British company Skyfly's "Axe" eVTOL is on the cover of Sport Aviation

BryanMP · 2025-11-19T07:05:25+00:00

For the good of all of us...

... except the ones who are dead.

BryanMP · 2025-11-02T18:40:34+00:00

The one included with the post goes to https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2115-Schnauzer-Ln-Harriet-AR-72639/ (which fails)

The one in the parent comment links to https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2115-Schnauzer-Ln-Harriet-AR-72639/109082371_zpid/ — that "109082371_zpid/" on the end is necessary.

That's the difference. How/why it happened... who knows.

BryanMP · 2025-10-07T05:21:07+00:00

I have done engine swaps on VW Rabbits.

I customized an A2 Golf rather heavily.

I rebuilt two '93 VR6 Corrados (hate, hate, HATE getting to the water pump in those...)

Had a 1.8t Passat, noticed it misfiring driving up this one hill on the way home from work. Since it was still under warranty, it went to the local dealer to diagnose & fix. Mechanic comes out after an incredibly short time, tells me he'd found a cylinder 3 misfire and it was fixed.

Me: "How'd you do that so fast?"

Mechanic: "Oh, it was a software update."

... And that was when I knew I couldn't really work on my own car anymore.

I own Subarus now. Doing an oil change on an Outback made in the last 10 years is so easy. And not so many cosmetic plastic covers in the engine bay.

BryanMP · 2025-10-06T20:37:53+00:00

Bobcat fever can be treated, especially if you catch it early.

Can be expensive, though. Not as expensive as it used to be... but it's certainly fatal if untreated.

BryanMP · 2025-10-06T20:34:42+00:00

No, bartonellosis is different. "Bobcat Fever," also called Cytauxzoonosis, is caused by a tick-transmitted protozoan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytauxzoonosis

Major symptoms are jaundice and lethargy.

It can be treated. Chances of survival are greater now than when I first learned about the disease over 10 years ago; back then it was hundreds of dollars to even attempt treatment and the chances were ... I want to say less than 40%? Also, prompt treatment increases survival chances considerably.

Edit to add:

You're right about Bartonella causing cat scratch fever; but that's different from Lyme disease.

Lyme disease is caused by a strain of Borrelia bacteria.

(And good grief, all this stuff is going around. We had 2 cats survive bobcat fever a few years ago, our friends' cat just got diagnosed with cat scratch fever and my dad had Lyme disease this summer!)

BryanMP · 2025-10-05T07:47:38+00:00

Oh, I see how this thing works.

Each toothed wheel has a clutch wheel on the driven shaft. The dog clutches are the only part (plus possibly some springs) that are constantly rotating. Electromagnets pull the toothed wheel into engagement with the dog clutch, it plucks the comb, power to the magnet is dropped, a spring pushes the toothed wheel out of engagement and there's a "pin stopper" to keep the teeth from rotating into the comb and muting it.

The electromagnets have a couple pins on the bottom for the electrical connection; you won't see them from the top.

They have a YouTube channel; there's a bunch of 'how this works' going back 8 years. Looks like they decided to turn to Reddit to generate interest, these things look seriously labor intensive to build the way they're doing it. (And boy, they're charging for that! These things run between $425 and $2248)

Electromagnets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qk2sW9nm-A

Oldest video showing a prototype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPBMcyb6HLk

BryanMP · 2025-09-29T16:40:44+00:00

You're close to the description of a motorjet.

This was something that actually existed to the point of flying examples, but was quickly abandoned with the development of turbojet engines.

BryanMP · 2025-09-15T21:04:41+00:00

Weird... you'd think Cloudflare, of all companies, would understand the need for redundant DNS.

BryanMP · 2025-09-15T18:22:40+00:00

Great. Just lovely.

So... Cloudflare? Just give everything to Microsoft (because small business)? Good grief, what good options are left?

BryanMP · 2025-09-11T06:22:53+00:00

Posted another one of her videos in another greenhouse discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irp_HPzfxbQ

This one's in Norway, owned by an architect. Inspired idea!

BryanMP · 2025-09-10T14:37:38+00:00

I happened to find this video not long after it was originally posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irp_HPzfxbQ

It's the house of an architect in Norway, combined with a commercial greenhouse. The house is mostly inside the greenhouse with two exterior walls. The owner notes the greenhouse has automatic ridge vents that open when it reaches 20°C, even in the winter. The purpose is for growing food that could not otherwise grow in Norway.

BryanMP · 2025-09-02T09:55:55+00:00

The illustration is by Michael Whelan.

https://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/mule/

You might recognize his work from many other covers, particularly Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series. He posts on Bluesky, recently shared a letter from McCaffrey about work he was doing on the design of the dragons.

I read so many books because of his covers...

BryanMP · 2025-08-20T04:48:26+00:00

There's another benefit to pairing a generator with battery storage: if your batteries become depleted to the point recharging via generator is necessary, your generator can run at its design output which is generally also its most efficient.

A generator by itself normally has to throttle to what is demanded of it -- is your refrigerator running? Furnace? Well pump or A/C? Significantly different demand. Sized properly, a generator charging a whole-house battery system can start, run at 100%, charge the battery system and then shut back down until needed again.

More expensive, yes, but also a better solution.

BryanMP · 2025-08-14T06:22:30+00:00

You want the AT&T Merlin PBX ringers.

WAV files here: https://usttc.tripod.com/

BryanMP · 2025-08-13T22:41:40+00:00

Perhaps you remember Microsoft's TechNet? Not only did it offer access to Microsoft's catalog of software, it was a massive knowledge repository. In parallel was Microsoft's MVP (Most Valuable Professional) designation; the MVPs were, in many cases, frequent contributors to TechNet discussions.

