DDE

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of Aeroflot flight 953. The one where the second pilot decided to let his two kids hop into the seat for a bit, and the son lost control and tugged hard the stick on his way out. 75 dead.

Accept accept accept accept

Take two, successful. https://t.me/roscosmos_gk/12906 Not that it's the launch(es) everyone is eager for today.

Well, we've been sticking with an Office 2016 permanent license once the corporate 365 got yanked in 2022. It's going to be interesting how many companies will purchase keys abroad and stick with the familiar product, no matter how much hassle it would be.

Microsoft Office 2024, coming up! https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/upcoming-preview-of-microsoft-office-ltsc-2024/ba-p/4082963 How's that always-online, cloud-based architecture coming along?

Vernor Vinge, sci-fi author and the inventor of cyberspace and technological singularity, among other things https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/03/vernor-vinge-father-of-the-tech-singularity-has-died-at-age-79/

Apparently the chemical battery was somehow related to PZUs. Complete ignition failure. https://t.me/roscosmos_press/1913

Scrub due to a dead chemical battery https://tass.ru/kosmos/20308597

There's a long, highly critical article by Fyodor Yurhikhin in the GLONASS journal. I dunno if I'll ever get to pulling the whole interview out of a PDF and into a translator, but one point felt particularly novel to me. Roscosmos is a poor attempt to emulate the success of Rosatom. Also, fun fact: Roscosmos's Telegram lists Vasilevskaya as a spaceflight participant, not a cosmonaut.

Normally, oversized replicas like this are associated with hazing for loss of a weapon (and I know at least one photograph where this was done with the deadliest weapon of them all - a navigator's slide rule). However, I've just stumbled over a garbage-tier source that claims these were a US WWII-era fully mechanically functional teaching aid for increased visibility in large classrooms. Is there truth to that? It's something not trivially googled for.

In general, don't be ashamed. So long as you highlighted to your immediate superior that you're short of work at the moment, you're entirely moral in watching cat videos on company time. It's your boss's problem to keep you occupied.

So the Rebel Moon 2 trailer has dropped and word is, it looks as bad as the first film. You know, some years ago I thought the industry fatcats are going to try and cook up another Star Wars now that the real ones are hollowed out and dying. I just didn't expect them to dip into literal Sequel Trilogy reject pile and fetch someone whose previous (IIRC) big-budget project required bringing Joss Whedon out of the doghouse. Oh, well, the backstage drama and economics are better than the movies they write these days.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/28/energy-hungry-tiktok-data-centre-ukraine-ammunition-production-nammo-norway

Thomas Stafford (commander, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project) dead at 93. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/science/space/thomas-p-stafford-dead.html

But also unproven, as algorithmic manipulation nearly always is. It feels like USG can't face the reality that TikTok's target age groups hates them that much without any help from the Chinese, and their own attempts at psyops either fail or are actually amplifying the message.

Given that Bezos is on the march against SpaceX starting about mid-February and word of ULA acquisition, I don't expect him to be stopped here either.

I really think it's just data wars. I had to look into Amazon and Alibaba these couple of days and it struck me how much Amazon just looks like a desperate attempt to substitute Alibaba and thus prevent ReD cHiNeSe InVaDeRs from getting detailed data on the transactions of American businesses. Alibaba famously used this data in lieu of normal financial reporting to produce credit ratings and push SME microloans.

Sounds like he dodged a bullet there. That's, pardon me, gaslighting. (Although I may be spoiled by a largely toxicity-free workplace where I pretty much adore everyone... from a distance) What if I told you about all the tax avoidance and money laundering going on in restaurants where I... Wait, did I tell you the COVID-era blanket moratorium on health, safety and fire inspections is still in place Russia-wide because of the war? Yeah.

Expanding from beyond the Russian spaceflight thread... Anton Frolov, The Downfall of the Neuronet "And who knows what the warrior is? What technology will come along next?" Comments be like: "Butlerian Jihad?" "BUTLERIAN JIHAD!" "Omnissiah be praised..."

I believe this was initially "sold" as an anti-COVID sanitary measure. But, as always, it's just cost-cutting with a smile. Is it? Forcing you to have more first dates or having to shell out to impress sounds like a sleezy customer engineering strategy. Plus, you're not producing content for social media and free marketing for the venue if your smartphone is in your pocket. Post at least four photos of every course to Instagram, or else.

Shuttle (and Apollo?)* astronauts were all trained to drive their emergency escape M113, to their absolute delight * I believe the Shuttle crew just left no space for a driver, but this wouldn't be an issue for Apollo

I think you're conflating two big groups. The first are trolls. Now, back in the day, trolling was a difficult task. One had to switch apparent political alignments like a T-1000 to get under the target's skin. This day, however, the battle lines are very clearly drawn, so one can blanket-posture as, in most cases, a far-righter sharing the various degrees of conspiracy theories, although the "breadtubers" also produce some madm... people from among their audience (and back in the Runet, we've got our own Reds vs royalists culture war that's kind of orthogonal to the Anglophone one). Point is, they don't necessarily believe the stuff they spout, it's entertainment and roleplaying, although oh gee can it be a political rabbit hole. The other group are actual nutters. Now, here's the problem: they don't gain validation directly from your enragement, as trolls do, they gain validation through elitism. The conspiracy nutters and their equally delusional counterpart, the uncritical mainstream enforcer, are in the game because they believe themselves the lone heroes holding off the hordes of ignorant rabble and the sneaky and nefarious powers-that-be to get the message out. Therefore, all their internet posting is actually really important... but at the same time they don't really care about interaction with anyone.

"Pardon my newest friend. He's dead tired."

So it's more or less understood that tooth fillings have potential as accidental (oh my gosh, that's terrible) AM radio receivers. Can perceptible sound be induced or by a solar storm (catastrophic magnitudes included), or am I a failure at physics?

Il-20 is no pretty thing but its name hides an ancient secret that is far more visually offensive