Well if you're shooting rats in a barn, why would you use anything but a.22 rifle with.22 shorts?
I've shot critters in a barn before with.22 shorts and I doubt the report was even audible a fair distance from the building. I've got an especially long barrel bolt action rifle, which reduces the noise as there's no cycling of a semi-automatic bolt and the gas pressures have reduced with the longer barrel. Inside the barn it sounds like someone popping an inflated paper bag.
I've tested the penetration of the bullets and in the unlikely event that I miss my target the wooden barn walls will stop the bullet. I prefer it over my air rifle. The air rifle makes more noise, is not as accurate, is more likely to wound than kill, and takes longer to load for the next target.
Politician A fights to keep your industry alive, lower your taxes, rebuild the roads you drive on every day, but wants concealed carry to require a permit. Politician B fights to end your job, raise your taxes and destroy all infrastructure, punch you in the face every Tuesday, but wants concealed carry without a permit.
NRA supporters will always vote for Politician B. No matter how much they are hurt by all the rest of the policies.
Have you thought about why that is?
Choice "B" means getting a law repealed that once gone has not yet been replaced. In 1986 there was a single state that allowed for concealed carry without a permit, Vermont. Now that number is something like 10 or 12, depending on how "strong" of protection one sets the line to consider this "without a permit". 30 years ago only 10 states guaranteed people's right to self defense with a firearm, through either no permit or the government was required to issue a permit unless the applicant was prohibited from owning a firearm. Today that number is around 40 states with "shall issue" permits or no permit required. Taxes change every year, industries boom and bust, and the infrastructure in the USA is still very good no matter who is in charge. So long as voters see the government get just a little bit smaller, such as with gun law repeals, they will see a very real improvement in their freedoms and quality of life.
Choice "A" likes to lie to people. They'll promise the world to get elected and then taxes still go up, regulations still kill industries, the roads continue to deteriorate, but they'll be honest about those gun control laws. I've seen the polls, and people have gotten wise to this. Gun control is just another tax by another name through fees and such. Gun control kills jobs as firearm manufacturers close up factories and move to another state, the guns are still made and sold but the jobs in that state just went somewhere else.
Oh, and the face punching tends to stop when people are carrying guns.
And look at Fukushima how costly a decommissioning could turn out to be...
So, because a 50 year old reactor design was hit by a once in 500 years tsunami in Japan means we can't build a new reactor in North Dakota? I guess if we wait until the sea levels rise high enough before turning to nuclear power then we might have to worry about sea water flooding a nuclear reactor outside of Fargo. Maybe we should build some nuclear reactors before that happens. Just an idea.
Given sufficient battery power, solar is also stable.
How much do the batteries cost? If solar is merely "competitive" without the batteries then what happens when the cost of the batteries is added? I doubt the batteries cost nothing to build and maintain.
The failure cost of a solar plant does not include losing the use of 525+ square miles of prime real estate for a few centuries.
No, the success of a solar plant means losing large tracts of prime real estate for the life of the plant, and then some. The failure of the solar plant means we get the land back. I'm not sure this is a good argument to make.
Comparing nuclear power plant designs from the 1970s to those of today is like comparing a Ford Model T to a Ford F-150. We learned a few things since then.
Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is only a means to store and transport energy. Petroleum is an energy source that also happens to be much easier to store and transport than hydrogen. We are not getting rid of petroleum until we figure out how to make fuel that is cheaper to produce than petroleum, and is just as easy to store and transport.
We can solve the problems of energy storage and transport by synthesizing hydrocarbons, since petroleum is just a mix of hydrocarbons that's a solved problem. We'll probably use hydrogen as fuel someday, only we'll attach it to a carbon first and then burn it.
At the root of all of this, is the undeniable fact that when you turn prisons into a profit centre, capitalism will guarantee that their population is ever-increasing; and if some, (or many), of those people don't belong there, well, that's just the price of 'progress' and 'security'.
So, how does "capitalism" guarantee the prison population increases?
There are a lot of steps to get a person in prison, and for "capitalism" to be the motivator then the people on every step would have to get a cut of the profit. While plea deals are pretty common it's not like we've done away with the jury trial. Are juries paid for convictions? I guess police are paid to arrest people, that's part of the job description. Unless they get paid extra for people getting to prison then what's their motivation to arrest people that don't belong there?
I'm not saying private prisons are a good idea. I think private prisons are a very bad idea. I just don't see how the profit from a private prison brings about more prisoners.
So, that somehow gives them right to poke their stupid noses into other people countries?
Last I checked the "T" in "NATO" stood for "treaty". I assume the terms of the treaty allow for member nations to poke their noses into the business of other members. Seems rather logical to me. If you want the US to protect your territory from attack then people wearing US uniforms might, on occasion, enter your territory. If this bothers you then leave the treaty.
But we appear to have lost focus on fighting an a "real" war against an evenly matched opponent.
