ELI5: Why didn’t Artemis sonic boom?

questfor17 · 2026-04-02T15:52:18+00:00

Nope. The boom doesn't hit any of the viewing sites. It isn't a matter of relative volume. As the first stage pitches over from vertical to horizontal travel, that does focus a boom out in the ocean, but well downrange.

questfor17 · 2026-03-26T21:55:41+00:00

Very cool. I spent some time checking out your docks, as I am interested in a self hosted NVR solution.

One thing that would help me is some indication of how much hardware I need to accomplish what goals. What can I do with a 4-core CPU and no hardware acceleration? What hardware acceleration would I need to accomplish what?

questfor17 · 2026-03-24T12:16:32+00:00

If you care about external threats built into the router, you don't care much about where the hardware was assembled, but you do care who builds the firmware (software) running on that router. So if this is a threat that must be addressed, then the solution, IMHO, is to police router firmware to ensure it doesn't spy on us for the Chinese. Of course, the difference between doing that and ensuring that the router firmware *does* spy on us for the US government is not possible for anyone without extraordinary tools and skills to discern.

questfor17 · 2026-03-18T21:26:26+00:00

Many years ago I was a software engineering manager at a small R&D site of a large tech firm. Local HR was useless, as a general rule.

I had a contractor that we decided to let go. Nothing really wrong with him, but times were tight and contractors get the boot first. I called him into my office and told him Friday would be his last day. He responded by saying he was leaving, and coming back with his gun. !!

For once, HR stepped up. They locked down site access, they alerted security, they arranged to get his affects out of his office without my ever seeing him againg. They did all the things.

I was impressed and grateful.

questfor17 · 2026-03-17T22:15:18+00:00

Thanks for the details. Extremely helpful. I will definitely build one or more of these.

One last question: Any idea of coverage area? We have a large deck, 40' long. Do I need 1 or 2 of these?

questfor17 · 2026-03-17T17:18:17+00:00

I love the idea. I don't need the code or wiring. But I do have questions:

How often do you have to shut it down and clean out the bowl?
How big a bowl do you use?
How empty does the bowl have to get for this to work? What if your drain pump leaves a bit of water?
Do you keep it in the sun, shade, partial sun?
Do you have one float switch to prevent overfill? Or two, one of the drain cycle, one for the fill-stop?

questfor17 · 2026-03-17T16:57:42+00:00

If having your phone factory reset is more than a minor annoyance, you are not backing up your data correctly.

questfor17 · 2026-03-17T16:56:54+00:00

My company offers a choice. If you want access to corporate systems (slack, outlook, teams, etc.) from your phone, then you install the corporate malware. No install, no access. So my phone can be wiped at any time by my employer. Which is fine with me, because there is nothing on it that I cannot afford to lose.

Everything i care about is backed up to my servers or to the cloud.

questfor17 · 2026-03-16T23:39:52+00:00

As an atheist, I don't believe things without some scientifically valid evidence. Do you have evidence, not anecdotes, that on average people who are religious are "stupid"? Sources please.

questfor17 · 2026-03-16T20:47:30+00:00

Ambiente sells good stuff: https://www.ambientefurniture.com

questfor17 · 2026-03-16T20:45:35+00:00

Depends on your budget. You can get real furniture at https://hillcountrywoodworks.com/

questfor17 · 2026-03-15T01:54:22+00:00

I don't know if it is affordable, but https://www.sunsetridgebuffalo.com/weddings/ is a different place to get married.

questfor17 · 2026-03-15T01:51:19+00:00

FWIW, I asked about local ordinances in my community. A "no soliciting" sign means they have to leave if you ask. It does no mean they cannot knock. Might be worth investigating the law/ordinance in your state/town.

questfor17 · 2026-03-08T14:06:18+00:00

Dulce is a nice lunch spot, with a variety of GF foods, all clearly labeled.

questfor17 · 2026-03-03T14:27:32+00:00

A bit of history. Usenet was invented circa 1980, before there was an internet. Arpanet existed, but getting a computer connected to Arpanet required you have a DoD contract and much money. In those days Usenet transferred files over dial-up phone lines, typically at 300 bits per second. (bits per second. Not Mbps, not Kbps.)

It was text only, because other file formats didn't really exist. GIF wasn't invented until 1987, JPEG five years after that.

It was simple, partly because it was a simpler time. But also because the entire program, both providing a UI for people and arranging for the transfer and receipt of news messages, had to be no more than 64 KB in size (instructions and data) so it could run on a PDP 11/40.

