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Comment Maybe the ultim killer app will be legal/political (Score 1) 112

Ever since I started writing code in 1980, I've continually wondered if we'll ever reach a plateau where consumer-affordable tech is so good the average person won't need it to advance anymore. Eventually computing and networking will be fast enough, and storage will be huge enough, that we can all essentially have full copies of the Internet on our phones (or whatever), and intelligent, locally-running agents that can tell us anything we want to know, conversationally in realtime, including results that require analysis. At that point what would a faster or bigger computer do for you? Hardware and software will definitely get there, but getting permission to have and manipulate the content will be an even bigger barrier. I don't see a scenario like this happening as long as economics is still a force in the world. Food and electricity will probably be free before information will.

Comment "bright as a full moon" (Score 3, Insightful) 80

You can stare at the full moon all night if you like, because the albedo of the moon has filtered most of the light including the UV band that naturally passes through our own atmosphere. The three mile circle illuminated by a mirror would bounce a significantly higher amount of UV than the moon's albedo. If you treat the 60ft reflector as an analog to a pinhole in a pinhole camera, the circular area on the Earth surface would be a rough projection of the image of the sun.

(1) I wonder how they calculate the UV exposure for the observer on the surface within the illumination area.

(2) I wonder if you'd be able to detect places in a coherent projection where sunspots or coronal ejections are reflected through the "pinhole" effect of this arrangement.

Comment the usual suspects (Score 3) 17

What megalomaniacal near-trillionaire had a whole squadron of leet hackers hoovering up federal employee records just a few short months ago? I forget. It musta been somebody with pockets 30x deeper than George Soros to tunnel into those boring databases, we should launch an investigation.

Comment Hematite vs Rust (Score 5, Informative) 20

Hematite is one specific type of iron oxide. Rust is a non-technical umbrella term for all iron oxides, and the typical red ones we see in daily life are formed by contact with water and are not hematite. Hematite is a dark charcoal gray and is sometimes formed as a byproduct of iron ore processing or other heat and pressure processes in the ground, where oxygen may be present but not water.

Comment Re: "far too small to generate any lift"?? (Score 4, Interesting) 106

That's how I read it. It should say it has no thrust.

A typical jet turbofan airframe has two engines that each have a generator shaft taking turbine energy and making electrical current. It then has a whole 'nother turbine engine used on the ground and in some other flight legs called the APU; this exhausts out the tail cone usually, and can start engines or provide extra hydraulic power if needed, but is slow to start just like the main engines.

For power loss emergencies, a small spring-loaded fan pops into action super fast, called a Ram Air Turbine or RAT. It can only make enough electrical power to reboot key systems like engine FADECs or avionics, often only on one electrical channel instead of all channels. It's only a turbine, not a thrust-producing fan. It's a pinwheel toy in comparison to the APU and even the APU cannot produce significant thrust.

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