I believe the opposite is true. We are seeing a military built in a way to fight World War 2 all over again that cannot deal well with "goatherds carrying AK-47s". I recall a US Navy exercise where someone brought in to command the simulated opposition force developed a plan that "sunk" nearly the entire flotilla. Despite the success of the opposition force in the simulation the US Navy tossed out anything that they may have learned and just called the simulation "unrealistic".
I'm not saying that having a military that is capable of winning World War 2 again is a bad idea. The chances of another large scale war is very very low but just having that military capability has a deterrent factor that cannot be ignored, "If you seek peace, prepare for war". Having the capability and flexibility to successfully fight a guerrilla war is also necessary. What does that kind of military look like? I wish I knew. I think that there are people that do know, but the people in command don't seem to be listening.
Anyone else notice a pattern? It seems that when the signals are spoofed the reported location is at an airport. Why would that be?
Is this to protect the airport? For example, a GPS guided bomb dropped on the airport would think it is on target when in fact it is 30 miles out from shore. Is it to protect other targets? They'd be willing to go sacrificing the airport (presumably a low occupancy area with few buildings, most of the area being runways and such) instead of a higher value target.
Maybe it's just that an airport is a convenient place to hide the equipment and the device is re-transmitting it's own location to get around the problems of having to decode and re-encode the GPS signals.
TFA says "tonnes". Maybe we should just use gigagrammes for clarity.
That's a great idea. Seriously. We already use the kilogram and milligram for indicating mass, why not a gigagram? Although I think you spell it funny.
If you can make poured blocks, it would make much more sense to simply use pouring to make big structures instead of pouring blocks on site and then moving them just like you move the chiseled blocks.
The blocks where not moved once poured, they were poured in place. The theory is that many of the blocks were quarried and moved to the site. When carrying the large blocks became difficult, or they wanted a smooth surface to work with, they would pour the blocks in place. Sometimes the blocks poured in place would have to be trimmed to allow for the placement of carved blocks, and that would mean chiseling into the poured block.
You don't need an analysis to see if a stone us poured. You see that with blank eye.
You are correct, the evidence of poured blocks can be plainly seen. I was mistaken before on the need to crack open blocks to see this, there are already damaged blocks showing evidence of being poured in place.
It is extremely unlikely that the Egyptians used poured blocks. If they had: we had literature about it. Like we have about basically everything covering their lives. And we probably had ruins of stuff that *obviously* used pouring techniques.
We do have literature about it. There's also a lot of literature on the use of carved blocks. Building these pyramids took decades and it is not inconceivable that the building techniques changed over that time, so early documentation may not have this technique because they didn't use it then. There is an obvious line in the blocks where the construction quality improved. This is where they shifted from only carved blocks to a combination of carved blocks moved to the site and blocks poured in place. The poured blocks can be seen in between carved blocks, where they fit so tightly that they could not be made any other way.
If they were poured, they wouldn't have chiseled tool marks on them. Duh.
Have you ever poured concrete? I have. Sometimes the forms move on you, things break, and now you have a very hard material that has gone beyond the bounds of where you want it to be and you have to do something about it. What do you do? You get out some chisels and hammers. Today we'd use power saws, jackhammers, and so forth but the problem and solution is much the same.
Again, as I recall the explanation on how the pyramids were built, is that it was a combination of quarried and poured blocks. Some of the stone was cut from a mine and moved to the site as a whole. The rest of the blocks were poured on site into forms. The material for the poured cement like material was likely from busted up pieces from the same mine that they got the whole stones. That means most any chemical, radiological, and such testing might not show which was poured and which was not. What would prove this theory is destructive testing, and that's not going to happen willingly. For that to happen we'd need something like an earthquake or meteor shower to hit the site and then someone look at the busted up pieces.
In Egypt, there are still large obelisks, and large carved stones, including granite!
Your solution doesn't explain those.
My explanation does not have to. I'm not trying to explain the construction technique of every stone structure from ancient Egypt, only how some of the large stones came to be in the pyramids. Even the people that believe in the use of poured lime slurry blocks will agree that some of the stones were quarried far away and brought in with boats, sledges, and muscle. Perhaps they used the large stones as the forms, not wood. There was not a lot of wood in ancient Egypt.
Carving granite was done in ancient Egypt, I don't recall anyone disputing this. Those that do will likely think of fantastic explanations of aliens bringing them forges capable of forming granite into shapes. Then they'll explain how all of this technology was lost without a trace. It doesn't take aliens from a distant planet to explain these things, just more imagination and some understanding of physics, chemistry, and engineering.
People like to point to the 10 ton blocks of granite in the pyramids to "prove" that they had access to heavy machinery. I remember in high school the track team picking up the coach's truck (admittedly a small truck) and putting it sideways in its parking spot as a joke. That's 2 or 3 tons lifted by a bunch of teenagers on a whim. Get a much larger group of motivated adults, and with planning, they'll move 10 ton blocks great distances and to great heights. They'll do this with tools made of bronze and wood too.
