Shpaget

I suppose there's a reason the proverb "Beauty is in the eye of beholder." exists. I find images you shared to be kitchy.

Minor spoiler from episode 6 (Krill) Loved that part.

I guess I can think of only one situation I witnessed that could have gone somewhat south. I was with some friends at the night club and we were already leaving and standing outside when some guy that wasn't part of our group approached a girl from my class that got a bit separated and was alone at that moment some 15-20 meters away. She stood about 5 meters from the night club bouncer that just stood there by the entrance. The girl was retreating from the guy and clearly wasn't interested in whatever he was telling her, but he wasn't letting her go. I watched for about 5 seconds to make sure what the situation was and approached them. Asking the girl "Everything OK?" and standing close to her while watching the guy was enough for him to get lost. I guess being a head taller than him (or more) was intimidating. While I don't think he would have assaulted her, she clearly was uncomfortable. I still don't know why the bouncer didn't intervene when he had the entire situation going on in front of him and was not otherwise occupied. Thinking back to that moment, there are many aspects to it. First of all, I knew the girl and knew that the guy was not part of our group, so it was likely she didn't know him. If that was some random girl, would I have done the same? I don't know. In that case I wouldn't know if they knew each other, even though I could possibly have seen the girl wasn't interested. The bystander effect is a real thing.

So, why did the gravitational wave come to Earth 2 seconds before the X-rays?

The sparks were kind of unusual, weren't they? As for the grid fin glow, you have to take into account that cameras are not nearly as good as human eye when it comes to dynamic range (the ability to properly render both dark and light areas in a frame), so glowing grid fins and a pitch black background are hard to film properly (and realistically), especially when you use cameras with small sensors and then butcher and mangle the data to fit the bandwidth for live transmission. What I'm trying to say, the grid fins may not have been a whole lot hotter than the ones we saw glowing in broad daylight. What surprises me, though, is that they still are using aluminium ones. Didn't they say they were going to replace them all for titanium? Am I remembering something that did not happen?

Is it considered a clickbait if they deliver?

Well, there's your problem! Switch to metric and that pretty A4 stuff. All your problems will go away and you may even find cure for cancer.

Years ago, before EVE even existed, I had an idea about the ultimate RPG game. In my mind it was fairly close to what EVE is. The main aspect - player driven economy, is spot on. It's an awesome game, but for me it turned out to be a huge time sinker, so I decided to drop it. I couldn't keep up and the time needed to play it properly was simply not available. Be careful not to get lost in it.

Care to elaborate on that? A constant wind (of any strength) will quickly accelerate an untethered airship of any size to the speed of that wind. A non-aerodynamic shape will make that time shorter, not longer. The thing with airships is that, by definition, their overall density is equal to the surrounding atmosphere. Since you want huge habitats and manufacturing systems to be suspended in air, your airships need to be huge as well. That leads to a design with large cross section that will easily catch wind.

I've noticed that we have some rail fans here, so I'd just like to inform you guys that there is a new game out. It's in Early Access on Steam, costs €23. Anyway, it's somewhat similar to Transport Tycoon with more modern graphics. The vibe seems to be the same. Having spent countless hours in OTTD, I think I might like this one too. Downloading as we speak.

I honestly don't care much. I'm perfectly fine just mentally reclassifying them to some other species that just happens to be called the same as some other. It's not the worst mental gymnastics I have to do when dealing with the inconsistencies of the real world. Case in point, the figurative usage of the word literal.

Yeah... I just don't find it intuitive.

Regarding Game of Thrones, go read the novels, they are much better. As for the last episode of Battlestar Galactica remake, I couldn't agree more, even though I'd extend it a bit to several of the late last season episodes, specifically the stuff going on with Starbuck. That mess just didn't make sense. Edit: Almost forgot to chip in with my pick for the series. Sledge Hammer!

Yeah, but their starships are not as pretty as Orville's.

I dissagree. Voyager probes are not (and never were) intended to be used by humans as relays. They are a message in a bottle type of objects intended for anybody but humans to discover (even though the plausibility of that sceario is debatable). For such mission they necessarily need to go outside of "human territory". With the Klingon device it is clear that it is intended as a comunication device for Klingons themselves, and it being ancient, one would expect to find it deep inside their territory, unless the Klingon empire has lost significant part of that territory. I must admit that Klingon history is not my strongest area of expertise.

