Posts by Neurons for Kryton

US standards body proposes atomic clocks in lunar orbit to keep Moon time

If implemented, NASA won't be using it anytime soon. China however will be saying, 'Thanks for all the fish !'

UK chemicals multinational to build hydrogen 'gigafactory'

Re: Quick charging

Hydrogen is feasible! Lithium is poised to be the next ecological global pollutant. It's one of those chemicals which is out of sight, out of mind to most individuals. A quick search on the web reveals the massive scale of its pollution effects on the land, water supplies and marine environments in the countries which are currently producing the metal. When electric vehicles start to become a mainstream (and not a niche form as today) of transportation, the problems of its potential systemic pollution effects will be felt everywhere. Hydrogen gas however is relatively easy and clean to produce (especially in the UK- we're surrounded by the stuff - sea water!) And can be distributed by the use of the existing fuel station network - no need to start excavating a humongous series of holes in the road network which already suffers from a form of 'pothole fever' caused by incessant road works. Also remember that hydrogen can generate energy for automotive purposes in 2 major ways - fuel cells and modified IC engines - Top Gear many years ago demonstrated a hydrogen powered Ford Fiesta. Battery powered electric vehicles are just the political flavour of today.

Nothing says 2022 quite like this remote-controlled machine gun drone

These things...

These things seem to be crawling out of the development wood work from every direction. One that caught my eye was a Taser Drone from Axon. Luckily the project seems to have been closed down because of ethics issues - https://investor.axon.com/2022-06-02-Axon-Announces-TASER-Drone-Development-to-Address-Mass-Shootings

Google calculates Pi to 100 trillion digits

They should try something more impressive...

Why doesn't Google try something more impressive like that tetration monster 'Grahams Number' - wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham's_number

Ron Graham appeared on one of the old BBC Horizon programs on the subject of infinity - highly interesting.

Logitech's MX Mechanical keyboard, Master 3S mouse

Not too impressed by all the hype and expense of the multitude of mechanical keyboards out there. Best 2 keyboards I've come across so far are the Thinkpad X1 carbon (4th gen) and surprisingly the Dell KB216 quiet key - both being extremely accurate to type on even on your off days when fingers and brain don't quite link up. All in all it's down to personal preference and what you (or someone else !) Wants to extract from your wallet.

Beijing needs the ability to 'destroy' Starlink, say Chinese researchers

EMP them !

Most of the comments presume China would blow Elon's orbiting handiwork up. Why not instead place a rather large satellite, let's call it a space station - they're already constructing these!, equipped with a huge array of solar panels (or a small reactor), a very large bank of super capacitors and some ginormous coil assembly's - hey presto a steerable EMP weapons platform and no pesky satellite debris!

Please pay for parking – CMOS batteries don't buy themselves

Re: For want of a battery

How much - £7.50 !

Farnell's £0.369 each + VAT each - ok min buy is 10+ and min order of about £40 (normally spend more than that though) - however you get a branded Panasonic battery and not some cheap and nasty made somewhere in the backwoods of beyond !

https://uk.farnell.com/panasonic-electronic-components/cr-2032-bn/cell-lithium-cr2032-220mah-3v/dp/5219590?st=2032

Richard Branson uses two planes to make 170km round trip

The X-15 - a proper space plane...

Don't forget what Branson achieved has to be put into perspective with the X-15 - flight 91 flown by Joe Walker achieving an altitude of 67 miles in August 1963 - 58 years ago !

NASA X-15 aniversary celebration - https://history.nasa.gov/x15conf/log.html

Also have a good read of one of NASA's excellent collection of e-books - http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/601242main_X15ExtendingFrontiersFlight-ebook.pdf

UK finally signs off on Square Kilometre Array Observatory Convention

Can’t see the data for the trees...

Yet another over the top pi**ing contest multi-govt project - 8.8 terabyte of data per second from each dish x 130,000 of the beggars - how much of this data is actually going to be professionally analysed/used ? Surely it would be better to go for lower amount of quality based data rather than going for an all out scatter gun approach and trying to grab all the information in the observable universe. Heck, for the humongous amount of money potentially to be spent on this project (think hardware, data management, staff, logistic and political costs), what about about being truly forward thinking and setting up a radio dish array on a smaller scale on the far side of the moon as has been proposed for a while - probably would work out cheaper and get proper research quality data on a useable scale - better get Elon Musk in on the job !

Tim Berners-Lee asks everyone to do new biz a Solid and let him have another crack at fixing the Web's privacy

More simples...

Dorthy (double) clicks her heels together saying there's no place like my home screen. Suddenly Google, Facebook, Windows 10 et all, disappear in a puff of green smoke and normality returns back to Kansas !

Good luck pitching a tent on exoplanet WASP-76b, the bloody raindrops here are made out of molten iron

Riddick...

...A triple max-prison,

A no daylight slam,

Cremetoria...