I thought it was well established a that the stones were poured in place using forms like concrete. A lot like how the Hoover Dam was constructed. The theory was supported with finding hairs sticking from the stones, as they likely fell from worker's heads into the slurry, and bubbles in the stones which are indicative of a pouring rather than a natural sedimentation.
These theories of having space aliens build them, or some lost advanced technology, were all very compelling when I was younger. I remember checking out books from the library on aliens building this and that, aliens visiting ancient civilizations and this being documented in cave paintings and such, and of "cryptozoologists" writing of animals that exist in out of focus photographs and wild imaginations. I've outgrown that. I just find it fascinating these theories of fantastic historical events persist as much as they do in this age of so many people having high definition cameras in their pockets and ready access to so much technical knowledge. I'm quite certain such fantasy will not go away, it's part of what makes us human.
Much more likely is that these pyramids were made with a limestone slurry poured into wooden forms built in place. The tightly fitted faces of the stones weren't from expertly carved blocks but from the cured blocks not adhering to the newly poured blocks. This would be difficult to prove without destructive evaluation of the blocks, which I can understand would be problematic logistically, politically, and for a lot of other reasons.
So, someone finds something that is supposedly from a person that worked on the pyramids. We've seen fakes before. We've misinterpreted ancient texts before. We've seen ancient fakes get misinterpreted before. This "mystery" has gone on for a very long time and nothing is going to rid us completely of it.
I just ponder on if someday in the future someone will find our modern construction and wonder how such a "primitive" culture could build something like the Hoover Dam.
I'm guessing you mean the Essential Phone, an Android phone which came out about six months before the iPhone X and had a similar camera notch.
No, that's not it. The phone I'm thinking of had an obviously separate screen off to the left with the camera shifted to the right. Maybe it was the other way around. Anyway, the screen was not notched out, there was a separate "touch bar" kind of screen where the virtual buttons shifted with context.
Amazing how "experience" and "bias" can seem like the same thing.:)
Perhaps. If the reviewer learned that this kind of notch in a phone screen was "bad" from previous experience then would not the complaint be that Apple had not learned the same lesson?
Much if the article is a bunch of the same old arguments rehashed. USB-C vs. Lightning? Lightning came first, predates it by about 2 years. Apple chose to make a new connector when it did, they could not have known about USB-C at the time, they're kind of stuck with it now. Dongles? Oh please, this again? No computer is going to have the "right" kind of ports for everyone. People complained about Apple removing the floppy drive and then the optical drive. Does anyone complain about that any more? It's quite possible that Apple removed too many ports too soon, they'll learn that lesson or suffer the drop in sales. You just bought a device that cost you a kilobuck or two, shut up about the need for a $20 dongle and realize that Apple just saved you from carrying around the volume and weight of ports you'll never use and gave you the choice to buy exactly those ports you need. The complaint about plugging the Apple Pencil into the bottom of an iPad to charge is just nonsense. No one is required to do this if this is inconvenient or impractical, it's an option for a quick charge to keep working. Charging an Apple Pencil looks a lot like charging competing devices. Is it complicated by using a Lightning connector instead of some kind of USB? Perhaps, but then Apple Pencil can get a quick charge from the iPad if it must while others cannot.
That last paragraph was a longer rant than I intended but I'll keep it anyway. My point is that instead of thinking about why Apple and other companies made the design choices that they did people leap to the conclusion that they don't know what they are doing. If you don't like the choices then don't buy it, maybe even write up an article on why you made that choice. What I don't understand is the people claiming that a successful company, like Apple, is full of idiots and that they'd have made a better choice. If so then why aren't you making these "better" products instead of writing a rant on the internet.
Yes, I understand the potential for irony on writing a rant about others writing a rant.
FCC audio division's regulations have done little to stop AM and satellite radio from broadcasting right-wing streams-of-consciousness throughout the lower 48 states.
I'll listen to the local NPR affiliate and the local news and talk station with the "right wing nutjobs" depending on which one happens to hold my interests that day. On Rush Limbaugh's show I hear him giving away brand new high end iPhones to people that call in. On NPR they keep asking listeners for money and trying to keep their government funding.
How much money does Rush make on his show? I don't know. Enough to hand out a dozen iPhones every week? Maybe he gets the phones for free from Apple but then Apple is making money on this from the advertising it brings in.
It's not the FCC's job to stop the "right wing stream of consciousness" that licensed stations bring to people. If you don't like it then listen to the competition. Buy the stuff advertised on those stations, give them money on their funding drives, and so on. If you want them to keep transmitting then make sure that they can pay their bills.
Why hasn't the FCC done anything about the "right wing" slant of AM radio? Because those stations make money, pay their fees, and file the proper license applications.
Plenty has been written about the mind-numbing, face-palming, irritating stupidity of the notch. And yet, I canâ(TM)t stop thinking about it. I would love to say that this awful design compromise is an anomaly for Apple. But it would be more accurate to describe it as the norm.
