Your car can easily supply 15A. It's just the crappy cigarette lighter plug that can't handle that load. It's pretty simple to add a custom power socket to your car though.
Agreed but that implodes the set of possible backup generators from pretty much any vehicle with a cig plug and some gas in the tank, down to... my modified car.
Yeah, but not a warmed over, super-sized Apollo capsule. Is that it for innovation out of NASA? Modernized 40 year old capsules?
You know, my brand new tower looks exactly the same as my 386 tower from 1993. Is that innovation? Modernized 18 year old computers?
(If you look real close the power supply type has changed, and I no longer have 3.5 or 5.25 floppys, in its place I have a front panel USB hub, and no turbo button / turbo LEDs, but this all requires close examination)
I will not use a browser unless it has the following installed:
adblock plus firebug flashblock ghostery noscript remove it permanently xmarks
Hows rollback support, in case 4.0 doesn't work with adblock plus can I trivially roll back to my working 3.6.15 install? I know you can't expect modern windoze software to work as well as a.deb package from 1993 but I'm hoping for something better than "reformat, and reinstall"
PowerPole is a product of Anderson Power Products, not Amphenol.
You are 100% correct. Amphenol makes some nice RF connectors, and a lot of my work involves Anderson PP DC connectors on one side of the box and Amphenol RF connectors on the other side of the box.
The high voltage limit is set by safety and cost of DC-DC converters.
Yeah, important, but more important limits are set by:
1) NEC vs unregulated. The cutoff is what, 50 volts or something? Below that as long as its plenum rated you can pretty much do whatever you want, its treated like security system wiring, etc. Above the NEC cutoff you need a licensed electrician every time a screw needs to be turned or you need to use consumer grade plugs -n- sockets.
2) wire insulation (good luck buying 1200 volt wire at home depot, you'll be lucky to find stuff good enough to do 477 volt)
3) Circuit breakers / fuses. You're lucky when they break the arc at 120 volts AC, good luck at 1200 DC, thats gonna be some expensive commercial industrial breakers or very large fuse holders.
4) last but not least connectors. What are you planning on using for 1200 V connectors? PL-259s? N connectors?... its a mystery at those voltage levels.
The major drawback to DC power is in the wiring. Direct current requires larger gauge wiring than AC power, which increases material costs considerably. In general, DC power is economical only if the wiring between the computers and the DC source is less than 35 feet in length. More than that, AC power becomes more economical.
FTFA:
the project team moved the one tonne AC converter through the University library and into the roof space, removing and rebuilding walls to transport it
Somehow, I suspect that the cable run to the individual machines is more than 35 feet.
His figure of 35 feet is of course completely made up, or at best applies only to one very specific situation. Its a rather complex non-linear solution that depends on current level, local union labor contracts, price of copper wire, UPS and battery capacity, etc.
Obviously, if you are charging an ipod at a zillionth an amp after a 12V to 5V converter, you can run that thru thousands of feet of small gauge (cheap) speaker wire before the voltage drop will matter. And if you're doing the thousand watt gamer PC or NAS farm you'll need something approaching welding cable to keep the voltage drop low enough. In between, well, its in between. But by no means as simple as a 35 foot cutoff.
Today if you blow a power supply (one of the most common computer failures) you lose one computer. If you blow the power supply for the office floor you might lose 100 or 200 computers.
For reasons which are a long story, I have had several servers up and running on 12V for many years now. The powerstream guys are pretty much the gold standard of ATX 12 volt power supplies, as far as I know:
Note that these are "honest wattages" not the "marketing wattages" seen in the AC power industry. The price of a 300 watt DC supply seems high compared to a 100 watt AC supply from China that has a sticker claiming 300 watts. However its not too bad compared to a AC supply that actually only provides 300 watts despite having a sticker labeled 800 watts or a million watts or whatever marketing felt necessary. Also the powerstream supplies, to the best of my knowledge, are some of the few computer power supplies you can buy that do not have forged FCC and UL registries, which is worth something to me. In summary, expensive, but strongly recommend based on years of experience.
