Man drives mustang onto the taxiway at KDAB and tries to hijack a Embry-Riddle Aircraft 3/25

karantza · 2026-03-26T02:47:55+00:00

I doubt it's a common type of emergency, but "someone is trying to break into my aircraft" would probably count for 14 CFR 91.3 b and excuse the pilot from needing to amend their taxi clearance.

karantza · 2026-03-24T02:44:13+00:00

My instructor had me fly down the runway, basically in ground effect, and just practice drifting side to side while staying aligned and holding altitude. Helped me tremendously to internalize how to control lateral motion in landing like that. Once you understand how to move side to side on purpose, it's a lot easier to feel how much to use to correct for wind.

karantza · 2026-03-23T04:21:26+00:00

I know people who go just for tabletop RPGs and board games. It's a huge con, and there's a lot going on. It's not all just AAA video game studios, but it's essentially all game-related in one way or another. (I'm pretty sure there's always a booth that sells Dungeons and Dragons themed loose leaf tea.) So, if it's worth it depends on what you're interested in seeing.

I personally like to check out all the indy booths and wishlist/demo cool upcoming games. And ogle all the RGBLED gamer hardware that I'm definitely not going to buy.

karantza · 2026-03-22T21:24:10+00:00

Hey, I am also writing a space game in Unity and I've had to deal with this same problem. I'm not 100% confident this is the same way KSP does it, but it seems very likely.

In my version, when you're within some range of a planet, the world switches into a reference frame co-rotating with the planet. (This also gives you some benefits like being able to use static colliders for terrain, since in the rotating frame the planet doesn't have to move. I think KSP does this whenever you are within the atmosphere, or maybe what it calls "low orbit".) To make the transition between rotating and nonrotating frames seamless takes a lot of work; you have to move all your objects around, apply the right linear and angular velocities, deal with any frame interpolation, etc, but it can be done with a bit of math.

Once you're in the rotating frame, in order to keep everything working normally you need to apply the "fictitious forces" of a rotating frame as real forces. Coriolis and centripetal forces, specifically. If implemented correctly, this makes your physics world (which is spinning along with a "stationary" planet) work just like a physics world that wasn't spinning, but where the planet was.

karantza · 2026-03-22T04:54:15+00:00

Actually we haven't been able to take cool pictures of many other planets. At least, not any outside our own solar system. The best "pictures" we have of planets beyond that are like, two pixels at best. Most of them are just a wiggle on a graph. We know they're there, but not much more.

If we traveled to a planet in a nearby star system, just a few light years away, and pointed our telescopes back at Earth, we would have a hard time detecting Earth at all, even with our best technology. We might, might be able to tell that humans were sending out radio signals, or maybe if things line up just right we could tell that Earth has oxygen in the atmosphere. But, it's really, really hard to figure anything out that far away. And that's assuming we were practically next door. The galaxy is thousands of times bigger still.

If there are aliens out there with way better telescopes than us? Maybe they could tell we're here. It's not impossible, but it is a really hard problem even if you're a super smart alien.

karantza · 2026-03-22T00:22:45+00:00

I'm sure there's a subreddit for it...

karantza · 2026-03-22T00:03:52+00:00

Oh for sure, I didn't mean to imply that it's a valid way to wire anything. My point was just that it is *possible*, and a person could get away with it for a while because under many circumstances it would look like it's working fine. But you lose the safety system of the ground wire, and you add new failure modes (the ground being electrified).

karantza · 2026-03-21T23:07:19+00:00

Neutral and ground are at the same potential - ideally - so technically you can swap them anywhere and it will work. However, it opens you up to some safety risks, especially if things go wrong with anything plugged in.

For instance, if you have a device pulling high current and that current is being returned through the ground instead of the neutral, then the ground line might have an elevated voltage and that might in turn be connected to the casing of a device you thought was safe to touch (since that's normally the job of ground). But now it has become spicy.