I recall a non-Apple smart phone getting highlighted on Slashdot where it had this "awesome" feature of a "second screen" on top of the phone. It was this small screen on top of the phone next to the camera, a small space on the front for "special context buttons" or some such. How is this different than Apple putting these same small "second screens" with buttons that change with context on either side of a place for a camera, speaker, microphone or whatever?
I know the difference, it that it's from Apple. Apple is "bad" and anything not Apple is "good".
Since Apple did it their way, with a single piece of glass instead of two, this is somehow bad. With the other phone (someone help me out here, who did this?) where it was instead a separate very small screen on top of a larger main display that this is somehow "better".
I'm sure I'll be accused of being an Apple "fanboi" for sticking up for Apple. Sure, I've probably acquired more than my share of Apple products over the years. I've also come to a point where I care much less about the tools I use so long as the work is done. When I try something new I try to see how to do it on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. I'm now expected to be proficient in a number of operating systems, programming tools, and so on that I just don't have the luxury to be a snob about the tools I use.
This pervasive Apple hate has got so bad that my brothers, who are certainly not Apple fans, think this has gone beyond the absurd. They'll give me grief about my iPhone, saying how their Droid is better, and then talk about how the news talking about the seemingly poor sales of the iPhone 8 is a bunch of bullshit.
This bashing over the iPhone X "notch" is just over the top. Sure, someone can give some pros and cons on this, but claiming this as an example of Apple not being able to do design worth a damn any more is just a bit too much. Tone it down and I might actually take you seriously on the complaints on where Apple fucked something up.
I think Nuclear Power Plants still needs to cool down... This is quite often done using a stream or a water body as a heat sink. With the raising temperatures, I wonder how this will work if those cold sources are always above... say 60C / 140 F.
A few points in response. - The concern is over increased frequency of heat waves with increased temperatures. Temperatures over 60C might happen at noon but it will cool off at night. Assuming that nuclear power is unavailable in those times because of the heat they will last perhaps a few hours at several times in the year. Not pleasant, of course, but that's an unlikely outcome as I'll get to in my next point... - The UAE power plants currently under construction are on the shore, they have access to the ocean for cooling. Generally, outside the UAE, this should also be true. The ocean will never get that hot. - The core temperature of these modern solid fuel reactors can reach 600C, a heat sink of even 60C will still allow production of power if perhaps less than the designed maximum. - Fourth generation nuclear power plants operate at even higher temperatures (800C is common) and therefore can use air cooling even in 60C heat, no water needed. Again, the output may be less than maximum designed capacity but the reduction in power would be less than the current solid fuel reactors. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) - Energy storage is possible for times of increased heat. Having storage available may be necessary to accommodate the unreliable nature of having wind and solar be part of the energy supply mix, and to accommodate the inability of water cooled reactors to shift output at the rate that demand shifts. This same storage would be available, assuming proper management, for heat waves. - Even the "greenest of the green" utilities are not likely to abandon natural gas or fuel oil generation for emergencies. A modern gas turbine will operate at temperatures as high as 1500C, they will run just fine even with a 60C heat sink. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - These heat waves are not going to come overnight. These heat waves are going to come, assuming they come at all, slowly over decades and therefore any place on Earth that would be subject to such heat will have plenty of time to build the infrastructure to deal with it. That might come in the forms I mentioned above or someone smarter than myself will think of even better solutions.
A quick Google search tell me that there are about 500,000 electric vehicles in the USA. Not bad, right? Well, there's about 300,000,000 ICE vehicles in the USA. The used market for electric cars is very very small by comparison. It's going to take a very long time before used electric cars get to be plentiful enough to compete with used ICE vehicles.
If California hadn't driven out all their nuclear power then perhaps they wouldn't have to rely on coal and natural gas so much.
Sure, using electric cars and coal fired electricity will quite likely reduce CO2 and other emissions considerably. Using electric cars and nuclear power would reduce the emissions problem even more.
I halfway agree with you here, this is a bad idea so long as their electricity comes primarily from fossil fuels. Shifting to nuclear power would solve that problem but the limitations of electric cars would remain.
That makes about as much sense as Larry the Cable Guy doing his comedy skit about his horse breaking a leg and having to shoot it, so now he has to fix the horse's leg and a gunshot wound.
Sure, let's nuke China. Now we have a hellhole of a nation that likes to threaten the West militarily and economically. Had we dropped nukes on them in the 1950s we'd have a *RADIOACTIVE* hellhole of a nation that likes to threaten the West militarily and economically.
Slashdot Mirror
Well if you're shooting rats in a barn, why would you use anything but a .22 rifle with .22 shorts?
I've shot critters in a barn before with .22 shorts and I doubt the report was even audible a fair distance from the building. I've got an especially long barrel bolt action rifle, which reduces the noise as there's no cycling of a semi-automatic bolt and the gas pressures have reduced with the longer barrel. Inside the barn it sounds like someone popping an inflated paper bag.
