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Jay's comments
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Jay  ·  4417 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: “It’s A Brick” – Tesla Motors’ Devastating Design Problem
Damn it. I want Tesla to succeed. But if this is straight dope, then they deserve to die. My car is old tech. Quaint. Buggy whip.

But I can park it for a month, even after driving it hard, and not worry about turning itself into a paperweight. That is simply fucking inexcusable. Either use a power supply that doesn't care if it's discharged, or make it so that it can't get fully discharged. Solarpanel, an emregency capacitor, a goldern anti-brick fuel cell, something, anything. Cuz this is as stupid as a battery operated device with a big high current lamp that comes on to let you know when you've turned the power off. I guess I'll hold out the hope that this is anti-tesla agitprop until further notice. It ain't like I have to worry about it personally...

Jay  ·  4430 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What’s Nasa Ever Done For Us? A Report
It's pretty much the only government program that's paid dividends. too bad they didn't have a better PR hack 30 years ago.
Jay  ·  4439 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Get your survivalism on for $59k
The good--it's a hard impossible to burn secure site with a spring. The Bad -- It's in Arkansas....
Jay  ·  4443 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: NYPD developing drive-by gun scans.
I'd say something like "oh there's no chance this'll get msused" but using this crap as they intend to is misuse from the start, sooooo....
Jay  ·  4444 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why 3D Printing will go the way of VR
I think it basically comes down to having insufficient knowledge or appreciation of the entire manufacturing process, just like the pushers of the "information economy". Just cuz it's old don't make it simple, or primitive, or able to be bested by software and any manner of hardware that plugs into a 110v wall socket. Some processes simply require more energy that you can get outta yer wall socket, yo. Moore's Law just doesn't apply here.
Jay  ·  4450 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Apple's greedy and evil license
Claiming rights to the output you make on thier software. Wow. Just wow. So they think that by using thier crap program, that makes you an employee of the company, where they own your output made on company time and resources. Let's see if they stick that clause in the eula for macbooks and ipads... and they call Microsoft evil?
Jay  ·  4456 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Edge question 2012 : what is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?
Bogus, man. "To get to the other side" wasn't even mentioned...
Jay  ·  4460 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A new "Things I won't Work With" is always cause for celebration.
Did you show me this guy, or did I show you, or neither? In any case his page is one o' my favorite links.
Jay  ·  4467 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The biggest I've ever fired is a 6.
heh... I just get paid to set 'em up and light 'em off, no need for me to look at invoices. However, the smallish (hand-fired, not electric shot by computer) show we've been doing the last many July 4th's is around 15 to 17k worth of lights in the sky and noises, around 4 to 500 3" to 5" shells. I'd love to go with bigger stuff but there are minimum distance requirements and the site in question can't legally accomodate anything bigger than 5" shells for that reason. Last time I checked a typical single break 6" Chinese shell was around ten bucks. A 10" carton of 4 can be had for around 30 but that's a 100carton min. order. Not that it matters. You can't just go online and buy this stuff. 1.3g display fireworks is regulated more than somewhat. My (state issued) license lets me set up and shoot 'em, but does not let me buy 'em or make 'em, and I have to have a CDL to transport the stuff to the display site. Geeze getting on 30 years I've been doing this and hain't gotten bored of it yet! DHS and other such entities are making things more difficult with no other real effects, but it's still fun, and I'll keep doing fireworks displays till they pry the highway flare from my cold dead fingers...

PS I haven't been able to find out how much this 4 footer costs, but I did find that it weighs 450 kilos... holy crap. The info I had on how much lifter charge is needed to get that thing up in the air may be inaccurate... a 6 or 7 lb bag of fff powder. Other sources say more like 50 lb, with lots of wadding twixt the charge and the shell to keep it from coming apart in the gun. In any case, getting 450 kilos ~2700' up in the air on just a black powder explosion has my undying respect.