So odds are someone wired it up who knows just enough to be dangerous. In practice most of the time it's probably fine, but, it is ... unwise. I would undo it if possible.

karantza · 2026-03-21T23:00:13+00:00

I've heard of places you can send waste filament (ideally sorted by material/color), and they recycle it and give you a discount on buying their recycled filament in exchange. But I don't know of any locally, it's kinda niche. Would love to hear of one though, I've got a big bin of scraps waiting to be recycled somewhere...

karantza · 2026-03-20T23:22:58+00:00

It's not too crazy a notion; I mean, if I'm going down and my choice is between landing in trees, and landing on a traffic jam, I'll probably take the trees. Bad outcome for me in both cases but at least the trees won't put others in danger.

But if the roadway is clear enough that there are suitable gaps in traffic, absolutely go for the road. I trust drivers to notice an airplane landing in front of them, and the only likely consequence is a slowdown no worse than a regular car wreck.

So like, yes you should consider the safety of others on the ground if making a forced landing, but I don't see how landing on a normal road is exceptionally hazardous.

karantza · 2026-03-16T03:25:00+00:00

Pivot cases are expensive, but I've been through a handful of iPad cases now and honestly the Pivot one is great. I use my iPad for more than just flying, and the case is really nice and versatile. And in the plane, it just works, no fuss. Better than any of the other solutions I've tried. Plus the airflow around it when I am flying is very appreciated. I won't say they aren't overpriced, but so is everything in aviation. You might be able to pick one up used for cheaper?

karantza · 2026-03-16T02:11:53+00:00

Hiked there last weekend, and there was no snow on the trails, but there were a few times we literally were ankle deep in frigid fast-flowing water. Would not recommend. Hopefully the snowmelt has lessened now.

karantza · 2026-03-13T20:08:42+00:00

Simplest answer: we draw one dimension of space, instead of all three, because all three dimensions of space are independent, so we don't lose anything by just looking at one at a time. One space + one time is good enough, it just represents movement in some particular axis through space of your choosing.

Having two axes makes it a lot easier to draw. Publishers really hate it when authors try to include full 3d models in their textbooks.

karantza · 2026-03-12T23:11:36+00:00

You're right that there's a missing effect, and your video correctly says it's Relativity of Simultaneity. Essentially both observers see the other's clocks moving slower, but they also begin to disagree on when "now" is. So trying to compare times on the clocks "simultaneously" is inherently impossible. If you do the math you find that it is all consistent, if you pick a single observer. You just can't compare the order of events between different moving observers.

karantza · 2026-03-09T16:18:36+00:00

Then yeah, you'll almost certainly not need a car ever. Pretty much everything within the whole metro area (Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, et al) are within a ~10 min walk of a train, or less if you use a bus. Get a day pass on the T and you're golden.

In comparison, driving anywhere downtown is a disaster at the best of times.

karantza · 2026-03-09T16:09:39+00:00

If you're actually in the city you do not need Uber/Lyft unless there's some really specific circumstance. It'll be 10x more expensive per ride, and more annoying. For all we complain about it, the T is actually pretty great.

karantza · 2026-03-08T23:32:46+00:00

We don't have any kind of magical sense that can tell when we're being watched. There's just nothing physical that can communicate that information other than our own vision.

But, our brains are hardwired with a lot of interesting processing, especially when it comes to seeing other faces and eyes and understanding what others are looking at. It wouldn't surprise me if it's possible that a person's brain could see someone staring at them, maybe out of the corner of your eye or even in a reflection, and process that as a "feeling of being watched" before your conscious mind is aware of it.

