* Posts by james 68

606 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jul 2009

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Musk 'texts' Nadella about Windows 11's demands for a Microsoft account

james 68

Re: Great last line

If you get a spare moment, read the lyrics for Babylon Zoo's "Spaceman".

All will become clear.

james 68

Re: Great last line

Man tits = moobs, but yours works too.

james 68

Re: Great last line

Every time I see him erupt the song "Spaceman" by Babylon zoo plays in my mind with the spaceman lyric changed to "Space Chad".

Developer's default setting created turbulence in the flight simulator

james 68

Re: sort of on topic...

Coningsby, Aberporth and Bruggen. Would have been early to late 80's.

james 68

Re: Emergency stop?

They did, around the lens of the camera were several stiff wires sticking out at various angles attached to switches, when one of the wires touched an object the camera would stop and it would count as a crash on the "flight" log.

james 68

Re: sort of on topic...

If anyone is interested here's a video about this old style setup for training Harrier pilots - youtube.com/watch?v=p1pKtmJGS8o

Never played with the Harrier version, but the Phantom and Jaguar versions were fun.

james 68

sort of on topic...

The first several times I got to play in an RAF flight simulator it had the pneumatic (hydraulic?) Cockpit, both fixed wing and Heli cockpits were available,but the interior view was provided by a tiny camera on an arm that moved throughout a rather large physical scale model of the Welsh mountains. I was given to believe that the army also had a not dissimilar setup for tank training.

Swarms of laser-flown bots visiting a planet light years away – and more NASA-funded projects revealed

james 68

Re: A couple of issues to be sorted?

That rather depends on how far away from the target systems star they start braking.

james 68

Re: A couple of issues to be sorted?

They could, but that would increase the total trip duration by many years.

james 68

Re: A couple of issues to be sorted?

@AlanSH

"How do they slow down?"

They would slow down using the stellar wind generated by the target systems star.

Maverick Mars chopper has survived way past its warranty – now it's time for a sequel

james 68
Coat

Re: lighter landing gear could be used...

Robots aren't alive, and having never been alive cannot be dead.

Can we therefore say that Mars is populated by the undead?

Lenovo sues Asus for patent infringement, seeks US ZenBook ban

james 68

Munich being in Germany would suggest that the European patent office rubber stamped these ones.

But it is much the same, you pay the fee - you get the patent, they don't bother much with checking for prior art so long as you can supply the cash.

We're getting that fry-day feeling... US Army gets hold of drone-cooking microwave rig

james 68

Re: Soled

Microwaves are a specific range of frequencies, it's right there in the name. Note that the emitter is microwave only, not longwave, shortwave, millimeter wave etc. other frequencies can pass through materials which block or reflect those microwave frequencies. Which is why the microwave oven analogy is not specious. GPS, cellular and many other wireless coms will happily keep working inside a microwave blocking layer or box. Now as to your actual specious suggestion, why don't you turn on your microwave at full power and place your phone right up next to any of the surfaces, you'll notice how the phone is perfectly safe and unaffected. Almost as if those microwave frequencies can by easily blocked. And yet a phone will still get signal inside a closed microwave oven.

Egads, what foul sorcery could this be? The magical mysterious microwaves have been defeated. Oh noes!

james 68

Re: Soled

Not really.

You ever stand right in front of your microwave while you wait impatiently for your food to heat?

You ever do that and have your face right at the door watching the food?

You ever wonder why you don't get cooked and your eyeballs don't pop?

But you can see through the microwave door right? the metallic screen behind the glass has all those little holes after all.

Now, lets propose an experiment. Put your mobile phone in your microwave, and get a buddy to call you.

That fancy little box that blocks microwave leakage won't stop your mobile from ringing, why? It's the frequencies.

You can even take your microwave outside, load up GPStest and watch it run through the closed door, the signals will be attenuated but it will still connect to enough sats for a location.

Hell you could even leave the top of the drone uncovered and only wrap the sides and bottom - the weapon is directional and unless they mount it on a plane it will never be looking down on a drone.

A faraday cage is unnecessary when the microwaves aren't coming from every direction, they only need to be reflected away from the electronics and that doesn't require a sealed cage just a material which can reflect those particular frequencies covering the directions from which the "beam" could possibly strike.

james 68

Re: Soled

You seem confused about what exactly a drone is.

A drone is a vehicle which can be controlled remotely and may or may not have autonomous functions.

You stated rotors, plural, inferring a quadcopter design, most of the drones used in conflict tend to be of the typical airplane design due to the fact that it is much more efficient for both range and loitering.

Regardless, either design could easily have the BODY wrapped in a tinfoil layer, note that I have used caps this time since apparantly that flew right over your head first time around, there would be zero need to cover the propeller or rotors in tinfoil.as if the drone is relying on electric motors (doubtful) the foil would only need to reach the motor casing. If the drone is using a gas engine (probable, because increased range and flying time) then the foil covering would only need to extend to and cover the bulkhead to which the engine is attached.