Anyway, what happens when the primary rectifier goes down, is my battery bank will run the asterisk PBX and friends for something like half a day, during which time I can source a generator and charger, or perhaps casually purchase a new supply, etc. Also I have multiple supplies any of which could theoretically power the whole works (at a cost of high heat and much shorter capacitor lifetimes, etc). So you Y-cable them to run multiple plants off one supply. Guess what, the same Y cable can be used to run multiple plants off one battery, if one fails. Etc.
Theoretically, I could run the entire phone system off an idling car, assuming you have enough gas in the tank. Unfortunately my entire plant draws just a little too much for the cigarette lighter plug, probably 15 amps total. If I could invest in new phones / new servers / etc and get total plant draw down to 5 amps, not only would my batteries be 1/3 cheaper or last 3 times longer in an outage, but I could also run the works conveniently off a car cig lighter port.
Obviously if you have zero battery capacity then you are instantly in deep doo doo, but given three or so figures of amp-hours you're good to go for a very long time.
Wire everything in Amphenol power poles, exactly like the ham radio guys so you can use their DC products, and keep a stock of extension cords and Y cables and other gadgets. Use fuses, and as a subset of that rule, only use automotive fuses because they are infinitely available. Use 12 volts as your standard because you probably own a mobile 12 volt generator (aka your car). Perhaps if you're in the.mil and have a 24 volt humvee, do 24v instead, whatever.
A DC powered system is frankly pretty straightforward and simple.
There is no evidence or reason for DC to be more "secure".
In this modern post 9/11 post columbine world the words "secure" and "inconvenient" have merged and very few non-philosopher types can tell them apart.
In this case it means that its inconvenient but typing the word secure is shorter and creates warm fuzzies in morons brains.
Are the centralised rectifiers + wires + in-computer DC-to-DC converters as efficient?
Yeah, generally the more you spend the higher quality the design. Its not that you can't design build and sell a 99% AC supply, its just you can't do so and survive in this weird confuseopoly market where the only thing that matters is price, none of the UL or FCC listings are real, and its all made by our enemies in China.
Laptops boot faster than tablets? Laptops wake up from sleep mode faster than tablets? Laptops have longer battery life than tablets? Laptops have faster virus scanning etc than tablets? I wanna see this $200 laptop.
If you're an author, have you considered bartering?
Let's put it this way. Say you have three author friends. Pass your book to each of them to proofread, and in turn proofread each of theirs. It's win-win, it costs nobody money, and you get the value of a different perspective. I often am in the situation where I am too blinded by my own bias and can use the outside perspective on something I've created.
Not a new idea. I know this is not an exhaustive list by any means:
I'm surprised that none of the ebook publisher sites have automated this process, or that I've never heard of them automating it.
The other side is I really like Nathan Lowell's work, and I would even pay a modest fee to proofread / edit his work before its released. The way he ended "owners share" was pretty much a big WTF and probably could have benefited from some review. Which brings up the topic that beyond simple grammatical correction, I'm not sure crowdsourcing will give useful results unless you're going for super formulaic pulp. I'd probably have to sign a NDA, ok whatever. For anything other than your Very First Book if you can't find one or two fans on the entire freaking internet, including friends, relatives, fellow authors, and coworkers, then, yes indeed, you have very big problems. BTW slightly on topic, Nathan Lowell had a cool interview on the linux link tech show podcast a couple months ago, I don't recall exactly but I think similar issues were discussed.
Arguing that paid editors exist therefore lone wolf authors absolutely must pay them, is probably going to work about as well as arguing paid software testers exist, therefore lone wolf programmers absolutely must find a way to pay them.
I'm glad it works for you, but me, I just couldn't gamble that much on closing the bag.
The problem with being "connected" and "well informed" is you catch the early adopter prices, remember them, and think they still apply way down the long tail. I still have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that a "big HDTV" costs as much as a kia car, because that is what they used to cost when the tech was new. Now they cost about one monthly kia car payment instead. A big LCD HDTV is currently cheaper than a very well insulated multi-pane window, although I can't figure out how that happens.
