Posts by imanidiot

Re: Fake news!!!

Welll... To be fair it once veered wildly off course, disintegrated and was then explosively terminated by range control.

Re: Any plastic experts out there?

ABS plastic is never as good when recycled as when new. For Lego this means they can probably recycle a small amount of fresh factory waste (Sprues and such) by adding a small percentage to new material but used Lego bricks cannot be recycled to something with sufficient quality. You can probably make other stuff out of it, but it is usually much weaker plastic.

Don't worry, I'm sure it was a mistake and the person responsible has been demoted to unpaid intern and sent to fetch coffee. I'm sure Apple's blackout of the Register will continue as normal going forward.

Re: You won't see the bunny hopping and falls like those seen in the Apollo videos.

I doubt they are correct there. The bunny hopping wasn't because of the suits, it was simply the most effective way for us bipedals to move in the low gravity environment (Compared to what we are used to).

And the falling will happen too. Because humans are clumsy and not used to a low gravity environment.

Re: bigwigs had spent the last year working on ... "numbers totally unrelated to reality"

I would say that's business as usual anyway. Most of the time the "numbers" the bigwigs work with are so abstracted and convoluted someone might as well have pulled them from their ass

Re: Signed documents

Sign digitally, print, fax. Just because I can.

New password: fuckoffyourselfyougit!

It's ALWAYS the people that make noise that get the headlines. As the saying goes the squeaky wheel gets the grease (I prefer that the squeaky wheel gets replaced, or at least new bearings).

Re: Simpler

But in the US the user CAN'T be forced to hand over their keys. Something stupid in their constitution gives them a right against self incrimination or something. That's why they want the option of forcing the carriers/services to hand over your data.

Re: Just

The people who get harassed, stalked, attacked and or lynched, who suffer real consequences because people who DO participate read the false rumours and lies spread about them would certainly care. That is the point. You don't need to participate to suffer the consequences of anti-social media!

Given what they are saying here, this could mean that Kodi is supplying them with the data they desire.

Re: Ah yes ...

On the first call the answer should have been:"

Means it's broken, send it back to us.

If you keep tripping over a rock, move the rock or move your route.

Re: That was a serious breath of fresh nerdiness

If they want to, the people at the airport probably have automated scanning tools that tell them a TrueCrypt partition exists. And then the rubber gloves come out, so to speak.

Re: Deal of the century

Don't mix up consumer sale price of electricity with wholesale generating/trading cost of electricity. They are almost entirely unrelated. Take a look at the profit margin of the average leccy farmer over the last few years.

Re: These are not the drones you're looking for.

It doesn't actually even require a sighting of a drone. Given there's still no evidence at all anyone actually saw one. A kite with some LEDs in the twilight will achieve the same thing (Also illegal to do btw), or possibly even just a frisbee with some LEDs and a strong arm.

Re: The bigger they are

You make sure the frame is strong enough to withstand the likely wind forces (easy-ish to calculate), make the siding/skin strong enough to withstand those wind load and that all holes and vents can be plugged up to prevent over-pressure inside the building. Then you remove anything in the vicinity that could be turned into a wind blown projectile. After that the steps should be easy: Cross your fingers, pray to whatever deity you prefer and hope for the best.

Re: Unwanted

Let's be honest, who would trust some more or less random street furniture to connect their phone to? How do I know it hasn't been compromised?

Re: HDMI and Ethernet

I have yet to encounter ANY equipment that is actually capable of using ethernet over HDMI.

Re: Hooray for science!

Oh and minor nitpick, to get the same energy as the Chicxulub impact you need a bit more than a few thousand Tsar bombs. Copied from Wikipedia:

The Chicxulub impactor had an estimated diameter of 11–81 kilometres (6.8–50.3 mi), and delivered an estimated energy of 21–921 billion Hiroshima A-bombs 1.3*10^24 and 5.8*10^25 joules, or 1.3–58 yottajoules). For comparison, this is ~100 million times the energy released by the Tsar Bomba, a thermonuclear device ("H-bomb") that remains the most powerful man-made explosive ever detonated, which released 210 petajoules (2.1*10^17 joules, or 50 megatons TNT).

