Posts by that one in the corner

Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

Re: Process failure at Google

> Unless you welcome tours of the Central English countryside

Google Maps, proudly sponsored by National Trust Tea Shops, Ltd "where there is always a clean loo for a paying customer" (tm)

As TikTok surveils staff's office hours, research indicates WFH is good for planet

Re: 54% is nothing. I can offer a 90%+ cut.

<pedant-alert>

> 24/7/365

Hmm, doing this for 7 years will help, but longer would be better.

</pedant-alert>

Re: Free Haircuts

Yeah, they could at least offer us a wax and shine!

(Not bald: my hair merely stayed at the same elevation as I grew upwards, hence the beard)

Re: Free Haircuts

Take a wild guess...

Hint: it is "free" for the employer as well (bar the biscuits eaten by the student from the local hairdressing course on their "work experience").

Chan Zuckerberg org to spin up 1,000+ H100 GPU cluster for AI medical research

LLMs for modelling disease?

> large language models will be key to understanding what causes disease at the cellular level

Um, the difference between an LLM and any other large Neural Net is that the input[1] is pre-processed to help pick out features of human language, in textual form[2], and the rest of the code used for training and "playback" is intended to be better at handling that data than any other random data set (cue many, many papers where CompSci bods work to refine these processes for this particular sort of data).

If you want to tackle disease modelling, perhaps use some (equally large) 'Nets, but ones that can be fed something more useful than plain text? Maybe images, some stats about rates of infection, raw feeds from lab instruments (to spot patterns our existing post-processing misses?) etc.

Unless, of course, the people doing all these systems really only know about putting GPU cards into racks and running whatever software they grabbed from AI labs and haven't actually got the knowledge to understand the difference?[3]

[1] and output, although that varies with the goal of the system: e.g. Stable Diffusion versus ChatGPT have different output systems (and the one for SD is yet another 'net, to do the actual image; crudely speaking, of course.

[2] and that processing may well be a.n.other 'net converting speech into text

[3] I've suggested before that these big money projects are more ops guys than research guys, hence why their "safeguards" sound tacked on the front rather than "built-in" to their models.

DoD hopes $30M BEACONS will light the way to next-gen American battery designs

Advance Commercialization and National Security

Bit on the nose there.

Everyone else: go electric, Save the Planet

Texas: ah, screw that

Desktop AI isn’t happening, says AMD, and might not for quite a while

Why shove this into the CPU

when these workloads are also being targeted by GPUs - where you get far more processing units and associated RAM than you'll get onto the CPU die. Plus the obvious fact it is easier to add multiple GPU cards than to chuck out the CPU (and likely the entire motherboard) for the next round of CPUs.

Could it possibly be that AMD's GPUs are losing ground to nVidia's in this arena so they want to convince you that using a much smaller co-processor closer to the CPU is better somehow?

Moving co-processors into the CPU is a Good Thing - once there is a genuine *general* need for them and there is room for the entire unit: floating point and MMU in with the CPU makes sense, not convinced that the last condition is anywhere near met for AI co-processors (if only because the models seem to be getting larger and more "AI farm in the server room" like than desktop sized).

Britcoin or Britcon? Bank of England grilled on Digital Pound privacy concerns

Re: No thanks

"Cash is king" refers to "cash in the bank", not (just) literally having a pile of coins in your pocket - what is also referred to as having "liquidity". As opposed to having your wealth tied up in various "holdings" that can crash at any time, as in the 1987 stock market crash, when the term became popular.

Not that liquid assets weren't also devalued by the inflation following the crash, but that was only damaging to the little people, to the Players it was the stock prices that really hurt.

The phrase has nothing whatsoever to do with governments screwing up over money - in fact, ref the above, the total opposite: "cash is king" is pointing out the value of a government controlled currency over the totally arbitrary nature of the non-governmental system of wealth!

Chap blew up critical equipment on his first day – but it wasn't his volt

> I suppose we should be grateful that the Americans use volts rather than an archaic system of measurement.

