I'll give nautical miles a pass. Like the Register sailors get to have their own units.
Posts by Francis Boyle
2735 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2007
Page:
Universe-mapping Euclid satellite arrives in US ahead of July launch
Handwritten Einstein essay on theory of relativity goes under the hammer
Owner of 'magic spreadsheet' tried to stay in the Lotus position until forced to Excel
Of course Russia's ex-space boss doubts US set foot on the Moon
Hubble spots stellar midwife unit pumping out baby planets
Pixies keep switching off my morning alarm, says Google Pixel owner
I'd go with the Ramones
not because I have anything against the band as such but because I have had the experience of being woken by someone playing them far too loudly when I desperately needed sleep and I can attest that playing the Ramones loudly, which I assume is how they should be played, is an very effective alarm indeed.
Eta Aquariid meteor shower peaks this weekend, and will be one for the ages
SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball
NASA names astronauts picked for next Artemis Moon test flight
Australian bank stops handling cash at the counter in some branches
Re: Opening hours
This may just be an Australian thing but in my experience banks have always had short opening hours. Back in the Jurassic when I was young they would close at 3pm to allow the tellers to count the money. When that process became automated they grudging extended closing time to 4pm. Still the case at my now tellerless branch.
Re: Uhhh...
My local branch hasn't even had a counter since it was opened several years ago – just a small reception desk that isn't usually staffed, a few seats, and the ATMs (thankfully including coin machines). There are I believe some staff lurking out the back but I rarely see them. This is also in Australia so ANZ seem just to be playing catch up.
Techie fired for inventing an acronym – and accidentally applying it to the boss
Astronomers (re)discover never-before-seen phenomenon on Saturn
Boffins: Microgravity impacts cell repair systems in proteins
Virgin Orbit lays off 85% of staff as funding deal falters
Uptime guarantees don't apply when you turn a machine off, then on again, to 'fix' it
Scientists speak their brains: Please don’t call us boffins
Terran 1, world's first (mostly) 3D printed rocket, lifts off ... and fails to reach orbit
AI-generated art can be copyrighted, say US officials – with a catch
Student satellite demonstrates drag sail to de-orbit old hardware
There's stuff everywhere
Even between the stars*.
*Good thing too. Otherwise there wouldn't have ever been anywhere else to have stuff.
Vessels claiming to be Chinese warships are messing with passenger planes
Re: Good Old Propaganda
This us one of those times I wish I had more than one upvote to give. The Air France Flight 447 crash was a tragedy with as usual multiple causes but the pilots were not incompetent and calling them deranged borders on defamatory. Thanks, Denarius for setting the record straight.
NASA spots first evidence of an active volcano on Venus – in a big pile of CD-ROMs
China debuts bonkers hybrid electric trolley-truck
Re: Does that thing really have the supply and the return both delivered by cables
Given that no road vehicle ever follows an exactly straight line I doubt that it will be necessary to do anything special with the wires to distribute wear. In any case, when your manoeuvring a multi-tonne vehicle I doubt pantograph drag factors very highly in your considerations.
Anyone want an International Space Station? Slightly used
NASA fixes solar observation spacecraft by turning it off and turning it on again
Humanoid robot takes a retail job, but not one any store clerk wants to do
Chinese defence boffins ponder microwaving Starlink satellites to stop surveillance
Re: Working
Very little was "destroyed" in trying to get reusability to work since what kept blowing up were used boosters. And now SpaceX have mastered reusability you can bet they'll be using it on far more than a double-digit number of launches.
The fact that SpaceX discard the first stage when they have to because they need the weight for fuel is irrelevant to the benefits of reusability when it is possible. WW2 fighter pilots were happy to destroy their engines if it meant getting away with their lives* – that doesn't mean it was SOP.
* Look up war emergency power.
NASA Geotail spacecraft's 30-year mission ends after last data recorder fails
Oh, 07734! Internet Archive debuts vintage calculator emulator
Truck-size asteroid makes one of the tightest fly-bys of Earth ever recorded
Plugging end-of-life EV batteries into the grid could ease renewables transition
Re: Follow the money...
It's not a new idea – it's happening right now. The study just quantifies the effects of it becoming mainstream.
As for management – battery management systems are known tech. As pointed out above, you should never connect up a li-ion battery without one. And they just work. Provided you don't buy something of unknown provenance (and why should you, it's not as if we can't track these things) your used batteries can be just as safe as new ones.
You mean
like this. (For those allergic to links it's the Aptera, a lightweight, partially solar-powered car that's the most anticipated thing in the EV world since anything from Tesla.)
Yes, I inwardly groan every time I see the announcement of another over-sized, over-appointed electric EV, but it's what the market demands and if the major manufacturers don't sell them they won't be able to afford to make the sort of affordable EVs the world needs. (Or the Chinese will, because barring a war nothing will stop the flood of cheap Chinese EVs. People will be buying the on Ali Express.*)
*which you can do right now if you're prepared to lay down a few thousand for something that essentially a toy.)
Flaming USB battery halts flight from Taiwan to Singapore
Non-binary DDR5 is finally coming to save your wallet
Since humans can't manage fusion, the US puts millions into AI-powered creation
The problem as I understand it
is to find a way to maintain a stable reaction. It's like riding a bike. As long as you can do it you don't really care how you're doing it or about the physics that make it possible. (Though in the case of fusion the physics aren't exactly a mystery.) It's an engineering problem to be solved by whatever tools you have to hand.
Too big to live, too loved to die: Big Tech's billion dollar curse of the free
That's why you really need your own domain as mentioned above. I get it that most people think they don't need their own domain since they don't want to mess about setting up a web site (and these days ISP provided web space is pretty much extinct) but the real value is in the email identity and setting up an email redirect to your current ISP provided email server is completely straightforward. With a bit of hand-holding even the most tech clueless could do it. I suspect there's a business opportunity there. Make it USD5/year and promote the crap out of it as email service and it could be a nice little earner. Personally, I've been paying two to three times that for decades and have never regretted it. (Having an infinite supply of email addresses comes in very handy.)
Boffins' beam forming kit opens the door to more realistic holograms
Japanese cubesat sends home pics from the far side of the Moon
Bright light from black holes found to be caused by particle shock waves
Matter might not be destroyed in a black hole
but I doubt that it feels very well after undergoing spaghettification.
Massive energy storage system goes online in UK
Re: Tiny
That works both ways. Based on the capacity they seem to be using about 60 megapacks. Assuming a generous spacing that's 60 X 100 square metres or just over half a hectare. I'm guessing Dinorwig is slightly larger than that. At a rough estimate I'd say just the reservoir is about 30 hectares. So this compares favourably in size and has the bonus that you don't have to find a mountain.