I've tested the penetration of the bullets and in the unlikely event that I miss my target the wooden barn walls will stop the bullet. I prefer it over my air rifle. The air rifle makes more noise, is not as accurate, is more likely to wound than kill, and takes longer to load for the next target.
Politician A fights to keep your industry alive, lower your taxes, rebuild the roads you drive on every day, but wants concealed carry to require a permit.
Politician B fights to end your job, raise your taxes and destroy all infrastructure, punch you in the face every Tuesday, but wants concealed carry without a permit.
NRA supporters will always vote for Politician B. No matter how much they are hurt by all the rest of the policies.
Have you thought about why that is?
Choice "B" means getting a law repealed that once gone has not yet been replaced. In 1986 there was a single state that allowed for concealed carry without a permit, Vermont. Now that number is something like 10 or 12, depending on how "strong" of protection one sets the line to consider this "without a permit". 30 years ago only 10 states guaranteed people's right to self defense with a firearm, through either no permit or the government was required to issue a permit unless the applicant was prohibited from owning a firearm. Today that number is around 40 states with "shall issue" permits or no permit required. Taxes change every year, industries boom and bust, and the infrastructure in the USA is still very good no matter who is in charge. So long as voters see the government get just a little bit smaller, such as with gun law repeals, they will see a very real improvement in their freedoms and quality of life.
Choice "A" likes to lie to people. They'll promise the world to get elected and then taxes still go up, regulations still kill industries, the roads continue to deteriorate, but they'll be honest about those gun control laws. I've seen the polls, and people have gotten wise to this. Gun control is just another tax by another name through fees and such. Gun control kills jobs as firearm manufacturers close up factories and move to another state, the guns are still made and sold but the jobs in that state just went somewhere else.
Oh, and the face punching tends to stop when people are carrying guns.
I do hope there is a travel ban on every white male over the age of 50! That will stop any future terrorist attacks right!
But how would President Trump get from the White House to his vacation home in Florida?
They can't, the nuclear-industrial complex would make sure they'd never be re-elected.
Are the politicians more concerned about getting votes than saving the planet? Sounds like we need to vote them out.
The nuclear industry doesn't elect people, voters do.
And look at Fukushima how costly a decommissioning could turn out to be...
So, because a 50 year old reactor design was hit by a once in 500 years tsunami in Japan means we can't build a new reactor in North Dakota? I guess if we wait until the sea levels rise high enough before turning to nuclear power then we might have to worry about sea water flooding a nuclear reactor outside of Fargo. Maybe we should build some nuclear reactors before that happens. Just an idea.
Given sufficient battery power, solar is also stable.
How much do the batteries cost? If solar is merely "competitive" without the batteries then what happens when the cost of the batteries is added? I doubt the batteries cost nothing to build and maintain.
The failure cost of a solar plant does not include losing the use of 525+ square miles of prime real estate for a few centuries.
No, the success of a solar plant means losing large tracts of prime real estate for the life of the plant, and then some. The failure of the solar plant means we get the land back. I'm not sure this is a good argument to make.
Comparing nuclear power plant designs from the 1970s to those of today is like comparing a Ford Model T to a Ford F-150. We learned a few things since then.
run on hydrogen
Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is only a means to store and transport energy. Petroleum is an energy source that also happens to be much easier to store and transport than hydrogen. We are not getting rid of petroleum until we figure out how to make fuel that is cheaper to produce than petroleum, and is just as easy to store and transport.
We can solve the problems of energy storage and transport by synthesizing hydrocarbons, since petroleum is just a mix of hydrocarbons that's a solved problem. We'll probably use hydrogen as fuel someday, only we'll attach it to a carbon first and then burn it.
At the root of all of this, is the undeniable fact that when you turn prisons into a profit centre, capitalism will guarantee that their population is ever-increasing; and if some, (or many), of those people don't belong there, well, that's just the price of 'progress' and 'security'.
So, how does "capitalism" guarantee the prison population increases?
There are a lot of steps to get a person in prison, and for "capitalism" to be the motivator then the people on every step would have to get a cut of the profit. While plea deals are pretty common it's not like we've done away with the jury trial. Are juries paid for convictions? I guess police are paid to arrest people, that's part of the job description. Unless they get paid extra for people getting to prison then what's their motivation to arrest people that don't belong there?
I'm not saying private prisons are a good idea. I think private prisons are a very bad idea. I just don't see how the profit from a private prison brings about more prisoners.
Are people getting paid to break the law?
So, that somehow gives them right to poke their stupid noses into other people countries?
Last I checked the "T" in "NATO" stood for "treaty". I assume the terms of the treaty allow for member nations to poke their noses into the business of other members. Seems rather logical to me. If you want the US to protect your territory from attack then people wearing US uniforms might, on occasion, enter your territory. If this bothers you then leave the treaty.
It seems a small crisis is brewing in the South China Sea. Or thereabouts.
