Posts by Lil Endian 1284 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jul 2021
The [California Public Utilities Commission] had been moving against vocal opposition from police, firefighters, and other city agencies when it voted to expand the hours of operation for GM Cruise and Waymo robo-taxis in San Francisco.
*Sniff Sniff*
What's that? It's the smell of dodgy lucre in brown envelopes.
You might have hit the nail on the head there HG -
From The Independent: Russian scientist who worked on Putin’s failed moon mission rushed to hospital
Blackpool is already 6Ged up according to some charlatans. Other than being marketing criminality, which has caught the eye of the Advertising Standards Authority, it's rather amusing. They install a small box on the customer's sucker's roof. It has a pretty blue LED in it, presumably to warn off low flying aircraft!
..."build your own website" services such as Wordpress.
Even worse, by far IMHO, are offers like Wix. Talk about vendor lock in! Websites are not my main thing, although I've done a "few" over the years. But I do like helping start-ups. The number of times I've heard "I've got so far with my site, but I'm stuck, and time's running short! Can you help...?". "Ah feck! You're using Wix. We cannot migrate that, and it won't go further towards your needs. Your many weeks of effort are for nought." And that hurts when a start-up is banging out 95+ hours a week.
[Disclaimer: I've not tried migrating from Wix for a couple of years. I'm *cough* sure *cough* they've sorted that out by now...]
...a better moon, the real moon...
Google promises the real Moon better, but Samsung delivers!
[Spoiler: it's snake oil!]
Okay, so Google could be sued for holding data illegally, but did they design those sites and place the beacon poxels there? Shirley it's the website stakeholders (eg "H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer, among others") that are liable for the inclusion of the facilitating intercept[1] code on their sites, sue them FFS!
[1] Nope, can't even put wiretap in quotes.
"...staring blankly at hex dumps of assorted ROMs... I totally hear what you're saying abend0c4!
That made me think of the Acorn Atom (that I still have) which has a free (EP)ROM slot that can take a daughter board, seating eight ROMs, individually selectable. That's populated with ROMs for disassembly, hex dumps etc etc. Ah! I know that blank stare all too well!
About your point, space, yep! Not a discipline that someone who's only banged out some C#/.NET spaghetti is going to manage too well, me thinks!
I'd suggest "Geeks and their love for cool sounding abbreviations..." as I must confess I'm partial to an acronym. Who am I kidding, every hacker knows that projects start with sub-zero acronyms! One of my favourites was FLAMES (Fundamental Logical Algorithmically Mapped Encryption Structures), which was basically a data structure used to compare "components" using bitwise operations for speed. Or so I told myself :)
Well, I reckon it's a Left Pondian Cousins' thang - references to "cities" in an odd way too by my reckoning. Example: while heading north on I1 around Lauderdale, I pass a sign reading "Welcome to Sunrise City, Pop. 312", less than 10 seconds later "Thank you for visiting Sunrise City!"
Now that's enthusiasm!
[NB: "Sunrise City" is a Lil Regomization - can't remember the name, but it was "Sunsomething City"!!]
I'm sure I wouldn't like to be airborne in a fly-by-wire plane at the time of such an incident!
I found this an interesting read, from EarthSky: How likely is another Carrington Event? Following "proper" scientific form, there's no unsupported declaration of any certainty of knowledge :)
I get the risks are compounded, but a lack of oxygen seems fairly risky to me on its own - just a little speck of debris travelling at v to the wrong place at the wrong time...
Anyhoo, when Zapp Brannigan's in charge, every mission is a suicide mission.
Well, then you have far too many self-service checkouts and not enough traditional ones.
I call bullshit. You don't want "engaging, consumer-friendly experience" at all, you want lower overheads.
And like self-service, your new upselling tech can just fuck off.
You can check against our workings from the article "We've lost our probe!" last Monday;
Draco's calcs: https://forums.theregister.com/post/4704486
Yours Truly: https://forums.theregister.com/post/4705186
[I made it 1.125B km - but looking back I'm not sure my inputs were correct!]
...my guess would be yes... -- Your guess would be correct!
Calculate apparent magnitude: m = (M-5) + (log10(d*5))
Where:
m = apparent magnitude
d = distance in parsecs
M = abs magnitude
So,
(M) Abs Mag Sol = 4.75
(d) V2 distance = 134 AU = 0.0006496456 pc
m = (4.75 - 5) + (log10(0.0006496456 * 5))
m = -0.25 + -2.48835349431
m = -2.23835349431
Taking Sirius[1] app mag from Earth (cos too lazy to calc the difference, and it'll be insignificant!):
Sirius m = −1.46
Sol m at V2 = -2.24
So yup, Sol still brighter.
[1] As the brightest star in the night sky.
PS. Heeeelp! I need a life!
PPS. I'll calculate the distance V2 needs to be for that not to be the case, after some therapy -->
PPPS: No, really: Heeeelp!!!
At its current speed V2 travelling from Alpha Centauri AB to Proxima would take in the region of 4000 years[1]! (Depending on the flexibility of rounding!)
From the esteemed Wiki: Currently, the distance between Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri AB is about 13,000 AU (0.21 ly), equivalent to about 430 times the radius of Neptune's orbit.
[1] That's about the age of the Earth *cough* according to some *cough cough*
This gives a bit of insight regarding the question "what happens on the reset".
From New Scientist.
But if anything were to go wrong, we would have no way to send any commands to Voyager 2 while the antenna is pointed away from Earth. “We are now generating a new command to attempt to point the spacecraft antenna toward Earth,” said Dodd. “There is a low probability that this will work.”
Even if it doesn’t work, all is not lost – Voyager 2 is programmed to automatically reset its orientation a few times a year in case of situations just like this one.
I'd already decided I wasn't going to do this, but you inspired me Draco! So here's the same using AU (Astronomical Units).
Conclusion: agreed, somewhere in between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn.
(A) 1 AU = ~150 million km (0.150 billion km)
(B) 1 AU ==> 8.3 light-minutes
(C) Voyager 2 distance (km): 32 billion
(D) Voyager 2 distance (AU): C/A = 213.333' AU
(E) Sanity check, distance in light hours: D*B = 213.333' * 8.3 = 1770.666' lm = ~29.5 lh [seems about right]
(F) Angular error: α = 2°
(G) Error perpendicular to normal (intended direct line)
Opposite (Error) = Adjacent (D) * TAN(α)
Opposite (Error) = 213.333' * tan α = ~7.5 AU = 1.125B km
Error perpendicular to normal = ~7.5 AU
I've really gotta get out more...
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