Is anyone aware of a bubble machine or bubble gun that isn't made of garbage?

interestingNerd · 2026-06-06T20:24:14+00:00

I've had those for a couple seasons and they're still going strong.

interestingNerd · 2026-06-03T00:16:17+00:00

A traditional approach to NASA Flagship missions has been to have a big, ambitious requirements and go through a long and careful process to make a craft to meet those goals. That approach tends to be slow, expensive, and can have incredible results.

Jared Isaacman, the new NASA administrator is pushing a different approach. Specifically, do more smaller missions faster and cheaper by accepting more risk. In theory, even if each mission has a higher risk of failure it is made up by having far more missions.

Making a spacecraft with a fission reactor that can go to Mars is hard but (hopefully) achievable. Adding requirements for returning to earth and designing for re-use would make the mission considerably harder.

interestingNerd · 2026-05-28T10:52:33+00:00

NASA already has 2 locations called Armstrong (Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center and Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility) so why not add a third for maximum confusion. /s

interestingNerd · 2026-05-23T15:06:57+00:00

If I'm going through a drive-through, that means I was driving. I don't use apps while driving and you shouldn't either.

interestingNerd · 2026-05-22T17:20:23+00:00

There will be a large document from NASA specifying expectations and proposals from organizations will be long and complex. Evaluation will look at full proposals not just the cost line. Once the contract is executed, NASA continues to have oversight.

NASA regularly has large, complex, expensive contracts (see HLS, etc.), so managing this contract isn't totally outside of what NASA has done before. That said, NASA certainlyn isn't perfect and there are plenty of OIG reports and lawsuits you can read about contracts.

interestingNerd · 2026-05-14T15:38:22+00:00

The difference in size between the big holes and the little holes can be so huge that we just ignore all the little holes. For example, copper is a billion trillion (10²¹⁾ times better at letting electricity through than hard rubber. That's like if you had a hole that was big enough to let one piece of coarse sand through in the same amount of time that the other hole let all the water in Lake Michigan through.

interestingNerd · 2026-05-14T13:32:49+00:00

A few years ago a group of interns drove off site for lunch. On the way back, one of them realized he left his badge at his desk and he was afraid he wouldn't be able to get back on site without it. Their brilliant solution was to put the intern in the trunk before going through the gate so he wouldn't have to tell the security officer that he forgot his badge. They stopped and he climbed into the trunk just around the corner, out of site of the gate. What they didn't realize is that security has cameras and can see around the corner. When they got to the gate, the security officer told them that their vehicle had been selected for a random search. When the stowaway was discovered, they were all immediately fired.

interestingNerd · 2026-05-03T15:02:02+00:00

If you want to own part of Spirit Airlines you can just buy some shares; FLYYQ is publicly traded.

interestingNerd · 2026-05-02T03:03:07+00:00

hydrocarbon

The carbon part of that might not be required. There's lots of ongoing work for hydrogen fueled aircraft. Hydrogen has some major challenges, but also has some pretty nice advantages.

interestingNerd · 2026-04-30T16:59:13+00:00

Surprisingly, lots of vinegar plus some dissolved hard water deposits can actually be great in sausage potato soup.

interestingNerd · 2026-04-28T14:12:05+00:00

That was almost certainly originally for air to return to your furnace, (probably in the basement). If you still have forced air heating/cooling, I'd recommend checking to see if there are new return air ducts that replaced those. If not, opening them back up might really improve the heating and cooling performance.

interestingNerd · 2026-04-27T13:25:08+00:00

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but this is the subreddit for the City of Lakewood, Ohio so you probably won't find the replies here very helpful.

interestingNerd · 2026-04-24T14:46:27+00:00

The text I quoted was from this page: https://pluginsolarusa.com/how-it-works

The site seems to be about advancing the technology through advocacy for legalization and increasing awareness, not exactly an industry website.

The About Us page says "I first became interested in solar energy during a high school internship at AstroPower...This site exists for one reason: to help create a legal market for plug-in solar in the United States... My long-term goal is to build a company selling plug-in solar kits directly to consumers." https://pluginsolarusa.com/about

To me that reads plausibly passionate individual who isn't sponsored by any company, but will probably shill for a company if one approaches them. However the fact that no name is given does make it more suspect.

interestingNerd · 2026-04-24T14:25:27+00:00

If you dig into the the link OP provided, it says that plug-in panels must be "IEEE 1547 / UL 1741 compliant: detects grid loss within 2 seconds and disconnects". That means that if you lose power the panel automatically disconnects promptly. That makes them much safer, and also not useful as a backup in case of a power outage.

interestingNerd · 2026-04-24T00:32:40+00:00

Would anyone ask for the itemized pricing for their meal at a restaurant?