Right, it sure is hard to know where the crisis is brewing when someone is spoofing GPS.
But we appear to have lost focus on fighting an a "real" war against an evenly matched opponent.
I believe the opposite is true. We are seeing a military built in a way to fight World War 2 all over again that cannot deal well with "goatherds carrying AK-47s". I recall a US Navy exercise where someone brought in to command the simulated opposition force developed a plan that "sunk" nearly the entire flotilla. Despite the success of the opposition force in the simulation the US Navy tossed out anything that they may have learned and just called the simulation "unrealistic".
I'm not saying that having a military that is capable of winning World War 2 again is a bad idea. The chances of another large scale war is very very low but just having that military capability has a deterrent factor that cannot be ignored, "If you seek peace, prepare for war". Having the capability and flexibility to successfully fight a guerrilla war is also necessary. What does that kind of military look like? I wish I knew. I think that there are people that do know, but the people in command don't seem to be listening.
Anyone else notice a pattern? It seems that when the signals are spoofed the reported location is at an airport. Why would that be?
Is this to protect the airport? For example, a GPS guided bomb dropped on the airport would think it is on target when in fact it is 30 miles out from shore. Is it to protect other targets? They'd be willing to go sacrificing the airport (presumably a low occupancy area with few buildings, most of the area being runways and such) instead of a higher value target.
Maybe it's just that an airport is a convenient place to hide the equipment and the device is re-transmitting it's own location to get around the problems of having to decode and re-encode the GPS signals.
Maybe I'm seeing a pattern that isn't there.
TFA says "tonnes". Maybe we should just use gigagrammes for clarity.
That's a great idea. Seriously. We already use the kilogram and milligram for indicating mass, why not a gigagram? Although I think you spell it funny.
If you can make poured blocks, it would make much more sense to simply use pouring to make big structures instead of pouring blocks on site and then moving them just like you move the chiseled blocks.
The blocks where not moved once poured, they were poured in place. The theory is that many of the blocks were quarried and moved to the site. When carrying the large blocks became difficult, or they wanted a smooth surface to work with, they would pour the blocks in place. Sometimes the blocks poured in place would have to be trimmed to allow for the placement of carved blocks, and that would mean chiseling into the poured block.
You don't need an analysis to see if a stone us poured.
You see that with blank eye.
You are correct, the evidence of poured blocks can be plainly seen. I was mistaken before on the need to crack open blocks to see this, there are already damaged blocks showing evidence of being poured in place.
It is extremely unlikely that the Egyptians used poured blocks. If they had: we had literature about it. Like we have about basically everything covering their lives.
And we probably had ruins of stuff that *obviously* used pouring techniques.
We do have literature about it. There's also a lot of literature on the use of carved blocks. Building these pyramids took decades and it is not inconceivable that the building techniques changed over that time, so early documentation may not have this technique because they didn't use it then. There is an obvious line in the blocks where the construction quality improved. This is where they shifted from only carved blocks to a combination of carved blocks moved to the site and blocks poured in place. The poured blocks can be seen in between carved blocks, where they fit so tightly that they could not be made any other way.
If they were poured, they wouldn't have chiseled tool marks on them. Duh.
Have you ever poured concrete? I have. Sometimes the forms move on you, things break, and now you have a very hard material that has gone beyond the bounds of where you want it to be and you have to do something about it. What do you do? You get out some chisels and hammers. Today we'd use power saws, jackhammers, and so forth but the problem and solution is much the same.
Again, as I recall the explanation on how the pyramids were built, is that it was a combination of quarried and poured blocks. Some of the stone was cut from a mine and moved to the site as a whole. The rest of the blocks were poured on site into forms. The material for the poured cement like material was likely from busted up pieces from the same mine that they got the whole stones. That means most any chemical, radiological, and such testing might not show which was poured and which was not. What would prove this theory is destructive testing, and that's not going to happen willingly. For that to happen we'd need something like an earthquake or meteor shower to hit the site and then someone look at the busted up pieces.
In Egypt, there are still large obelisks, and large carved stones, including granite!
Your solution doesn't explain those.
My explanation does not have to. I'm not trying to explain the construction technique of every stone structure from ancient Egypt, only how some of the large stones came to be in the pyramids. Even the people that believe in the use of poured lime slurry blocks will agree that some of the stones were quarried far away and brought in with boats, sledges, and muscle. Perhaps they used the large stones as the forms, not wood. There was not a lot of wood in ancient Egypt.
Carving granite was done in ancient Egypt, I don't recall anyone disputing this. Those that do will likely think of fantastic explanations of aliens bringing them forges capable of forming granite into shapes. Then they'll explain how all of this technology was lost without a trace. It doesn't take aliens from a distant planet to explain these things, just more imagination and some understanding of physics, chemistry, and engineering.
