Posts by LogicGate 832 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Nov 2020
And this is why we can not have nice things.
I used to be exited about SpaceX, finally seeing a future in space exploration and utilization.
Then Elon self radicalized on drugs and yes-men, and now the millstone of the AI Bubble has been firmy attaced to SpaceX.
And as a result I can neither have space exploration nor a decent new PC where I can pretend to explore space.
Bummer
Valid points, but there is no way that any kind of vehicle speed will save the astronauts.
A rocket explosion tends to be a binary event: Everything is good changes into everything is bad at the blink of an eye.
If you stand next to the pad at this moment, then even an MRAP will have a "BAD DAY" (TM)
However, if you are at any distance from the event, then an MRAP can survive the distance being much shorter than a CRAP (see below).
Thus, if my statistics are correct, then this is a situation where one would rather have armor than speed.
A James-bond style bunker tunnell with a seats only monorail might be the best solution though.
I am pretty sure that an MRAP provides more protection than a shoddily built SUV no matter where the problem comes from. Prematurely discarded spacecraft components will much more easily fall through a large sloping windshield than throuh a roof that is "only" shrapnel-proof.
Tesla is circling the drain and Space Karen is doing anything to keep it relevant... ..at the cost of SpaceX.
My thoughts exactly!
While the movie creators may have tried to illustrate a kind of dystopian travel experience (seeing that everything else is shown as maximally inshittificated, modern day airlines have managed to make the 5th element air transportation seem very idyllic.
"Getting on board with 2 litres of water in your hand luggage is a good idea"
However, since 9.11 and TSA, purchasing 2 liters of water at the airport after having gone through the security check costs approximately as much as upgrading to first class.
For some strange reason, airports have not made it a priority to update screening hardware to differentiate between consumable liquids and two component liquid explosives.
It was hard to build a society without any card carrying officials, so they (the allies plus what was left of non Nazi Germany) had to limit themselves to trying to get rid of the upper echelon / the worst of the worst. At the same time, in the east, GESTAPO basically morphed directly into the STASI with very few changes in personell.
Note that in order to be able to have any kind of responsible job in Nazi Germany, you had to join the party and get a Parteibuch. Quite a few joined out of convenience.
Hence, an equivalent clean sweep in the US would need not only to toss the whole republican party out of public office, but also toss out EVERY 2020 republican voter.
It must be mentioned that the Trump got a higher percentage of US vots in 2020 than Hitler ever did in Germany, and US Americans have spent the last 85 years bashing all Germans for that event.
Many moons ago, I had a class at the Uni where (numerical analysis?) "homework" was handed out on floppy disks. These contained a small program which presented tasks and then gave us 3 shots at solving these. The results were graded by amount of tasks solved with 1 to 3 tries, and tasks not solved.
Being wary of problems with strange floppy disks, the first thing I did was to run chkdisk.
This found and fixed disk errors, so I congratulated myself for having dodged that bullet., until I tried to run the program, which promptly failed.
I found out later that, in order to prevent disk multiplication, the disk had been equipped with disk errors which the program needed to see before it was run.
Having optained fresh working disks, a group of us sat down and started solving the identical tasks as a group, making sure that not a single stundent needed more than 2 tries for any task...
You are misunderstanding the article.
What reality reflects is that shoddy workmanship and a motorcade of armored vehicles will damage the sealant on a reflecting pool much more easily than an invisible man with a box cutter.
What reality reflects is that bombing nations that have potential control of two narrow passages where much of the world's oil has to pass through may lead to this potential control lead become real control.
What reality reflects is that when you ignore international deals and start trade-wars with your closest allies, because this is easier than trade wars with your adversaries, then this may alienate your allies.
What reality reflects is that cutting back on disease prevention may result in more diseases.
All of these items are today consideres leftist. The problem is not the reality, the problem is that the right wing moronocracy has left reality so far behind that everything that does not involve the gargling of the orange balls has become "leftist".
"$300 billion to burn through a large proportion the West's inventories of tanks, missiles, artillery pieces and shells does not seem like money well spent IMO, especially as Russia continues to advance on the battlefield with just 3 of the 9 fortress cities in the Donbas fortress belt left under Ukrainian control."
$300 billion to burn through all of Russia's ridiculously large inventory of military hardware and "military age" males at the cost of not a single Nato soldier?
A bargain! The Trump one week SMO in Iran has cost more without accounting for world economic losses.
The US has tried to uphold the doctrine of the two war capability, meaning that they have tried to be capable of stopping BOTH Russia and CHINA at the same time.
With much of the rRussian threat to Nato being bled out in Ukraine, this shoud mean more capabilities available for China..
..Unless somebody decides to blow through most of the available strategic inventory on trying to get a deal that is significantly worse than one tore up in 2015..
Poland?
The Baltic states?
Finland?
Northern Norway?
All places that have has Soviet boots on the ground at some point in time, which according to Putin means that they belong to Russia.
All Nato members, which means that an attack on them is an attack on you.
Also: The UK is the only Nato nation that has been attacked by Russia by means of chemical warfare.
> “It's just a vast amount of sort of thrown away compute and recycling is a terrible option for most of these smartphones.”
Which is why Google is nagging me about the battery in my 6a and offering discounts on a new phone.
Building phones that can last would be a better solution than figuring out ways to second-life the phone after screen or battery stops working.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
"One of the most critical steps towards Gleichschaltung of German society was the introduction of the "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda" under Joseph Goebbels in March 1933 and the subsequent steps the Propaganda Ministry took to assume complete control of the press and all means of social communication. This included oversight of newspapers, magazines, films, books, public meetings and ceremonies, foreign press relations, theater, art and music, radio, and television."
