Posts by Flocke Kroes

Re: staff leaving

Some staff left when the threat of the buy-out became public and I am sure more will follow if it goes through. Twitter has had difficulty attracting skilled workers since Musk made his offer.

Part of the motivation to buy Twitter was to make it immune to pressure from advertisers. Advertisers are not famous for taking moral stances. If advertisers wanted to avoid all possible links to IQ45 it must have been because of pressure from their customers.

The sequence appears to be Musk buys Twitter, advertising plummets. Re-instating certain accounts drives away more advertising and failing to re-instate them antagonises a vocal portion of the user base. The plan to replace advertising revenue with account revenue limps towards a buggy release because Musk cannot hire enough competent programmers. Sufficient MDAUs leave until Musk's idea of the 'bot percentage becomes reality. Twitter then merges with Правда social.

Re: Tesla minus Musk

I think Tesla has reached the point where it would be better off without Musk. Tesla needs to stop promising big then under-delivering very late. Instead focus on consistent high quality and after sales support - areas where Tesla's reputation currently stinks.

There are hints that my dream might actually come true. Musk's current cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-lie promise is that in return for Twitter ending the litigation Musk will pay up now IF the debt financing works. I assume this means that the bankers have found a way out of their debt financing agreement (banks lend Musk money to buy Twitter using Twitter as security for the loan). Without debt financing, Musk has to sell more Tesla shares, then sell even more to pay taxes on the profits of those sales. Normally he would borrow money using Tesla shares as collateral to avoid tax but he is already maxed out like that.

Re: There's an obsolute compatibility patch running on my PC

As far as I know Windows worked on ancient AMD laptops with VIA chip sets so they must have had some solution to the original problem. I have no idea if their fix had the same issues or if it remains as cruft to this day. By all means, check the source code and find out. If like me you do not have access to the source code you could try installing a modern version of Windows on 20 year old hardware. If turning off power management makes it work that would suggest that the fix has been removed.

Re: There's an obsolute compatibility patch running on my PC

Has this performance reducer been fixed in Windows? Did anyone notice?

Re: Why mince words??

A key part of it is no-one noticed any problems. It only shows in the C2 power state, which is very unlikely on servers. It is common on laptops but AMD laptops are rare.

Re: Quick fix

There is something that I have not seen follow up on yet. The hydrogen pressure spiked during the last launch attempt. This could have damaged the seals and caused the leak. Replacing the seals is part of the solution. The other part is procedural: filling up with liquid hydrogen without causing a pressure spike. That is something they could only work on after getting a complete rocket on the launch pad and discovering the problem.

A quick fix for this specific problem is reasonable now because they finally have the tools in place. On the other hand, with this fix complete NASA may be ready to discover the next problem.

Re: Pointless rocket is pointless

The next ⅓ is Starship going somewhere. Ship 24 has got as far as a full static test fire. Booster 7 did a 7/33 engine test fire and is going back to the shop for some additional work - probably shrouds around each engine so one failure does not damage its neighbours. Booster 8 is going out to the launch with no engines for cryo-proofing. The next three big milestones are a 33 engine static test fire, a wet dress rehearsal and a launch license (for an actual launch - they already have the programmatic environmental impact assessment.)

The final ⅓ is comparative costs and cadences reaching mainstream news - not just tech sites like this.

Re: Post hock justification

Ignore Musk's tweets and listen to his lawyers. Bot numbers are not the issue. The actual issue is information not provided by Twitter for Musk to calculate the bot numbers. There are words like that in the merger agreement. It is a really slim crack that the lawyers a trying to wedge open but it is still the best chance they have. There is a whole chain of links that the lawyers have to create and assemble: the information existed, Musk asked for it, Twitter could have given it to him, Twitter didn't give it to him, the information would have shown that the MDAU is far more than 5% and that this will cause a significant reduction of profits for years.

As the most direct route to not buying Twitter is so difficult it is not surprising that Musk's lawyers are exploring any other option, even one this desperate.

