Posts by LogicGate

Ship abandoned off Alaska after electric cars on board catch fire

Re: Tesla that burned so hot, it melted part of the road

https://youtu.be/0xo8Zq-1SpE?si=9eekc7wDN7AYQyDt&t=47

-A bit of youth sentiment, parts of which have not aged well..

Techies thought outside the box. Then the boss decided to take the box away

Re: Shredder

I had a sign saying "Suggestions, vacation requests and salary increase propositions"..

UK 'extremely dependent' on US for space security

Re: Good article

The bigger question, seeing recent history, is: Will the UK become a reliable partner again?

Re: Good article

Oh, he wanted them to bring guns (for use after the rally), but the secret service would not allow it.

Trump wants to fire quarter of NASA budget into black hole – and not in a good way

Re: Aeronautics and Space

fun fact: Even the Germans were often using NACA airfoils in their designs.

Re: What was .... *ponder* ...

"A tiny space agency with no ability to self launch anything into orbit."

-A tiny aeronautics agency, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Advisory_Committee_for_Aeronautics

Cancelling the already underfunded aviation-projects of NASA is also a big mistake.

Parts of aviation (nope, not the airliners, but in some years the commuters) are already transitioning to electric flight, and there are good reasons to do so which have nothing to do with "just stop oil".

This is an area where "blue sky" research performed now can save years of time and wads of cash in the future.

However, it is not unsurprising, since petty vengeance seems to be the secondary goal of this administrations after the first directive, which is to transfer as much wealth and power as possible inot one#s private little hands.

Liz Warren, Trump admin agree on something: Army should have right to repair

Unless the plastic clip requires structural integrity. The rule of thumb is that you can expect the printed part to only have 30% of the strength of thesame part in the same plastic, but injection molded.

Depending on the printer and the material used, the mileage may vary, but I would be very hesitant to sign the printed part off as flightworthy.

Only one thing is squaddy proof-

It is a sphere of surface hardened steel, 2 m in diameter. However, the squaddy will then manage to loose it.

(A squaddy fully capable of loosing a MBT)

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Re: Phonetic Alphabets

Yep, and the O-Model would have been Otto

Re: It's a wise dwarf ...

That title sounds a lot like "Adventures in Accounting - Volume 7" of which there is now only one known example left diskwide.

Re: I was called in ...

"There's a lot to be said for optocouplers"

Yep, but sadly three of the words are "Weight", "Cost" and "Complexity".

Still, they do solve many issues, and are often worth the investment later on.

Re: Phonetic Alphabets

You know the Nato code, which is also instructed for modern day aircraft communications.

Name based codes tended to be national, which is why the BF 109-E used to be called an Emil and not an Echo.

Europe fires up beefier booster for Ariane 6 and Vega-C

Personally I hoped for a second that they were planning to launch actual biomass.

If this had been the case, I would volunteer (voluntell) 3 specific pieces of biomass which would do much better in orbit than they are currently doing on earth. Maybe if we let it be known that the rocket contains hamberders, fertile white women and and an inviting looking lazy-boy....?

Trump blinks: 'Substantially' lower China tariffs promised

"The West Wank"?

20 years on, DART still a masterclass in how not to rendezvous in orbit

Acronym failure

I blame the acronym.

By naming the project DART, there was no way there would not be a forceful impact in the end.

With a better acronym, the mission would have progressed perfectly. May I humbly suggest:

Efficient

Maneuvering

By

Remote

Autonomous

Coupling

Effector

Static electricity can be shockingly funny, but the joke's over when a rack goes dark

Re: Shocking experience

I believe that that one was originally invented in 1837 by a Welch farmer, who was using the lower intestine of a sheep.

In 1842 the invention was then improved upon by an Englishman (Mr. James Tuddly Condom), who figured out that it was possible to dispose of the rest of the sheep.

Re: Shocking experience

Well, that is basically what he did, using his "third leg".

Joke aside: The goal of the exersize was to electrostatically charge him, and use his hair as a visible charge indicator. For that purpose, his rubber sneakers served as insulators (as would rubber in other areas also have, but there is such a thing as being too prepared).

Adding a grounded strap would have negated the whole experiment.

