Posts by wikkit@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AwrtoJkbWfQzLgSSLQ by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-08-05T17:49:23Z
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If you live in the US and listen to podcasts, you really should get a VPN on your phone and set it basically anywhere else.Podcasts that have ads and are using one of the big podcast distributors, and podcasts from professional media companies, all localize their ads. Which changes not only what the ads are, but massively changes the total ad load. Sometimes I VPN into the US and if I accidentally leave it on, the quantity of ads on podcasts makes them close to not worth listening to.
(DIR) Post #AwrtoKs5ML0qpAxwe0 by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-08-05T17:57:30Z
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For example, por ejemplo, the latest episode of the Bloomberg podcast “Odd Lots” is 26:01 if downloaded from Spain. I deleted it, VPN’d into the US and downloaded it again, and now it’s 28:16.Two minutes and fifteen seconds of extra ads for being in the US.
(DIR) Post #Axbuq4ZJyrFy4EjoBM by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-08-27T20:40:05Z
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I have made up a bunch of processes around the design and testing of very hazardous rockets, and have sometimes thought I couldn't possibly be doing it as well as heavily resourced programs.And then I get insight into a trillion dollar program where they are filling the hydraulic system with water and operating it in Alaska, and writing software that misinterprets touch-and-gos and crashes the plane.
(DIR) Post #Axbuq64uMu7KkUWY3U by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-08-27T20:40:36Z
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> At that point, the F-35’s sensors indicated it was on the ground and the jet’s computer systems transitioned to “automated ground-operation mode,” the report said.> This caused the fighter jet to become “uncontrollable” because it was “operat(ing) as though it was on the ground when flying,” forcing the pilot to eject.https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/27/us/alaska-f-35-crash-accident-report-hnk-ml
(DIR) Post #Axbuq6wn8ZDdRbja2i by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-08-27T20:45:06Z
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A single F-35 and its share of the development program is more than the cost to hire a team and build a new orbital rocket from scratch.They could have built the Superconducting Super Collider as a side project in the F-35 program and it would have been a minor footnote in the budget.
(DIR) Post #Axg5wHPZ1MvtlPAyIK by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-08-29T22:30:23Z
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A man walks past a news stand in Moscow every morning on his way to work. Each time, he stops for a minute to check the papers, frowning before he continues on his way.Eventually, the vendor notices and asks him, "You always seem to be looking for something. Can I help you find it?"The man replies, "I'm looking for an obituary."The vendor says, "I see, the obituaries are on the last page, comrade!"The man shakes his head, "Not the one I'm looking for."(Now we’re all in a Soviet joke.)
(DIR) Post #AxyNOiGLyedNDTI3jk by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-09-07T17:47:38Z
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Absolutely embarrassing statistic for Cyprus from Eurostat. One of the sunniest countries in Europe and yet their power generation is still mostly imported oil.
(DIR) Post #AxyNOj6SquJlp5ffxg by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-09-07T18:52:47Z
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But also, amazing to see progress everywhere else! I don’t think people are, on average, living energy-starved lives in those countries. Still plenty of heat, A/C, driving, trains, and a lot more streaming video servers. And yet carbon intensity has dropped almost across the board.
(DIR) Post #Ayr0Zf5jRlV8xZqo2C by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-10-03T18:27:37Z
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I keep finding that a huge portion of the world's interesting hardware projects and discussions only exist on Discord, and it really sucks. It means they immediately get lost to anyone who wasn't there at the time, and they are all perfectly impossible to search for on the open internet.Things like freelists e-mail lists, subreddits, even a huge portion of usenet are all searchable years later. Discord is like "well linkrot is inevitable, let's make it nearly instantaneous".
(DIR) Post #B0ArdKfenb9Z2Xm7UG by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-11-12T15:50:58Z
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Here's a dumb question: are aurora lasers? You're pumping energy into a medium and it's outputting one particular wavelength of green light from a specifc electron transition in atomic oxygen. Which is basically a description of a laser without the mirrors on the end. But the column is kilometers tall, does it lead to any coherence?I've seen people claim it's in sheets because of "magnetic field lines", but those don't actually exist. It's like saying they align to latitude lines.