Twitter not asking for $1B at all

$1B is if Musk is prevented from buying Twitter either because of poverty or the US government blocks the deal. (There is also the possibility that Twitter pays $1B to Musk if they sell to someone else presumably for more than $45B.)

Twitter are going for specific performance: Musk buys Twitter for $44B or the court appoints a special master to control Musk's assets and complete the purchase for him (not a forgone conclusion but the wind is blowing hard in that direction). If Musk thought he could get out of this for $1B he would not have sold $8.4B of Tesla shares in April and $6.9B in August on top of the remaining $6.25B of margin loan. ($13B comes from money that Musk's Twitter will borrow and the rest from fearless investors.)

You are right that Musk will effectively be paying Twitter's legal fees if things carry on as they are going. If Musk could listen to advice he would have talked up the value of Twitter. If he got the share price over $54.20 Twitter would be the ones looking for an excuse to end the merger agreement. Even if he only got part of the way he could get cheaper loans from the banks and bring in more outside investment to reduce his risks,

The only 'sane' reason for Musk to trash talk Twitter would be to quietly buy Twitter shares at the current low price so he does not have to buy them later at the full price. I am not convinced it would be sane to do this again while being investigated by the SEC for doing exactly that early this year.

Hydrogen is a problem on other vehicles too. Hydrogen leaks became less of a problem for them as the operators gained experience and because their rockets are smaller. The problems come back when ground support equipment is left unused for months (last Delta IV Heavy had lots of scrubs). That is something SLS has to look forward to as Artemis 2 will be May 2024 (lies, damned lies and rocket launch schedules).

Hydrogen has other problems. The boiling point is far lower than other propellants and the low density requires enormous tanks and turbo-pumps. Try comparing to Raptor which uses methane:

Thrust: RS-25=2.279MN Raptor=2.3MN

Mass: RS-25=3177kg Raptor=1600kg

Diameter: RS-25=2.4m Raptor=1.3m

Cost: RS-25=$145M Raptor=$250K

After that, comparisons get more difficult as the use cases are so different.

Hydrogen engines (except on Delta IV Heavy) do not produce enough thrust for lift off and require solid rocket boosters (equivalent to about 8 raptors each for SLS). It takes ages for SLS to burn all its hydrogen so the main tank and engines are almost in orbit before separation. Hydrogen in a small second stage is an excellent propellant for high energy orbits or Earth departure.

The plan for Raptors is to light a large number of them so the much heavier rocket leaps off the pad really fast to reduce gravity losses. Raptors will burn through their fuel quickly and stage much lower. This makes reuse much simpler but requires a much more capable second stage. With a single launch, a fully loaded Starship can go to LEO but payload mass plummets for anything higher - even geosynchronous transfer. That massive stage two pays off with refuelling. From LEO, a refuelled Starship can take a full payload anywhere - even to the surface of the Moon and back to lunar orbit.

Re: Same sealants as on the storage tank

There are permanent seals that are bolted tight. There are small filling connectors for when a tanker unloads into storage tank, operated by a skilled human. There is a great big connector on the quick disconnect arm. This connector has to handle a huge flow rate and disconnect quickly by remote operation just before launch. It may also have to reattach after a late scrub while it is dangerous for people to approach. It cannot be bolted as tight as the more permanent or less time critical connections.

This particular failure may be because the pressure was commanded way too high shortly before filling started. During the post scrub press briefing NASA avoided answering many related questions. The pressure was commanded too high. It was not certain that the high pressure caused the leak as at the time people could not safely inspect the quick disconnect. NASA did not say if the command came from software or a human. If it really was human error that caused the scrub then I would say that a human is still more reliable than Boeing software.

Rocket scientists know about hydrogen

Lots of hydrogen detectors, big fans to scatter the gas below an explosive concentration (4% with air) and no sparks before launch then start the ROFIs.