People like to point to the 10 ton blocks of granite in the pyramids to "prove" that they had access to heavy machinery. I remember in high school the track team picking up the coach's truck (admittedly a small truck) and putting it sideways in its parking spot as a joke. That's 2 or 3 tons lifted by a bunch of teenagers on a whim. Get a much larger group of motivated adults, and with planning, they'll move 10 ton blocks great distances and to great heights. They'll do this with tools made of bronze and wood too.
That's what you get when you buy your Gizmo from an Asian shop...
I see I'm not the only one that got the joke. Kids these days will have no idea what that means.
I thought it was well established a that the stones were poured in place using forms like concrete. A lot like how the Hoover Dam was constructed. The theory was supported with finding hairs sticking from the stones, as they likely fell from worker's heads into the slurry, and bubbles in the stones which are indicative of a pouring rather than a natural sedimentation.
These theories of having space aliens build them, or some lost advanced technology, were all very compelling when I was younger. I remember checking out books from the library on aliens building this and that, aliens visiting ancient civilizations and this being documented in cave paintings and such, and of "cryptozoologists" writing of animals that exist in out of focus photographs and wild imaginations. I've outgrown that. I just find it fascinating these theories of fantastic historical events persist as much as they do in this age of so many people having high definition cameras in their pockets and ready access to so much technical knowledge. I'm quite certain such fantasy will not go away, it's part of what makes us human.
Much more likely is that these pyramids were made with a limestone slurry poured into wooden forms built in place. The tightly fitted faces of the stones weren't from expertly carved blocks but from the cured blocks not adhering to the newly poured blocks. This would be difficult to prove without destructive evaluation of the blocks, which I can understand would be problematic logistically, politically, and for a lot of other reasons.
So, someone finds something that is supposedly from a person that worked on the pyramids. We've seen fakes before. We've misinterpreted ancient texts before. We've seen ancient fakes get misinterpreted before. This "mystery" has gone on for a very long time and nothing is going to rid us completely of it.
I just ponder on if someday in the future someone will find our modern construction and wonder how such a "primitive" culture could build something like the Hoover Dam.
I'm guessing you mean the Essential Phone, an Android phone which came out about six months before the iPhone X and had a similar camera notch.
No, that's not it. The phone I'm thinking of had an obviously separate screen off to the left with the camera shifted to the right. Maybe it was the other way around. Anyway, the screen was not notched out, there was a separate "touch bar" kind of screen where the virtual buttons shifted with context.
Amazing how "experience" and "bias" can seem like the same thing. :)
Perhaps. If the reviewer learned that this kind of notch in a phone screen was "bad" from previous experience then would not the complaint be that Apple had not learned the same lesson?
Much if the article is a bunch of the same old arguments rehashed. USB-C vs. Lightning? Lightning came first, predates it by about 2 years. Apple chose to make a new connector when it did, they could not have known about USB-C at the time, they're kind of stuck with it now. Dongles? Oh please, this again? No computer is going to have the "right" kind of ports for everyone. People complained about Apple removing the floppy drive and then the optical drive. Does anyone complain about that any more? It's quite possible that Apple removed too many ports too soon, they'll learn that lesson or suffer the drop in sales. You just bought a device that cost you a kilobuck or two, shut up about the need for a $20 dongle and realize that Apple just saved you from carrying around the volume and weight of ports you'll never use and gave you the choice to buy exactly those ports you need. The complaint about plugging the Apple Pencil into the bottom of an iPad to charge is just nonsense. No one is required to do this if this is inconvenient or impractical, it's an option for a quick charge to keep working. Charging an Apple Pencil looks a lot like charging competing devices. Is it complicated by using a Lightning connector instead of some kind of USB? Perhaps, but then Apple Pencil can get a quick charge from the iPad if it must while others cannot.
That last paragraph was a longer rant than I intended but I'll keep it anyway. My point is that instead of thinking about why Apple and other companies made the design choices that they did people leap to the conclusion that they don't know what they are doing. If you don't like the choices then don't buy it, maybe even write up an article on why you made that choice. What I don't understand is the people claiming that a successful company, like Apple, is full of idiots and that they'd have made a better choice. If so then why aren't you making these "better" products instead of writing a rant on the internet.
Yes, I understand the potential for irony on writing a rant about others writing a rant.
FCC audio division's regulations have done little to stop AM and satellite radio from broadcasting right-wing streams-of-consciousness throughout the lower 48 states.
I'll listen to the local NPR affiliate and the local news and talk station with the "right wing nutjobs" depending on which one happens to hold my interests that day. On Rush Limbaugh's show I hear him giving away brand new high end iPhones to people that call in. On NPR they keep asking listeners for money and trying to keep their government funding.
How much money does Rush make on his show? I don't know. Enough to hand out a dozen iPhones every week? Maybe he gets the phones for free from Apple but then Apple is making money on this from the advertising it brings in.
It's not the FCC's job to stop the "right wing stream of consciousness" that licensed stations bring to people. If you don't like it then listen to the competition. Buy the stuff advertised on those stations, give them money on their funding drives, and so on. If you want them to keep transmitting then make sure that they can pay their bills.
