JanSolo

This article was from 8 years ago… anyone have any updates on progress or testing of this system?

I share your fond memories of the Gravis Ultrasound. It was expensive and fiddly to setup, but when it worked, it just sounded so awesome. Nothing else really came close until the AWE32 came out a few years later. I still have some old PCs somewhere with various GUS soundcards in; including some rare ones like the GUS MAX and GUS Ace. I was surprised to see that GUS hardware in good condition is selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay. I guess I should dig them out and see if they still work.

So weird to see this on the front page of HackerNews this week. I was browsing The Mod Archive just a few days ago and enjoyed this exact mod and noted how familiar it sounded. I added it to my 'favourite tunes' Youtube playlist too. My cynical mind thinks maybe there's some connection between my search history and stories that appear on my HN frontpage. However, it's likely just a coincidence.

What's notable is that the Russians were not able to exploit the huge lead that they had built in rocket engine technology. The RD-170 series of engines (RD-180, RD-190, etc) were so ahead of their time. Imagine if they had focused on reusability instead of aping NASA's foolish shuttle ideas.

A reusable Zenit or Energia would have been a real game-changer back in the 80s. Russian launches would have cost a fraction of what they were in the west. With cheap launch costs, MIR would likely have been maintained and expanded; maybe even to this day. The ISS would likely not exist since one of its primary goals was to engage the Russian space industry and prevent it decaying away to nothing. With Russian primacy in space, perhaps we'd see more of the 'exotic' Russian space ideas realized... like Kliper, TKS & Polyus.

According to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...

The current statistical fatality rate for astronauts and cosmonauts is 3.2 percent. Lets give Blue Origin the benefit of newer tech and learning from previous mistakes and say they're twice as safe as any other spacecraft. That's still a 1.6% chance you'll die taking a flight in it.

Yes; very good point. Although Blue Origin has done an excellent job so far, it's important to remember that space travel is very dangerous and eventually there will be an accident and people will likely die. It's not an 'if' but a 'when'.

I expect that it meant a lot to Shatner. That man has spent a significant portion of his life imitating a spacefaring version of humanity. For him to finally see reality intersecting with the fiction of his lifes-work must be very satisfying. I completely understand that it was a profound moment for him.

The contrast between him and Jeff spraying champagne and squealing with his marketroids was very apparent.

ICBMs are a large, blunt weapon. Their value is primarily in their deterrence. The concequences of actually using them are so unthinkable, that we don't really consider it unless it's a very-last-resort kind of situation. Most of the time you want a precision, guided munition that can destroy a house or a truck or something small without causing too much collateral damage. Until now, that has meant an airbase or a carrier nearby to launch aircraft to carry these munitions.

However, with the XR-72, we can do away with those and just launch our precision strikes from the US mainland. It's cheaper, just as effective and hopefully will give emerging superpowers (like China) pause when planning their defence scenarios.

(Product)Red is not a typo. It's a weird marketing trick that Apple uses to make red coloured things seem more special.

My understanding is that neurons are like a higher-order connected mesh. A bit like many fully-connected layers in a Machine Learning model.

You can't just read fine motor signals from any neuron, but given enough neurons, since they're deeply connected, you can infer a close approximation of the intended motor signals given a known output. That's why they need a lot of sampling wires in the brain; to makes sure they have enough data to make that inference. Luckily, machine-learning is very good at figuring out patterns in this sort of data.

My guess is that they train an ML model using the inputs and outputs when the joystick is connected. Then they can use the trained model to just generate the output directly from the inputs when the joystick is disconnected.

This will work fine for one particular monkeybrain/interface combo; however, you cannot use the same model on other monkeys. You have to train a new one each time.

This has already been done successfully in Canada. A small team from Vancouver built a pay-what-you-want web-based tax-filing system from scratch. It's called SimpleTax and it's already a major competitor to the Canadian version of TurboTax. In fact, it was so successful that it was recently acquired by Canadian investment group WealthSimple.

Have you ever lived in Vancouver? It’s a strange place. Everything is expensive and you see ultra rich people everywhere, but there is little in the way of local industry to explain all this wealth. Everyone who lives there will recognise this uneasy feeling of ‘Where did all the money come from?’ For ‘normal’ people it feels like there’s this richer strata of society that exists but there is no clear path into it. Almost like royalty. This article may offer little evidence, but it rings very true for people who live there.

Adaptation will happen for sure. Here are some examples of things that we should expect to see in the coming years:

* No more building in flood-plains or low-lying coastal regions.

* Flood insurance in those areas will lose their subsidies and will become expensive.

* Areas in Florida, Louisiana, etc will become poorer as those who can afford to relocate do so.

* Farming will slowly move north; southern areas that are currently farms will dry out and become non-viable.

* Alternative energy might take the place of farming in the south. Solar farms? Wind Turbines?

* Inland cities will become more popular because of their reduced risk of climate-related events. Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Washington, will likely all get net-positive migration.

* Conversely, the big coastal cities will become more expensive and cause people to start leaving. NY, LA, San Francisco, Boston, etc.

Interesting research, but utterly impractical. Are they proposing to harvest all the pine needles from all the forests in the Himalayas, convert them to charcoal and then use that to filter the Ganges? How much do they have to spend on this?

It's a fun mental exercise, but it's so far from realistic that it's funny.