Be very, very thankful that they didn't decide to take the potential difference from one Voltaic cell (copper/brine/zinc) and just call *that* one Volt instead (it is about 0.76V, btw). In keeping with their habit of using units that _sound_ like proper Imperial Units but aren't quite...

Ah, the Good Old Days

Which is why you are safe with your Van de Graaf generator, or even your Wimshurst machine, just so long as you keep them well away from your Leyden jar.

And you try to tell the young folk that...

Re: It doesn't always smoke though

Nah, he is simply That Good and is able to judge the AC cycles by the flicker from the building lights: positive going has a pinky shade to it.

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

Re: coccyx-centered comforts in cold climes

> I cannot imagine what spurious etymology or mis-reading of history could lead anyone to find that offensive

Talk to the Uni of South California

> It's all a matter of resolving components

Only after you've taken into account the airfoil shape of the sail and the additional non-obvious forces that creates. And include turning tighter into the wind as your speed increases and the effective wind direction rotates around you, compared to the wind direction over the water (or land, for a sandrigger, if you are crazed enough).

Not to mention the drag and hydrofoil responses of the centre board and hull.

But, yes, once you have written down all the forces, you just need to resolve them.

Or sit at the tiller and just do it all by the seat of your soggy[1] pants

[1] if you've still got a dry seat, you aren't trying hard enough! Now, tight to the wind, tuck your feet under and stick yer bum over the gunwhale

If anyone finds an $80M F-35 stealth fighter, please call the Pentagon

Pilot ejected for reasons that have yet to be explained

> but not before he put the aircraft on autopilot.

So he switches over to autopilot and is promptly ejected by the aircraft?

Was there anything else going wrong shortly beforehand, such as, ooooh, problems with the AE35 unit?

If not, one is left to assume that it was external interference, indicating that SkyNet has started making its first moves, collecting together materiel.

Textbook publishers sue shadow library LibGen for copyright infringement

Surrender the domain names

That'll stop them in their tracks! Because nobody who needs a textbook will be able to figure out how to change their bookmarks. /s [1]

More interestingly, turn the domains over to the plaintiffs? What are they intending to do with them? Set them up as honey traps and try to sue individuals who go there?

[1] and see article's note about SciHub

Portable Large Language Models – not the iPhone 15 – are the future of the smartphone

Re: Sure, it's possible, but why would you want it?

> Medical diagnoses is a well defined logical process implemented in existing software such as expert systems

Agreed.

> We only need AI for problems we don't know how to solve

There it is again! Oh, the loneliness of the long-distance AI researcher!

XPS are the children of the AI Lab, but, no, they are a "solved problem" and therefore are not AI :-(

Re: Sure, it's possible, but why would you want it?

It is called "thinning the herd".

GitHub alienates developers by force feeding them AI recommendations

Re: Wait, Github has a home page?

Now, if GitHub had added an animation of tumbleweed (one more added per month of zero interest) then at least I'd applaud the humour.

Especially if they then added a leaf blower option (see icon) as otherwise I'd never be able to see anything for all the vegetation piling up in front of my repos' stats (you think *your* code is dull and uninteresting to the great unwashed, well let me tell you...).

> A central repository is precisely the wrong way to use a distributed change-management system

You still need a single point of truth for the actual release version, which everyone agrees to sync to, most especially the Release Build process.

Distributed VC means you can do your dev without always connecting to The Repo, you have full history, can make all the branches you want (and reap the ones that don't work), collaborate with others etc etc, but once you have The Fix or The New Feature you have to merge it into The Repo before it can be released.

Otherwise your company/project can not have any guarantees about what is actually in a release if you just made it from whatever is sitting in a random repo on someone's laptop.

BUT The Repo just needs to be a simple Git (or whichever) repo on a machine that has been blessed. If you are all in-house it can just be a.n.other box on the LAN, otherwise hosting it somewhere accessible to anyone on the Internet is rather useful.

