Shpaget

I just got an email from dealextreme on some of their specials. In this case it's "buy 1 get 1 free", but what I want to ask, is this even worth the asking price? DDR3 8GB 1600MHz Desktop RAM Memory 240Pin 1.5V for AMD Does anybody have experience with these things? A name brand in my local store costs about 2,5x this amount, so with the "buy 1 get 1 free" it's close to 5x price difference. It looks too good to be true and if the memory doesn't work, it's worthless regardless of the low price. In fact it's more expensive than buying the proper stuff immediately. Will it burn down my house?

Tell me about it. A colleague was having some problems with the POS (the credit card thing), so he calls me for help. I'm at the other side of the company, with more stuff to do than I can count, but I realize it is most likely one of those "turn it off and on again" types of problems, so I tell him to unplug it from the mains, wait for 10 seconds and plug it back in. 15 minutes later, he walks up to me and says: "I don't know how to do that." "Do what?" "Turn off the POS." "Darn it, you're still doing that?" Anyway, both of us go to the store, a customer is alone in there with about $100 000 worth of easily "borrowed" merchandise, the cash register PC is turned off and the POS is still happily turned on. My colleague says: "I don't know which cord is it supposed to be." Just to clarify, there are three cords going to the POS, one is a curly fixed telephone style one (if anybody still remembers those) that goes to the little numpad where customers punch in their PIN. It's instantly recognizable as not being a power cable. Two other cables are a LAN cable going into a network switch and the power cable itself. Not really too hard to follow those two cables and see that one leads to an AC adapter. Despite clear instructions that really can't get any simpler and the fix taking literally 15 seconds to do, with additional 15 seconds for POS to reboot, I need to waste my time walking all over the company, twice. I don't even work IT.

And this goes for other things as well. Just yesterday, at work, a piece of newly installed electronics my boss was working on just refused to work, so I was called to find out why. Nearby similar electronics powered by the same 12V bus and control signal all work fine, but this one that was assembled just minutes earlier doesn't. I check the PCB and all solder joints look fine. I check voltage on the power supply bus and it's 11,2V, a bit low for a nominal 12V but not something I consider a problem in this case. The problem is that the device expects 15-24V. I check it with my bench supply and it works fine at 15+ V. No problem, we have two options, to bring in the 18V bus that is a bit far, but certainly possible to do, or I suggest installing a small boost converter, after all, I have an entire bag of them it's going to be a 5 minute job... And here we get to the problem. I take the first one out of the bag and no matter where I twist and turn the trimpot it doesn't regulate. About half an hour later, after I went through 5 of them I finally found one that worked. One of them even released the magic smoke. So, what am I complaining about? On ebay, they cost about $0,50 delivered, but don't work. I would gladly pay twice as much to get something equivalent, but operational that won't cause me headaches, but if there is such a thing on the market I don't know about it. Aww... Do yourself a favor and get a better one. I have a Weller PU 81 station with WSP 80 iron and it's a great thing. Perhaps a bit pricey if you don't use it often, but I also bought the much more affordable TS100 and it's proven to be extremely useful. I have a 24V DC outlet on my bench which I can use to power it, but also bought a smallish 12V motorcycle battery so that I can use the iron even on powered electronics (not something I recommend you do, but in my very specific case, I find it extremely useful on those few occasions).

Judging from the reaction from the BlizzCon crowd when a guy asked if Diablo Immortal was an "out of season April Fools joke", I'd say I'm not the only one who thinks Blizzard made a poor judgment when they decided that the main event at BlizzCon would be to present a mobile game that is a lazy outsourced reskin of an existing game.

Diablo Immortal nuff said

Thanks. That does look like it's one of them. If I understand correctly BrahMos is based on P-800 which would explain the similar launch. Fascinating.

Does anybody know what missile is this (starting at 0:19). And why does it have such a complicated launch sequence? It look amazing, though.

One would think so, but ESA says it's not related to volcanic activity. http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Mars_Express_keeps_an_eye_on_curious_cloud Interesting nevertheless.

