Posts by midgepad

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

The distrust I still feel was

thoroughly earned last century.

Toyota's bungling of customer privacy is becoming a pattern

...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.

Their travel plans

might be influenced by it.

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

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.

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

Space is hard

And so is the Moon

UK consortium bid for NHS data platform falls at first hurdle

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

Re: costs less than $3,500 apiece

Your time?

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

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

Well done

So far

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Better ask if it can land an F18

On a carrier.

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

Not

for a polar orbit.

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

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?

Photographers

Still like printing.

Lasers seem unlikely to ever do that job for us.

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

Insulate Britain. And

Shut your oven door.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Re: Decommissioning?

Extinction is the externalised cost of the fossil fuel approach.

Cheap, right?

Watchdog warns UK health data platform could damage patients' trust

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?

Name a satellite deorbited from

Geosynch orbit.

LOX/H2

Tell us how much CO2 that produces.

Cygnus cargo ship makes it to ISS with blanketed solar panel

Down a chute.

Launches I think 6 at a go

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

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.

GEO is

a lot higher.

40 000km IIRC

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

Nobody can prevent you

Is the argument.

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

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

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

Oh no ...

It isn't!!!

50% of Limeys*

don't have a religious component to it.

I don't mean Xiand, I mean the whole range of gods and whatnot.

So let's go with the winter solstice, which demonstrably happens.

* lemons were known to be more effective - later explained by their higher content of vitamin C, but at the time Scurvy went out of fashion England/Britain didn't have any friends among the many places that grew lots of lemons.

So, limes.

They do go well with rum though

Juno what? Jovian moon Europa is looking rugged

CHON

With traces of, indeed, sulphur etc, is the basic recipe.

The Martian Way, by

Isaac Asimov.

I'm not sure we've seen the icebergs yet, but they might be there.

No, working in IT does not mean you can fix anything with a soldering iron

Re: Customer pushback

Even if you don't rely on aerobraking for any of the slowing down, you are climbing up the solar gravity well, so you won't need half the fuel at the far end.

You also have a much lighter ship to slow down than you started boosting from the vicinity of Earth.

One reason why Venus is so hard.

Post-Brexit 'science superpower' UK still hasn't appointed a science minister

Conspicuously didnt

work.

Surprising no detached observer.

Re: IMF

You vote for an MP.

In practice all of them stand on a Party prospectus.

Public speaking

Is a core role in the job she has sought and obtained.

It is an important job.

There are other jobs, in fact all other jobs are not it.

We are not unreasonable in criticising her if she lacks a required ability, facility, skill, capability, or inclination ... and takes that job.

Update your Tesla now before the windows put your fingers in a pinch

I've had Br Leyland cars with

lighting by Lucas.

Don't tell me that story.

Joe Lucas: Prince of Darkness.