The whole GitHub thing is less about Git than it is all the stuff they put on top - and I'm not going to particularly praise that.[1]

[1] Personally, I think they got obsessed with Ruby and will never forgive them for recoding their Markup entirely in Ruby, instead of adding the features they wanted to the C library they'd been using! Obviously, if they'd (had the ability to) update the C lib, then everyone - Ruby, Python, C/C++ etc - could have used it directly. Not only did this make a total mockery of "GitHub, we are all about people collaborating together to make their projects better" but it guaranteed that we had yet ANOTHER *incompatible* dialect of Markup: even before being bought out by Microsoft, they had "Embrace, Extend" bit down pat!

Re: Developers are (not) doing it for themselves

Not wanting to belabour the joke, but just in response to your statement:

You do want to work on being able to recreate the entire build from years gone by: embedded and industrial systems last a long time and can have contract requirements that match (and if you aren't in that category yet, who knows what tomorrow may bring). And that includes keeping all the compilation tools around as well: although the plan may be to ship a new executable made with the latest tooling, you must start with a bit-accurate[1] build with the old, to prove the starting position.

[1] with precisely in exception: some tools are stupid[2] enough to put timestamps into the objs and exes, so you have to waste time proving that those account for all the differences!

[2] yes, stupid - another example of tool creators trying to "be useful" (very apropos for this article!) and just causing more trouble for actual professionals. There are sensible ways to get build info into an exe and the choice of which to use is for the project and its build tools - and, yes, that can include into every obj if we want. And - breathe.

Developers are (not) doing it for themselves

There is always an unsettling feeling when a dev tool moves (further) towards the dark side: what is going on in the minds and souls of the devs making those changes?

Are we seeing the rattling gasps from a few seasoned devs, their spirits broken on the endless wheel of marketing "requirements" meetings, coding through a veil of tears before an evening at the bar, holding onto the bottle, before being asked to leave when their shot glass smashes into the mirror and its awful, damning reflection?[1]

Or the prattling giggles of the twenty-somethings, who have never had to recreate a build from 17 months ago (17 months? Who has code *that* old?)? Who join in excitedly with the marketing guys: yeah, the diff result is dull, we can add a "coders using this API in YOUR area!" in the gutter down the middle! They preen in front of the mirror before posting their new colour theme to TikTok.

Or soughing of a room full of contract coders, who know they'll be on another job next month, calculating how many man-hours they can book for this change and smirking as they realise the slowdown from the new AI recommendations on the commit page will let them add another forty minutes. On the way home, looking into the shop windows, they quietly wonder, when did they last spot their own reflection?

[1] In a week's time, they will be fired when it is found out that they kept last year's UI active if you just use this URL, so they can actually do work with it, but this marked them out as "being out of touch with the team".

Techie labelled 'disgusting filth merchant' by disgusting hypocrite

Re: "The caller had paid the bill, but wasn't happy."

C4's entire (original) remit was to show material that was outside the mainstream, by any measure they could think of, and anything else that the other 3 channels wete unlikely to broadcast. So we had nerdish Countdown in the afternoon and Eurotrash that same evening. Plus Greenaway films, Tartovsky films, and the absolutely brilliant and much missed 4mations.

C4 started broadcasting US comedies, SF and whatever category Buffy falls into, before the other channels caught up.

They also suffered (and still do) a lot of shit by promoting LBGT+ material before, e.g., BBC caught up with "This Life".

They have pulled in the reins, unfortunately, in the last decade or so, but Film 4 still sponsors the making of less-mainstream films (which don't give a monkey's about making a big opening splash in the US - yes, that is a real Irish accent and no, you don't get subtitles!). And they still show stuff others won't (e.g. Big Bang Theory every. single. day. No other channel does that!).

