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Comment Re:Wildfires in outer space? (Score 1) 77

Got me curioser, so I googled it. One source said what I thought:

https://www.scientificamerican...

"Because gravity is necessary for density differences to arise, neither buoyancy nor convection occur in a zero-gravity environment such as space. Consequently, the combustion products accumulate around the flame, preventing sufficient oxygen from reaching it and sustaining the combustion reaction. Ultimately the flame goes out."

and

"Researchers learned that flames extinguish themselves."

and

"Oxygen could still reach a flame in a gravity-free environment if someone blew the gas into the flame or let it "diffuse" in. It is the diffusion process that spreads the scent of a perfume in a room without air circulation: the perfume slowly mixes with the air to try to achieve a uniform distribution. This process, however, is too slow to sustain a flame."

Other sites don't directly contradict this, but say fires in the ISS are dangerous because smoke doesn't rise and set off smoke detectors on ceilings like in homes, so they install smoke detectors in the ventilation ducts. Also that fires on the ISS can survive on lower levels of oxygen than humans, and thus are much more dangerous if they linger on. That's confusing; if the smoke doesn't rise, then wouldn't it smother the fire like the first site says? But if the ISS has moving air from ventilation ducts, maybe that is what feeds oxygen to the fires.

Thanks for tricking me into not being so lazy :-) But all I learned is that I don't know.

Comment I bought one, then sold it a few months laterâ (Score 1) 62

I bought one of these in the mid 90s (from a Bell Labs engineer). It had upgraded memory and some kind of digital PBX type card that could route calls and record voicemails. I did a few things with it and created accounts for everyone in the house. I even got a bigger hard drive for it, this big MFM/RLL full height 5 1/4 drive that sounded like a jet taking off when it started up. I sold the system to somebody else a few months later because there wasnâ(TM)t much to do with it besides play some games. This was in the era of the Sega Genesis, and it was a far more capable game system. It was still probably the sexiest system Iâ(TM)ve owned, even today it looks retro-futuristic like in a space opera or Aliens franchise movie.

Comment Re:Prohibition doesn't work, never has (Score 1) 57

Why would concert tickets need an auction any more than almost everything else? No auction for beans, none for gasoline, or haircuts. If they price them too high, they don't sell enough. If they price them too low, they sell out fast and learn to charge more next time, just as any other limited commodity does. If they can get more, they do, and raise the price next time. If they can't, well, that's life.

I don't think TicketMaster is making a fortune, because if they were, competitors would want some of the action. That's how markets work. If artists actually cared, they would sign up with alternative sellers and pull the rug out from under TicketMaster. They don't. Artists either don't care, or don't know. From the noise they make, they are hypocrites either way.

The actual real value of concert tickets for established artists is well-known by now. But artists want to pretend they support the little people, so they refuse to charge realistic prices, and act all miffed when the market establishes the real value people place on their tickets.

The simple fact is that more people want tickets than tickets are available. The only realistic alternative is long long lines and make people pay in time and hassle. But then others will charge high prices to stand in line as placeholders. Price caps are no more useful than Richard Nixon's gas price controls in 1973. People pay in dollars or time or barter of some sort. The market will always establish a more realistic price.

Comment Re:The volume of ads (Score 1) 152

There were two theaters in San Francisco, the Richilieu? (Geary near Van Ness) and a second near the TransAmerica Pyramid. Great selection of old movies, mostly b/w, and great trailers for old movies. They eventually decided the second one just wasn't profitable enough, early 1980s, and had a final night of nothing but previews, several hours of them, the trashiest exploitation movies from the 1950s, glorious stuff. Then they interrupted it, lights came on to announce someone with a private copy of Vertigo had brought it in and did we want to see it? Apparently it was locked up in some copyright ownership dispute and could not be seen commercially, but since we hadn't paid for it ...

A fantastic night. I'd gladly do it again, nothing but hours of trashy ancient B and C movie trailers.

Comment Dumped Grok over this (Score -1) 72

Grok was constantly say it was doing something that it had ZERO ability to, and I kept calling it out and it kept apologizing and then immediately doing it again.

As a guy who spend 5 figures a year on Ai, the last thing I want is that. I know Claude and ChatGPT also do it, but Grok was doing it CONSTANTLY.

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