sathackr

in space != Orbit.

While an accomplishment no doubt, the utility and difficulty of achieving orbital speeds is not even in the same ballpark as simply flying above the Karman line.

I used to think differently also but then I learned from KSP how incredibly more difficult achieving orbital velocity(and surviving deceleration from such) is than simply going up and back down.

New Shepard looks like an orbit rocket but is not even close in cabability. SpaceShipTwo would burn up on re-entry if it ever reached orbital speeds.

Years ago when they took the X-prize it was explained as something groundbreaking how they folded the wings for re-entry. I, along with probably the vast majority of the public, equated this re-entry to the same re-entry that the Space Shuttle experiences and felt this was some monumental achievement and advancement of the art.

Again, not to belittle the accomplishment, as it is definitely in an elite realm, but not even close to what is accomplished by Boeing, Lockheed, NASA, SpaceX, and all the other entities actually achieving orbit.

It's not the tracking info that breaks it, it's that when the receiving device tries to parse the long url and figure out what part is a link and what part is just text, winds up with a broken link.

I'm not able to find an immediate example but usually happens when sharing links via a format that doesn't explicitly format them as links, such as SMS

As a rule I don't install any add-ons or extensions. Because a trusted extension today can become malicious tomorrow as has happened so many times.

Have you recently tried to share a link with someone?

There's so much tracking shit appended onto the end of the link that by the time they get it and whatever url parsing algorithm their device uses maims it, the url is no longer in tact and trying to click it brings you to a broken page.

I make a concerted effort to remove all of that before sending, but Google et. al. are working very hard to make that harder and harder by continuing to make changes to obscure the link. I already have to copy it, and re-paste it into the mobile address bar just to see what the entire link looks like. The vast majority of users won't even know what parts of the url to trim, nor will they care enough to do it.

So they just send a screenshot.

Don't think the police were involved here? Regardless the [bad] police will never care and the good ones are likely mostly ignorant.

It's the judges and DAs that need to learn.

Even more so now with more carriers doing CGNAT (and this number will go up as IPv4 gets more and more expensive.)

Wound up going to PNC.

Since they bought Simple I'm hoping the features will trickle to their customers.

What they have now is close enough for now. Similar but there are 3 "pockets" -- two checking and one savings. And they have auto transfer. (One has auto transfer now also)

Bills/utilities/relatively fixed costs come from one pocket, dining/entertainment/variable costs from the other.

Excess is moved manually every couple months to savings.

I gave One Finance a try but found their rules and inflexibility incompatible.

They don't have a 'joint account' option but claim you can share a pocket with someone else and it works the same.

Except when you have an instrument that you need to deposit/credit and it's made out to two people. They won't credit it to the 'shared' pocket because technically that pocket is owned by you, not both.

Tried to work with them for a solution but all they could offer was that I could deposit/receive it at another bank and then transfer it. When I closed the account they warned me that once closed I could never come back(they don't allow you to become a customer again in the future if you close your relationship with them). Another odd rule. And no auto transfers and no ability to deposit a paper check(at the time)

The benefit wasn't worth the hassle and I moved on.

The issue with an alarm only when something is wrong, is that you don't know that your monitoring system is working until you actually get that notification. You could just check the system every day and avoid the 'heartbeat' email, but that's likely to be forgotten/missed more often than seeing/reading the received email.

You could set up a monitoring system for the monitoring system...

Based on what was wrote I don't think that's the case. He included some special conditions like:

>The monitor knows if I take the boat out when I turn on the main boat power and switches the small pump to auto and otherwise stops monitoring. But when the main power is back on, the pump will initially run every half hour and then every hour and then after about a day it will only be running once a day"

Though reading closer there are only two relays, and the author talks about controlling both the small pump and the fan with relays, and there is language around the large pump that while isn't conclusive, may indicate it is indeed on a separate float switch and system and the ESP32 is only involved in the monitoring of it.

> I have a large pump that only goes off if the small pump fails or the boat is trying to sink. If the float switch lifts, the monitor wakes up and sends an email alerting me.

Very nice work overall, and I admit I haven't read the entire project, but it seems the entire authority to operate both pumps has been delegated to a microcontroller that becomes a single point of failure for the entire system.

Given the cost of the system and chance for failure I think it would make sense to either add a second system or enable some sort of automatic override (possibly via mechanical float switch wired directly to large pump and set at a higher water level than the other two switches)

So that there will be enough time between a potential large leak occuring and detection of controller failure(via lack of daily email) to prevent it from sinking the boat.

Something always leaks. If anything just the packings around the propeller shafts (though since this is a sailboat it may not have propeller shafts).

And there is maintenance. Even if you seal up all of the leaks, something will always degrade and start leaking. If you are away from the boat for weeks at a time, you may find your leak-free boat on the bottom of the harbor.

So yes, you could conceivably find and seal every single leak, especially if you don't have a rotating shaft that penetrates the hull, but it would not negate the need for monitoring.

Maybe they work nightshift.

Or more likely as with most solar systems they are "grid-tie"

Your electric meter essentially runs backwards during the day when you are selling excess power from your panels to the utility. Then you "buy" it back at night when you are drawing more power than your solar panels make.

Cellebrite's initial response[1] includes this gem

"We have strict licensing policies that govern how customers are permitted to use our technology and do not sell to countries under sanction by the US, Israel or the broader international community."

And these policies are obviously quite effective at preventing such uses.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/21/signal_cellebrite/

.

And you had to pay monthly for that 'service' -- for them to NOT publish your number.