In a similar way, a top of the line ipod touch cost about $600 at release, I could never afford that, so forget about ever owning one.... except that I actually bought one for $186 at best buy about two (one?) years ago. They're probably cheaper now. Weren't Kindles about $500 when they were newly released 1st gen? Correct I would not take a $500 device into the tub, assuming I were a woman whom takes baths, and by some miracle I had the spare time to float around in a tub of my own slowly cooling diluted wastes for an hour. The problem is a kindle is about $130 now, not $500.
Sadly I have paid well over $130 for individual college textbooks... If I could buy a kindle or whatever just for that one book, it would literally be risk mitigation to use the "cheap" kindle in the tub rather than the "expensive" textbook in the tub.
But I'll tell you why I am not inclined towards E-books. I like to read in the tub.
Luckily for you, according to all the advertising for all the ebooks I've ever seen, ebooks are for thin women to read at the beach while wearing a modest one-piece suit. Not in a tub or whatever. Seriously, check the ads for all the majors, its a mandatory photo for all ebook promotional literature.
Bathing vs showering might be an interesting/. poll, more interesting than some have been. I have not taken a bath since the 80s. Take regular daily showers, sure, but a bath?
Especially since I know how the photos would break the internet.
All the "wasted" food examples basically involve making compost, some faster, some slower.
I've never seen a garden that would benefit from taking away its compost.
Increasing next quarters yield by "reducing waste" would inherently ruin long term productivity, either of that plant or the world in general.
The only real way I can think of wasting food (as in the biosphere is permanently reduced in biomass) would be to put it in a rocket and shoot it into the sun or moon.
For those whom don't know anything about nutrition, I'll help explain that he's kidding.
Technically if you eat about three bags of potatoes per day, you'll get your RDA of riboflavin and calcium, but its hard to imagine eating that much potato at every meal. Both rice and potatoes are basically empty calories, kind of like cane sugar.
Not that empty calories are bad, if you're starving and have a bag of potatoes and a bottle of vitamin pills to meet all dietary needs other than calories, you'll "live", plus or minus some protein and essential fat deficiencies. Its just that unless you're starving, almost any "real food" is better for you.
The figure I've heard for years is 10 calories of oil to grow and eat 1 calorie of food, on average. Somewhat more for Kobe beef, somewhat less for local farmers market, but in all cases the energy in the oil is greater than the energy in the food.
ah, wrong connectors so send the generators back and run in circles try something else? WTF, they can't cut the cables and weld or clamp the wiring together?
LoB
That part of the story stinks, no absolutely reeks, of journalistic simplification and talking down to the audience. I'm fairly certain when the whole story comes out, it'll be that they shipped a gen waaaay too small, or a single phase gen to run a three phase motor, or a 60 Hz gen to run a 50 Hz motor, etc.
VFDs are a whole nother exciting topic, if the motor had one, where theoretically you could have a situation where the supply cannot run the VFD safely (voltage too high, whatever) even if the motor could be trivially rewired to handle it. I'm guessing not an issue at a nuke site, but....
Except the water reservoirs are on the roof. Earthquake cracks the pipes then what?
Fire departments have remarkable experience at spraying water unto roofs. They really are quite good at it.
If a 9.1 quake couldn't crack the Japanese pipes I'm guessing it would take a "near miss" from an asteroid to crack the pipes. Now a tsunami did ruin the Japanese plant, so you'd want to put yer goods on the roof to keep them dry... Err thats exactly this design... Interesting.
Alpha particles are blocked by a thin sheet of paper, so no risk to astronautics as long as the alpha particle producers stay outside the craft
Secondary gammas release on impact. Ouch.
Beta particles are neutrons
No electrons.
Gamma rays are an electromagnetic wave, like light, and hence also can't be deflected by an electric field.
There are other types of radiation, but I got the feeling they were rare (ie. not found except in particle accelerators) - can someone correct me?