Pinholes in the foil layer which would allow wiring through for the aerial, camera etc would be functionally sealed by said wires filling the aperture.

Sure, any exposed camera would get borked, but that's not going to stop an explosive suicide drone from completing its mission by GPS.

james 68

Re: Soled

Pretty much what I was thinking.

Has it been tested against a drone that has had its body wrapped in a layer of tinfoil? If not, they might want to start this kind of test sharpish. Preferably before so much money changes hands that they're stuck with another boondoggle.

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

james 68

... because Japan.

Come to Japan where depending on where you live in the country you'll be supplied with power of a different frequency, Eastern Japan has one frequency and Western Japan has another, both are nominally 110 volts, plugs are the same for both areas. Whilst 90% of equipment doesn't really care and will work regardless the other 10% will have all kinds of issues from intermittent faults to releasing the magic smoke.

And sods law requires that the one item you really need to work is the one that'll crap it's guts out.

Bombshell biography: Fearing nuclear war, Musk blocked Starlink to stymie Ukraine attack on Russia

james 68

Re: So Musk has blood on his hands

And yet the ratio of smouldering Russian tanks compared to smouldering Western tanks completely disproves your argument.

A room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor? Take a closer look

james 68
Trollface

Re: Apatite

Spoilsport :-P

I wanted to see how many people would come here ranting after trying it.

james 68

Re: Fake News!

Room temperature superconductors already exist (google superhydride superconductor) they just don't exhibit superconductivity at atmospheric pressure, so I'm gonna call hokum on the "laws of atomic physics" claim which probably should have been "the laws of thermodynamics" anyway even though they don't rule out room temp atmospheric pressure superconductivity.

james 68

Re: Apatite

Rounded corners are a regular expression. Didn't stop the Jesus fruit company from patenting it though.

james 68

Re: Apatite

So instead of licking a 9v battery to wake myself up after my boss has given the daily "motivational pep talk" I should actually be applying the contact points to my teeth?

Florida man insists he didn't violate the law by keeping Top Secret docs

james 68

Re: What I cannot understand ...

@Rafael #872397

Don't know what they are specifically, but I know that they are grown on a beach in Norway.

https://www.boredpanda.com/donald-trump-hair-growing-prairie-dropseed-tromso-norway/

FTC pulls emergency brake on Microsoft's marriage to Activision Blizzard

james 68

Re: Pity

To be clear, you want every game brought to PC to be a shitty, rushed console port?

Because that's all that comes out of Microsoft owned games companies.

NYC Mayor: Robo-pup 'out of the pound' and back to police work

james 68

Auto correct can be bothersome

"to protect his beloved kickbacks."

Fixed that for you.

China aims to pair J-20 stealth fighter with 'loyal wingman' battle drone

james 68

Pew pew

The Royal Air Force announcement that Mosquito had been squashed saw the Royal Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) state it had made "substantial progress" in understanding and harnessing a range of future uncrewed capabilities, and that it would "aggressively pursue" the RAF's commitment to integrate advanced uncrewed capabilities "with more immediate beneficial value" into the force mix.

Isn't this just a long winded way of saying they're going down to the pub to make paper airplanes?

Is Neuralink ready for human brain implants? Allegedly so

james 68
Black Helicopters

Danger: conspiracies ahead

How long before they're ad supported? Tickling the brains pleasure center every time you see a twitter ad thereby making ad watching addictive? Because lets face it, that's the only way Elon will make twitter profitable.

Firefly gets nod from NASA to deliver Lunar Pathfinder to the Moon

james 68

Why oh why

So they're giving the contract to a company which has no track record of success, is already a year behind on its prior contract and has no rockets of its own to launch anything anywhere. At least they have a spiffy name.

Another normal day for the geniuses in government procurement then.

NASA spots first evidence of an active volcano on Venus – in a big pile of CD-ROMs

james 68

Re: In Vino Veritas

It does, however it's not an internally generated magnetic field like Earth (much lower iron content in the core) but externally generated by the ionosphere interacting with the solar wind and is much weaker.

It's interesting stuff.

Tesla hits the brakes on rollout of Full Self-Driving code to new users

james 68
Black Helicopters

Umm..?

Wasn't Musk complaining to all of the twits who follow him that the FSD recall shouldn't be called a recall as it would be an over the air thingamajigger? If what Musk claims is true then why should any of the Tesla owners have to wait in a queue? Could he perhaps be exaggerating? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

NASA starts assessing Orion capsule for refurb

james 68

Re: Would I fly to the moon in a reused spaceship?

My biggest worry would be the mounting points for the parachute lines and the sections of the main body to which they mount, They will be experiencing pretty horrendous shock loads on a low cross section on every use, plus the thermal cycling of said parts. However I'm pretty sure that the folks at NASA know a thing or two about x-raying materials for stress fractures and would hopefully see these as "consumable" components.

Cisco wriggles out from $2 billion bill for ‘willful and egregious’ patent infringements

james 68

Re: Can you imagine the headlines if Huawei had done this ?