Jay  ·  4468 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The biggest I've ever fired is a 6.
I wonder if they still fire those old school. When those 4 footers first started being made, not all that long ago, they'd lower a 6 lb bag of lifting charge into the mortar, then the shell, and then then a monk with with full regalia of prayer robes and some embers. He'd do a big ol' ritual down in the gun on top of the shell, and they prayerfully get the hell outta Dodge. I'm guessing these days it's an electric squib but I don't wanna underestimate the inscrutableness of the Far East...
Jay  ·  4497 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "Eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini – plus a Toyota Prius –"
yeah, saw that. Whod'a thunk it...
Jay  ·  4497 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "Eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini – plus a Toyota Prius –"
Shit I KNEW that link was gonna point to the idiiot in the Veyron...
Jay  ·  4497 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "Eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini – plus a Toyota Prius –"
Does nothing to dispel negative notions of the abilities of Asian drivers. Or rich assholes that can buy fast cars but not driving ability.
Jay  ·  4497 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Discovery of Dolphin Language
"I wonder how they deal with abstract concepts, like distance or time." Since studies have shown that we cannot even think without turning to symbols, I don't know if we could ever know the answer. Maybe that's (one of) the next steps in this translation effort
Jay  ·  4497 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Discovery of Dolphin Language
Despite living in a supposedly less varied environment than ours, I'm starting to think that dolphins' language is richer and more detailed than ours, after reading this. Kinda like Egyptian pictographs, but motion 3d video broadcast right into your brain in real time, 'steada carved in rock. i wonder just how detailed thier mental sonograms are. I bet they rawk and rawk hard. The tie-in to SETI at the end really makes me think...what would an announcement signal look like to our radio telescopes that comes from a dolphinlike ET that has no need or concept of symbolic language? Their idea of what constitutes an "obvious" announcement signal might be so different from ours that despite our shared assumptions about things like the 21cm band, monochromatic broadcasts etc, that we could pick something up that sounds just like static but is in fact the encyclopedia galactica we've been looking for. Crikey maybe they find monochromatic broadcasts far too limiting.
Jay  ·  4503 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Rule 34 on Sand People.
Better there than rule 34 on, say, Hutts....
Jay  ·  4503 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Mars Curiosity rover just launched.
Very cool that the launch was successful but am gonna hold breath till landing...
Jay  ·  4503 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Trimble can eat a hot bucket of dicks.
That's the sort of behaviour I wanna see get splashed alll over social media such that the perps go tits up for doing it...
Jay  ·  4510 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The solar system at relativistic speed
What, you mean it ain't like dustin' crops, boy? :p
Jay  ·  4511 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The solar system at relativistic speed
Hmm. What I get from this is: Navigating a relatavistic space ship is gonna be one bitch of a job.
Jay  ·  4511 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How China Can Defeat America
Whover shows the most "humane authority" will prevail. Hmm. I don't see much of that attribute from either party, but most especially not from China...
Jay  ·  4516 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 1883 Photograph of Earth killing Comet
I don't find that the font, Comic Sans, or otherwise, diminishes the holy-shit factor by even the tinest amount, really. I'm not sure that even kittens could sugarcoat a near miss of this magnitude.

Well ok. Maybe really cute ones.

"Awwwww, lookit cute kitty, with soft cuddly news about how close the planet came to getting fucking sterilized"

Nope, that don't work either!

Jay  ·  4519 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The sacrificial gas giant
Really? Oh you are in for a treat. Google 'Worlds in Collision"but beware... He makes that, who's that guy that wrote all the space aliens built the pyramids books, von daniken or whoever, look like a learned scholar...
Jay  ·  4519 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The immediate future of architecture and 3d printing
It's been taking far longer than anyone thought, but real, modern housing, modern buildings, may finally arrive. Look at how far cars have come in a century, look at how far cel phones have come in a couple decades, and look how far house construction has come in like ever.
Jay  ·  4519 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Road of 99 turns
WRC needs to do a round in China, just to use that road...
Jay  ·  4520 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The sacrificial gas giant
Well, something wierd happened out there, to knock Uranus on its side. Velikovsky woulda loved this. He also woulda bent the timescale so as to make this stuff happen in historical times, but he was kinda kinky that way.
Jay  ·  4521 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Light of Alien Cities
Using lasers for star to star comms.... you have to be able to aim and hold your laser pointer at where the receiving planet will be in (insert X number of years hence here), with a degree of accuracy requiring not only knowledge of where that star is gonna be when your beam gets there, but also where in its orbit the receiving planet is gonna be at that time, cuz unless you up the output power to type II levels to afford a less focussed beam that's still detectable, you're gonna have a beam narrow enough that you won't be able to fill an orbit, much less a whole planetary system. This is accuracy so damn perfect we can't even approach it. But again, coherent light seems to be a pretty obvious thing to look for out there, just in case, don't it?
Jay  ·  4521 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Light of Alien Cities
Nah, I don't buy it. In one of my fave books, "intelligent life in the universe", it makes mention that although Scott Carpenter could see chimney smoke and foot trails in Tibet, he could find no trace of Los Angeles. Alien smog, alien weather, and vee are squared conspire to reduce the flux from city light on other planets to a value too low to bother with, I bet. OTOH, that same book postulated what our planets' spectrum might look like from an observatory on Mars, and after crunching the numbers, the authors concluded that any astronomer from that vantage point would have no trouble at all seeing an increase in light from sodium and mercury vapor, apparenty increasing from nothing to quite a lot over just the last several decades. But over interstellar distances? Man, I just don't think so. Not that it hurts to look. I just think that there may be other light signatures that would be easier to spot. The exhaust from a Bussard ramjet pointing our way, fr'instance. I bet there's some photons coming outta that bad boy.
Jay  ·  4521 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A Day of Intense Force-on-Force Handgun Training
"The experience has taught me two things. One: Gun ownership for home defense demands more than just range shooting. Two: Anyone who says they are eager to get into a gunfight is either stupid, lying, or a sh*tbag."

quoted for truth

Jay  ·  4521 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: NASA prepares for moon tourism
They really wanna prepare for moon tourism? See to it they're the tour operator. Like that's gonna happen. Our leaders can't even spell "space program".