Mikrotik has a great feature set and is mostly stable for the mainstream features. Where they really fall apart is wifi throughput. Most devices won't top 400mb/s.

There is some hope on the horizon with v7 and the newest devices like Audience. Have seen reports of 1.3gb/s on these. But it's barely even beta right now.

Ruckus is pretty solid and you can usually find them used for great prices. Many units have a stand alone firmware available that negates the need for a controller.

This is one of the biggest problems I have seen with attempted real-world deployments of wifi-based mesh systems.

Another issue is the half-duplex, CSMA nature of Wifi. It all but guarantees high amounts of jitter and latency instability. Particularly when several nodes in the same path are still in signal-range of one another so effectively share the same collision(and inteference) domain. A->B->C->D

I've found this wreaks havoc on TCP connections as well as applications that require some ability to detect and adjust to link condition.

This becomes significantly worse once the typical levels of WIFI interference come into play, causing multiple retransmissions and lost packets.

Particularly when said battery is not accustomed and likely not even designed for such high power loads. This battery would be only used for vehicle accessories, electronics, etc... Not even as a "cranking" battery as would be the case in a vehicle with an internal combustion engine.

The battery in the Tesla was likely sized and designed with this in mind also.

This is not new. You'd encounter the same thing from any other car dealer if you brought your vehicle in for a charging system problem and they discover you've been pulling 100+ amps continuously(1200 watts at 12 volts = 100amps) from the system.

Vehicle alternators(the device that charges the battery while the engine is running) are not designed to continuously output that kind of load and would likely be damaged if it were used for any significant duration at that load.

I have done this myself with a non-electrically propelled vehicle and have damaged(due to overheating) an alternator in the process.

This is standard in EVs(and most plug-in hybrids).

My 17 Volt has a 175 amp DC-DC converter that charges the 12v battery from the traction battery. It's interesting that this converter is cooled via the same liquid cooling loop that cools the traction battery.

I have a 4kw inverter connected to it and have used it several times to power large loads for several days in my home during power outages, including refrigerators, lights, TV/Computers, vacuum cleaners, and also the furnace(as the guy in the article has).

I have been doing this since I bought the car in 2018 and the only ill effects are when I forget to turn it off(when the vehicle is off) and it drains the 12v battery. I've done this (drained the 12v battery accidentally) about 20 times so far and it has not noticeably impacted the 12v battery.

I also would not expect any warranty support for this charging system and battery as I am clearly using it outside its intended purpose.

So everyone says the helicopter would be the first powered flight on another planet.

Wouldn't the Skycrane be considered powered flight?

Based on available renderings for both skycranes[1][2], the motors do not appear to have any gimble ability, so must be controlled by thrust alone. It's interesting that the valves consume 168 watts of power each, 1.34kw of power just for the throttle valves. The paper in [4] mentions they were adapted from the same engines used for the Viking landers.

A paper specifically on the EDL system [4]. Page 13 is where the fun starts. The IMU appears to be a Honeywell MIMU [5][6] and is combined with a radar altimeter for navigation and attitude control.

Datasheet for the motor [3] (Pg. 13)

[1] https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/curio...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=569&v=obzGkiyelt8

[3] https://www.rocket.com/sites/default/files/documents/Capabil...

[4] https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/44894/13-0633...

[5] https://aerospace.honeywell.com/en/learn/about-us/customer-s...

[6] https://satcatalog.com/component/mimu/

Until they get hacked

And then those bad reviews magically disappear just like the 150,000 reviews of the Robinhood app that have disappeared.

This is true -- most vendors supply a calculator tool that attempts to take this into consideration. Over the past 10yrs or so I've found them to be generally accurate, but have noticed a significant deviation in late 2019-2020 from expected vs observed effects.

I don't know what method is used but would expect it to be some sort of extrapolation from the average to predict peak rates

Sure --

It manifests in both cost and capability. For the same throughput you generally need more expensive equipment to obtain the same level of reliability.

Where with the previous calculations it may cost X dollars for equipment, using the new calculations you may need to use a larger antenna or a more power transmitter, costing sometimes 2-3x, if it's even possible at all. Many times the link is just no longer viable at the required reliability.

Rain rates are typically measured in mm/hr but it's an instantaneous rate, but what I've observed in 2020 is instantaneous peak rates easily 50% higher (indicated by signal attenuation levels) than 2019/2018. I'm not aware of any standard meteorological way to measure this as it seems most measurements are done as cumulative over minutes/hours/days, when the effects on microwave signals are in the seconds and minute scales.

Certainly can't establish as causal relationship with climate change, especially since my observations are on the scale of just a few years, but it shows the danger in simply relying on low resolution historical 10/50/100yr data for infrastructure design.

I learned this the hard way when engineering microwave links to withstand rain rates based on historical data.

Many of my links that the calculators said would have >99.999% availability saw a cumulative downtime in 2020 over 1hr due to much higher peak rain rates than historically measured.

I now engineer the links to handle double the historically measured rain rates.

Most fruit juices sold have very similar amounts of sugar to non-diet sodas.

Some people I know lecture me about drinking too much soda while their kid chugs cup after cup of orange/apple/grape juice.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nancyhuehnergarth/2015/12/14/wa....

If Amazon wasn't directly competing against their sellers, and doing exactly what you said, while lying to Congress about it [1], then maybe journalists wouldn't be writing about Amazon stealing secrets from sellers.

1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its...

It's tying your google account to the location, not your IP