Not really. nuke radiation is pretty much defined as alpha beta and gamma "waves/particles" plus our mostly artificially generated pal, the neutron. If we could make muons or other particles in bulk we'd probably add those. Delta waves and stuff are only found in star trek technobabble.
The concept of "rare" is kind of vague in particle physics.
I was amazed at how little detail there was in the article. Its just, like all magic and stuff because he's so smart and experienced. And we're only going to use one syllable words here, because you're... not. What a Pulitzer of modern journalism, almost worth catching a fish so I can wrap it.
Sounds a lot like a scanner guy with an ADS-B receiver, either homemade or purchased something like this:
That's a bit of hyperbole. In Austin, TX, with a healthy tech community, a dev right out of college makes around $60k a year, depending on the industry. A teacher right out of college makes around $30k, and only gets to $60k after a decade or so.
In "a decade or so" the dev is unemployable due to ageism thus $0 and the teacher is making $60k....
First decade the dev is ahead, second decade they're even, more than 3 decades and the teacher makes more lifetime income.
Moral of the story, if you plan to retire in 5 years be a dev, if you plan to retire at age 70, be a teacher...
Subject says it all. It's expensive to get a signed SSL certificate.
You're kidding, right? You can pick up a single site SSL certificate for under $20 and a wildcard certificate for about $100. For all the other costs associated with running a website, the cost of an SSL certificate is negligible
Labor costs. Both upfront and ongoing and yet another bill for accounting to pay. Also $100 is a pretty steep jump in costs for a low/no traffic website.
Slashdot Mirror
Your car can easily supply 15A. It's just the crappy cigarette lighter plug that can't handle that load. It's pretty simple to add a custom power socket to your car though.
Agreed but that implodes the set of possible backup generators from pretty much any vehicle with a cig plug and some gas in the tank, down to ... my modified car.
Yeah, but not a warmed over, super-sized Apollo capsule. Is that it for innovation out of NASA? Modernized 40 year old capsules?
You know, my brand new tower looks exactly the same as my 386 tower from 1993. Is that innovation? Modernized 18 year old computers?
(If you look real close the power supply type has changed, and I no longer have 3.5 or 5.25 floppys, in its place I have a front panel USB hub, and no turbo button / turbo LEDs, but this all requires close examination)
Hows the add on compatibility?
I will not use a browser unless it has the following installed:
adblock plus
firebug
flashblock
ghostery
noscript
remove it permanently
xmarks
Hows rollback support, in case 4.0 doesn't work with adblock plus can I trivially roll back to my working 3.6.15 install? I know you can't expect modern windoze software to work as well as a .deb package from 1993 but I'm hoping for something better than "reformat, and reinstall"
PowerPole is a product of Anderson Power Products, not Amphenol.
You are 100% correct. Amphenol makes some nice RF connectors, and a lot of my work involves Anderson PP DC connectors on one side of the box and Amphenol RF connectors on the other side of the box.
The high voltage limit is set by safety and cost of DC-DC converters.
Yeah, important, but more important limits are set by:
1) NEC vs unregulated. The cutoff is what, 50 volts or something? Below that as long as its plenum rated you can pretty much do whatever you want, its treated like security system wiring, etc. Above the NEC cutoff you need a licensed electrician every time a screw needs to be turned or you need to use consumer grade plugs -n- sockets.
2) wire insulation (good luck buying 1200 volt wire at home depot, you'll be lucky to find stuff good enough to do 477 volt)
3) Circuit breakers / fuses. You're lucky when they break the arc at 120 volts AC, good luck at 1200 DC, thats gonna be some expensive commercial industrial breakers or very large fuse holders.
4) last but not least connectors. What are you planning on using for 1200 V connectors? PL-259s? N connectors? ... its a mystery at those voltage levels.
The major drawback to DC power is in the wiring. Direct current requires larger gauge wiring than AC power, which increases material costs considerably. In general, DC power is economical only if the wiring between the computers and the DC source is less than 35 feet in length. More than that, AC power becomes more economical.
FTFA:
Somehow, I suspect that the cable run to the individual machines is more than 35 feet.
