I saw the 2017 eclipse from my uncle's farm, and it was definitely worth the trouble (and the traffic afterwards) -- not ten minutes after it was over, we (other family gathered there) were already excited for 2024! Definitely an unearthly experience, and being on a farm, I got to see lots of animals reacting to the eclipse (as well as being awed myself, even though I knew it was coming -- I can only imagine how it must have felt to people who didn't know what was happening).
All the chickens ran into the coop, and when the eclipse was over, the rooster crowed.
All the gnats went to ground, which was very nice because I'd been swatting them all afternoon leading up to the eclipse (and would have been very cross if one had distracted me during totality).
My uncle had been worried that his goats might freak out, because they didn't like being left outside for too long after sunset, but they didn't seem concerned (maybe it was short enough that they didn't regard it as 'night time' the way the other critters did).
By far the funniest reaction was that of a neighboring farmer (as my aunt explained it to me), who was frantically asking for pairs of eclipse glasses for all of her animals -- "What if they look at the sun???" Fortunately, my aunt managed to explain to her that the animals would be okay -- us humans were the only critters dumb enough to look at the sun while it was out!
Capsules have killed too, there was the Soyuz accident where faulty valve leaked the air into space and one where capsule impacted earth at full speed.
That is true, but those failure modes are not unique to capsules; air leaks and mechanical failures will kill in shuttles just as they will in capsules. The difference is that the capsule gives you more abort coverage, since the crew module is self-contained and can survive any conditions from stationary on the ground to orbital velocity. Just pop it off the stack (or whatever's left of it) and go -- not a comfortable ride (I've read that abort loads can be in excess of 20 G's for a few seconds) but that's easier to take than getting caught in the blast. The Space Shuttle, on the other hand, had stricter structural limits because of its large wings and cargo bay, so there were 'black zones' in its launch sequence where it could not safely separate in the event of a failure.
Wings and wheels get you some nice qualities for certain missions (see the X-37 and fly-back booster designs like the XS-1), but for crew safety, it's really nice to be able to just pull the crew module up and away.
This is the Justice Department. They're all about using every law on the books to make their targets sweat (cf. Swartz, Aaron). Why would they ever state publicly that they can't do something?
Maybe they want to prod Congress to "update" CFAA with even greater overreach (and maybe some language about cryptographic backdoors)? Or maybe they're pre-emptively covering their asses for not doing anything about electronic voting machines?
If one person you meet has bad information, well, that's that. If you think that "my office, Congress, and the American people" are all misinformed...maybe the problem is you.
"Knowledge flows from a student's eyes and ears, to the fingers, to the pen, to the paper, to the brain." Even a little physical motion of writing improves engagement so much beyond passively reading.
Well, there is ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulation), but that only applies to an enumerated list of technologies with military applications, and I believe that the settlement mentioned in TFS includes a determination by the State Department that these gun schematics are not within that domain. We had the same argument over PGP, also decided in its favor, and certainly the conventional blueprints of guns have been freely publishable this whole time: http://www.sightm1911.com/blue....
A point of correction: Falcon's stages are cryogenic*, which is precisely the problem with using them for deep-space missions.
Oxygen must be kept extremely cold to remain liquid (especially as the Block 5 variant uses super-cooled liquid oxygen and RP-1 to achieve greater fuel densities). The much-hyped "extreme cold of space" is true enough in the shadow of the Earth, but in sunlight it's getting rid of excess heat that is the greater challenge. On the launchpad, the rocket can remain connected to refrigerators and dewars to keep everything chilled and compensate for propellants lost to boil-off, but that is obviously not an option in space, and so the rocket will not remain fueled for a multi-day mission required for lunar operations.
Deep-space missions to date have used storable (i.e. room-temperature liquid) propellants such as hydrazine, which Dragon has in limited quantities but Falcon does not. It is possible to design long-duration storage for cryogenic propellants (as ULA is proposing, and as BFR will have to for Mars operations), but that has a mass penalty attached.
* Some would quibble that, as SpaceX's rockets do not burn liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, they are not properly called cryogenic.
Here's a program (in development since at least three years ago) which uses neural networks to upscale and de-noise anime-style art: https://github.com/nagadomi/wa...
Quoth Jessica on the death of John "TotalBiscuit" Bain (dead at age 33 by cancer): "The kindest thing I can say is "I'm glad he's no longer around to keep doing harm.""