Why hasn't the FCC done anything about the "right wing" slant of AM radio? Because those stations make money, pay their fees, and file the proper license applications.
Plenty has been written about the mind-numbing, face-palming, irritating stupidity of the notch. And yet, I canâ(TM)t stop thinking about it. I would love to say that this awful design compromise is an anomaly for Apple. But it would be more accurate to describe it as the norm.
I recall a non-Apple smart phone getting highlighted on Slashdot where it had this "awesome" feature of a "second screen" on top of the phone. It was this small screen on top of the phone next to the camera, a small space on the front for "special context buttons" or some such. How is this different than Apple putting these same small "second screens" with buttons that change with context on either side of a place for a camera, speaker, microphone or whatever?
I know the difference, it that it's from Apple. Apple is "bad" and anything not Apple is "good".
Since Apple did it their way, with a single piece of glass instead of two, this is somehow bad. With the other phone (someone help me out here, who did this?) where it was instead a separate very small screen on top of a larger main display that this is somehow "better".
I'm sure I'll be accused of being an Apple "fanboi" for sticking up for Apple. Sure, I've probably acquired more than my share of Apple products over the years. I've also come to a point where I care much less about the tools I use so long as the work is done. When I try something new I try to see how to do it on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. I'm now expected to be proficient in a number of operating systems, programming tools, and so on that I just don't have the luxury to be a snob about the tools I use.
This pervasive Apple hate has got so bad that my brothers, who are certainly not Apple fans, think this has gone beyond the absurd. They'll give me grief about my iPhone, saying how their Droid is better, and then talk about how the news talking about the seemingly poor sales of the iPhone 8 is a bunch of bullshit.
This bashing over the iPhone X "notch" is just over the top. Sure, someone can give some pros and cons on this, but claiming this as an example of Apple not being able to do design worth a damn any more is just a bit too much. Tone it down and I might actually take you seriously on the complaints on where Apple fucked something up.
I think Nuclear Power Plants still needs to cool down... This is quite often done using a stream or a water body as a heat sink. With the raising temperatures, I wonder how this will work if those cold sources are always above... say 60C / 140 F.
A few points in response.
- The concern is over increased frequency of heat waves with increased temperatures. Temperatures over 60C might happen at noon but it will cool off at night. Assuming that nuclear power is unavailable in those times because of the heat they will last perhaps a few hours at several times in the year. Not pleasant, of course, but that's an unlikely outcome as I'll get to in my next point...
- The UAE power plants currently under construction are on the shore, they have access to the ocean for cooling. Generally, outside the UAE, this should also be true. The ocean will never get that hot.
- The core temperature of these modern solid fuel reactors can reach 600C, a heat sink of even 60C will still allow production of power if perhaps less than the designed maximum.
- Fourth generation nuclear power plants operate at even higher temperatures (800C is common) and therefore can use air cooling even in 60C heat, no water needed. Again, the output may be less than maximum designed capacity but the reduction in power would be less than the current solid fuel reactors. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )
- Energy storage is possible for times of increased heat. Having storage available may be necessary to accommodate the unreliable nature of having wind and solar be part of the energy supply mix, and to accommodate the inability of water cooled reactors to shift output at the rate that demand shifts. This same storage would be available, assuming proper management, for heat waves.
- Even the "greenest of the green" utilities are not likely to abandon natural gas or fuel oil generation for emergencies. A modern gas turbine will operate at temperatures as high as 1500C, they will run just fine even with a 60C heat sink. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
- These heat waves are not going to come overnight. These heat waves are going to come, assuming they come at all, slowly over decades and therefore any place on Earth that would be subject to such heat will have plenty of time to build the infrastructure to deal with it. That might come in the forms I mentioned above or someone smarter than myself will think of even better solutions.
A quick Google search tell me that there are about 500,000 electric vehicles in the USA. Not bad, right? Well, there's about 300,000,000 ICE vehicles in the USA. The used market for electric cars is very very small by comparison. It's going to take a very long time before used electric cars get to be plentiful enough to compete with used ICE vehicles.
If California hadn't driven out all their nuclear power then perhaps they wouldn't have to rely on coal and natural gas so much.
Sure, using electric cars and coal fired electricity will quite likely reduce CO2 and other emissions considerably. Using electric cars and nuclear power would reduce the emissions problem even more.
I halfway agree with you here, this is a bad idea so long as their electricity comes primarily from fossil fuels. Shifting to nuclear power would solve that problem but the limitations of electric cars would remain.
That makes about as much sense as Larry the Cable Guy doing his comedy skit about his horse breaking a leg and having to shoot it, so now he has to fix the horse's leg and a gunshot wound.
Sure, let's nuke China. Now we have a hellhole of a nation that likes to threaten the West militarily and economically. Had we dropped nukes on them in the 1950s we'd have a *RADIOACTIVE* hellhole of a nation that likes to threaten the West militarily and economically.