Re: Shocking experience

I may have told this one before, but here goes anyway:

Many many moons ago, our physics class was given a somewhat free access to the various items of demonstration hardware and told to pick one, figure out the physics and demonstrate to class.

One classmate picked the static charge generator.

When time came for his demonstration he was in front of the class and proudly turning the handle with one hand, holding on to the metal sphere with the other, and his hair was standing out nicely.

Then suddenly an "eep" was emitted, his eyes rolled up, and he collapsed behind the desk.

When he came to after a while he explained as follows.

1: The desk on which the generator had been operated was a conductive steel desk.

2: He had been wearing boxers that day, and his "fuse" had somehow found it's way out beyond the protective cotton.

3: He was a young man comitted to style, so instead of using a zipper, his jeans were buttoned with a row of nice and conductive brass buttons, agains which his "fuse" had been resting.

4: In order to achieve maximum hair-effect, he had been turning the handle of the apparatus with vigor, resulting in a full body swinging motion that ended with one of the aforementioned brass buttons touching the steel desk, completing the circuit.

Apparently the fuse did not blow completely, but it was a physics demonstration that no one in class was eager to duplicate.

Tech tariff turmoil continues as Trump admin exempts some electronics, then promises to bring taxes back

Re: What’s it gunna be America?

Why not have them all?!

Cue the much over used meme video

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

And Porn-Stars

Re: Econ 101

"Oddly in socialist, and especially communist, countries the 'fair' distribution of wealth seems to be amongst the elite and absolutely no-one else."

Let me introduce you to a Mr Elon Musk.. You may have heard of him before:

https://engaging-data.com/how-rich-is-elon-musk/

Re: Liberals

That is not the claim of the parent post. They VERY specifically made these claims about Marx. If guilt by followers was possible, then the Donald should be in jail now for Jan. 6. Acording to MAGA thinking this is not a thing.

Re: Suez Canal

"the thanks the US is getting for doing that is pretty much zero"

Ok, since you and your administration feel under-appreciated and this hurts your snow flake feelings, let me take one for the team and thank you.

Thank you USA for spending the last 80 years fucking up in the middle east so that you could fuel your economy on cheap oil (remember that bit that you continuously complain about the Germans doing), while leaving Europe to suffer from the resulting becklash of refugees and terrorism.l We truly appreciate your effort.

Re: Liberals

"Note that Liberals are interesting people like Marx, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Maduro and so on. These are people who fight for the liberty to tell you what to think and do. If you think Liberalism is some kind of utopia, then you still have much to learn about politics."

Juist out of curiosity, can you please reference where and when Marx fought for the liberty to tell you what to think and do?

Isar’s first orbital rocket crashes into sea – CEO calls it a 'great success'

Cutting the livestream before impact may have been a precaution just in case someone was about to get injured or killed.

This would give them the option of handing over all footage to the investigating authorities if this was the case, or publish with a delay if all was well.

Livestreaming someone's death would result in serious backlash, and this was most likely discussed and decided upon beforehand.

Re: Miura 1

I am aware that sounding rockets are fairly normal. What I tried to convey, was that for all intents and purposes, the spanish launch was just another sounding rocket.

A crane is built with a safety factor of 10. The crane is expected to continue to operate safely even if maintenance is lacking.

An aircraft is built with a safety factor of 1.5. The aircraft is expected to be operated regularily, but by professionals and with constantz maintenance.

A rocket suffers under the rocket equation. m.payload/m.structure is very low.

I am not sure what the safety factor for a rocket is. I expect it to vary by mission/ hazard level. However, a rocket designed to 1.5 is, in theory lifting 50% too much structure.

Re: Miura 1

From the liked Wikipedia article, first sentence:

"Miura 1 (previously called Arion 1 is a >>>suborbital<<< recoverable launch vehicle"

The Spectrum is designed for orbital insertions.

On a side note: Andöya has been launching Nike-Orion sub-orbital sounding rockets for many decades

He founded a private venture rocket company. He cannot be anything but an optimist.

Q: What is the fastest way to make a small fortune in the aerospace industry?

A: You start with a large one!

Rocket science is relatively easy. Rocket engineering is HARD. Rocket plumbing is extremely so.