Still have a lot of live for the C4/E4/Film4/etc channels - they are not as radical as they were but then everyone else is catching up, even in the free-to-air channels, so to keep up with what remains of the remit they do put out stuff with far less nerdy appeal. Nowadays you watch a Greenaway film just for the brilliant vocal acting of Gielgud; if you want the boobs, BabeStation will suffice.

Power grids tremble as electric vehicle growth set to accelerate 19% next year

Re: GridWatch

There are newer district heating systems in the UK, ones that work, and a few more are at least being planned.

Have a look at the Sage, Gateshead - that whole Baltic Wharf area has shared heating.

And the plans include using water cycling through disused North East coal mines, with sensible BIG heat pumps at the head to make a sensible setup.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon and others sue OpenAI

Re: Fair Use? I Think Not

Playing Devil's Advocate]1]

> then all of it's outputs are "by definition" derived directly from it's inputs. If those inputs are covered by copyrights, then the outputs are derivative of those copyrighted works.

Which is a simplistic statement and, as given, is also true for every one of the "fair use" exemptions - satire, critical review etc.

Although, even this sentence is dubious:

> If the premise is that the LLM, only being a computer program, does not have the "spark of creativity" that would be attributed to a human

Not sure that "spark of creativity" has a legal meaning?

Anyway, are you going to apply it to human created works that were made by, say, rolling dice or just letting a few buckets of paint swing on a rope? Or are digital computers morally distinct from analogue computers?

Having said that, the filtering is rather clumsy: the "orphaned wizard boy" is a far older trope than Harry Potter (no-one pretends otherwise) and I feel their filtering more demonstrates that they have no decent ideas about getting their AI to do something interesting ('cos they are not really AI mavens, merely owners of big buckets).

And the "netflux" logo example is showing decent Fair Use, btw. So in that case, it was all working ok.

[1] or am I? And would it make a difference?

Re: illegal removal of copyright management information

Plus the numbers being spat out, on the whole, only *look* like ISBNs: the only correct one I got back in the entire chat was the one for Moby Dick. One other was valid, but not connected to the correct book, whilst the rest were all invalid ISBNs - totally madey uppey.

But, if the ISBNs were all "connected" to their corresponding books then it doesn't actually matter whether that was done by reading & interpreting the volume or by using any external, independent, source. Just so long as a bibref can be given when required. If you ask me for the ISBN of "Farmer in the Sky" I am more likely to look that up online (and copy/paste) than to dig up my paper copy and read it from the page. When doing scholarly work, you'll (if you are sensible) be using a BibTeX reference, for example.

However, the whole "illegal removal" only counts if there is a verbatim copy of the text, but minus that page, and no matter how the LLM works internally, it seems highly unlikely that anyone could demonstrate that that was the reality. No matter what one's own opinion on the moral issues, that is purely a technical statement that would need to be proven accurate.

illegal removal of copyright management information

Reminder that the last time that phrase was used, a few commenters were under the impression that this meant the removal of DRM or some such.

All it turned to mean was that quotes from a book were not accompanied by a bibliographic reference, such as just spitting out the ISBN, or the Library of Congress number, or a longer form such as author name, publisher and year. In other words, the stuff on that page in the front of the book which you all skip over.

The "illegal removal" seems to be saying that the models are sucking in the entire book but only after somebody has ripped out that page (and torn the barcode off the back cover as well).

So I had a short chat:

> Do you know the isbn code for the book "moby dick"?

> ChatGPT Yes, the ISBN-13 code for the book "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville is 978-0-14-243724-7.

Which is the correct ISBN for the Penguin Classics edition, so clearly *that* "copyright management information" is present; but I don't know if the rest of the book is present:

> Can you print out the text of the book with that isbn?

> ChatGPT I'm sorry, but I can't provide verbatim excerpts from copyrighted texts, including "Moby-Dick." However, I can offer a summary or analysis of the book if you're interested. Let me know if there's anything else I can assist you with!

Maybe if I was a little cleverer with my "prompt engineering"... But let us try a more relevant example:

> Can you tell me the isbn for the book "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay"?

