planetaryprotection

@planetaryprotection@midwest.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A cargo plane flew 50 miles with no pilot onboard using a semi-automated system. An aviation expert says the technology could address the pilot shortage.⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thousands of military drones have been remotely piloted for decades. This news isn’t as ground breaking as it might seem. Some of these drones are large: …wikipedia.org/…/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Haw…

  I know a military drone isn’t the same as a passenger carrying airplane, but for cargo I think the only reason this isn’t already a thing is because drones are military tech and most governments don’t want that falling into the wrong hands.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jeff Bezos plays down AI dangers and says a trillion humans could live in huge cylindrical space stations⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not trying to defend Jeff here, but generally these kind of space megaprojects rely on manufacturing materials in space. I.e. capture an asteroid and use its material as the radiation shielding. Not that that’s currently anywhere near feasible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not mocking cobol devs but yall are severely underpaid for keeping fintech alive⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah I had convinced myself that I would only do it for a year and be able to retire much much sooner.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not mocking cobol devs but yall are severely underpaid for keeping fintech alive⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I once applied for a “database admin” job at one of the big credit card companies. The job description was basically “run all our Oracle databases” and the salary was in the mid 2 millions USD, but I assumed that figure was typo’ed or something ( an extra 0 maybe?)

  In the interview I learned that there was no typo and it was to be one of the seven people on the planet that run the databases for this credit card processor. They said “if the database goes down then we are losing billions of dollars a minute”.

  Anyways I didn’t get the job, but they’re not all underpaid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Teeth.⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Makes me think of this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dentition#Dental_formula

  Teeth can tell you a lot about an animal. Their size, shape, number etc can tell you what it eats or how it eats or how much it eats. Dental formula can give you clues for how animals are related to each other. If two different animals have the same dental formula then maybe they share a common ancestor or have a similar diet. If two animals are already very similar but have different dental formula then maybe they’re only very distantly related or there’s been some convergent evolution elsewhere.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨He's more of a pottery expert. But even he can see this.⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Correct. Plywood gets a lot of strength from the alternating grain directions in each layer and the core plys aren’t always the same species as the veneer/face plys.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨He's more of a pottery expert. But even he can see this.⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The grain pattern looks like veneer instead of solid wood.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨He's more of a pottery expert. But even he can see this.⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Black walnut top, purpleheart legs, and maybe a maple plywood drawer front?

  Looks like the side of the casing might also be the same hardwood plywood, just stained much darker?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Researchers identify ‘switch’ to activate cancer cell death⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This article is worth reading if only for this line:

  However, though drug companies have had some success targeting the Death Receptor-5, no Fas agonists have made it into clinical trials.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The EV transition trips over its own cord⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I wish the US had better passenger rail infrastructure so people traveling long distance didn’t need to road trip.

  I’m lucky to be in a position where I can ride a train to the two closest cities so I’m picking up an EV. Anything longer distance and I’ll either fly or rent an ICE.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's your warp slogan?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Appa, yip yip!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cleaning long tubes? (More a howto/research aid)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I used to work in a brewery and we used hot caustic followed by acid for cleaning most things but some pneumatic (spent) grain systems got pigged in freezing weather to avoid the wet grain freezing into a plug.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cleaning long tubes? (More a howto/research aid)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Depending on what you’re cleaning and the nature of the pipe (is it smooth or does it contain sharp bends?) you could consider pigging.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you currently handle Covid infections?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I had COVID a couple months ago. I was told to strictly self-isolate for two weeks after my first day of symptoms. That meant not leaving my house, even if masked. I was also told to strictly mask for two weeks following that self-isolation period.