Posts by lee harvey osmond

by the sea?

"Faith in Japanese authorities may be hard to sustain given they allowed construction of a nuclear plant by the sea, in an earthquake-prone country, and gave it redundancy rigs that did not survive a foreseeable combination of events"

Ummm. First part, next to the sea is a very good place to build nuclear plants. Look at where all the UK's are.

But the second bit, yes, the problem with that one was the engineers allowed for a once-in-a-hundred-years sort of earthquake and tsunami, when they should have allowed for a once in a thousand years event. There was another nuclear power complex a few miles away where the engineers built adequate earthquake/tsunami defences, which explains why I can't remember what it's called

... and a few things the British Empire didn't invent

... such as 100 octane aviation spirit, which the Air Ministry began buying in large quantities from US refiners. A month or two on from Dunkirk, same fighter aircraft, same engines, MORE POWER!

Covfefe-19

Are we really still calling it coronavirus or COVID-19?

Covfefe-19 please.

what sort of nuke

As I recall all the early Nork Tests had very small yields -- people were pointing the finger of fizzle, or even suggesting there had been no gadget, someone had lit off a big pile of TNT instead and lied about it.

It is possible, but highly unlikely, that this involved about 200,000 tons of TNT.

Any indication of what they were up to? Plutonium pit? Oralloy? Single or two-stage device? I dare say there are US technical agencies that know, but aren't telling.

10.15 Catastrophe. Just say no!

I finally got my MacMini rebuilt, working, running 10.14.6. After a fortnight.

There was a period of about 4hr when it was running a fresh install of 10.15 on a clean disk, and it was running as advertised.

I was still finding bugs about every 5 min.

My relief, when I resorted to the recovery console for the umpteenth time and tried yet again to restore via Time Machine, that this time I was offered a 10.14.6 restore point, was immense.

In the meantime my iPhone seems permanently to have a red badge on the System Preferences app icon, and every time I look, it's telling me about a different iOS 13 update. 13.2 now? Wonder what it'll be tomorrow morning? [EDIT ha! already pulled!]

The iOS crew seems to have attracted all the grownups, but I'm not letting them change the software on my phone voluntarily until the dust has settled on whichever build and it has been pronounced righteous by others.

I'll have a think about that patch for Mojave.

Also it appears a bunch of downloads, including Mojave itself, have disappeared from the Mac App Store. There is a rumour that an Apple code signing cert has expired; certainly that would explain why my Mojave USB thumbdrive installer decided its copy of Mojave was now corrupt. If this rumour is true, it is not clear if those downloads will be back, newly re-signed. After all, Cupertino is going to have to resort to something drastic to force adoption of Catastrophe....

'once the kinks have been worked out'

That's an unfortunate turn of phrase, right there ...

Other Apollo 11 tie-ins

Or Lego could depart from its customary practice of not modelling military vehicles, and produce a set based on Buzz’s F-86.

AAIB Question Time

Caller: so we have ascertained that there was a catastrophic aerofoil control systems failure, the aircraft flipped on its back and accelerated, impacting the ground at around 600kts, killing all passengers and crew, and burying much of the wteckage. Has the Air Accident Investigation Board been able to establish any causes?

Panel: ah, the answer lies in the soil!

‘Mind the fap’?

Mind ... the clap

Mind ... the clap

Mind ... the clap

Stand clear of the whores please!

like Delay Repay?

When I first heard of this, I thought this was going to be like Delay Repay on the railways.

ie, if your packets are over four hours late you could claim a refund

mildly radioactive?

"Also, it’s mildly radioactive since it contains low deposits of uranium and thorium."

Hmmm. In principle then we could also be using bioleaching to separate out uranium and thorium?

I'm scratching my head. The bacteria produce gluconic acid, is that the whole business of making them available to chemical separation, or is there a biological component too?

Chemical reactions conducted by biology tend to be different to those conducted by geology or chemists. Enzymes tend to be very efficient catalysts. Biological reactions tend to proceed via a much larger number of transition (intermediate) states than abiological ones, and this sometimes shows up in the isotopic distributions of elements in reaction products -- reactions with lighter isotopes go faster.

Could we then use biotechnology both for refining uranium ore, and isotope separation? Enrichment? That'd be good for a laugh.

[Yes I reread the article, no biotechnological step in the chemical separation. But I can dream can't I?]

Old story

http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/molly-guard.html

Oh dear

It appears we're about to digress into philosophy.

Is language a prerequisite for self-awareness and thought? Is it possible to think, to have thoughts, without words?

'Cogito, ergo sum' ... but how do you express that without language? If you could think it without language, would it still be true?

How, then, is this funky AI system going to transform thoughts into speech, when thoughts don't necessarily correspond to language?

SNOT?

All those acronyms, and they never got as far as Studs Not On Top?

Afternoon effect, see also:

'the layer'

'convergence zones'

'thermocline'

The RN's Submarine Service was exploiting the thermocline during the Great War; during the Dardanelles campaign, it was possible to park one's boat at the boundary, because it floated on the cold water below but sank in the warmer water above, although there is one instance recorded of the crew having done this at night and woken in the morning to find their boat was now on the roof, ie at the surface

14.7m

Last communication I saw from Facebook was that the estimate is down to 14.7m

Among UK FB accounts, I am seeing a pattern in who did or did not get hacked. I suspect whoever did this didn't go hacking accounts at random; they had a list of targets before they started.

Asshole!

Yes, clearly a total asshole, upon whom we look back in fondness and admiration.

I’m no fanboi; I do not own the watch or the TV thing or whatever. But I’m on my sixth Mac at home, I have three on my desk at work, and as for my second iPhone ... I’m tapping on it here.

unexpected methane?

Unexpected methane? At Saturn, but not Uranus. Detection of methane is expected from time to time at Uranus.

Yes yes I know, but hey, it's the pun that just goes on giving

T&Cs?

Well yes.

As a previous commentard could have remarked but didn't, it may be against their T&Cs, but what about T&As?

"the Atomic Weapons Establishment stores at least some of its data on the public cloud."

Call me irresponsible, but I'd like to make a public cloud with at least some of the fissile material the Atomic Weapons Establishment stores. Over 100 tons of separated plut, apparently

Yep, wasps are assholes

Got stung on the wrist myself at a beer festival a fortnight ago. I played nicely all weekend (no swatting!) but got stung anyway. I’d include the picture if I could, but El Reg’s below-the-line stuff doesn’t support that.

Wasp sting treatment? Insect bite creams like Anthisan are good. Or failing that, topical application of something mildly acidic like lemon juice. Or application of ice. You can imagine I had lots of trouble finding ice and lemon at a beer festival at a pub.