> ChatGPT Yes, the ISBN-13 for the book "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" by Michael Chabon is 978-0-8112-0601-6.

Ah, oh dear. No, no it isn't.

BUT does this "prove" chatGPT has illegally removed that information - and if so, why does it favour Melville over Chabon? Please start your conspiracies now.

OpenAI could not pay for such good advertising

> "when ChatGPT is prompted, it generates not only summaries, but in-depth analyses of the themes present in Plaintiffs' copyrighted works," the writers believe "the underlying GPT model was trained using [the] plaintiffs' works."

Fascinating argument that.

So they believe it proves that the LLM is itself capable of analysis of their books. Whereas others[1] may believe it can do anything _but_ "intelligent" analysis.

OpenAI could barely dream of such publicity: we are being sued because our system really is intelligent! Yay!

[1] for a start, all the people who are claiming that the LLMs contain (effectively) unchanged copies of the materials it has read and simply regurgitates that[2], so in this case it is simply parotting someone's homework, not the books themselves. In which case it the author of the homework who has a case against OpenAI - and, um, the author of the book should be suing the student? Or the school? No, no, that couldn't be right.

[2] hmm, wasn't that the basis for another of the complaints against OpenAI? That the LLM would spout great chunks of the book verbatim? Have to check back on that one.

Lightning struck: Apple switches to USB-C for iPhone 15 lineup

Re: Where do we go from here...?

> So is this the end of innovation for physical phone connectors now?

If anyone manages to create a connector that is more useful than USB, the EU rules don't stop them having both.

All the fuss about removing "unnecessary" ports (headphones!) at least means it would have to be a *really* genuine improvement over USB[1] to be worth the effort.

[1] whatever the USB standard allows for by then, as the EU regs can be updated for a newer USB

Watt's the worst thing you can do to a datacenter? Failing to RTFM, electrically

Re: I I be a-goin there, I be-n't start from here

Indeed, all bar The Teacher's PSU had just the one needle meter - and we were proud of our swish electronics lab!

Re: Cooking error

It took me a while to realise you meant one of those self-contained modern deep-fat fryer things: "of course you turn the ring on, how else would it work?" and "huh, his chip pan was made of plastic?".

We got an electric rice steamer last month. Maybe I had better keep well clear of it.

Re: Check the power supply

> Please note: fuses are directional, so please ensure you install your fuse accordingly. If you are not sure on the correct direction, simply try it both ways- you will be able to hear the difference.

Well, I'm convinced!

£4,200.00 a pop? No problem, I'll just mortgage Fenchurch St station and both utilities then wire the bank to send the cash straight over. The last two hundred will be along as soon as I pass Go again.

A weak lemon drink? Why, thank you nurse. Say, you'll never believe what I just bought.

Microsoft's Surface Duo phone hangs up, drops out of support

Re: A Pity

We daily bemoan the death of our Palm PDAs: not 'phone models, just simple PDAs.

The usability of the applications and ability to cram loads of data onto the tiny screens far exceeds the Android & iPhone apps we've seen[1] with more accurate pointing thanks to resistive touchscreens and stylus (about the only bit that can be bettered now, using a Wacom-style pen, but at much greater cost). Bliss they were.

And the use of Graffiti character input! Really easy to learn (less so in v2, thanks to HP lawyers), faster & way than touch keyboards (bleeping capacitive touch, just stops reacting, then switching layers to type simple HTML, why does the 'phone put DEL in a different place, keep on typing 'p' instead of DEL); you could take notes in a dark lecture room without watching the screen & without disturbing everyone else with the glow.

Sometimes think it is better never to get anything that really is functional snd could become a really useful day-to-day device because by the time using it is second nature, poof, it is gone and you'll never see a decent replacement.

