stoneman24

“Scotland, a country whose primary flying irritant has been the humble midge”

Speaking as a long term victim, there’s nothing humble about the Scottish Midge.

Quite capable of driving its victim back indoors with an extensive set of itchy bite marks (which develop over the next few hours.

We don’t need the mosquitoe as well.

I didn’t know that my manager had such an extensive resume.

Well done, I was late to sleep and late to work. Entirely my fault for trying to improve my score. Very enjoyable game and thanks for making source available for study.

Kids Fed: achievement unlocked.

Moving to next level

Support Kids at college/University

Can’t remember where I heard it but “people who desire public office should be utterly barred from it”.

Very few are able to escape their own prejudices, viewpoints and succeed in the office. Extremely difficult to make a positive difference for everyone. So many recent examples.

They call it an air taxi, others might called a multi rotor helicopter but from the picture it looks like a Babylon 5 Starfury to me.

I was assuming EV was expected value.

“For a pocketful of mumbles such are promises” Paul Simon.

Seen too many promises forgotten/diluted to really trust anything other than cash.

I suspect if test flight 3 makes orbit then flight 5 will be delivering starlink satellites and then testing on the way back down.

If I remember correctly, a starship can deliver 440+ starlink satellites compared to around 60 for falcon 9.

Recent price shocks for gas/electricity for people and companies, ongoing squeeze on local councils / public services. Impacts of brexit and other government austerity policies.

Lots of people live close to paycheck to paycheck, not having any savings for emergency’s. It certainly stops any optional spending for both households and companies.

With the renaming of the overground lines, we’ll need to rename some of the more obscure openings and rewrite sections of the rules [0]

[0]. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68296483

It was rumoured that an early form of the game was played and researched by AM Turing in the 1930’s. Work had been nearly completed to show that good play was undecidable, but it was abandoned to focus on the much easier ENGIMA problem. This was before the modern rules and the addition of the Elizabeth line, leading to much expanded game space.

“Glass Klein Bottles for sale - inquire within”

Still puts a smile on my face, every time.

still getting by with the little plastic tesco barcode card on my key ring. But it's just a matter of time, before I'll need all the apps on my phone.

Yes, I was writing a similar comment about luck being a huge factor in success when I was beaten to the market by brazzy’s post :)

No, it’s fine by me. I believe that it was thought that the combination of frequency hopping and spread spectrum would make it difficult to monitor and jam ( other than very wide band jamming). My application was rapidly moving so triangulation would be difficult.

If I understand the capabilities of modern Software Defined Radio systems, then they can monitor many different frequencies at the same time which might defeat those old systems. It’s been a long time since I read up on the current ideas and capabilities.

Yes, it’s a thing. A long time ago, my work involved a frequency hopping, spread spectrum radio link. Can’t say much about it but I’m sure that the technology has improved since then.

Yes, the simplest checks always lead to a stack of bug reports that I (with my testing hat on) can generate on the developers. In addition, tab order when entering the data by keyboard. The developers just assume that the user knows as much as they know and will work in the same way as they do.

We have wide range of clients from very technically sophisticated down to people who need guidance and hand-holding. QA, for me, is ensuring all clients have a good experience with the software and get value from our software.

After you have attended the year long cultural workshop on defining “marriage quality” with your peer group and wider community.

An extremely subjective topic with very controversial areas of discussion.

If I remember correctly (can't find the book), the novel describes the aliens writing as a intricate multi-level rectilinear ideogram where in order to start drawing the design, you needed to know the exact ending of the entire message. Each ideogram was an entire complex reply. This implied that the aliens had a different sense of time.

Whereas the movie, the writing was a simpler circular design with slight filaments hanging off and no mention of the encapsulated message as a whole IIRC. The movie design reminded minded me of the Lucent Technologies logo [1] (worked for them a short while, back long ago).

I really liked the story and the movie but different media formats have different aims and constraints so it's hard to compare. I wish the movie industry would tackle more original content (like Arrival) rather than endless sequels.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucent

Yes, I might be able encompass how a set of galaxies evolve into a ring structure but what process would end up with the galaxies in a coil configuration (viewed end on).

To my mind, the coil structure is the bigger headline, a bit buried in the BBC article.

I’ll try to get and read the AAS paper at the weekend, perhaps that will help me.

Maybe the issue is the alpha-beta algorithms just string good moves together, there is no overall plan or intent. Perhaps the lack of narrative when we read through the move, feeds that sense of mechanistic play.

I remember reading about a chess program that built plans and then considered moves in order to complete the plan. Not sure how this could be combined with the ML engines that we have but it might lead to a more natural playing style.

While we have models from geologists and geo-physicists, I think it’s very difficult to work out the best course of action in each case without a lot of prior examples (typically trial and error as you point out).

In modelling oil wells, oil industry engineers typically have lots of variables but far fewer data points (well head pressures, flow rates and hopefully some downhole pressures/temperatures) which makes building a good physics based mathematical model tough. The structure and permeability of the rock matrix is difficult to characterise both before the fracking and after. All situations are different and once you start operations which are expensive, you can’t go back and start again if you make mistakes.

There have been considerable improvements in model theory, sensors/instrumentation and computer power in the past decades. Hopefully this can be harnessed to provide cheaper geothermal power for the future as well as managing oil fields more effectively.

I liked the book but I would like a lot more detail on why the bad circuits are bad. Some are obvious but I thought a few were quite difficult to understand the issue.

I can appreciate the point of view that self discovery of the answer is an important path to learning, but you never know if you are learning the correct lesson. I fortunately had a understanding chief engineer who helped guide me in my early career before I moved to software.

The obligatory xlcd reference https://xkcd.com/538/.

Always the easiest path, defeat the implementation.

By the way, Googling SALET says that it’s piece of historical armour. (a light round helmet extending over the back of the neck)

My usual is SALET (high frequency vowels in 2nd and 4th place), followed by CURIO to provide more hints if needed. Then review the information acquired. Usually it’s solved on the 4th attempt, occasionally on the 3rd. Sometimes there are too many options and I bust out. Just my opinion, probably not optimal strategy.

If I remember correctly there has been a couple of falcon failures, it should be noted that the starship project is is still well in the development phase.

The success criteria for integrated launch test 1 was to clear the launch pad (which it nearly destroyed) test 2 was get past the stage seperation, which it did.

Spacex have a very fast cadence for tests and seem not to make the same error twice. The best test environment is really trying to fly the ship.

4968 furlongs. Some of us use the FFF (furlongs, firkin, fortnight) system.

There is some good progress, but there is so much still to do, especially when you consider the other impacts to the eco-systems around the world (pollution, species extinction etc).

We know that there will more energy in the weather systems as a result of the high levels of CO2, leading to more frequent severe weather.

A real concern is climate tipping points, where the weather patterns shift and stick in new patterns. Living in Scotland, the Gulf Stream weakening further or stopping would be a real change to a much colder climate. It’s already cold enough.

I would agree, it’s a good evocative term for the current trend in a lot of sites. They are reducing their value to the customer and trying to force the choices of the operator onto the client.

As examples, Google, Amazon and meta are corrupting their search with extra items (suggestions or sponsored or some other terms) making it harder to see the items that I asked for