Posts by Sane

Bad news: Earth is not going to be walloped by asteroid 2006 QV89. Good news: Boffins have lost sight of it, so all hope is not yet lost

We looked really hard...

...to see where it would have to be in order for it to deliver a September smack and we saw nothing.

Great. Good. Er, did you check August, October, etc?

Remember that crypto-exchange boss who mysteriously died after his customers' coins disappeared? Of course he totally stole them

Re: Obligatory Hitchhiker's Guide

I get the reference but I wonder if the illustrious Mr Adams* might have found inspiration for that line elsewhere. I remember listening to Monty Python's Instant Record Collection a year or two before H2G2 had its first run on the radio. I'm sure I remember a point in the recording at which one of the Pythons (can't remember which) describes John Cleese as "spending a year dead on Mars for tax reasons".

*Had the good fortune to meet him once and have nothing but admiration for the man. Not trying to take anything away from him now. Just curious. Then again, great minds, etc...

Come to think of it, my memory might be just a tad hazy after all this time. Maybe Adams was first with the gag...

Motorised robo-coolbox biz Starship makes lunchtime pitch to campus-dwellers

Local MP 1 - Delivery Bot 0 (first leg)

For a couple of years, until a few months ago, they were a common sight in my London neighbourhood. Now the trial is over, they have completely disappeared. I miss 'em, but my local MP might not. One balmy evening last summer, he was enjoying a refreshing sherbet outside my local watering hole just as one of the little bots went trundling by. Perhaps feeling threatened by the menacing whirr of its 6mph approach, he tipped the poor thing over with his foot, which led to a somewhat emotional exchange between the bot's minder and said MP. No doubt the next generation of bots will be equipped with tasers. As will the next generation of MPs, probably.

Bring on delivery bot 2.0!

Inviting nearby exoplanet revealed as radiation-baked hell

First!

"Proxima Centauri became a candidate for exploration, colonisation and/or alien investigation in 2016, when its second planet - Proxima Centauri b - was spotted..."

Proxima b is the first (and so far only) planet discovered to be orbiting Proxima Centauri. The designation 'b' is always given to the first planet discovered in a system. The parent star is considered 'a'.

Apologies for the pedantry.

No sh*t, Sherlock! Bloke suspected of swallowing drug stash keeps colon schtum for 22 DAYS

They're waiting for him to log in.

Juno's July fly-by gave NASA a close-up of the Great Red Spot

Agreed. And way of converting that value to Vulture-ese would have been even nicer.

Mine's the one with the adult badger scales in the pocket.

Shazam! Apple chucks £300m at Brit what's-that-song app – report

Re: Ah well

Used Shazam to ID a piece of classical music on Radio 3 just last week. Not sure how long it’s been into Francis Poulenc and chums but there you go.

Now I’m wondering just how obscure you can go and still get a result. Must try and find some Tuvan throat music later.

From Vega with love: Pegasus interstellar asteroid's next stop

Set the controls for the heart of... no, no, not this sun, that one over there

I still enjoy listening to Oumuamua once in a while. It is remarkable how well the first half has survived its extraordinarily long journey, probably because it is indeed metal rich. Just a shame it doesn't have an Interstellar Overdrive.

Bees bring down US stealth fighter

It used to be the F15 that was nicknamed 'the hangar queen'.

Eye of Sauron-themed trojan targets Russia, Sweden

I'm sure it's all true. It has a certain ring to it.

They Came From Beyond Our Galaxy And Landed In The Ice!

Imagine travelling nine billion light years, zipping right through most obstacles in your path, only to slip up on some boffin's carefully lain banana skin.

I assume it was a banana skin. That's what I would have used.

Here's a great idea: Let's make a gun that looks like a mobile phone

Top Gear

Last time I was in the States I was on a road trip in Nevada. I pulled into a gas station, started filling the tank and noticed the three-line neon sign in the window. The first line read, "Guns." I thought, yep, this is the US. The second line read, "Ammo," and I thought you may as well. No point having one without the other. The third line read, "Alcohol," and suddenly everything made sense.

Windows 10 will now automatically download and install on PCs

Re: You. Will. Upgrade. You Will. Upgrade

Yeah but on this point the cybermen are on our side.

They keep repeating, "Delete! Delete! Delete!"

How to help a user who can't find the Start button or the keyboard?

I remember hearing one half of an IT support call. I was visiting a friend who happened to be the technical editor of a computer magazine. His father, a doctor who had very little computer experience - this was circa 1990 - called his son, because he'd encountered a problem. This is roughly what I head.

"Hi Dad, what's up? Say again? The mouse pointer doesn't go all the way up the screen? Okay, lift up your mouse. Move it towards you. Right, now put it back on the mouse mat. Try moving the pointer now. All good? No problem. See ya."

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Star Wars Special Editions

If the author has made his peace with the special editions; good for him. But Star Wars picked up more than a fistful of Oscars and it's worth remembering why. One was for special visual effects. John Dykstra's ILM invented motion control, which led to those great space battle effects. Many of these shots were replaced by CGI in the special editions. Another Oscar was awarded for the film's intense, fast-paced editing, which was cutting-edge back then. The padding of scenes with extra shots diminishes this in the SE. John Williams's score is muddied in the SE. Many of John Mollo's Oscar -winning creature designs are replaced entirely with CGI in the SE. I could go on.

Love the SEs all you like, but not letting us remember the originals for the achievements they were is inexcusable revisionism. There's no official widescreen version of the unaltered originals that doesn't suffer from a dodgy colour palette, motion smear and aliasing. The amount of work fans have had to do, to try to create such version, is incredible. And it shouldn't have ben necessary.

When an artist creates something, a book, a piece of music or a film, at that moment, the artist's vision stops being the definition of what that thing is. How the work is received and perceived becomes part of its definition. The originals deserve to be preserved.

P.S. I own the SEs (Christmas present). I do watch 'em. I love the extras. Shame about the colours and the contrast levels. And the SE-y bits.

Music lovers move to block Phil Collins' rebirth

Okay, the story made me chuckle, but...

Full disclosure: I still love Phil's often devilish Genesis drumming (and his frontman work with the band up until 1980-ish). Liked some of what he did with Brand X, too. I was never keen on his solo/pop-ier stuff but so what?

Point being, I do think he takes a lot of stick for no good reason. Some people seem to think he's the effing Antichrist.

The stars of jazz never had their age held against them when their genre ruled. Nor did they have popularity held against them. However, any musician who achieved success in the era of pop and rock must, it seems, run a gauntlet of derision and hate if they have the temerity to come out of the woodwork once they've passed some arbitrary age. I don't think that's fair and I don't think it's healthy.

Like his music or not, Collins was not manufactured; he was and remains a genuinely talented musician, whether or not anyone finds his music to their tastes. So let his next work stand or fall on its merits.

(Yeah, the eighties were awful in every way but at least I'll always have Seconds Out.)

Electrons ride huge plasma tubes above Earth

Thank goodness

That is inspired.

Now the only proper thing to do is to raise this glass in salute.