Elaborating on my previous, quite verbose, response, yeah, not only no warning about imminent shutdown, but no explanation after the switch was flipped. It looked like some temporary server outage or something. I kept coming to see if they had fixed it, but nope. No forum, no information. Weird way to shut down a forum. Real shame about it. I liked the community.

Reporting!

I'm more significantly impressed with the rig to float the seed and the camera work than the results of the study. Summary: It's drag.

Wikipedia has some data on actual NERVA engine that was built and tested Diameter: 10.55 meters (34.6 ft) Length: 43.69 meters (143.3 ft) Mass empty: 34,019 kilograms (74,999 lb) Mass full: 178,321 kilograms (393,131 lb) Thrust (vacuum): 333.6 kN (75,000 lbf) ISP (vacuum): 850 seconds (8.3 km/s) ISP (sea level): 380 seconds (3.7 km/s) ISP is not bad at all, but maybe a bit heavy.

When we have turnstiles on the path to board a moonbound spacecraft, we'll know we're doing something right. Huge milestone.

Okay, okay, it's a deathray! At this power level it could do some damage, but it could also be a nuisance weapon of no current classification. Imagine lighting up enemy positions 24/7 for a few weeks. People would go crazy.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/10/chengdu-launching-satellite-to-create-8x-full-moon-lighting.html/amp It's getting crazier. Now they are talking about eventually having this thing illuminating ground based solar farms 24/7, presumably at daylight illumination level.

From chute deployment to landing you have plenty of time to strap yourself into a seat.

Sure, it would still need to be very large. Not inconceivably large, but about twice the size of ISS array, plus control mechanism. Not at this power level. If it can concentrate all its power to an area of 100 m^2 (10 m x 10 m square) it would deliver 8 kW/m^2 which would give you a decent tan, but is far from death-ray. For example, industrial fiber lasers (that are in several kW power range) focus all that energy to a tiny spot of about 0.1 mm^2. That means the energy density is on the order of 10 million times higher.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/17/chinese-city-plans-to-launch-artificial-moon-to-replace-streetlights So, someone thinks it would be great if they could put a satellite up there that would shine down on Earth during the night to produce "dusk-like glow" which is, according to the article about 8 times as bright as moonlight. With moonlight being about one millionth as bright as Sun, it would take about 800 kW to power this monstrosity. That's 10 times the size of ISS solar array. Now, how to we cool this thing down?

Wouldn't just lying on the floor be relatively safe?

It's not true that there will be a gathering to express support for nuclear energy on Sunday? Well, we'll see, who knows. The coal mine expansion and deforestation has been put on hold, pending further analysis of bat population. It has not been canceled and the future is certainly not clear. Nobody shouts for nuclear in Germany? Again, Sunday is just a few days away. The article is not claiming that energy companies are advocating nuclear power. The article talks about an environmental group advocating it, further claiming that closure of nuclear power plants leads to higher cost of electricity (50% in 12 years). Energy companies won't object to that. Time will tell. 2.5% of Germany is a humongous area to cover with PVs and wind turbines. It's entirely not feasible.

Not that I complain, but speaking of nuclear: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/10/15/in-wake-of-terrifying-climate-report-german-environmentalists-will-in-a-twist-rally-for-nuclear/#7c967a7349cf

Nice! That reminds me that I still have three Nashorns and a Tiger that I was planning on making a diorama out of. Too busy with building stuff for work, though.

That is NOT a proof that the emails were official. Spoofing (faking) the email sender is trivial. Check any link (hover over it and take a look at lower left corner, browsers usually display full link address there) in those emails to see if they lead to proper sites or not. If the links are not leading to proper sites and you used them to log in or change password, your accounts have been compromised.

It's clear that aliens are shutting down our capabilities as a start for an invasion. After all, isn't the next end of the world about to happen? There are so many of them I keep losing track. Alternatively, IIRC Hubble is about 30, and Chandra almost 20 years old. Hardware breaks down. With so many observatories and space related hardware around, I'd be surprised if no coincidental timing was ever recorded.

If it's big enough, you don't even need the binoculars and everybody can tell time. No more strangers stopping you on the street to ask you. Now we just need to iron out the details. What timezone will the clock show? Or do we launch one clock for each timezone and have them labeled for ease of usage.