* Posts by midgepad

280 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2020

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NASA to store pair of probes it's built but can’t send to target asteroids

midgepad

Re: Cheap

So having a steady stream of rather generic ready for the next opportunity might be approaching.

midgepad

Haynes Manual?

Mars Rovers, all models.

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

midgepad

Re: All your QWERTY belong to us...

Apple?

Mega-data platform worth half a billion will suck in info from family doctors

midgepad

Planning for their retirement?

This is a spectacularly bad idea.

Again.

And I don't believe a word of the Minister's assurances.

Again.

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

midgepad

Re: Unique keys

Strange, and unfamiliar, but dangerous if you succeeded.

You might just spare a thought for people trying to give each of you the intended treatments and management.

One might speculate on whether the refusal attributed to "the NHS computer" is just that, or something more local.

Microsoft's big bet on helium-3 fusion explained

midgepad

Ni

IIRC there is something odd about those elements at the bottom of the curve of binding energy, and supernovae, which converts much of the bottomest into the next-to-bottomest. Absorption of a particular temporarily abundant photon.

Also, knights say.

midgepad

A two stroke

fusion engine.

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

midgepad

Month

5 years

Microsoft has made Azure Linux generally available. Repeat, Azure Linux

midgepad

The distrust I still feel was

thoroughly earned last century.

Toyota's bungling of customer privacy is becoming a pattern

midgepad

...or finding

an officer of the company, current, ex, or future, in the EU or anywhere with relevant treaties with the EU.

Which includes some parts of the Caribbean and the American landmass.

The USA is a big place, perhaps big enough for all concerned.

midgepad

Their travel plans

might be influenced by it.

Of course Russia's ex-space boss doubts US set foot on the Moon

midgepad

They have...

A scheduled service to LEO or GEO, almost.

They have expertise and frequent practice in docking in orbit.

They have 2 well,-tested crew capsules, and one that'll probably work, one if which is known to work round beyond the Moon.

They have well-practiced propulsive landings.

They have the plans if the Apollo ascent stage.

They have much better mapping of masscons and the lunar surface.

They don't have a compelling reason to bodge that together into a minimum soonest mission. TMA-1 might bf there, but if so it has been for a million or ten years, and any waits well.

midgepad

KH11 repeat business

SR71 flights needed a lot more than the 1 aircraft and 2 crew. Tankers, AWACS no doubt, fighter assets for their exit points etc.

KH11 may be predictable, but it is also repeated, for months. And militarily, stopping your opponent doing something so it isn't observed is not without value.

If you were Spacex or ULA or the US DoD, would you not have a spare spacecraft or two - the next KH (we hatefer current model is) or that drone spsceplane, and s booster available for use in a day or so?

First attempt by Japan's ispace biz to land on Moon ends in awkward silence

midgepad

Space is hard

And so is the Moon

UK consortium bid for NHS data platform falls at first hurdle

midgepad

Old enough, yes

Old enough.

I've not heard ex-colleagues saying golden age, I have heard us saying saved, rescued, repaired.

Modernising Medical Careers was an impressive fuckup. I'd see sources for blaming Blair, or indeed Labour for it. It lead to Wueenslsnd's healthcare system being approximately fully recruited, and then a while later to there being a supply of spare ex-NHS executives offering themselves there, and being rejected.

And then there was the early chaos of the (Tory) Lansley plan.

Cardboard drones running open source flight software take off in Ukraine and beyond

midgepad

Re: costs less than $3,500 apiece

Your time?

Defunct comms link connected to nothing at a fire station – for 15 years

midgepad

A paper label

My small collection of machines had paper labels on them saying what they did.

Japanese outfit's private Moon mission enters Lunar orbit

midgepad

Well done

So far

Used EV car batteries find new life storing solar power in California

midgepad

The virtues* of electric vehicles are not driving this process

We don't have to have EVs.

We do, OTOH, have to stop having ICE vehicles.

Soon.

If you don't think EVs are any good, don't have one. Arrange not to need one. Or not, as you like.

* which are considerable

midgepad

Far less often

Note that the guarantee on the batteries is 8 years.

If you have a fan, and want this company to stay in business, bring it to IT now

midgepad

CO2

We breathe out 4% CO2.

It doesn't take noticeable extra effort to maintain that with an inspired tension of 1000 ppm (0.1%) rather than the 300ppm it should br or the 420 ppm it currently is outdoors.

Other factors account for feeling uncomfortable.

Core-JS chief complains open source is broken, no one will pay for it

midgepad

Libre

You don't do the washing up after someone else cooks, do you.

Free is an overloaded word in English.

You've taken Libre as gratuit.

Theres time for some prizes.

Not for you though.

Second Soyuz springs a leak, astronauts stuck on ISS for an extra month

midgepad

Soyuz,Proress

Is a Progress a Soyuz?

If not, how much commonality is there in those systems?

Spotted in the wild: Chimera – a Linux that isn't GNU/Linux

midgepad

Are we heading toward a converged Unix?

Or several Unices flying in close formation.

Labyrinth of 371 legacy systems hindered hospital's IT meltdown recovery

midgepad

The mess in the bucket.