A good rocket will, by design, operate all systems and components to the very limit of their capability. At these limits, mathematical modelling can only get you a certain amount of the way. Hardware testing becomes unavoidable. Failures will be unavoidable until you have enough data to verify or tweak your models. Padding is added to items that, were designed too marginally. Items that appear to have too large margins can be noted for future addition of lightness.

(One of my engineering profs once noted (tongue in cheek) that if you go to an aircraft crash site and find a component that is bigger than 30 cm, then this part was over engineered and in need for optimisation)

The alternative is the NASA-SSL-approach, where years and years are wasted optimizing and veryfying all mathematical models. And how are these models tested? By putting individual components into a lab and testing them. ..But is the lab test correct? Can the lab recreate the exact flight conditions? Sometimes the most sensible solution is to light the candle can collect as much data as is physically possible.

ISA (and SpaceX) is not NEW space. This is OLD space. Look into how many rockets exploded up to the point where Apollo could head for the moon. What it is not, is MIDDLE AGED space with a bit too much flab around the middle and a sneaking suspicion about it's own mortality.

EL REG likes to be snarky, but it is better if the snarkiness is applied correctly to things that the EL Reg hack understands.

As for now, Europe needs US-free space access, and having more options than Arianespace is a GOOD thing, even if getting there may kill some poor innocent codfish.

Edit: Würstfinger

TSMC's US builds won't make America great at chips again, says ex-Intel boss Gelsinger

Re: Leadership comes from *technical* leadership

But you DID get blue passports and Pint marks, so all is not lost.

UK's first permanent facial recognition cameras installed in South London

Re: Wrong question

"China's incarceration rate is lower than the UK's."

Do those numbers include secret consentration camps for minorities?

NASA's inbox goes orbital after email mishap spams entire space industry

Re: If only..

but..but... -Creatively misunderstanding can be so much fun!

Ex-US Cyber Command chief: Europe and 5 Eyes can't fully replicate US intel

Five Eyes:

Five nations, each only keeping one eye on the stuff that matters..

Earth's atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats

Re: Starlink = Starcrash!

Spaceballs!

Want to play billionaire for a day? This app lets you rent your own armed goon squad

Re: Feed Your Ego for a Fee

The son of a friend of mine was sent for a year to a french school in a scandinavian country (it is complicated).

There he became close friends with two classmates who were both aristocrats in an african country. Both guys were heavily pigmented and MASSIVE.

This group of 3 would roam the streets of the capital in the evenings, as one likes to do at that age. The locals would see one pale teenager built like a beanstalk with the two aforementioned caracters approaching, immediately make the wrong conclusion (Russian Mafia + 2 bodyguards), and hurry over to the other side of the road, while the reality would be a much more procaic european nobody flanked by two african princes*......

Looks can be decieving.

*: No, they were not offering unbelievable financial opportunities.

The future of AI is ... analog? Upstart bags $100M to push GPU-like brains on less juice

Re: Full circle

One of my favorite books is Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".

However, one thing that used to irk me was the description of the Computer, Mike" developing his digital "face" in realtime:

"We waited in silence. Then screen showed neutral gray with a hint of scan lines. Went black again, then a faint light filled middle and congealed into cloudy areas light and dark, ellipsoid. Not a face, but

suggestion of face that one sees in cloud patterns covering Terra. It cleared a little and reminded me of pictures alleged to be ectoplasm. A ghost of a face.

Suddenly firmed and we saw "Adam Selene."

Was a still picture of a mature man. No background, just a face as if trimmed out of a print. Yet was, to me, "Adam Selene." Could not he anybody else. Then he smiled, moving lips and jaw and touching tongue to lips, a quick gesture--and I was frightened."

Being used to polygon based 3d graphics, this seemed wrong to me. It did not bother me too much, because the book was obviously written during the infancy of computing.

Looking back, I must say that Heinlein's description reads scarily close to an AI / Neural network being trained. The text improves with age (although the same can not be said for all of Heinleins work).

LibreOffice still kicking at 40, now with browser tricks and real-time collab

Re: All you need

Not only excel.