His figure of 35 feet is of course completely made up, or at best applies only to one very specific situation. Its a rather complex non-linear solution that depends on current level, local union labor contracts, price of copper wire, UPS and battery capacity, etc.
Obviously, if you are charging an ipod at a zillionth an amp after a 12V to 5V converter, you can run that thru thousands of feet of small gauge (cheap) speaker wire before the voltage drop will matter. And if you're doing the thousand watt gamer PC or NAS farm you'll need something approaching welding cable to keep the voltage drop low enough. In between, well, its in between. But by no means as simple as a 35 foot cutoff.
Today if you blow a power supply (one of the most common computer failures) you lose one computer. If you blow the power supply for the office floor you might lose 100 or 200 computers.
For reasons which are a long story, I have had several servers up and running on 12V for many years now. The powerstream guys are pretty much the gold standard of ATX 12 volt power supplies, as far as I know:
http://www.powerstream.com/DC-PC-12V.htm
Note that these are "honest wattages" not the "marketing wattages" seen in the AC power industry. The price of a 300 watt DC supply seems high compared to a 100 watt AC supply from China that has a sticker claiming 300 watts. However its not too bad compared to a AC supply that actually only provides 300 watts despite having a sticker labeled 800 watts or a million watts or whatever marketing felt necessary. Also the powerstream supplies, to the best of my knowledge, are some of the few computer power supplies you can buy that do not have forged FCC and UL registries, which is worth something to me. In summary, expensive, but strongly recommend based on years of experience.
Anyway, what happens when the primary rectifier goes down, is my battery bank will run the asterisk PBX and friends for something like half a day, during which time I can source a generator and charger, or perhaps casually purchase a new supply, etc. Also I have multiple supplies any of which could theoretically power the whole works (at a cost of high heat and much shorter capacitor lifetimes, etc). So you Y-cable them to run multiple plants off one supply. Guess what, the same Y cable can be used to run multiple plants off one battery, if one fails. Etc.
Theoretically, I could run the entire phone system off an idling car, assuming you have enough gas in the tank. Unfortunately my entire plant draws just a little too much for the cigarette lighter plug, probably 15 amps total. If I could invest in new phones / new servers / etc and get total plant draw down to 5 amps, not only would my batteries be 1/3 cheaper or last 3 times longer in an outage, but I could also run the works conveniently off a car cig lighter port.
Obviously if you have zero battery capacity then you are instantly in deep doo doo, but given three or so figures of amp-hours you're good to go for a very long time.
Wire everything in Amphenol power poles, exactly like the ham radio guys so you can use their DC products, and keep a stock of extension cords and Y cables and other gadgets. Use fuses, and as a subset of that rule, only use automotive fuses because they are infinitely available. Use 12 volts as your standard because you probably own a mobile 12 volt generator (aka your car). Perhaps if you're in the .mil and have a 24 volt humvee, do 24v instead, whatever.
A DC powered system is frankly pretty straightforward and simple.
There is no evidence or reason for DC to be more "secure".
In this modern post 9/11 post columbine world the words "secure" and "inconvenient" have merged and very few non-philosopher types can tell them apart.
In this case it means that its inconvenient but typing the word secure is shorter and creates warm fuzzies in morons brains.
Are the centralised rectifiers + wires + in-computer DC-to-DC converters as efficient?
Yeah, generally the more you spend the higher quality the design. Its not that you can't design build and sell a 99% AC supply, its just you can't do so and survive in this weird confuseopoly market where the only thing that matters is price, none of the UL or FCC listings are real, and its all made by our enemies in China.
Err, you were probably writing about the input side not the output side.
We estimated that a car driven 100 km uses about 80 kWh of energy.
80kWh / 5-10 minutes ~= 1000-500kW.
Hmm. That's roughly the power draw of a small electric passenger train (e.g. an old subway train).
100 km in 5 minutes implies 1200 kph which is roughly the speed of sound at sealevel.
There have been supersonic cars, and they require well over a mere 1000 horsepower or so.
