thombat

9 ms·

61.
by thombat 2y ago
That's not quite correct. The first (public) brute-forcing of DES was done in 1997 by the DESCHALL project distributing the search across tens of thousands of volunteer's computers for weeks [1]. The EFF then spent $250,000 to bui
62.
by thombat 2y ago
Cake fork
63.
by thombat 2y ago
Be careful about looking as if they're abusing that dominant position. Back at the highwater of the "Wintel" dominance, early 2000s, Intel staff reportedly found Microsoft hair-raising, boasting openly of crushing the competi
64.
by thombat 2y ago
If you're living in a tunnel to protect you from radiation then the true length of the day isn't important.
65.
by thombat 2y ago
Even today it's wise to be careful with lumps of amber on Baltic beaches: https://www.dw.com/en/ticking-time-bombs-on-the-bottom-of-th...
66.
by thombat 2y ago
What help could they realistically send? Poland was between the two nations that were invading it and the UK was only just introducing a bomber (Wellington) with the range for a direct return flight to Warsaw (and such a flight was impossib
67.
by thombat 2y ago
At least in the USA it seems you need permission for derivative works regardless of your intent in making them: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/derivative_work
68.
by thombat 2y ago
Rather depends upon what you consider "long" to mean. The sun moves about 15 degrees per hour and the angular field of view on a zoomed iPhone 13 shot is about 23 degrees (according to a blog). 12MP resolution so crudely moves abo
69.
by thombat 2y ago
Except that apparently they had such warnings for individual trades, but the bundle was implemented as "for(trade in bundle) transact(trade)". Which design has a certain appeal, standing on the shoulders of the peculiar handling o
70.
by thombat 2y ago
It doesn't seem that this would have helped here: the trader entered exactly the number that they intended to, just that their intent was misconceived.
71.
by thombat 2y ago
So long as they do a gag where the dummy's suit is depressurised and he continues to protest but now silently, then I'm all for it. If Man is truly to live along the stars then vaudeville humour shall be part of it
72.
by thombat 2y ago
NASA had only contracted for 15 Saturn V stacks, and in 1968 declined to start the second production run. Nixon only assumed office in 1969, at which point the only question was how many of the remaining ten stacks would fly as part of Apol
73.
by thombat 2y ago
NASA had only contracted for 15 Saturn V stacks, and in 1968 declined to start the second production run. That was still under Johnson - although Nixon was doubtless happy with the decision it had already become obvious that Congress wasn&#
74.
by thombat 2y ago
And having re-read "Bad Times" for the first time in years, the "screw-up your VHS tracking" is a testament to its age.
75.
by thombat 2y ago
Nope. Or at least, never happened to me. This comment section is starting to read like a "Bad Times" virus warning https://web.archive.org/web/20060925013545/http://www.making...
76.
by thombat 2y ago
Guessing that it's Jobs' job?
77.
by thombat 3y ago
I'm similarly haunted by the question of an avuncular Anglo-Indian office manager some thirty years ago who upon learning that I had no kids exclaimed "How do you know that you're not just shooting blanks?!" I've wo
78.
by thombat 3y ago
But the (horrifying) maths checks out: say he got the Gameboy at the age of 12 when it launched in 1989, had a first child at twenty in 1997, that child has a child of its own also at the age of twenty in 2017, grandchild aged six or seven
79.
by thombat 3y ago
Train the fish to train electric eels to train the AI (adding indirection is both the cause of and the solution to life's problems)
80.
by thombat 3y ago
But what control input could a pilot make that abruptly produces significant negative gees for just a couple of seconds? Other than the bland references to "technical issue" it sounds like clear air turbulence. (Although one possi
81.
by thombat 3y ago
Christmas the Minch did steal
82.
by thombat 3y ago
Certainly not true for almost all stars visible to the naked eye. Consider Alpha Centauri, well known to all southern hemisphere inhabitants and just four light years away.
83.
by thombat 3y ago
But where did they say they only used each device for 1.5 years? That seemed like your assumption based on the quoted dozen laptops across twenty years; I certainly have a number of devices concurrently, with the oldest now being 14 years (
84.
by thombat 3y ago
And by applying this rule then it's all hard sci-fi: take the fluffiest "Conan" tale and just tweak the parameters of the universe until it becomes not merely possible but actually inevitable.
85.
by thombat 3y ago
And if a man mates with nine women he'll be holding one baby this time next month? With both electronic devices and gestating females concurrency is common.
86.
by thombat 3y ago
The difficulty of long range communications is nicely demonstrated there: "X-band with 5-m fixed antenna capable of sufficient downlink (~10 Mbit/week) at 1000 au using Next Generation Very Large Array or equivalent resource"
87.
by thombat 3y ago
Another constrained resource is communications: the Deep Space Network dishes are shared between all of the current NASA missions and already has rationing. So before upping the pace of new deep missions factor in the time for getting Congr
88.
by thombat 3y ago
Geothermal station on Io? Harvest the radiation belts somehow? (Probably both environments are too destructive to be practical, like putting a Crockpot on the surface of Venus)
89.
by thombat 3y ago
Indeed - I hadn't noticed the publication date before encountering the remark about Pioneer's Jovian encounter still being in the future! High time for an update; although many of the additional moons may not be of direct interest
90.
by thombat 3y ago
How have I never seen this gem before? Belters banished by basic orbital mechanics, already 50 years ago!

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