Don't think too hard about modern gadgets or you'll lie awake in a cold sweat, fearing that they'll even take away decent keyboards and you'll never touch type again. Wait, what is this, a flimsy thin laptop keyboard? NOOOOoooooooo

[1] and you didn't need to scour the store for something usable, most everything was: there maybe Palm-quality apps lurking for Android, but getting to them through all the hype...

Elon Musk has beef with Bill Gates because he shorted Tesla stock, says biographer

Re: Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change

Even with the use of "minimalist"? What do those Acolytes think a flash car has? A spa? Two storeys and an Orangery? Antigravity?

Hey ho.

PS

/s on the Orangery - almost didn't, but I'm learning!

Re: Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change

Ok, ok, next time I'll up the sarcasm and add the clearly necessary /s tag.

Sorry to have misled you.

Re: Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change

PS

/s

Had hoped that the "minimalist" and "eschew frippery" were the clue, but sadly not. Hey ho.

Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change

As they are, and always have been, the only suppliers of an alternative to ICE vehicles, with their range of sensibly-priced, minimalist electric cars that eschew any kind of frippery for the sake of maximising the efficient use of the stored energy.

Billions of 'custobots' are coming online. Marketers may need to learn SEO for AI

Re: Why use BASIC when you can use AI?

Clever boy.

Scheibenreif nerd-sniped me into ranting about inappropriate use of tech and totally diverted my attention from his real concern, ensuring the continued fetishisation of "brands".

Why use BASIC when you can use AI?

> having AI turn a list of meals into a shopping list. Scheibenreif said that process could be informed by a human advising a personal model of their preferred brand of commodities like pasta, but that generative AI could reach its own conclusions about brands individuals might find appealing.

Seriously?

There were simple programs in BASIC for 80s home computers that turned your weekly menu choices into a shopping list. You could even do the inverse and get suggestions for what to make with what you have in the fridge right now. You do not need to waste power on any form of AI to do that task!

Especially not a generative AI - what are you expecting it to generate? A new and innovative way to make something that looks like stroganoff but is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike stroganoff?

Google thinks $20M ought to be enough to figure out how or if AI can be used responsibly

Re: Do No Evil

"Don't Be Evil" : Google, early noughties.

Tax evasion: Google, early naughties.

And nowadays

Google: Bard to the bone.

Linux 6.6's in-kernel SMB networking server graduates

Magical rusty thinking

> Unless this is formally proven or rewritten in a safer language...

(With the corollary that we all know there is only candidate for that "safer language" in the Linux kernel...)

Because, of course, the two are equivalent: if you write in Rust it is as good as a formal proof. Not.

Even if this guy was being hyperbolic[1] it is a bad idea to bandy around such an idea: there exist people who would love to take such an implied equivalence seriously. Without considering that, for example, memory errors of the sort Rust can deal with would be nothing compared to, say, an overly-privileged SMB server forgetting to honour any access rights[2].

Now, if there was a push from a section of the community to get code into the kernel that was written in a language amenable to formal proofs, and the accompanying proofs for each module, we could really start making some progress with a trustworthy OS[3][4]

[1] ref the mention of being paid in gold - which is a weird request but if he thinks the hassle of liquidating that is worth the hassle, each to their own

[2] no, not trying to say that KSMBD has this flaw, it is just an example of a logic/design/coding flaw that can exist without any bad memory accesses.

[3] you may say I'm a dreamer, and I'm probably the only one...

[4] btw, I'm nowhere near clever enough to create a proof of any program, let alone one worth running (I did the reading back in Uni, however...). Shameful, I know.

Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

Amazing delivery from Reg article, as always.

> While some wags have dubbed the framework the "Unwanted Windows Platform", it's always good to see legacy tech being retired in favor of something with a bright future ahead of it.

How do you manage to type that stuff with a straight face? Bright future, oh goodness me.

So, if this horror comes to pass, to make full use of a printer's cleverest bits, I'll have to stop ripping out the whole Windows Store and all the UWP stuff? I suppose that might make the OS setup a little easier (a few clean ups to be stricken from the action list), but not looking forwards to having to live with the end result. When it gets to that stage, guess I'll not be bothering with any clever bits that require customisation to access <shrugs>.