1000 HP will barely achieve 250 MPH.
My $200 Laptop Can Beat Your $500 Tablet
Laptops boot faster than tablets? Laptops wake up from sleep mode faster than tablets? Laptops have longer battery life than tablets? Laptops have faster virus scanning etc than tablets? I wanna see this $200 laptop.
If you're an author, have you considered bartering?
Let's put it this way. Say you have three author friends. Pass your book to each of them to proofread, and in turn proofread each of theirs. It's win-win, it costs nobody money, and you get the value of a different perspective. I often am in the situation where I am too blinded by my own bias and can use the outside perspective on something I've created.
Not a new idea. I know this is not an exhaustive list by any means:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_circle
I'm surprised that none of the ebook publisher sites have automated this process, or that I've never heard of them automating it.
The other side is I really like Nathan Lowell's work, and I would even pay a modest fee to proofread / edit his work before its released. The way he ended "owners share" was pretty much a big WTF and probably could have benefited from some review. Which brings up the topic that beyond simple grammatical correction, I'm not sure crowdsourcing will give useful results unless you're going for super formulaic pulp. I'd probably have to sign a NDA, ok whatever. For anything other than your Very First Book if you can't find one or two fans on the entire freaking internet, including friends, relatives, fellow authors, and coworkers, then, yes indeed, you have very big problems. BTW slightly on topic, Nathan Lowell had a cool interview on the linux link tech show podcast a couple months ago, I don't recall exactly but I think similar issues were discussed.
Arguing that paid editors exist therefore lone wolf authors absolutely must pay them, is probably going to work about as well as arguing paid software testers exist, therefore lone wolf programmers absolutely must find a way to pay them.
I'm glad it works for you, but me, I just couldn't gamble that much on closing the bag.
The problem with being "connected" and "well informed" is you catch the early adopter prices, remember them, and think they still apply way down the long tail. I still have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that a "big HDTV" costs as much as a kia car, because that is what they used to cost when the tech was new. Now they cost about one monthly kia car payment instead. A big LCD HDTV is currently cheaper than a very well insulated multi-pane window, although I can't figure out how that happens.
In a similar way, a top of the line ipod touch cost about $600 at release, I could never afford that, so forget about ever owning one.... except that I actually bought one for $186 at best buy about two (one?) years ago. They're probably cheaper now. Weren't Kindles about $500 when they were newly released 1st gen? Correct I would not take a $500 device into the tub, assuming I were a woman whom takes baths, and by some miracle I had the spare time to float around in a tub of my own slowly cooling diluted wastes for an hour. The problem is a kindle is about $130 now, not $500.
Sadly I have paid well over $130 for individual college textbooks ... If I could buy a kindle or whatever just for that one book, it would literally be risk mitigation to use the "cheap" kindle in the tub rather than the "expensive" textbook in the tub.
But I'll tell you why I am not inclined towards E-books. I like to read in the tub.
Luckily for you, according to all the advertising for all the ebooks I've ever seen, ebooks are for thin women to read at the beach while wearing a modest one-piece suit. Not in a tub or whatever. Seriously, check the ads for all the majors, its a mandatory photo for all ebook promotional literature.
Bathing vs showering might be an interesting /. poll, more interesting than some have been. I have not taken a bath since the 80s. Take regular daily showers, sure, but a bath?
Especially since I know how the photos would break the internet.
Can't possibly be worse than goatse.
All the "wasted" food examples basically involve making compost, some faster, some slower.
I've never seen a garden that would benefit from taking away its compost.
Increasing next quarters yield by "reducing waste" would inherently ruin long term productivity, either of that plant or the world in general.
The only real way I can think of wasting food (as in the biosphere is permanently reduced in biomass) would be to put it in a rocket and shoot it into the sun or moon.
What you want are potatoes
For those whom don't know anything about nutrition, I'll help explain that he's kidding.
Technically if you eat about three bags of potatoes per day, you'll get your RDA of riboflavin and calcium, but its hard to imagine eating that much potato at every meal. Both rice and potatoes are basically empty calories, kind of like cane sugar.