Re: hard choices

There is also huge pressure to scrub if there is any possibility of a RUD. Try looking at the options after a RUD after take off: repeat Artemis 1 in 2024 or maintain the schedule by putting a crew on Artemis 2. Options get worse for a RUD that trashes the mobile launch platform. Artemis 2 cannot launch without a replacement MLP and is incompatible with MLP being designed for Artemis 3 in 2025. Either way Starship will be making progress during that time and it is remotely possible New Glenn reaches orbit before 2025.

The main tank is rated for 22 cryo-cycles. Because of testing it has had somewhere between 10 and 20 already. There will be no more test cycles. Every 'test' will be done while the rocket is ready to launch. Imagine if the only time propellant loading worked was during a test that was not during a launch window...

The boosters are certified for 12 months from stacking (2021-01-07). A few extra days is not a problem but each extra month is a risk that inspections will show degradation. If the boosters do not get re-certified then the launch abort system, Orion capsule, service module, second stage and first stage all have to be de-stacked so the SRBs can be replaced.

It may actually be worth risking a launch despite warning signs if the main tank or SRBs are very close to their expiration date anyway. Some redundant parts of the capsule have already died of old age. The crawler transporter is struggling with the extra weight too. If it gets stuck near pad 39b it could delay Crew Cragon launches that can only depart from 39a.

Re: Propellant from the moon

The Moon has plenty of oxygen bound to light metals, a limited amount of hydrogen mostly in sheltered locations near the poles and a shortage of carbon. Using lunar oxygen to get off the Moon is a massive winner once you set it up. Using Lunar oxygen to get from Lunar orbit back to the Moon is still a clear winner compared to oxygen from Earth. Lunar oxygen for a trip anywhere else does not compete with oxygen from Earth at Starship prices although it would be competitive against Earth oxygen delivered by SLS - if anyone had that much money and there actually was an unassigned SLS available for launch.

The simple answer for the fuel to leave the Moon is to bring it from Earth with Starship. A more complicated solution would be to bring carbon from Earth and combine it with hydrogen from the Moon to get methane for a Starship. A simplistic way to look at cost benefit is hydrogen has a relative mass of 1 and gets you 1 bond. Carbon has a relative mass of 12 and gets you 4 bonds. Oxygen has a relative mass of 16 and gets you minus two bonds. You need to get the total number of bonds to 0 so you need oxygen. It costs 8 per bond so it is expensive to transport. As it is abundant that makes it a good local resource. Hydrogen's mass of 1 per bond makes it cheap to transport and the difficulty of extraction makes it a difficult local resource. If you want Carbon you have to bring it from Earth and the cost of 3 per bond makes it intermediate in value between hydrogen and oxygen for transport.

Hydrogen+Oxygen have an excellent _theoretical_ effective exhaust velocity. At first sight this looks like the mass of hydrogen needed to change velocity is lower than for any other chemical rocket fuel. On closer inspection, the low density requires an enormous tank. The very low boiling point makes storage tricky. Leaky connectors will spoil your day. It dissolves in popular structural metals making them brittle and leaking through them. The low density means a huge pump is needed to get it up to pressure. The huge pump needs a powerful turbine to spin it. RS-25 engines get around this by sacrificing the theoretical high exhaust velocity by sending too little hydrogen to the combustion chamber. (Chemistry says 2H:1O. Rocket science says some extra H gives a higher exhaust velocity because the exhaust contains lighter molecules.)

All of hydrogen's problems disappear if you switch to methane. Easier handling, smaller tank, smaller turbo pump. Best mixture ratio is practical. Boiling point similar to oxygen so one propellant does not freeze the other solid. The maximum theoretical exhaust velocity is lower but it is easier to get close to the maximum and overall performance including tank and engine mass work out similar to hydrogen.

There are other choices: if you have oxygen, chlorine, aluminium, hydrogen and carbon you can make solid rockets. The Moon has plenty aluminium but not chlorine. Spin launch from the Moon has fewer technical difficulties than spin launch from Earth. A space elevator on the Moon can be built with practical materials rather than extremely long nanotubes that we cannot make on Earth. Each of these requires a big step up in Lunar traffic over the last to bring a return on investment.