(DIR) Post #B0M2RDWKx4alrfNQNE by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-11-17T18:45:13Z
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Really minor thing in the scale of things lately, but I feel bad for this rock. Was a great big rock sitting on top of another rock on top of a hill, and kind of looks like a head. Would have been a landmark for people walking around in what is now Australia for 50,000 years.Somebody built a house beside it, and then presumably somebody else decided that they didn't want a rock next to their house, so they demolished the rock instead of the house.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CG83UcN9K0
(DIR) Post #B0nZT7bS1Z7AbrGK6C by wikkit@mastodon.social
2025-11-18T20:18:35Z
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The beer of Turkey is Efes, which is the Turkish name for the ancient city AKA Ephesus. Cool to name the main beer after a major archaeological site.I am not in Turkey but I saw the beer at a store, and had the thought that you could do a great English-language ad campaign for it.You have a variety of scenes of people screwing things up at work at the end of the day, then the punchline is "F this, Efes", and then a quick scene of them drinking at a bar covered in paint or whatever.
(DIR) Post #B1vjslsgHBfPqN8m7U by wikkit@mastodon.social
2026-01-04T04:36:30Z
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Made Sugar Cookies of Catan today with my nieces (ages 8, 9, and 20). Used this sugar cookie recipe, a hex cookie cutter, and royal icing. https://www.seriouseats.com/rolled-sugar-cookie-recipeI should have done two shades of green, the pastures blend in with the woods.My first time trying royal icing, I can see why people would get into it. It sits top right in the chart of artistic possibilities vs. actually edible results.
(DIR) Post #B23S663wzDzTLMbyym by wikkit@mastodon.social
2026-01-07T19:45:56Z
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I had the belief that aluminum is basically solid electricity, and was prompted to check it today.Primary (smelting, not recycling) aluminum production is 15 MWh/Mg https://international-aluminium.org/statistics/primary-aluminium-smelting-energy-intensity/Good industrial electricity price is 0.1 USD/kWh: https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/Bulk aluminum is around 2600 USD/Mg: https://www.intratec.us/solutions/primary-commodity-prices/commodity/aluminum-pricesIf you multiply the power by the energy price that's 1500 USD/Mg, so indeed more than half of the price of aluminum is just the electricity to make it. (1500/2600≈60%)
(DIR) Post #B25oRT3LI7HA2FqIuO by wikkit@mastodon.social
2026-01-09T00:17:17Z
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RE: https://mstdn.social/@noelreports/115861882953528486These things aren't yellow because they are on fire or have rocket engines or anything like that. They are artificial meteors, compressing air in front of them until it glows, falling at thousands of meters per second.This is what Global Thermonuclear War looks like, but at the end of each streak there will be an explosion before it hits the ground.
(DIR) Post #B2GmLLdvriHG9BTFEu by wikkit@mastodon.social
2026-01-14T08:00:10Z
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Not ideal sightseeing weather this morning on the train in Spain (mostly on the plains). Fortunately (?) it is one of the longest train rides in the country so I’m sure it will improve later. (Now I probably have to check where this ranks amongst single train normal passenger itineraries.)
(DIR) Post #B2GmLQtiKSs8RZtQ24 by wikkit@mastodon.social
2026-01-14T08:06:57Z
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I flew into Madrid a couple weeks ago on the way to Iowa, and the air was so dry in T123 that the handrail on the moving walkway was generating static electricity as it rubbed past the glass side, a big unintentional Van de Graf generator. You could hear it popping every few seconds as the voltage got high enough to find a path.Yesterday morning flew back into Madrid T4, and got shocked ridiculously hard when I pushed the elevator button.I think they need some humidifiers.
(DIR) Post #B2JfjGMV2HDwVreXLs by wikkit@mastodon.social
2026-01-15T17:24:35Z
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Great video by a relatively new channel on an old dam disaster in Italy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVtfIEik8AwI thought he was angling to be a new Tom Scott from his previous video, but he manages to add a lot more emotional depth to a video that could just be "here's an odd thing that exists".
(DIR) Post #B2LQA5GJCdS0xJRbd2 by wikkit@mastodon.social
2026-01-16T12:26:28Z
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I bet there's already shit like this raising seed rounds.
(DIR) Post #B2LrMBgjpjF57jnoKu by wikkit@mastodon.social
2026-01-16T18:20:41Z
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Calendar of Artemis II launch windows: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/artemis-ii-mission-availability.pdf