With current technology, it is estimated that we could send a mission to other stars in a matter of ~1,000's-10,000's of years (using something like "Project Orion" nuclear pulse propulsion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ). That's a long time from a human perspective, but it's very short compared to the lifetime of the universe, and if we envision a "binary colonization" (we send two missions to nearby stars -- Alpha Centauri and Epsilon Eridani, for example -- and they each land and built two missions, each of which goes forth and builds two more, etc.) then the entire galaxy can be colonized in a few million years, which is still a small fraction of the galaxy's age.
It is possible that not enough intelligent life wants to do this to make it happen, but the distances between the stars themselves is not a great explanation for why it hasn't.
How can they possibly make any money off of this? Who doesn't recognize it as a robocall and hang-up immediately? And of that percentage, who actually buys stuff?
There is an art in these scams to being a little bit "obvious", so that anyone who's skeptical or sensible gets weeded out. Then, the people who make it to the end (when the human scammer gets involved, which is the part that is "expensive" for the scammer) are really gullible and ready to hand over a bunch of money.
"'My name is Adrian; I inherited the phone from the previous Dread Pirate Robocaller, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Robocaller either. His name was Tommy Tutone. The real Robocaller has been retired 15 years and living like a king in South Carolina.' Then he explained the name is the important thing to inspire the necessary impulse. You see, no one would ever buy a travel deal from the Dread Pirate Adrian."
"'My name is Craig; I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Satoshi, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Satoshi either. His name was Ulbricht. The real Satoshi has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Second Life.' Then he explained the name is the important thing to inspire the necessary fear. You see, no one would ever surrender to the Dread Pirate Craig."
Slashdot Mirror
I saw the 2017 eclipse from my uncle's farm, and it was definitely worth the trouble (and the traffic afterwards) -- not ten minutes after it was over, we (other family gathered there) were already excited for 2024! Definitely an unearthly experience, and being on a farm, I got to see lots of animals reacting to the eclipse (as well as being awed myself, even though I knew it was coming -- I can only imagine how it must have felt to people who didn't know what was happening).
All the chickens ran into the coop, and when the eclipse was over, the rooster crowed.
All the gnats went to ground, which was very nice because I'd been swatting them all afternoon leading up to the eclipse (and would have been very cross if one had distracted me during totality).
My uncle had been worried that his goats might freak out, because they didn't like being left outside for too long after sunset, but they didn't seem concerned (maybe it was short enough that they didn't regard it as 'night time' the way the other critters did).
By far the funniest reaction was that of a neighboring farmer (as my aunt explained it to me), who was frantically asking for pairs of eclipse glasses for all of her animals -- "What if they look at the sun???" Fortunately, my aunt managed to explain to her that the animals would be okay -- us humans were the only critters dumb enough to look at the sun while it was out!
Capsules have killed too, there was the Soyuz accident where faulty valve leaked the air into space and one where capsule impacted earth at full speed.
That is true, but those failure modes are not unique to capsules; air leaks and mechanical failures will kill in shuttles just as they will in capsules. The difference is that the capsule gives you more abort coverage, since the crew module is self-contained and can survive any conditions from stationary on the ground to orbital velocity. Just pop it off the stack (or whatever's left of it) and go -- not a comfortable ride (I've read that abort loads can be in excess of 20 G's for a few seconds) but that's easier to take than getting caught in the blast. The Space Shuttle, on the other hand, had stricter structural limits because of its large wings and cargo bay, so there were 'black zones' in its launch sequence where it could not safely separate in the event of a failure.
Wings and wheels get you some nice qualities for certain missions (see the X-37 and fly-back booster designs like the XS-1), but for crew safety, it's really nice to be able to just pull the crew module up and away.
Replying to undo mis-mod, apologies.
A Canadian short documentary (2 minutes) on exposing spiders to different drugs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They got in trouble for slurping up location data before, but this ostensible purpose gives them a veneer of legitimacy when they go for round 2.
This is the Justice Department. They're all about using every law on the books to make their targets sweat (cf. Swartz, Aaron). Why would they ever state publicly that they can't do something?
Maybe they want to prod Congress to "update" CFAA with even greater overreach (and maybe some language about cryptographic backdoors)? Or maybe they're pre-emptively covering their asses for not doing anything about electronic voting machines?
If one person you meet has bad information, well, that's that. If you think that "my office, Congress, and the American people" are all misinformed...maybe the problem is you.
I've always found sand to be course, rough, and irritating. It gets everywhere.