Keep in mind that Hitler nerver won a popular vote, and that the rest of the world (including Austria) has sepent the last 80+ years bashing the Germans for their (parent's and grandparent's) choices.
The article mentions kids as young as 14 years old performing the crimes, and that the ones performing the crimes often only get a small amount of the ill gotten goods.
The logical conclusion is that there is somebody else behind it all, and that these abuse both the elderly that are being robbed and the young and misled that do the footwork.
This does not mean that the kid perpetrators should get off with just a slap on the hand.
As I have posted before, If a European military purchases a stockpile of 100.000 modern combat drones, in half a year they will have a stockpile of 100.000 obsolete combat drones.
The best thing to do today is to build up an industrial base that can churn out combat drones at a high pace, send these to Ukraine in exchange for feedback and continuously improve the combat drones that the national industrial base can produce. Should the nation itself then have s sudden need for combat drones beyond what is used in training and exersizes, then the production can be increased and redirected.
At some later point, when the technology has matured and the evolution is slowing down, one can concider stockpiles. Now is not the time.
"thing with Americans and guns goes back, quite literally, to the first shot of the revolution"
..And this is supposed to be a long time?
I live in a village that can trace it's written history to 796 AC, and that does not count for very much.
Ameriucans and Guns is just a passing fad...
..The way things are going, US Americans may actually themselves be a passing fad.
For that to work, a group can only be as far away from each other as the room is large. Otherwise the straggler will be smacked into a wall.
Still having actors stand in action poses in a transforming room is better entertainment then having the actors boldly sit in well used couches and plugging in USB-Z -cables into a matching sockets in the back of their skulls.
edít: spelling
Lucky Ducky.
For me step 1 will be to upgrade to a PC that is capable of running the resolutions required. Sadly covid, supply chain shortages, cryptomining, AI GPU and RAM gobbling and now the Trump-Recession conspire to prevent me from ever upgrading.
AI is great for creating content that looks correct, but does not need to be correct.
For example, AI can use geophysical map data and low resolution satelite images to create realistic looking, but incorrect high detail sceneries that are great for flight simulators.
Do NOT use AI generated content in court
VR is good when the user experience does not involve large body movements. While VR DOOM will have you run into your living-room walls and furniture, a VR flightsim truly make you feel like you are SITTING in the cockpit. (add a motion chair if you have the liquidity).
The only logical conclusion is that the last two computing bubbles (three if you consider VR gaining from 3d TV technology)have seen the IT industry spending a gazillion of liquidity to unwittingly improve the flightsim-experience.
I suspect that if the Chinese state started to enforce Microsoft licencing fees (paid TO Microsoft), then a lot of Chinese users would switch away from Microsoft software very quickly.
(same for Adobe etc.)
Many moons ago I took the bus across the Andes from Santiago de Chile to Mendosa in Argentina.
Chile at the time had one thing going for it: The police was not corrupt (this might still be the case, I do not know)
At the border, the bus was driven into a building for inspection. Leaning against a sign saying that in Argentina it was forbidden to bribe the police, the border guard held out a paper cup and all passenger of the bus dropped in what they could spare in change.
The inspection thus correctly completed, everybody was allowed to enter the bus, and the trip continued.
On a side note;
Interestingly, the social system / safety mesh in Chile at the time consisted of having to hand over change to poor people wherever you saw them.
Stop at a red light? Pay the guy with the dirty rag.
Park your car along the road: Pay the guy that "owned" that stretch of road so that he would "protect" your car from getting scratched in your absence.
And so it went, with a new scheme for every situation.
"Soon, that alone might get you arrested just about anywhere."
As a non-white US american citicen, you ar emost likely to be arrested in the USofA.
...And put in a concentration camp, with little to no food or medical care, separated from your family...
...And then deported to a death-camp in some southern dictatorship...
...By which time your paperwork will have been lost, so there will be no way out.
And the NRA will be standing by, fighting for the 4th amendment so that they will be ready and able to rise up as an organized militia should the US democracy ever be under threat.
"What you need is an inexpensive turboprop plane"
The problem with all slower platforms is that by the time you have intercepted your target it may already be too late, or the next target may just have shown up on the radar 200 km in the other direction.
Speed has a value in such a situation.
Also, simple ammunition will not stop if it misses the target, and may end up doing quite a bit of damage.
Smart munition with self destruction etc is not cheap, so the savings vs. a lower cost guided missile may not be that great.
Finally, I suspect that mass manufacture may bring the cost of these missiles down substantially. Build few and each item is gold plated.
"The use of tools such as Blender to create the 3D models will also help to keep things accessible in years to come."
Blender, sketchup and other mesh based packages are unsuited for engineering models. The 3d model should be created and stored in a format that supports parametric surfaces (for example nurbs). .step would do so but lose inter-model relations. There may be more modern interchange formats that preserve more information, but the desired format is certainly not .blend.
The Norwegian mass murderer some years ago had prepared a press folder with images of himself dressed up as some sort of fantasy commando in a wetsuit.
Sadly, the dimwits in the press fell for it and published these pictures rather than the most embarrasing pictures they could find on his aunts social media account. I am still angry about this.
Inmate #1 posting on "Lies Social" about his "Big Buttful of Bill" while the "Traitor Act" is finally being dismantled together with the "Department of Homelander Insecurity", the Theater of Security Agency and InCell Eggshaped-agents are fired and investigated. All the while, the Banana Republic(an) party explains that they had nothing to do with the current debacle.