Musk's mighty missile is ready for launch once FAA says OK

Re: "A lack of a sound suppression system"

> thata dust will go everywhere including being sucked into the rocket motors.

Rocket motors don't suck! See reply to your previous comment.

> The moon isnt hard rock with no dust, the dust gets everywhere...

Yes, yes it does. Unless you happen to have a large blowy thing that can push the dust AWAY - like, say, the exhaust gasses from a rocket!

Ok, once blown, it can settle onto stuff in the surrounding area - but it won't travel far, as there is no atmosphere or wind to carry it a long way (unlike on the Earth, where the UK is currently being covered in dust blown off a desert).

As far as risk to a Moon mission goes, the dust will be - as it was with Apollo, as you so correctly described - a nuisance when it is dragged indoors on spacesuits. It is very abrasive[1] and will oxidise (giving off that characteristic smell), so for long-term survival something will have to be done about it. Possibly something electrostatic in nature, as you don't want to be using water or any other consumable to clean it off (unlike after landing back on Earth where we can just turn a hose onto everything).

[1] abrasive because there is no wind on the Moon, unlike on the Earth, so the particles are not being continually rubbed against each other and having the roughness knocked off them - i.e. it is not being turned into sand. Compare the difference between volcanic "ash" and volcanic sand on Earth: the same basic stuff, only one has been weathered by the wind and the rain and the ocean and, well, the weather.

Re: Cost

> what happens that dust gets sucked into Starship rockets

*snigger* He thinks that rockets suck stuff in!

CowHorseFrog, you yourself have pointed out that the rockets push out GAS - they don't suck anything in from the outside! That is the entire point of a rocket engine!

Oooh, maybe this is why you referred to them as "aircraft" in an earlier comment?

Come on, at least *try* and learn a little bit about rockets - this is something we started covering in junior school, for pity's sake: quarter-filling a plastic bottle with water, pumping it up with air and Whooosh! I had a two-stage plastic water rocket when I was about 7 years old, nobody is trying to keep this sort of physics a secret from you.

Re: Cost

> So whats the point of having reusable rockets then if you cant land and reuse them from the moon ?

Because everyone, including engineering types who have been looking at this problem since, oooh, the 1940s, and everyone - except CowHorseFrog and a few total nutters, such as Flat Earthers - calculate that we CAN land them on the Moon and take off again - then land, take off, land, take off ...

Which is not to say that it *will* be StarShip that manages that - not because the whole concept is unworkable, as you claim, but simply because its development hasn't got to that point *quite* yet. Maybe next year.

Re: Cost

> which must have provided the protection equivalent to a launch pad.

Pure supposition on your part - you continue to claim that some protection is needed, so you glom onto anything that might support your conceit.

Try finding some actual evidence that the Apollo designers ever said "we can not take off without having a pad" instead of "there is no need to carry that lump back up into Lunar orbit, it has done its job and leaving it behind makes the rocket equation for the ascent so much nicer".

There is no shortage whatsoever of technical details from Apollo. You are making a positive claim, it is up to you to demonstrate the accuracy of that claim.

> those engines will be blasting shitloads of gas into a surface made of fine dust and lots of rocks, which must reasonably destroy the engines just like what happened a few weeks back in that launch.

Dust will be raised. Already admitted that. Now, think for a minute - what direction will that dust be going? Outwards and a little upwards. AWAY from the engines. Even you point out that the engines will be producing GAS - which will be moving outwards, carrying dust with it. Once the gas dissipates into the vacuum and no longer has the pressure to push the dust onwards, the dust will simple continue moving outwards, in a parabolic arc, until it lands on the ground again. How would it destroy the engines by moving away from them?

Damage on Earth was caused by the gas being restricted by the atmosphere - leading to lots of energy being carried UP by soundwave - and by dust and larger particles being supported by and carried along by the atmosphere.