"Knowledge flows from a student's eyes and ears, to the fingers, to the pen, to the paper, to the brain." Even a little physical motion of writing improves engagement so much beyond passively reading.
Well, there is ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulation), but that only applies to an enumerated list of technologies with military applications, and I believe that the settlement mentioned in TFS includes a determination by the State Department that these gun schematics are not within that domain. We had the same argument over PGP, also decided in its favor, and certainly the conventional blueprints of guns have been freely publishable this whole time: http://www.sightm1911.com/blue....
A point of correction: Falcon's stages are cryogenic*, which is precisely the problem with using them for deep-space missions.
Oxygen must be kept extremely cold to remain liquid (especially as the Block 5 variant uses super-cooled liquid oxygen and RP-1 to achieve greater fuel densities). The much-hyped "extreme cold of space" is true enough in the shadow of the Earth, but in sunlight it's getting rid of excess heat that is the greater challenge. On the launchpad, the rocket can remain connected to refrigerators and dewars to keep everything chilled and compensate for propellants lost to boil-off, but that is obviously not an option in space, and so the rocket will not remain fueled for a multi-day mission required for lunar operations.
Deep-space missions to date have used storable (i.e. room-temperature liquid) propellants such as hydrazine, which Dragon has in limited quantities but Falcon does not. It is possible to design long-duration storage for cryogenic propellants (as ULA is proposing, and as BFR will have to for Mars operations), but that has a mass penalty attached.
* Some would quibble that, as SpaceX's rockets do not burn liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, they are not properly called cryogenic.
Here's a program (in development since at least three years ago) which uses neural networks to upscale and de-noise anime-style art: https://github.com/nagadomi/wa...
Quoth Jessica on the death of John "TotalBiscuit" Bain (dead at age 33 by cancer): "The kindest thing I can say is "I'm glad he's no longer around to keep doing harm.""
With current technology, it is estimated that we could send a mission to other stars in a matter of ~1,000's-10,000's of years (using something like "Project Orion" nuclear pulse propulsion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ). That's a long time from a human perspective, but it's very short compared to the lifetime of the universe, and if we envision a "binary colonization" (we send two missions to nearby stars -- Alpha Centauri and Epsilon Eridani, for example -- and they each land and built two missions, each of which goes forth and builds two more, etc.) then the entire galaxy can be colonized in a few million years, which is still a small fraction of the galaxy's age.
It is possible that not enough intelligent life wants to do this to make it happen, but the distances between the stars themselves is not a great explanation for why it hasn't.
Clickbait headline: "TESLA CLOSING A DOZEN FACILITIES!!!11!!1!"
Meanwhile, in reality: "Tesla closes 13/14 out of 75 solar panel installation sites."
No wonder Elon Musk wants to get into the journalism accountability business, if he has to deal with nonsense like this all the time.
It's spelled "Murdock", btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
By "earlier this week", do they mean Wednesday? https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
ADSAuPR, atAJG
Could you write this out in full, please?
How can they possibly make any money off of this? Who doesn't recognize it as a robocall and hang-up immediately? And of that percentage, who actually buys stuff?
There is an art in these scams to being a little bit "obvious", so that anyone who's skeptical or sensible gets weeded out. Then, the people who make it to the end (when the human scammer gets involved, which is the part that is "expensive" for the scammer) are really gullible and ready to hand over a bunch of money.
I'm sorry to report that Uncle Ben is dead. Fortunately, his nephew Peter is pretty amazing -- spectacular, even!
If you want to be rewarded for making "comments which inspire critical, independent thinking", you might want to take it easy with the pseudoscience going forward. Exhibit A: your "argument" that the large size of dinosaurs is evidence that gravity is fake and craters are caused by electric impulses rather than meteorites.
:)
I will give you this much: it is certainly not a short stupid comment. Paul Graham would be proud.
"'My name is Adrian; I inherited the phone from the previous Dread Pirate Robocaller, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Robocaller either. His name was Tommy Tutone. The real Robocaller has been retired 15 years and living like a king in South Carolina.' Then he explained the name is the important thing to inspire the necessary impulse. You see, no one would ever buy a travel deal from the Dread Pirate Adrian."
...you're dead, Jim!
"'My name is Craig; I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Satoshi, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Satoshi either. His name was Ulbricht. The real Satoshi has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Second Life.' Then he explained the name is the important thing to inspire the necessary fear. You see, no one would ever surrender to the Dread Pirate Craig."