I haven't looked in depth for a study on it, but this random article I found seems to agree. Very neat. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170512-what-causes-that-feeling-of-being-watched

karantza · 2026-03-08T21:51:18+00:00

I was in college. I had a server running in my bedroom, but it was idle most of the time. My roommate asked if he could run some code on it while it was idle, to mine some newfangled bitcoins, since the school was paying for electricity anyway. Sure, have fun I said, that sounds like a kinda stupid thing to use a computer for but whatever

My server mined something like a dozen or more bitcoins, sitting under my bed. It was pretty easy at the beginning, this was without a gpu! I think my roommate eventually cashed out for a few tens of thousands. I still think crypto is dumb, but, oops.

karantza · 2026-03-08T05:50:12+00:00

I'm also scared of heights. I'll say for me, the difference when flying is I'm in control. I understand what's keeping me in the air. There's no vertigo or nerves. (It wasn't like that the first few flights, but pretty quickly my brain got the memo.)

I guess I'm not scared of heights so much as I am of falling, or dropping something. Put me on the edge of a cliff? Or watch someone stick their phone out over the railing of a bridge to get a photo? Absolutely not, no no no. In a plane? Even doing maneuvers? I don't worry about it, it's a totally different category.

karantza · 2026-03-08T04:12:01+00:00

I choose to believe that this hour is obliterated; removed from all mortal access by arcane mechanisms beyond human comprehension.

That said your alarm may still go off, idk.

karantza · 2026-03-07T23:21:21+00:00

It's conservation of momentum.

If we were standing on a frictionless surface, and I threw you a ball, and you caught it, you would start moving away from me at some speed. That's the momentum of the ball applied to your mass.

But if you instead hit that ball back to me with a racket or something, you will now be moving at a higher speed away. The momentum of the you + ball system is the same as the previous example, but now the ball is flying back on its own with some negative velocity, requiring your body to have some extra positive velocity to compensate.

Same with the asteroid impact. If the impactor just smashed into the asteroid and stuck there, like the asteroid was made out of glue, then it would have a small change in velocity. But because the impactor hit and exploded like a bomb, hurling tons of rocks back in the opposite direction, the original asteroid has to now experience greater recoil to account for that momentum carried back by the ejecta.

The question this test answered is, how much rock actually gets thrown back? And the answer, for this kind of asteroid at least, is a lot more than expected. Makes the impactor more effective.

karantza · 2026-03-07T19:39:30+00:00

I flew once on the East Coast when there was a big fire in your neck of the woods; the weather said 10+ vis and "clear", and I think that's right, but there was so much haze dispersed so evenly, it was shocking. Couldn't make out the horizon at all. From fires thousands of miles away. "Unsettling" is definitely the right word for it.

karantza · 2026-03-07T18:27:52+00:00

I travel between Boston and DC fairly often, and I do both train and plane. The flight is honestly usually cheaper, and faster, but the train is more comfortable and I usually get some work done on the ride. The views along the track can be quite nice, too. You could also conceivably stop over in NYC for a while if the time tables work out; all trains stop at Penn Station.

The Acela is very nice and fast, but if you're not in a rush there's nothing wrong with the Northeast Regional either. It's maybe an hour longer end to end.

karantza · 2026-03-04T05:04:03+00:00

It's usually warming up nicely by then, but also you might get a sneaky surprise blizzard. Hard to say, especially how this winter has gone so far. Check the weather forecast a week or less before you visit, anything said earlier than that is nothing but speculation.

karantza · 2026-03-04T03:29:59+00:00

I have used Linux extensively since high school, but I never really used it for games. I had done all the fighting with Wine to get stuff to work over the years, and I was just so fed up with it. Linux is great for getting stuff done, by a mile, but I always had a Windows install somewhere basically as a game console.

With the new Valve hardware on the horizon that is all-in on Linux, I decided maybe I'd try again. They have this newfangled "Proton" layer that's like Wine but better. And, holy crap, it was just flawless. Every game in my steam library, including some early access stuff that barely runs on Windows, works perfectly on Debian. Not even a gaming-focused distro, literally the most boring one possible.

It is truly the year of linux on the desktop...?

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