If we actually build Moon Base Alpha, oxygen propellant makes sense. Methane looks interesting for Starships but the economics may not work out. Hydrogen for a Blue Moon lander would be a possibility if Blue Origin could launch to orbit but the way things are going, Blue has a long way to go to compete on price with SpaceX. At this time, it is not clear that there will be enough traffic to justify Lunar oxygen propellant but if I have massively underestimated the tourist market then I would put a small bet on a Lunar Space Elevator for my great grand children over Lunar fuels.

Re: the point here is how Twitter reacted

I gave clear reasons in my post why anyone who did minimal fact checking would find clear evidence that this "Hunter Biden's Laptop" is nonsense. I am sure you will continue to ignore them.

I tried looking for COVID trials of ivermectin. There have been many small scale trials with varying statistical rigour. You can ignore a meta analysis here. In short: not statistically significant especially in trials controlled for publication bias.

Please remember before you try ivermectin yourself that you are depriving horses.

Re: the point here is how Twitter reacted

As far as I can make out, some of the files from Isaac's laptop are genuinely from Hunter's laptop. Some of the files certainly aren't. Do you have a link to evidence that Mr Isaac's laptop once genuinely belonged to Hunter? The closest I have evidence for is that Isaac's may have been Hunter's but could also be a copy.

Youtube cannot censor me as I do not have an account and do not want one. If I did get an account youtube have every right to not publish what I send them for any reason or no reason at all. There are other places for me to publish and I am perfectly capable of buying a domain name, pointing it at a web server and getting my content out there. I could even get it to show different things to people and Google's robot if I thought Google would not put my server in search results.

Re: the point here is how Twitter reacted

Yes I 100% agree that is the point. Twitter along with a bunch of reputable journals did not publish some blatantly fake news. Even the author of the NY Post article refused to put his name to it. I do not trust Twitface to be unbiased either, but Hunter Biden's Laptop is conclusive evidence that Twitter can get something right occasionally even if it is by only accident. On the other hand you are doing a thorough job of trashing your own credibility.

Try a little critical thinking

Mr Isaac says a man delivered a water damaged laptop for repair. Noddy's guide to dealing with something like this:

1) Do not under any circumstances touch the laptop until

2) Get the user to demonstrate the fault

3) Document the extent of the faults and what actions you are offering towards repair. Get this signed because without it the customer WILL say you broke it.

4) GET PAID - even if this is just a deposit. Do not waste any of your time unless there is money.

5) Make damn sure that you can identify the customer. The laptop could be stolen and you WILL need to prove to the police that you are not trading in stolen goods. When you return the laptop you must be certain that you are giving it to the right person so you will not get sued for giving it to someone else. This goes double if you are legally blind (like Mr Isaac).

6) Image the hard drive. The data on that drive could easily be worth more than your shop. Take every opportunity to not get sued for loss of any of that data.

Now for the first list of smells:

*) Mr Isaac says he did (3) - where is Hunter's signature?

*) Mr Isaac said he did not get paid.

*) Mr Isaac says he cannot identify the man who left the laptop.

*) Mr Isaac says found evidence of a crime. He is not clear on what the crime was, how he knew it was evidence of a crime and how he found it among 128,755 emails.

*) Several hard disks with Hunter's emails have turned up with modifications made after Mr Isaac received the laptop.

Everything about this story stinks. Every journalist capable of minimal fact checking did not run with this story. The lack of covfefe indicates something going right.

Re: Oh good

There are only four names required and half the name comes from the price:

1) Cheap, slow and never in shown on searches from Apple products.

2) Expensive, fast and supplied as standard only to reviewers.

3) Same component as (2) but cheap and out of stock.

4) Same component as (1), same price as (2) and in almost identical packaging.