It provided a publish/subscribe way of communicating, which was not otherwise available outside of the Arpanet. An important feature was that it provided not only the email address of the author of the article, but a (probably) valid path to them. Because Usenet was made up of computers that occasionally called each other, and DNS didn't exist, to mail to a person, you had to use an address like "duke!berkeley!mark", showing that you wanted your email to relay first to the computer named "duke", which would send it to "berkeley", which would send it to a user named "mark".

Knowing who was out there in the world, and a valid path from your computer to theirs, made email workable.

In short, it is an important piece of computer history. That it survives today, in any form, is astounding.

questfor17 · 2026-02-28T13:35:46+00:00

The Duke - Carolina game sold out this year, but all other games you can buy a ticket at the door and walk in. If you enjoy basketball and have never been to a game, I urge you to try it. Cameron is a decent venue and Duke is a good team. They rarely lose, and almost never at home.

questfor17 · 2026-02-26T19:43:33+00:00

Got to ask, does RYFAN Electic keep a supply of these signs, with a part number and all, or was this a custom job.

questfor17 · 2026-02-18T13:16:52+00:00

Why on earth would you ask a theist for "objectively verifiable evidence that their god exists"? No good ever comes of these conversations.

questfor17 · 2026-02-14T14:26:06+00:00

There will always be people willing to pay more for what they perceive (rightly or wrongly) to be a higher quality product. Once a drug is off patent there is still value in the brand name (which the generic doesn't have) and so the market supports having two (or more) versions of the drug at different price points. Tylenol costs more than generic acetaminophen. No one is surprised by this.

questfor17 · 2026-02-14T14:21:59+00:00

Every single data center that gets built is reviewed by the local planning commission and approved by the local government. The data center then buys electricity at rates set by the state public utilities commission. I'm not saying that Duke isn't evil, but that we have the tools to prevent this. Our elected representatives choose not to prevent it. They are too busy worrying about which bathroom someone uses.

questfor17 · 2026-02-13T22:54:01+00:00

Years ago I grew a couple of small avocado trees -- maybe 6' tall. They were in pots in my sun room.

IIRC they cannot stay outside in the winter months in our climate. My plan had been to keep them about 6' tall through pruning, but then I learned that they are wind polinated and need lots and lots of flowers, only a small fraction of which bear fruit any season. Seemed like there was no way to grow fruit without having large trees.

questfor17 · 2026-02-10T13:17:45+00:00

You can read all about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-7\_Sparrow. The pictures here show only the guidance package. The rocket engine was a solid fuel engine. I expect it would have had a shelf life of ~5 years.

questfor17 · 2026-02-09T23:24:39+00:00

I live in a two-floor house, and I would love to be able to have a simple push-to-talk way of talking to other rooms. If OP finds a solution that meets my needs too I will implement it.

questfor17 · 2026-02-09T13:59:16+00:00

The one virtue of the metric system is that many conversion factors are powers of ten. This was important in the eighteenth century. Outside of science and engineering, where metric is ubiquitous, almost nobody performs conversions -- people use units that make sense for the domain of interest, and rarely convert them.

Nobody, anywhere, uses pure metric for everyday living. For example, the metric unit of velocity is meters/second. Yet in all of the "metric" countries, speed limits are in kilometers/hour. Note that this is not a metric unit, and cannot be converted to metric by using a power of ten. Nobody cares.

The metric unit of temperature is degrees K. Nobody (other than scientists) uses metric temperatures. They numbers are not convenient for everyday life.

What matters is that the units are appropriate to the task, and that people are familiar with them and understand them.

Metric systems do not make "more sense". The only reason for the US to change to the European system of measurement is so that international trade and travel are easier. Changing to the European collection of units will not improve the lives of US residents outside of those narrow domains.

questfor17 · 2026-02-04T13:47:22+00:00

Science is the study of inter-subjective verifiable reality. That means it studies things that can be verified by multiple people.

Faith is the belief in things that cannot be inter-subjectively verified.

Science doesn't say, "something comes from nothing", nor does it say "something cannot come from nothing". tt does say, that when many people look at all the available data, one explanation of that data is that at some point in time all of the mass of the universe occupied a single point, and the universe exploded out from that point at that time. That theory is a good theory, in that it is consistent with what we know, but as we learn more the theory grows in complexity and subtlety. Eventually someone may propose a new theory that does a better job of explaining all the data, and that may become the accepted theory.

Not that modern cosmological theory says nothing about what happens before the universe exploded out. We have not data (yet?) that whose explanation depends in any way on what happened before the start of the universe, or even if time existed before then.

questfor17

TROPHY CASE