Kind of similar to how Cisco has been shown to add NSA backdoors to their equipment but that's fine and dandy, Huawei on the other hand has not been proven to do the same for Chinese "intelligence" services and have in fact shown their hardware and software to prove it but OMG WTF CHINESE BAN THE BUGGERS!!!!!!

One might think there is some kind of double standard at play and perhaps security is not the issue.

Tesla Megapack battery ignites at substation after less than 6 months

james 68

Re: Look to Dinorwig

Indeed, "old school" can be very very good indeed - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell

These dry piles (fnar fnar) have been in constant operation since 1840 and will continue to operate for the foreseeable future.

Chinese researchers make car glide 35mm above ground in maglev test

james 68

Re: Bumby rides ahead

Look at the last section of the video, the car is sliding diagonally off the rail to the left by a large margin. I'm guessing that the clip stops at that point to hide the resulting crash/rollover.

Japan to change laws that require use of floppy disks

james 68

Re: It's pervasive.

Yup, that's why on hot days at low tide half the damn city stinks like there's a leak in a sewer.

Currently I'm living in Sakura and travel through Funabashi every day for work, I in fact use the Toyo line which services Kaijin-eki. You got some local knowledge though, did/do you live nearby?

james 68

Re: It's pervasive.

Yup, I get the phone part (at least for those working in the boonies), but the pager........?

And worse the combination of pager AND intellectually challenged phone? If they can contact him on the phone by voice, SMS or email then surely the pager is redundant?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

james 68

It's pervasive.

I was standing in the smoking area of a familymart convenience store in Funabashi last week, I heard an archaic Nokia-esque alarm from the Japanese guy next to me who is furiously smoking and playing some kind of game on his smartphone. Lo and behold he pulls out a pager, reads the display and then pulls out an ancient flip phone to reply while still holding the smartphone in his other hand.

I can only guess that the pager and flip phone were required specifically for his job.

Could a leaky capacitor be at fault on ESA's Sentinel-1B?

james 68

If you consider electrons moving from one point to another where or when they aren't supposed to go, then yes.

DARPA says US hypersonic missile is ready for real world

james 68

Russia = Ouroboros

Add to that: they have a limited supply of aircraft and missiles and unfortunately for Russia they can't currently build more/repair what they've got because the components and spares were all made in Ukraine. Ooops.

james 68

Re: Sooo...

The Americans have been testing hypersonic missiles at the Woomera RAAF test range in Australia since at least 2015 many of which have been openly reported, my guess is that the two mentioned are essentially "final design" concepts or demonstrators from two different manufacturers using the data gained by numerous previous tests.

Pioneer 10 turns 50: Remembering humankind's first jaunt to Jupiter

james 68

Did you miss the part where this is a story about space flight and bit rockets etc?

james 68
Black Helicopters

Agreed but.... Don't forget however that most of the technology used came directly from trying to find faster ways to kill more people.

Salesforce sued in attempt to block release of Capitol riot info

james 68

Re: All parties

@Cederic

"Yes, the Democrats have been accused of being complicit. Pelosi explicitly, for instance, relating to multiple curious decisions made."

Would these be the Republican accusations which ignore that she does not in fact control the Capitol Police and has little to no input on how they perform their roles? Or the accusations that blame her for not calling in the National Guard which she doesn't actually have the power to do?

You realise that you are accusing Pelosi of trying to help Trump right? How exactly does that fit into your worldview? Does it make you lay awake at night in sweaty dilemma wondering if that means you should in fact be supporting her because your conspiracy theories claim she actively tried to support Trump?

O

M

G....

Maybe she's Q!!!

Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection

james 68

They would also have needed to apply a reverse spin, but one would presume so.

james 68

Milspec is marketing wank for civilian grade overpriced tat sold to rambo wannabes.

MOD approved (or DOD approved if you're a yank) is the marketing wank for overpriced sub-civilian grade tat foisted upon actual military personnel at great taxpayer expense.

james 68
Coat

617 Squadron are the "Dambusters" if memory serves, well.... damn they've busted this one.

Good Grief! Ransomware gang has only gone and pwned the NRA – or so it claims

james 68
Devil

Thoughts and prayers folks ...

Thoughts and prayers.

This is AUKUS for China – US, UK, Australia reveal defence tech-sharing pact

james 68

Re: buy gold now

Whilst I agree with almost everything you wrote, I feel the need to point out that as Australia is a democracy then people have every right to protest, however daft said protests might be. Otherwise it would be a tad more similar to China than you might like. Besides, if memory serves its the various world governments that sink protesters ships in dock, even going so far as to set off bombs in the buggers.

The web was done right the first time. An ancient 3D banana shows Microsoft does a lot right, too

james 68

Eh?

Windows and stability in the same sentence....have the trumpets sounded? The end of the world is nigh and all that.

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

james 68

Research, it's a thing.

Someone didn't do their research before writing this article.

https://www.pcgamer.com/high-end-gaming-pcs-are-exempt-from-the-cec-power-regulations/

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