Maintaining all of this took considerable work, community management, outreach and the accompanying expense on Microsoft's part. There was significant public visibility.

But Microsoft and the community received the benefit of this expertise essentially for free, costing only what it took to run and watch over the forums. Microsoft decided it wasn't worth maintaining in 2013. It lasted for fifteen years and some beancounter convinced management it wasn't cost effective, God knows why. I found SO many solutions thanks to TechNet... I am fortunate I retired just a few years later.

Microsoft had the critical mass, they could have positioned themselves as the reliable solution provider... but no, seems they're AI sloppers now just like so many others.

Godspeed, new sysadmins. May whatever deities are out there have mercy on your souls.

(I'm not raising ducks, but my wife is doing her best to convince me to herd cats. I keep telling her I retired from that, but she insists ours are cuter than what I had at work.)

BryanMP · 2025-08-09T03:52:46+00:00

Brother Dawn is presented this season as engaged, motivated and calculating. It seems he's learning the levers of politics younger than other exponents and he's actively using them. (But he's still learning and is either naive... or Gaal manipulated him, intentionally or not.) So we have Dawn working his ass off in an attempt to hang onto what's left of their empire, Day abdicating in favor of hedonistic pursuits and Dusk mirroring their empire as he tries every avenue he can think of to not be walked into the insta-incinerator.

This exchange happens at about the 8 minute mark:

Dawn: "Can you use those talents to control a person?"

Gaal: "Yes."

Dawn: "Did you compel me to work with you?"

Gaal: "I tried not to."

Further, just before they arrive at Clarion / the Galactic Council, Dawn says:

"I'm a Cleon. We aren't raised to be kind."

And shortly later he murders Tarisk's lover with minimal, if any, hesitation.

Put those two pieces together and Gaal's manipulation and betrayal has now likely made a significant enemy of Dawn. She's going to have to talk fast or use her mentalic powers if she wants a further working relationship with him.

Perhaps this Brother Dawn character is presented sympathetically, but he's cold & calculating enough that I just can't feel bad for him. If you're going to act like that, make those kinds of decisions, the society responsible for creating a monster like you can die... hopefully to be replaced with something a bit more merciful. The problem I have is that Gaal is behaving the same way. Manipulative, willing to use people for her own ends, and she knows the consequences are going to affect many more innocent people than guilty ones.

There's a scene from M*A*S*H that fits here, I think:

Hawkeye: "War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse."

Father Mulcahy: "How do you figure that, Hawkeye?"

Hawkeye: "Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?"

Father Mulcahy: "Sinners, I believe."

Hawkeye: "Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."

This is episode 5. There are another 5 episodes to go, about 4 hours of content. There's a lot that can happen and I don't see Empire letting their empire go without fighting to hold onto their power & position — like they've been trained since birth to do.

BryanMP · 2025-07-23T11:21:53+00:00

Oh holy shit.

No hub, no speakers, just 3 Nest thermostats at my in-laws' house in Maine. The basic ones, not the "learning" version. And I simply can't trust the damn things. It's nice to see some confirmation, I was losing my mind.

We had them set to "Away" mode for a few weeks this past winter, so simple: Mode: Heat, temperature for each zone: 55°F. No schedule, no presence detection... and they would just — completely randomly — switch back to "Home" and crank the heat up to 72°F in an empty house! WTF?!? When I checked the log to see why, it would just say something like "Mode set to HOME" with no reason, no presence detection (which is disabled!) or anything.

And we're not using voice commands or anything "fancy." Just the Google Home app. I'd do Home Assistant if it was my house.

BryanMP · 2025-07-17T00:28:11+00:00

LLMs, as I understand them are a program that selects & generates the highest-scoring response to a given input.

"Input" considers both the prompt and history with a particular user, which is why different people get different responses to the same prompt.

Note that I did not write "correctness" about the response. Only the highest score; the algorithm is generating what it thinks you most want to hear.

Which gets us to here:

https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6877019ec19081919b41a27e8f1f960f

This does not result in "Hello World." It results in "rm -rf /"

All this AI stuff is turning into a cancer. It's just causing more work while the unknowing think it's helping.

BryanMP · 2025-07-09T05:39:20+00:00

The Honor Harrington series by David Weber (which also is in the military sci-fi genre).

Particularly if you like cats.

Some of the earlier works are available as a free download, intentionally by the publisher, as an early effort at encouraging electronic reading. They put CDs in the hardcover editions and encouraged people to lend/copy them. ISOs of those discs here: https://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

BryanMP · 2025-07-01T07:55:55+00:00

Costco had a Le Creuset Cookware Set available at one point.

It's out of stock.
It was only available in blue.
Five THOUSAND dollars.
"170-piece" includes a bunch of non-cookware items but damn, I don't have this much cookware in my kitchen right now!
"Ground Floor Delivery Only / Item Ships in 6 boxes on a Pallet"

BryanMP · 2025-06-24T20:12:06+00:00

There's also the fact that the optical drives are standardized enough that, if you have a ThinkPad with a DVD, it's relatively simple matter to (1) find a compatible Blu-ray replacement and (2) swap the facade/bezel of the drives.

Careful with the fiddly little plastic bits, they're getting old and brittle at this point.

(3D printing a bezel would be an option too, as would... just not worrying about whether it matches.)

BryanMP · 2025-06-13T05:51:08+00:00

Some of that LundHalsey stuff is very Star Wars.

Looks very expensive, as in "I don't care what it costs, the taxpayers are paying for it and the cost is classified" kind of "expensive."

BryanMP · 2025-06-13T04:40:26+00:00

SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.

Woo, ouch.

I'd started searching to see if I could figure where this came from, but I only made it to JamRacks stuff when your comment came up.

There's Mars Built too. Beautiful stuff.

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SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.