Dаn̈ıel Раršlow 🥧 @pieist@social.cleverlibre.org

@davidbrin Terrific news. As is the latest word on flow batteries, which have many clear advantages over traditional types including lithium and now seem poised to beat them in terms of energy density as well: https://spectrum.ieee.org/flow-battery-2666672335

@adrianhon

Europeans were using text messaging years before the US did, because US carriers confined it to their own walled gardens, to get you to switch your friends and family over.

Oh, and this idea that regulation raises prices? EU mobile phone service costs typically less than half what it does in the US.

@simonbp Yours is the first literal trainspotting account I've ever followed

@AnnemarieBridy Man are they ever Streisand Effecting those books. Half of them would be forgotten in a few years when their moment passes, the others are impervious to anything those politicians can do to them.

@GlasWolf @ottocrat

«disappointed face»

@GlasWolf @ottocrat Could you document your experimental data about Liz Truss and a marzipan dildo?

@celestelabedz Last flight until Mark Watney digs it up and uses it again.

@paul And as a bonus you get to spend many hours in a tube packed as full as practical with unmasked freedom lovers during a pandemic which is decidedly not over. What a time to be alive.

@yaneerbaryam @whn @carlysagan And given that during my career we've gone from offices to cube farms to much smaller cube farms to open-plan to hot-desking, there is simply no upside to going into the office at all. Nobody benefits. It's an uncongenial, unhealthy (between sick-building syndrome and the unending pandemic), massively distraction-prone waste of time and energy.

Speaking of space suits, the Mars suits they use are form fitting and very practical to move around in. Yet for space EVA they still use old-tech megabulky suits. Why? The pressure differential is the same. If you've managed to invent a suit like they use on the surface, you'd use it everywhere in preference to the 60kg Michelin Man.

What didn't make sense about "The Martian".

Okay, the film's like eight years old now and there have been numerous articles about it, but none really go into very many of the problems it has. But this is a sufficiently nerdy place to try outlining them.

- The storm could not have carried that much force.

Most articles touch on this one. Mars' surface pressure is less than 1% of Earths. It has dust storms all the time, but the main problem they'd present is visibility. Even 100kph winds would not so much as raise a pebble, let alone jeopardize an ascent vehicle or impale an astronaut.

- If somehow your ascent vehicle IS about to blow over, the *worst* thing you can possibly do is launch it.

What's wrong with stakes and guy wires? Better than taking off, instantly losing the only thing that's keeping you stable and upright, and immediately tumbling and blasting into a hillside, or the ground. NASA doesn't launch rockets in a hurricane. For good reason.

- Non-organic potatoes are sprayed with a sprouting inhibitor. You can't plant them.

Given that they were sealed in transparent plastic, NASA would not have skipped this step. Okay, that's nitpickery. But this isn't:

-- Mars is 50% further from the sun than Earth is (inverse square law, anyone?) and the habitat's skylights are at best translucent. It's VERY difficult to believe the spuds got enough light.

- Retaining a full atmosphere of pressure over a two-metre diameter hole requires an extremely strong structure. Plastic wrap and duct tape won't cut it by, many orders of magnitude.

- You cannot achieve measurable delta-V by poking a hole in your glove. You just depressurise your suit and die without going anywhere much.

- You cannot lose 40m/s velocity in a massive ship by venting some of its atmosphere forward. The math doesn't work, again, by orders of magnitude.

- No competent crew would have mutinied and gone off on that rescue without a known, feasible mission plan. A course is not a mission plan. Incredibly difficult problems were only solved after they were committed. Not even one of those astronauts would have gotten their job if they were that irrational, let alone all five.

But even give all that, it's a fun movie to watch. But more as a kind of meditation and an appreciation of what we can do than as hard SF.

@PJ_Evans @EugeneMcParland Pretty much every article about the purchase contains that conversion.

@techtraveler @WPalant Or he should have pseudonymously leaked it them using a throwaway account. With a note to the effect that if they didn't correct it, the next step would be to post it to a public forum.

@WPalant I sincerely hope this gets publicised to all that vendor's customer base and they lose business as a consequence.

I just learned that in Spanish, to say you "spent" time with someone is a little bit insulting; equivalent to saying you wasted it. (Instead you'd say you passed time with them.)

Translating from your native language is full of these kinds of pitfalls. Fluency requires an intimate familiarity with the way people actually say things.