alexfernandez

At really high altitudes air density goes down quickly; this is good for planes but bad for airships because payloads are reduced. Plus, as you say, winds are really really strong: over 200 km/h. https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/o...

I have seen many high altitude airship studies trying to hover around, but none have been viable in the end. To go around the world it seems better to just float, as in the comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46881679.

Fair points. I am aware that it is a UAV, and that there are some harsh regulations around the world (e.g. drones are completely banned in Morocco). I am also willing to accept my vast ignorance. I don't know exactly what regulations apply to an autonomous airship: balloon, UAV, recreational amateur aircraft? Actual laws for the handful of countries involved in the actual trajectory (Nicaragua, Thailand, Egypt perhaps) are not easy to find online. So I changed the first paragraph to:

"Finally, what are the legal implications of flying an airship drone over foreign air spaces? This very complex area clearly requires in-depth study and careful consideration, and it lies completely out of my depth. The primary objective is just to avoid being shot down since I'm not planning to visit any foreign countries in person, so allow me to just touch over the main issues."

I'm loving "Project for Intelligent Circumnavigation Airship Research Drone" myself.

Corrected now, thanks! So grateful for the compliments. For the record, the correct link is: https://pinchito.es/2024/aves-aeternae.

Project to Circumnavigate using an Autonomous Airship Drone

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This video is interesting, but I find it opinionated, neo-liberal, US-centric and conclusion-driven. It raises more questions than it answers: if Greeks are not paying their taxes, why would raising those same taxes help anyone? Why should Germans and French pay the Greek debt, if not to repay loans to German and French banks? How can a government bribe its whole population with borrowed money, and who is lending that money? Isn't it irresponsible to lend to countries in those terms, and shouldn't the lenders lose that money? Why would these losses cause a default in foreign economies?

Also, most of its facts are messed up: the US subprime mortgage crisis did not cause the crisis via a Spanish real-state market collapse, it just tightened credit and ultimately deflated public banks (cajas de ahorro) which have hidden political spending for several decades, and which have cost billions in the last few years. This is well documented, just as a data point: Bankia was bailed out for $29B http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2115950,00....

The problem with Government spending cuts mandated from the outside is that they all go to health and education, instead of cleaning up the layers of bottom-feeding politicians and friends which have occupied most public companies and which are devouring the economy. The Spanish competition regulator estimates the cost of corruption in about €48b: http://www.elconfidencial.com/empresas/2015-02-10/la-cnmc-ci... (in Spanish, I found no good source in English). I can imagine that in Greece the situation will probably be similar or worse, it would be nice to have credible figures. Meanwhile inequality soars in Spain, and the number of millionaires increases: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/10/spanish-wealth-... http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/05/21/inenglish/1432203309_060...

Any analysis which doesn't take into account these factors is superficial and will never reach the true causes. A shared fiscal policy would make European policy less transparent and easier to manipulate by the elites, unless it was accompanied by deep reform in all European institutions, which is highly unlikely. Revising the role of the ECB is much more interesting IMHO.

To show that there is a correlation you have to quantify both hiring process evaluation and job performance. Since both are elusive quantities that are hard to quantify, showing there is no correlation may just mean that measurements are done poorly. E.g. when job success is measured by boss satisfaction.

I can tell you after listening to one of his talks and talking to him afterwards: Reg is indeed a great guy! It is a good thing that JavaScript lured him from the Ruby world (bad for them I suppose).

Cassandra is a real winner in that study only if you need on the order of 100K ops/sec. Otherwise high latency can be a killing factor.