reading from 75 cm away.
AIU the Oort cloud is spherical. The Kuyper belt is an actual belt (although with large deviations from the average inclination).
My eyesight is fine. Yet e.g. the word "stereo" is a green blob at first glance, thanks to the unneccessary 5x7 pixel bitmap used and the noise around the letters. Same goes for the track name. The W in 'Llama whip' is antialiased into '||||'. All of the text in the interface takes more trouble/time to decipher than it should: reading should be effortless. If I wanted low-resolution graphics, I'd work on a ZX Spectrum.
as far as I remember (I ditched winamp a long time ago), "double size" mode just magnified the low-resolution art by 2x, so the interface looked like the screenshot here or see the comparison here. The text in that screenshot is barely legible.
I've never caught VLC distorting audio. It depends a bit on the source material, if the source is quiet you can turn up the volume in VLC way past 100% without ill effects. A source that's recorded at near 0 dB has less headroom.
Point is, Winamp started distorting at much lower volumes than VLC.
the huge additional burden of ongoing maintenance all of the wiring and chargers entail.
I'm typing this blind due to the amount of eyerolling this ridiculous statement caused, you insensitive clod!
Ongoing maintenance is necessary for equipment with moving parts that gets used heavily. The only part subject to wear in a wall charger is the cable that connects to the vehicle, and as long as you manage to avoid driving over the cable, it'll last a decade or more.
I'd expect a charger to last for 25 years, after that you may have to replace the high-power electronics at some point. So no preventive maintenance, and negligible repairs over the life of the charger.
Winamp has several drawbacks:
1. it distorts the sound at high volumes (anything near 100%).
2. stupid, low-resolution fonts make everything hard to read.
3. its use of a non-standard window means screen management apps like UltraMon can't place its controls in Winamp's top bar.
I replaced winamp with VLC which solves all of these problems, and is infinitely more configurable to boot.
5.9 GWh/8760 hours in a year is 673 MW = 6.7 million lightbulbs at 100 W each.
Imagine if you were sold a car for example that had a design flaw in the locking system allowing anyone to remotely unlock the doors with an exploit, or start the engine. Obviously you'd want it fixed, but unless these things are brought to public attention the company could just claim that it's bad luck that your car got stolen and they've nothing to do with it.
This guy "called attention" to the flaw by setting fire to every car with a flaw in its locking system, inconveniencing the owners and NOT INDICATING why he did that. His "cure" was worse than the problem.
A bricked device is not harmless: it has to be replaced. If the average price of those devices was as low as $10, he caused $ 100 million in damage.
And he left the owners of those devices with no clue as to what was going on. The user only noticed his device had become unusable, and would be far more likely to assume a hardware problem than someone remotely disabling his device (let alone divine WHY someone chose to do that).
Maybe we should send the malware maker some cease-and-desist letters.
a. secession
b. situation now: catastrophe happens, state emergency services are overwhelmed, state calls Federal government for help. FEMA comes in and may or may not fuck up.
situation after secession: catastrophe happens, state emergency services are overwhelmed, ???
This is a prime example of a situation where a state is better off as part of a union.
Obviously this pays homage to the Roadrunner cartoons, which seemed to have a large amount of power lines for such a deserted place. They also made nice twangy sounds when Wile E. Coyote ended up being catapulted by them.
I was worried I'd have to go a whole day without seeing another fucking Bitcoin story...
The third will be people moaning about losing their BTC wallets.
#nomorebitcoinstories
Slashdot: News about bitcoin. Stuff that's boring.
You can copy and paste the comments from the last 100 BTC stories verbatim, there's nothing new to say at this point.
Yes. Tagged the story with "nomorebitcoinstories".
leaving a device full of security holes by not providing security updates and bugfixes = forced obsolescence.
I accept not being able to run software that relies on new hardware features or increased processing power. But that's only a fraction of what's supplied in an OS update.
There is no excuse to stop providing security updates and bug fixes after 6 months (or not provide them at all, abandoning the device at launch).
Why not? It's just the latest attempt at forced obsolescence. There are no valid technical reasons not to provide OS updates for older devices.