From one class of users' perspective, the records centre around one patient, the one in front of us now.

Plain text and picture files work nicely, and can all go in one folder.

Automation is another matter, with assistance to writing prescriptions for instance, but even there, sending messages, and dropping a line of text into a file, may not be inferior.

Data for analysis might need to be centralised, but that can be done separately, or programs can pick out one record at a time and ask it questions.

Someone wants to add a new data type to the bucket, fine, provide the open sourced viewer for it.

FOSS could be an unintended victim of EU crusade to make software more secure

midgepad

A good for the community

So setting up a communal service for securing software may be a reasonable communal expense.

Anyone who doesn't choose to publish their source code to it can make alternative arrangements.

midgepad

Sales...

Then there must be some people cooking with it, insulating with it, or smoking like unfashionable chimneys.

Because there are substantially fewer people smoking, fewer smoking so much, and fewer dying of several of thd conditions caused, exacerbated, or contributed to by smoking.

tl;DR: Balls!

Surely you can't be serious: Airbus close to landing fully automated passenger jets

midgepad

Better ask if it can land an F18

On a carrier.

midgepad

V once IIRC

Iirc, a test pilot took a flight on a V1, and did not die, but I've not checked.

"Never"

Virgin Orbit doesn't

midgepad

Not

for a polar orbit.

midgepad

Sun-synch orbits

I've never quite understood sun-synchronous orbits, but isn't that how you get into one?

That NHS England patient data platform procurement, FDP, is live. And worth up to £480m

midgepad

Once more: unto the breach

Oh dear, here we go again.

This time it isn't even offering to make it a little easier or quicker to do medicine, nursing, etc.

Killing trees with lasers isn’t cool, says Epson. So why are inkjets any better?

midgepad

Photographers

Still like printing.

Lasers seem unlikely to ever do that job for us.

midgepad

Re: Windows & USB killed printers

I remember making an early Windows local machine printer the network printer.

Amused me. Also a lot cheaper than proper network printers.

Massive energy storage system goes online in UK

midgepad

Insulate Britain. And

Shut your oven door.

midgepad

Dynamotors, ancient screaming horror

I recall sitting in front of noisy valve radio sets which made EHT from 12V batteries by running a common axle which was a 12V motor at one end and a generator at the otter.

I recall there were big AC ones including ones which ran on 50Hz at one end and 60Hz at the other, separated by a very long DC cable.

But just spinning a big thing up without blowing steam into it would make a good stabiliser, even better if you want a gyroscope.

midgepad

Re: Decommissioning?

Demand is not fixed in time.

Also, every megawatt of electricity produced from the sun is a megawatt and a half of gas not burnt - it isn't cheap or unlimited and that will steadily bite more under assumptions independent of warming - and CO2 not yet added to the air.

Saving spare solar etc capacity - as it develops - by electrolysis and burning the result in those gas combjned cycle turbines may be worth doing to avoid wasting sunshine or piping gases to homes. Once it is spare, it is cheap.

midgepad

Re: Decommissioning?

Your assertion is that we have built every wind turbine and every solar panel that will ever be in place, and that there will be no tidal power.

Oh, and that fission will fizzle out and not be replaced either.

Could you show your workings for that, please?

midgepad

Winter

Perhaps we'll have an occasional week off work. Bad huh.

However, your arithmetic is wrong.

A daytime with no wind and no sun is unlikely.

The demand is elastic to a degree.

And while the wind may, the tide waits for no week.

midgepad

Re: Decommissioning?

Extinction is the externalised cost of the fossil fuel approach.

Cheap, right?

Watchdog warns UK health data platform could damage patients' trust

midgepad

Describing as health leaders

People who failed to gain the confidence of either patients - citizens - or the health professions seems unjustified.

They might drive, but are not followed.

Worried about your datacenter carbon footprint? Why not put it in orbit?

midgepad

Name a satellite deorbited from

Geosynch orbit.

midgepad

LOX/H2

Tell us how much CO2 that produces.

Cygnus cargo ship makes it to ISS with blanketed solar panel

midgepad

Down a chute.

Launches I think 6 at a go

Look! Up in the sky! Proof of concept for satellites beaming energy to Earth!

midgepad

After we ban crypto mining in the Earth's atmosphere ...

... a obvious use for large amounts of power in orbit, which needn't be GEO, arises.

Moves power generation and heat dissipation off Earth, apparently a market exists to fund the lift.

midgepad

GEO is

a lot higher.

40 000km IIRC

Open source's totally non-secret weapon big tech dares not use: Staying relevant

midgepad

Nobody can prevent you

Is the argument.

Your abilities and inclinations are no more and no less a factor than in other tasks.

midgepad

A digression, but

FWIW the bits I use work fine, thank you.

NASA details totally doable, not science fiction plan for sending Mars rocks to Earth

midgepad

Nasa landed in reverse in 1969

and take off again,

And a few times more.

And with a more delicate and difficult payload.

Batteries with a 3 year shelf life are no trouble, even without panels or Pu.

The article mentions the Mars return vehicle in orbit, awaiting rendezvous with the Mars to orbit launcher.

You should think better, rant less.

No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them

midgepad

Oh no ...

It isn't!!!

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