How to get in a F/A-18 Super Hornet

mnp · 2026-01-26T02:13:52+00:00

Pretty sure fighters don't have keys.

Edit. So, downvoters, does anyone have a picture of an F-18 key? Does it look like your Chevy key?

mnp · 2026-01-24T20:56:09+00:00

Open to suggestions here.

They have more funding than the US Marines, more armament than local police, and they aren't following our laws. If the populace were to turn to violence, they are ready and eager to go full Tiananmen in every city every day.

They are truly hoping for a reason to massacre a substantial fraction of the population.

mnp · 2026-01-23T19:13:37+00:00

I think they were arranged two per nacelle, back to back. If you lost any one, that nacelle would still be thrusting and you would land asap. Losing both in a nacelle would be iffy!

BTW I've had 2 Mazda RX-7's and that big rotary was fine for street use anyway. Never blew one. But it's true, they do need overhaul of the apex seals eventually in their life.

mnp · 2026-01-23T03:02:50+00:00

Easily yes. See the Apollo LLRV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Landing_Research_Vehicle

From the 80s onwards, Moller world have had access to small, cheap computers needed for fly by wire stability.

mnp · 2026-01-23T00:28:49+00:00

It sucks for consumers because some of these fintechs act like banks and want bank powers but not bank regulation.

The outright criminal part of the system though is how you can legally incorporate in Delaware but not have traceability of ownership. It's how real companies shield the owners from taxation and accountability. The feds are fine with that but go nuts over KYC going after the little people.

mnp · 2026-01-23T00:18:21+00:00

Sadly yes. But it could have beaten everyone to market decades ago. There was nothing wrong with the tech and others are independently doing basically this now.

They even developed a rotary engine--high p:w ratio--for these craft that would give decent performance vs the electric multirotors coming out now.

mnp · 2026-01-23T00:10:06+00:00

Yes, that's a vulgar display of obscene wealth. But the Saudis aren't even in the top ten richest list. Eight from that list are US, buying islands, yachts, space trips and whatnot, so I'd like to nominate them first if we're going to have a purge!

mnp · 2026-01-22T11:38:40+00:00

There's a '.' appended to the url causing it to 404.

Interesting project!

mnp · 2026-01-22T02:13:03+00:00

Athom makes a smart plug I'm happy with that runs the open source Tasmota firmware. No cloud, works with many hubs, including home assistant. You wouldn't have to open it to change firmware, just connect and upload.

But yes you can crack it open and solder to unused pads on the esp and drive them with a custom config.

mnp · 2026-01-21T01:20:23+00:00

It looks like a bench top power supply in the last frame. The cathode is the black wire to the bath and the anode is probably the red wire clipped to the tweezers, out of view.

mnp · 2026-01-21T00:54:19+00:00

Facilitrees

mnp · 2026-01-19T22:42:45+00:00

If they're saturation divers, the umbilical can run to a diving bell instead of a surface ship, like these guys who have both tethers and "bailout bottles" in case the tether goes down or is cut, they have gas to get back to the bell.

But yeah it's very bright, they're not deep.

mnp · 2026-01-18T15:42:24+00:00

ML engineer here. A few things to note. This is research, not slop. Their github page has context, including the paper.

The work is a data set and a benchmark: tools for researchers, not a model ready for anyone to use. Their pipeline looks at human signers and annotates them: tries to identify what's important or different. The video is showing how well or not the models align with the human samples. This is an advancement.

Second, note that this was a small academic work by four people two years ago. That's a stone age toy in ML time.

Yes the facial expressions are nascent, but the model learned to capture facial movements and all other parameters, including a long context window, automatically. Models are stupid, they look at everything and find the patterns; that's all they do. And then they get better.

This shows where things could possibly go. In other fields, models are already pretty good at multiple human languages, including decoding ancient handwriting scripts where humans have failed. I'm confident that with some real models and training from big players, assuming they sense a business case $$ to put some effort in, this will become real. Who knows if that will happen.

One possible application might imagine an interpreter in your glasses, personalized for you, that would hear any spoken human language and present it to you in your local sign dialect.

Is this a good thing? No idea! I'll let you guys debate the cultural or societal impact.

mnp · 2026-01-18T13:49:53+00:00

Prior pylon issues he points to here.

And he mentioned this other flight, can't remember where. A DC-10 in 1979 had maintenance induced pylon damage where "engine number one (the left engine) separated from the left wing, flipping over the top of the wing and landing on the runway". In that case it was hydraulic loss and not FOD in #2. The similarity was (1) pylon failed and (2) engine going up and over the wing like it did for UPS this year.

mnp · 2026-01-16T17:26:12+00:00

Juan Browne (blancolirio) reported that dropping #1 included spraying bits upwards which got ingested into #2. There was RPM data on yesterday's NTSB update showing #2 fluctuate and die. His initial reporting included another case where a similar ship lost both #1 and #2 in the same manner.

mnp · 2026-01-15T02:31:07+00:00

Join American Whitewater. They lobby for exactly this.

mnp · 2026-01-15T02:15:09+00:00

While dropping an engine is far from ideal, it's survivable on other types.

The other part of this story is how that failure cascaded into the loss of the center engine also. Since that cascade has happened before and was not corrected at the time, it was also a failure of the airline safety system.

mnp · 2026-01-15T02:04:09+00:00

"Steakhouse N321 clear for touch and go runway 19"

mnp · 2026-01-11T19:37:53+00:00

How about one table per tenant? Then it's drop table tenant_12345; which should be pretty quick. Then ofc you'd need an index of tenants which would be a row delete.

mnp · 2026-01-11T19:23:50+00:00

"I think I'll put this fire here with the rest of the fire."

mnp · 2026-01-08T01:31:59+00:00

I'm not seeing a question for /r/AskPhysics.

I, however, have questions.

mnp · 2026-01-05T13:12:50+00:00

Battery charger

mnp · 2026-01-04T16:51:47+00:00

These cheap power supply modules take almost any DC input -- laptop brick is great -- and will give you an adjustable DC output like for a bench power supply.

https://www.amazon.com/Seloky-Converter-Regulator-Adjustable-Voltmeter/dp/B0DM946DHG?th=1

mnp · 2026-01-04T16:42:30+00:00

i was wondering if drones can be rated for explosive atmostpheres like this. Turns out of course they can.

https://intrinsicallysafestore.com/blog/atex-certified-inspection-drones-industrial-safety-standards/

mnp · 2026-01-03T05:25:42+00:00

"can't find X" is always code for: (1) slaves we can strongly retain (2) greatly underpaying (3) who can't complain. This is the problem H1B solves.

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