Not that empty calories are bad, if you're starving and have a bag of potatoes and a bottle of vitamin pills to meet all dietary needs other than calories, you'll "live", plus or minus some protein and essential fat deficiencies. Its just that unless you're starving, almost any "real food" is better for you.
The food we eat is oil.
The figure I've heard for years is 10 calories of oil to grow and eat 1 calorie of food, on average. Somewhat more for Kobe beef, somewhat less for local farmers market, but in all cases the energy in the oil is greater than the energy in the food.
ah, wrong connectors so send the generators back and run in circles try something else? WTF, they can't cut the cables and weld or clamp the wiring together?
LoB
That part of the story stinks, no absolutely reeks, of journalistic simplification and talking down to the audience. I'm fairly certain when the whole story comes out, it'll be that they shipped a gen waaaay too small, or a single phase gen to run a three phase motor, or a 60 Hz gen to run a 50 Hz motor, etc.
VFDs are a whole nother exciting topic, if the motor had one, where theoretically you could have a situation where the supply cannot run the VFD safely (voltage too high, whatever) even if the motor could be trivially rewired to handle it. I'm guessing not an issue at a nuke site, but....
Except the water reservoirs are on the roof. Earthquake cracks the pipes then what?
Fire departments have remarkable experience at spraying water unto roofs. They really are quite good at it.
If a 9.1 quake couldn't crack the Japanese pipes I'm guessing it would take a "near miss" from an asteroid to crack the pipes. Now a tsunami did ruin the Japanese plant, so you'd want to put yer goods on the roof to keep them dry... Err thats exactly this design... Interesting.
Alpha particles are blocked by a thin sheet of paper, so no risk to astronautics as long as the alpha particle producers stay outside the craft
Secondary gammas release on impact. Ouch.
Beta particles are neutrons
No electrons.
Gamma rays are an electromagnetic wave, like light, and hence also can't be deflected by an electric field.
There are other types of radiation, but I got the feeling they were rare (ie. not found except in particle accelerators) - can someone correct me?
Not really. nuke radiation is pretty much defined as alpha beta and gamma "waves/particles" plus our mostly artificially generated pal, the neutron. If we could make muons or other particles in bulk we'd probably add those. Delta waves and stuff are only found in star trek technobabble.
The concept of "rare" is kind of vague in particle physics.
I was fascinated to find wood is effective in blocking a stream of neutrons
Most plastics are awesome neutron shields, so if you think of wood as "naturally made plastic" then it shouldn't be too surprising.
Carbs would make a decent neutron shield, plenty of H and low Z atoms. A giant caramel or taffy would make a decent shield. Plus you could eat it.
I was amazed at how little detail there was in the article. Its just, like all magic and stuff because he's so smart and experienced. And we're only going to use one syllable words here, because you're... not. What a Pulitzer of modern journalism, almost worth catching a fish so I can wrap it.
Sounds a lot like a scanner guy with an ADS-B receiver, either homemade or purchased something like this:
http://www.radargadgets.com/.
Google for ADS-B and 1090 MHz and terms like that, you'll get the idea real quick of how he does it.
That's a bit of hyperbole. In Austin, TX, with a healthy tech community, a dev right out of college makes around $60k a year, depending on the industry. A teacher right out of college makes around $30k, and only gets to $60k after a decade or so.
In "a decade or so" the dev is unemployable due to ageism thus $0 and the teacher is making $60k....
First decade the dev is ahead, second decade they're even, more than 3 decades and the teacher makes more lifetime income.
Moral of the story, if you plan to retire in 5 years be a dev, if you plan to retire at age 70, be a teacher...
4) Run on multiple ports. URLs like https://example.com:23456/index.html. This absolutely confuses the heck out of some firewall monkeys.
You're kidding, right? You can pick up a single site SSL certificate for under $20 and a wildcard certificate for about $100. For all the other costs associated with running a website, the cost of an SSL certificate is negligible
Labor costs. Both upfront and ongoing and yet another bill for accounting to pay. Also $100 is a pretty steep jump in costs for a low/no traffic website.