I just finished watching the first two episodes and all I can say is "Meh". Michelle Yeoh as captain is poor casting. Her English is worse than the one spoken by the Klingons, even with their prosthetic teeth. Seriously what was the point of that choice? The ship is dispatched to the edge of Federation space to fix a broken coms relay. Why is a coms relay at the edge of a territory? That doesn't make sense. One would expect such infrastructure to be placed inside protected space where it can be easily maintained and actually have more useful coverage. Can we please stop representing asteroid fields as densely packed clouds of rocks that are impossible to navigate through? That is nowhere near the actual state of them. However, if they made a conscious decision to forgo realism and decided to make the asteroid field (or protoplanetary disk, whatever) so densely packed, why would they put a coms relay (and the Klingons their beacon) in a still forming solar system where there is a significant risk of debris hitting it? Why is there an ancient Klingon beacon at the edge of their territory? One would expect such a device to be close to their home planet. The opening sequence in the desert, what was that all about? Not only it doesn't make any sense since it would be impossible to see footprints from orbit, not to mention a freaking sand storm being in the way, why include such a scene at all? To show how smart the captain is? Or that our first officer can predict when the storm will reach their position with the accuracy of one second (even though she later clearly says she was wrong and that the storm was moving faster than she thought)? I think I'll go back to Orville, it's a better Star Trek series than this.

Does it happen when you wiggle the screen and open/close it? Try gently bending it in various directions to see if it triggers the issue. if it does, it could indicate the problem with the flex cable, which should be a cheap fix. If it is independent of the manhandling, then it would indicate the issue with the graphics card, although the pattern doesn't look like that's the problem.

I played WOT and got to Hummel, then they nerfed the hell out of arty. Got bored of them aiming for 15 seconds at a moving target and then when finally fully aimed doing no damage or missing completely. Then I got into TDs and got myself a shiny new ISU 152, much fun. I played with Hellcat in parallel. Also many fun matches were had. Then they released Waffle line and I rushed that grind, only to realize that tier IX is better than X. Then they nerfed the X some more. Kept on playing but they nerfed all TD across the board, including the Hellcat that suddenly became reluctant to get moving and pretty much lost the only thing it had for itself (other than the turret) - camo. Then I started to play more with clan mates which meant I had to get myself some heavy armor, but I don't like that, even though I had some fun matches in IS-3 and T34. Finally about a year ago I basically stopped playing. Now I occasionally play WOWS and have a few Japanese destroyers that come factory equipped with some major giggle torps. As for War Thunder, I just can't comprehend the GUI. Seriously, it's beyond my cognitive capabilities. I managed to get into a battle a few times, though. It was a mess.

HA! Just yesterday I had a guy come up to me and asked to buy a nonspecific "controller" produced by multiple companies in significantly different variations, with different prices. After asking him "Which one?" for about five times I just gave up and told him to go away and come back when he decides what he wants.

But applying for a patent requires divulging some of that IP. I would consider the practice of not applying for a patent analogous to "security through obscurity" concept, which is not a good approach in security if not backed up by some other mechanism. Unfortunately, when it comes to intellectual property, there are few other mechanisms available and patents are the only way to enforce ownership, and we all know how China prosecutes infringements of western patents.

Yeah, manufacturing high grade materials involves a lot of know how and tiny procedures that are hard to replicate without involvement of someone who knows those little tricks and trade secrets.

Three around one is rather inefficient usage of area, but yeah it would work. My middle of the night insomniac ballpark eyeballing suggests they will still need to do the suicide burn, even with one engine. 30 ton entire rocket wet mass would suggest much less than 10 t dry mass on first stage, so 100 kN on one engine is too much for hover. IIRC, Merlins on F9 boosters can go down to 70%, but that still isn't low enought (assuming these guys achieve similar capability). Regarding Rocket Lab, yeah this is goong to be some serious competition, especially since China Gov can reasonably be expected to subsidize their company.

Apparently there is a new player in town - a private Chinese company that has the goal of developing a reusable rocket with propulsive landing. Kind of like SpaceX thing. Their current project is a smallish (20 m tall, 1,8 m diameter, 33 t) kerolox rocket with 200 kg of payload capacity to 500 km Sun synchronous orbit. From their website http://linkspace.com.cn : How have we missed that? But according to https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/09/linkspace-is-a-chinese-startup-that-will-try-to-make-reusable-rockets-like-spacex.html Unless they have some major low throttling capability (or some wacky engine configuration), how are they going to achieve stable deceleration with four engines? In any case, I look forward to seeing more from these guys.

No, that is not how ATC works. ATC doesn't ask private companies much. It just tells them that certain part of the airspace is going to be closed during a certain period. Whether ATC decides to grant a permission to launch depends on the traffic conditions expected in the area in question around the time in question, and the available personnel. If ATC is able to organize that traffic in such a way as to accommodate a launch, they will. They gain nothing by not giving the go ahead, except avoiding a certain extra bit of workload, which is usually not a problem if the requested time slot is not already chock full.

Also, these guys being amateurs, they have other real life obligations they have to coordinate. Perhaps ATC offered them another slot, but they could not accept it.