Remember the Hunga Tongaâ"Hunga HaÊapai eruption of 2022? That eruption blasted enough water (sea water, in particular) into the stratosphere that there were immediate concerns it would enhance the greenhouse effect worldwide (recall that water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas), so here we are. Volcanoes are tough enough to predict, but when you get an unusual one where the primary aerosol is water (rather than sulfer dioxide and hydrogen sulfide), that throws things further off when trying to model weather & climate impacts.

It's stuck on Catalina, as it won't take any of the the OS 11+ updates. The only software I've installed on it (other than the baseline set that comes with Catalina) are Firefox, Chrome, Kodi, and SoftRAID.

The spinning disks are only in the external RAID enclosure. I'll worry about the caps going bad if and when it happens (I have Macs that are even older that still run fine), and I shift the Mini around every so often and the shelf is glass so I'm not worried about rubber feet getting sticky.

A year or so ago, I bought a 2012 model to serve as a home fileserver and media center. Given it just sits idling most of the time, I'm not too worried about it being obsolete. I have other computers for gaming or other heavy processing.

In the U.S., the utility power is three phase, but often a neighborhood will just receive one phase from the utility while the next neighborhood gets the 2nd phase, and a third gets the third phase. Utility systems are more often 3-wire delta configuration, but I have seen some newer systems running their utility as 4-wire wye (4th wire is a neutral).

Even if all three phases run to a neighborhood, often you'll see a utility pole with just one transformer can on it. That transformer will that just 2 lines of the utility power into the primary side (which means single phase), but the secondary side of the transformer will have a centertap neutral (also bonded to ground). Line to line on the secondary size will be 240V (nominal), but either line to centertap neutral being 120V, with the two lines-to-neutral being 180 degrees out phase. Even though you have three wires the centertap configuration is still considered single-phase.

Commercial and industrial properties will more often have a three phase power system. That is either 3 transformer cans on a pole, or a pad mount. If you see two transformer cans, then that usually means two separate single phase systems, if you see four that usually means there's a three-phase system, plus a separate single-phase system (usually to a different property).

I've heard the old Niagra, NY utility system is an actual 2-phase system, but that's the only location that actual 2-phase still exists, and shouldn't be confused with a common residential single-phase centertap system.

Bald eagles eat far more than fish, and they will tackle things close to "their size" depending on how you want to measure that: they can lift off carrying nearly their own weight of prey. Around my area, they will eat fish, when convenient, but they will also take other prey: eggs, chicks and fledglings of other large birds (often seagulls), full grown chickens, small dogs and cats, rodents of all sorts, fresh roadkill (just feasting, if too large). They will occasionally kill full-grown crows and seagulls when they get fed up of being swarmed by them, but they usually drop the now-dead foe, as I guess adult crows and seagulls must not taste good.

One morning when driving to work, I saw an eagle take out some prey on the ground near the side of the highway. It then proceeded to lift off with the catch, very slowly ("Hey it caught something big!"), and flew over the highway, crossing it pretty low. As it cleared my car by a few feet, I could identify its prey ("Holy crap! That's a cat!"). The cat was full-grown, but scrawny, so probably a stray or a feral. Pet cats and dogs in that size range go missing awfully often around here, possibly also victims of coyotes and cougars.

Yes, Youtube is blocking videos such as live-performed church music that the Youtube copyright bot determines are too close to some copyrighted performance of the same songs.

I volunteer as a church audio video team member, and I'm a member of various social media groups on the topic. There were complaints from our European counterparts this weekend that they've had somd of their videos blocked entirely, and can't even get to some of their videos to edit out the sections that Youtube's bot doesn't like.

I watched the ascent portion of the livestream. The second stage seemed like it was vibrating a bit more than normal during the insertion burn, but it was a small enough amount that I wondered if it was just a camera problem with the image stabilization, or whether it was an actual vibration issue. With this news, I'm leaning towards the second.

I live in Washington state. The posted speed limit on most of the freeways in the greater Seattle area is 60 mph (~99 km/h), and if you are speaking of I-5 in King County (Seattle's county), yes the road surface is abysmal. You can actually tell where the county line is based on the road surface alone, as it suddenly improves when you cross into Pierce County (Tacoma's county). At any rate, most daylight hours, most of the freeways in the area are just plain too crowded to do 75 mph for long stretches (if you are inclined to break the speed limit).

Now, if you are talking I-90 through most of eastern Washington, 75 mph is pretty easy to do (most of the year), and the posted speed limit along large stretches is 70 mph. Most of that road surface is good enough you can drive at speeds well above the speed limit, if your car is built for it. Just don't speed in Grant County, particularly Moses Lake, that whole place is a speed trap!

Nope, in the U.S., our President's signature on a treaty holds no power nor commitment whatsoever. To be ratified, our Senate has to vote for it by a two-thirds supermajority (which is uncommon, because our Senate is usually pretty close to being balanced 50:50 between two political parties that make it a point to oppose each other on nearly every issue). Unlike most other pieces of legislation, our 2nd legislative house (The House of Representatives) has no say in treaties, nor does a ratified treaty need to be signed by the President, nor does the President have any veto power if the Senate hypothetically ratified a treaty that the President didn't like.

I'll take your word on the 130nm node matching, but I do recall when the 90nm node debuted, as I was in my university's electrical engineering program at the time. I also recall our professors (at least 3 different ones) mentioning that the new node label did not match any of the feature sizes. It seemed like they were all pretty irked about the fibbery.

When I saw a diagram of how the plug is designed, I don't see how lock wire would have helped. It looks like the bolts are threaded in from the interior side of the plane into taps in the door plug. These are probably steel bolts and I think it's a fair chance that the taps are aluminum, and these are oriented in the same direction as the outwards force. If the taps are indeed aluminum, all this put together pretty much guarantees the bolts are going to loosen up as the steel wears down the aluminum threads. The bolts should probably go all the way non-threaded through-holes, with the bolt heads on the exterior side of the through-hole, and lockwashers, nuts, and finally a lockwire on the interior side.

If the electrical provider says, "Sorry, we don't have enough line capacity where you want to build this," the project is dead in the water until the provider upgrades the lines and substations. The supply chain, even just for common items like pad-mount service transformers, is still backed up 12 months or so, and anything that falls under disaster repairs automatically jumps to the front of the line.

Adding new transmission lines is also terribly slow, not only do you have NIMBY problems, but some of the providers are basically bankrupt from lawsuits (i.e. PG&E) or probably will be soon (i.e. Hawaiian Electric Company).

On top of all this, some of these lines route through federally-owned substations (particularly DoD), and those substations need upgrades, too. Those federal substation upgrades compete for energy & utility project funds with initiatives like this one, which leads to a Catch-22 of nothing happening on either.

NFPA.org, free of charge. You're just stuck registering on their website and viewing the standards through their viewer that won't let you copy-and-paste.

Just so you know, anyone can register on nfpa.org, and view any of their standards online, free of charge. National Electric Code is NFPA 70. Being able to copy-and-paste is paywalled, however.