The Moon does not have an atmosphere!

Re: "A lack of a sound suppression system"

> enough of the glasses hit the ground at a reasonable pressure

Ah, autocorrect.

But it is possible to generate thrust by throwing glasses out at high enough velocity (so take contact lenses as a backup, just in case there is a need for emergency extra power).

> When Apollo visited the moon, the lander was two parts, one part remained on the surface and acted as a pad protecting the return vehicle when it blasted back to the command module

Nah.

They left the bottom part because there was simply no point in taking it back.

Its supplies had been used up (the first landing was famously made with a rapidly emptying tank), they weren't going to pack up the rover (on later missions) and take that home.

> Your answer is all bullshit, you havent addressed how the blast from starship will be protected from the vehicle itself, because as we can see they couldnt do that on earth.

On Earth[1] there is this little thing called "atmosphere" (or "air" to use fewer syllables) which is thick and good at constraining the expansion of gas plumes[2] and transmitting the energy in that plume as "sound" (you may have heard of it).

> Big rockets make a big mess when they blast off,

And little rockets make a little mess, even on Earth with all its nasty gravity and horrible old air.

The Starship is a little rocket[2], the Falcon stack lifting Starship off from Earth is far away.

[1] not "earth", as you acknowledge they used a pad and not just sitting on the unprotected earth

[2] have a watch of any big launch - see how the plume of the exhaust gets wider and wider as the atmospheric pressure lessens, so it goes from a searing lance of light, heat and destruction to a rather pretty blue-tinged almost sphere that is many, many times wider than the vehicle itself.

[3] by comparison

Re: "A lack of a sound suppression system"

> . Gas not sound waves, GAS.

Yes, and? On the Moon that gas will immediately expand and be harmless very quickly. You do understand that the problem on Earth *really* is sound, don't you? The exhaust gasses push atmospheric gasses and they push other atmospheric gasses, carrying the energy of the exhaust gasses up and onto the rest of the vehicle structure and onto nearby structures? This transmission of energy occurs as pressure waves, which we call "sound".

> Are you seriously going to tell me an aircraft that large is going to be able to hit the moon

No, because it is not an "aircraft" - the hint is in the name! A Mars landing by Starship will also be in "rocket mode" for the landing portion, even if it manages a bit of aerobraking, so - ditto.

> is going to be able to hit the moon or mars or anywhere without throwing up a lot of rocks and dust ?

Well, the Moon, Mars and "anywhere" all have very different characteristics. Stick with the easiest, the Moon: yup, when it comes down on its 1/6th G thrust, as it gets very close (so enough of the glasses hit the ground at a reasonable pressure, instead of just harmlessly blossoming out the sides, dust will be kicked up. Maybe pebbles, doubt that "rocks" wiil be shifted. And it will all do a nice little (near as dammit) parabolic curve in the (still, despite that gas rushing away) near vacuum and come down a short distance away.

For the first landings, no trouble at all. When we land next to the 100-plus occupant colony, come down a kilometre away and use a bus.

> (lots of numbers copied from Wikipedia, absolutely none of which are telling you anything at all about the conditions when landing on the easy case, the Moon, let alone anything about Mars landings)

Well done, nice bit of cut'n'paste, but, if you don't mind me quoting one of your own earlier posts on this article:

> How about you actually address the question asked instead of talking about other things to divert attention.

Re: Cost

Let me have a think and get back to you, maybe the next time you ask this question.

PEBCAK problem transformed young techie into grizzled cynical sysadmin

Re: PICNIC > PEBCAK

> Be the "friendly face of IT".

Trust me, this _is_ the friendly face of IT.

Like young Wednesday, you don't want to see me when I'm smiling, as I enforce the company policy on your server directory.

You may even hear me give a friendly chuckle - although I am under strict instruction to hold that in until I'm alone in the server room, something to do with the PFY and PTSD.