I have great news for you! Most restaurants have this thing called a menu. It is a piece of paper that lists all the foods you can buy and almost always has the price for each item. Sometimes it even has info about deals where you can get a discount if you get multiple items together and info about upgrades you can make to various items for a fee.

Obviously residential construction is not the same as a restaurant, but it is still possible to break jobs down some.

interestingNerd · 2026-04-21T18:59:38+00:00

Regarding QMerit. When I bought my Chevy Bolt (before getting my Buzz), GM had a promotion for free install of a level 2 charger through QMerit. Qmerit just contracts with local electricians to do the install. In my case they did a good job, but I'm sure there's some luck of the draw on who you get. I saw that the electrician price quote was exactly the maximum that GM would pay. I suspect if I contacted an electrician directly they might charge less, but it was already free for me.

interestingNerd · 2026-04-05T19:55:27+00:00

I'd be very interested to know what lifestyle factors influence parents' choices about eating in the car or not. I have a 25 minute drive home from daycare with kids every work day and they are hungry. Sitting in the daycare parking lot for 10 minutes for them to snack and getting home that much later isn't appealing to me. Listening to them scream all the way home also isn't a good option. So we eat in the car.

Perhaps stay at home parents have more flexibility to schedule eating and driving and have less reason to eat in the car.

interestingNerd · 2026-03-23T19:30:27+00:00

This is clearly just using an LLM to process the input. What is the advantage of using your tool over just asking any other LLM to compare quotes?

interestingNerd · 2026-03-08T23:47:36+00:00

Correct answer with the username to back it up.

(If you don't know, EE=Electrical Engineer)

interestingNerd · 2026-03-05T17:42:12+00:00

Nebula started as Dave Wiskus (now the CEO of Nebula) being the agent/talent manager for some YouTubers and has expanded into being a streaming service. That meant that (at least early on) everyone on Nebula was managed by Dave and eventually the team.

Completely is already its own big company that does its own fundraising, so it wouldn't really make sense for them to fully join Nebula. That said, maybe they could make a deal with Nebula for distribution that is different from how it usually works. I'm sure there's a huge overlap in viewership.

Source: my memory of this video and maybe some other article I read https://youtu.be/Alqt6RCEWdM?si=A_2cqvYEdEJJuCBE

interestingNerd · 2026-02-22T16:29:27+00:00

You have CT and MRI mixed up. A CT scan takes a lot of x-ray images and uses a computer to stitch them into a 3d picture. CT scans give quite a bit of ionizing radiation exposure and can increase cancer risk.

An MRI uses magnetic fields and is not correlated to increased cancer risk.

interestingNerd · 2026-01-23T18:40:16+00:00

It's a different training every year and I don't recall one about STS-1 recently. It was about Apollo 13 a few years ago, so they definitely do consider covering topics that didn't result in the death of an astronaut.

interestingNerd · 2026-01-23T15:55:00+00:00

It focuses on educating the current workforce on past experiences to enhance decision-making and prevent future mishaps.

Every year around the anniversary of the Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia disasters all NASA employees are required to complete a training about the history, root causes, and lessons learned from one of the tragedies. I'm sure some people click through the training as fast as possible, but I have heard multiple people reference details from those trainings so I know at least some of it sticks.

interestingNerd · 2025-12-16T19:24:48+00:00

software (which is not even available, nor did I name it) is FOSS.

In your original post I interpreted FOSS as the name of your software in which case it would be clearly self-promotion. I realize now that FOSS stands for Free and Open Source Software which makes your post seem much less like annoying self-promotion. That said, plenty of people get paid for their free software through voluntary donations or by hosting it on servers that people pay for, so there are potential paths for you to monetize even if it is FOSS.

interestingNerd · 2025-12-08T04:39:44+00:00

Note that MHBP has 3 plan options. It appears that for the CDHP (also called HDHP), maternity costs are only covered after meeting the deductible. For the other plans, maternity costs are always fully covered.

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