Worked a treat with .doc as well. Actually, it worked so well that we decided to keep the documents in .odt and skip word for this group of documents

Tesla sales crash in Europe, UK. We can only wonder why

Re: What to expect

The reason WHY Tesla as a startup managed to bring a completely new car to market is that, compared to a conventional car, an electric car is easy. (The safety architecture required to manage the battery is not, but this does not prevent the car from driving).

Tesla put together a decent drivetrain, and solved the range issue by simply using a LOT of laptop-size cells. After all these years, they have not managed to figure out how to make the (relatively simple) bodywork, and you suggest that they should go for an IC engine solution (The truly complex bit)? No chance.

Democrats demand to know WTF is up with that DOGE server on OPM's network

Re: President Musk does not care

Naah, Trumpistan sums it up nicely.

--A sort of Kult-Theocracy where no oposition is tolerated.

FBI's secret UFO hunters fear Trump's January 6 purge will send them into orbit

Re: They'll never find us.

They came,

Looked for intelligent life,

Found none,

Left.

As Trump slugs Canada, Mexico and China with tariffs, industry groups hope trade war weapon isn’t pointed at their feet

Re: Well, I never ...

Last time around, the EU hit back with relatively smart tariffs aimed at creating maximum hurt in relevant red states.

We have now had 4 more years to prepare, and the power of the EU is in trade.

However, I would like to see a request for compensation for the US created refugee situation (middle east).

Do not forget, that this is not the best time to migrate to the US for work.

Ah! I see that Mr. Hitler won the election. The industry and economy must be booming! I think I will move there and set up some factories for making Bar Mitzvah Party supplies!

I am curious (but not sufficiently curious to really research it), what the US trade balances looks like when (digital) services is taken into account.

The amount of money that amazon alone brings in is mind-boggling. However, creative accounting in order to avoid handing any of it to the IRS may be keeping that number artificially low.

Also, I think it is high time that arms exports should be balanced. The US should import just as much for weapons as it exports.

European Space Agency picks Thales Alenia Space to build lunar lander

trust me, I know all about this, however, the situation right now is particularily volatile, with starship beginning to demonstrate some capabilities which were unthinkable 3 years ago.

I grew up with TinTin flying to the moon in a rocket that landed on its tail. This rocket was big enough to take along a tank which could then be used to explore the surface of the moon. ..Clearlya pipedream

At the point where I could have directed my career into rocket engineering, the most exiting project was an upper stage which would use folding rotor blades to autorotate into a controlled landing. There was NO percievable movement on breaking the cycle of cancelling all new projects before they could get into orbit.

Today we may be on the brink of opening access to space for all sorts of non-governmental activities. It is exciting, and starting this month, very very scary....

On first thought, this sounds like an attempt at building an old-school lander in a world where the technology is very much in flux, and wehere it is not unlikely that the Lander will be overtaken by more modern technology before a flight is attempted, but after money has been spent.

HOWEVER

In the world we live in, where a many decades old ally is talking about creating article 5 conditions by attacking other allies, basing one's future on having said ally providing unrestricted access to space is blue-eyed. Better an uneconomic access to space than no access to space.

I hate this timeline

Sweden seizes cargo ship after another undersea cable hit in suspected sabotage

"a small shaped explosive charge .... fixes a lot of problems"

It might be worth considering that sinking a ship full of oil within a relatively small body of water surrounded by the precious coastlines of your allies may create more problems than it solves.

For the same reason, I have refrained from proposing that the number of "shadow fleet" ships that just happen to get mysterious fishing-nets and ropes entangled in their propellors should see a tragic and unfortunate rise. It is a nice day-dream, but the real world consequences should be investigated first.

Trump nukes 60 years of anti-discrimination rules for federal contractors

Re: Good start

You are talking about Pence, right?

Re: only matters if companies change policies

...and generally, it is a bad idea to have a Supreme Court that is albove all standards with regards to, for example corruption.

The fact that the most promising way to get rid of Clarence Thomas is by applying even more bribes (https://youtu.be/GE-VJrdHMug?si=vosq_xBAqLFEAY8R&t=1574), demonstrates that the US has no checks and balances. It had some gentlemans agrements, but clearly, Trump is no gentleman.

How to leave the submarine cable cutters all at sea – go Swedish

Spelling mistakes noted after editing time passed..