My own calculation based on the numbers in the article would come at just over 3 million Tsar bombs, so I don't think the number of little johns in the article is entirely accurate.

That's exactly why TheReg keeps asking, and keeps telling us they've asked. At this point the line is more of an in-joke

Re: hmm

4) Is there a small child in the house?

Planes can (and do) follow a set of waypoints. And have been capable of doing that since the introduction of Inertial Navigation Systems and today they use GPS backed up by INS. Nowadays, theoretically planes COULD be built that do the entire flight autonomously if everything keeps working. Currently you need a human in the cockpit to handle comms, switch settings, press buttons, and handle anything out of the ordinary. The systems we have to do unmanned flight are not as reliable as having a well trained human in the mix, so nobody wants to use them. And it's very likely it'll stay that way for quite some time. On top of that those systems only work if everything keeps working as expected. Throw a failure into the mix (even something innocuous) and things will go bad fast. No matter how slim the chances, I'd like a plane I'm on to be flow by something that can handle something unexpected. Be it something small (like an engine exhaust running hot and diverting to an alternate before something goes bad) or something large (like the Gimli Glider or the Sioux City DC-10 crashlanding). It's not a guarantee for success, but it gives a chance.

Re: One Lunar Day?

As Vulch said, it's all about thermal management. Lunar nights (because they are so long) are very cold. While the electronics themselves don't mind, most batteries can't survive such low temperatures, meaning that as the sun rises again there's no longer a power buffer available for things that take a lot of energy in a short burst (like transmitting data). While the craft might not be completely dead, effectively it is.

Due to the length of the night just adding more insulation isn't enough to keep things warm, you really need a heater. Spacecraft design is always a balancing act of vehicle weight versus the power available from the launch vehicle and decent stage. In this case they probably decided more instruments outweighed the benefit of extended mission time.

Re: Scooter stoopid

Fortunately electric scooters (scooters as in the article, not scooters as in the small streamlined motorcycle variety) are also not allowed in the Netherlands. (Not on the cycle paths, not on the roads, not on the sidewalk/footpaths)

Re: Are you f**king kidding me?

"Fast charging stations are for the development version of electric cars. Production electric cars will have easily replaceable battery packs constructed to a universal standard."

It's been tried (the model S was capable of this battery pack swapping in it's first prototype iteration for instance), but it turns out the amount of peripherals you need to do this safely makes the economics of it just not measure up to any gains in efficiency. On top of that, it turns out drivers of electric vehicles aren't too keen on having to rely on an unknown battery pack with an unknown lifetime charge cycle count (And it's very difficult to actually measure how good or bad a battery pack is.)

Re: Radicalization

It's easy to place people on the general political spectrum. Peterson is definitely on the center-right. There's nothing all that controversial on his position in a general view of the world. Most of what he's known for is his resistance to the whole gender pronoun thing and can be summed up by: "I should not be FORCED to have to go out of my way to use very specific language just so you don't have your feelings hurt". And quite frankly I agree with him on that.

As to the funding from Rebel Media, that's not entirely the story. His research grant from the University of Toronto was cut off (for somewhat dubious and badly argumented reasons) and Rebel Media (amongst others) started a crowdfunding campaign to give Peterson the money he needs to continue his research (That's not his salary btw, but money to hire and pay PHDs, fund the execution, etc). That means the money he's getting isn't coming directly from Rebel Media. Sure some of the crowdfunding "sponsors" might be right wing extremists, but that can't and shouldn't influence the research itself The results are still scientific work, they're still publicized, it's still open for peer review. If the work he delivers at the end is of all this IS indeed far right wing ideology then maybe we can take something from it, but so far, none of what he has published is really far-right wing material. And even if it were, the correct way to fight it is to provide peer-review and data to refute his research.

He's using big words to say "shady person".