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User: MichaelSmith

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Comments · 11,670

  1. Exposed ice? on Close-Up Images Show Ceres' Bright Spots In Great Detail · · Score: 1

    The bright spots must surely be exposed ice. There are other bright spots on Ceres, typically on steep slopes where the regolith has slid away. Maybe exposed ice on Ceres is bedrock.

  2. Antarctica? on In Hawaii, a 6-Person Crew Begins a Year-Long Mars Isolation Experiment · · Score: 1

    Plenty of people winter in Antarctica, in a similar operational environment.

  3. Just say on Tiny Pebbles Built the Gas Giant Behemoths · · Score: 5, Informative

    100 to 1000 km

  4. Re:DC power? on Sharp Announces Sales of DC Powered Air Conditioner, Other Products To Follow · · Score: 4, Funny

    At 60Hz?

    Single phase obviously.

  5. No point linking to an article from July 1 now.

  6. Looks like it.

  7. Re:Taxi licenses are crazy expensive on Uber France Leaders Arrested For Running Illegal Taxi Company · · Score: 1

    Its the same here in Melbourne with taxi licenses and newsagent licenses. To sell newspapers you needed to front up with 200 kAUD for the license. Unfortunately the newsagent licenses are worth next to nothing now and a lot of people got burned.

  8. Insufficient control authority on Weather Promising for Sunday Morning SpaceX Launch · · Score: 0

    SpaceX are trying to do this with a barely throttlable ascent engine pushing a very light first stage. It can't hover before landing because thrust is too high. It has to steer by rotating the entire vehicle, which puts tight constraints on the landing timeline. I doubt that reliable landings can be achieved with this configuration. They may get one in 4. Something like that.

  9. Re:Python + infinite loop on Amazon Is Only Going To Pay Authors When Each Page Is Read · · Score: 1

    You can't write an infinite loop in python its too slow.

  10. Re:Technical Question: on Amazon Is Only Going To Pay Authors When Each Page Is Read · · Score: 1

    My kindle knows when I press the screen to go to the next page. When I connect it to the internet, it will pass this information to amazon. If I never connect it, the author presumably doesn't get paid.

  11. Coffee table? on Amazon Is Only Going To Pay Authors When Each Page Is Read · · Score: 1

    Who buys a coffee table book for a kindle?

  12. Epilepsy is irrelevant on 'Brain-to-Text' Interface Types Thoughts of Epileptic Patients · · Score: 1

    According to TFA they could hook this up to anybody. It was just that epilepsy patients were having invasive surgery done anyway.

  13. Real time systems on June 30th Leap Second Could Trigger Unexpected Issues · · Score: 1

    Its been raised as an issue with radar trackers where the radar and the tracker have their own time sources and they slew at different rates. The tracker gets upset and drops tracks where the timestamp from the radar seems to jump by a second.

  14. At Last on WebAssembly: An Attempt To Give the Web Its Own Bytecode · · Score: 1

    Its about 1 billion times better than minified js.

  15. Re:Private Profiles on Orange County Public Schools To Monitor Students On Social Media · · Score: 0

    The system the schools use will bypass users security settings. How else do facebook make so much money off their users?

  16. Re:Private Profiles on Orange County Public Schools To Monitor Students On Social Media · · Score: 0

    Privacy settings make no difference if the schools can go in as root.

  17. Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions? on Apple Design Guru Jony Ive Named Chief Design Officer · · Score: 1

    Unless something comes along which he couldn't do at Apple.

  18. Ducted fans? on The Hoverboard Flies Closer To Reality · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Looks like a drone with a guy standing on top. It must chew through LiPo batteries.

  19. I bought a cheap tablet for 35 AUD from officeworks. The normal price was 45 AUD but this device was pink (for kids) and had been returned. I took it home, and when I experimented with the gallery I found selfies taken by a child. I ran the factory reset but the pictures were still there so I just deleted the photos.

  20. Re:Battlefield Earth sucked on Rediscovered Lucas-Commissioned Short "Black Angel" Released On YouTube · · Score: 1

    He was quite well regarded by Clarke and Heinlein, but definitiely not in the same rank as them when it came to writing. He could churn out money making words though.

  21. Re:Battlefield Earth sucked on Rediscovered Lucas-Commissioned Short "Black Angel" Released On YouTube · · Score: 1

    The book was good

    Any idea who wrote it?

  22. Re:Kansas isn't even remotely flat on Shape of the Universe Determined To Be Really, Really Flat · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually I would argue that when we say that part of the Earth (like the ocean) is flat, we mean that it follows the shape of the WGS84 oblate spheroid, whereas an area the size of Kansas which was geometrically flat would look to us like a bowl, with its centre lower in gravitational terms than its perimeter.

  23. Re:Kansas isn't even remotely flat on Shape of the Universe Determined To Be Really, Really Flat · · Score: 2

    The Earth is not flat therefore Kansas is not flat.

  24. Kansas isn't even remotely flat on Shape of the Universe Determined To Be Really, Really Flat · · Score: 3, Funny

    Not sure what OP is on about.

  25. Re:We can do good technology when we have the will on Opportunity Rover Reaches Martian Day 4,000 of Its 90-Day Mission · · Score: 1

    Machinery doesn't need life support. Thats the challenge. Try operating a machine like Opportunity on a planet like Venus or Earth for ten years. That would be very difficult.