From my cursory glance at the doc, the part in question is inside the bleed-air cutoff system. This is a flapper valve (a bit like in your toilet) that takes air from the engine and uses it for other systems in the plane (air conditioning, cooling, starting other engines, etc). When it's in use, the movement of the parts will prevent rust from building up in one spot. A little rust might accumulate, but it will be rubbed/wiped off when it's next used. The problem occurs when enough rust builds up that the flapper cannot move anymore.

Yeah I'm sure most commercial airliners are the same. Apart from maybe the Super-Heavies; I hear that there are dozens (hundreds?) of 747s and A380s sitting around doing nothing currently because they're too expensive to fly.

Interesting that the vast majority of 737s were flying so frequently that this was not found earlier. For their entire 20-ish year service life, those planes are never left idle long enough for this part to rust! Amazing. Goes to show how popular and successful the 737 line is.

Anyone know the reason why there's no iMessage for windows? Is it supposed to act as some kind of gateway drug into the Mac ecosystem?

Apple seems to have quite a few of these 'unspoken unfeatures'. Perhaps someone can tell me why there are no web browsers allowed on AppleTV devices?

I had heard of Robert Peel, but not of his principles. Thanks for the link; it was an interesting read. And I agree that US policing would really benefit from following some of his ideas. Specifically Principle 6.

Weird... My father did too. He was one of the engineers who drove around fixing Wordplex word processors at customer sites. There were always a couple of spare machines sitting in his car or in the garage; he showed me how to play games on them. I even wrote some school projects on them; they had these huge daisy-wheel printers that sounded like machine guns!

Agreed... Mass production needs to be designed-in and developed with the whole system.

Related question: Just how many Starships do you think will be necessary to fulfill all our launch demands? Given that it's designed to be reusable and it has a huge payload capacity, perhaps there is less need to mass-produce them, since fewer vehicles will be able to do the same job as many expendable vehicles...?

Remember that the SLS is what will be used to launch the Artemis missions. Starship & Superheavy are not in the picture at all for this work, even though they would be able to do the job and at a much lower price.

Additionally, I doubt that Starship or SuperHeavy will be ready by 2024; flying, maybe, but reliable enough for manned missions? I don't think so.

The deadline for this moon landing is 2024; most space followers agree that it's a crazy deadline. It's 3 years away! It's even crazier when you consider that the lander hardware has not even been designed, let alone built, tested, certified and man-rated.

Blue Origin has made a few public statements about having ideas (and maybe even designs) for a lunar lander. However, given their current rate-of-progress, I doubt that they could finish it within the time remaining.

SpaceX has built man-rated spacecraft; also they have extensive experience of propulsive landings and re-usable launchers. Also, they have a reputation for making fast progress. They're clearly the front-runners here and I think they're the safest bet to succeed. Still unlikely for 2024 though.

Dynetics is partnered with Sierra Nevada who also have experience of building spacecraft. However their craft have never been flown manned and their speciality is in winged, aerodynamic reentry; something which is not necessary on the moon. Also, their rate of progress is glacial; I consider it very unlikely that they will be able to design, build, test and certify any kind of lunar craft before 2030 at the earliest.

It's interesting that in naturally aspirated mode, the engine creates around 280hp. That's right around what SUVs and Crossovers are currently producing. This engine has a real potential to be a game-changer; if the freevalve tech can be made cheap enough and reliable enough for mass production, it could really improve average efficiency and emissions for a large number of cars. Great Tech!

I've also noticed that Dishwashers are less effective than they used to be. I thought it was because I was cheaping-out and getting the most affordable one I could find. So this time, I bought a top-of-the-range Bosch. My wife hates it.

So the question is:

Did they rule for Elon because of some legal technicality?

Or was it because of the exorbitant defamation claim?

Or was it because Elon was correct in his claim?

Why is there no rush to phase out the use of these chemicals? My understanding is that they are a relatively recent invention and that we used different, less toxic, pesticides before. It should be a simple task to outlaw the neonicotinoids and return to the old pesticides. Sure, yields might drop a little, but that's better than an existential threat to our whole food chain, no?

Don Pettit is my favourite astronaut. He's easily the nerdiest guy who ever made it up to the International Space Station.

The reason he's so cool is that he can present scientific topics in an easy-to-understand way that really captures the imagination. He conducts a whole bunch of personal experiments in orbit and then uploads them to Youtube. Using static electricity to spin water droplets around a knitting needle. Using surface tension to improve coffee usability. Real science, but presented with a wide-eyed innocence that shows how stoked he is to be up there doing all this cool stuff.

A great asset for NASA in my opinion. They should fly him all the time!

Amen. That thing was so close to being ready; just let down by the composite tanks. The state-of-the-art in composites has advanced so much since the 80s, I'm sure if they tried again now they'd have no problem.

Propfans are great in theory; extra efficiency! More power! Less weight! However in practice, things are not so rosy. The biggest downsides to propfans are Noise and Safety. Propfans are LOUD! Much louder than the current generation of turbofans. The lack of a fan-case means the tips of the blades are whirling right next to the passenger compartment. Which leads to safety; there's no fan-case to protect the passengers if one of the blades were to detach from the engine. Turbofans all have very stout fan-cases (they're the single heaviest part of all turbofan engines) and the certification processes include a blade-off test to make sure that the case can contain it. A blade puncturing the fuselage would be a big problem.