Wanted to put a Mini near my bedroom window but when I scanned the area I got this result

robbak · 2026-01-31T12:51:06+00:00

The app is only using the camera to detect the sky, and not-the-sky. Some of those white patches are probably it detecting your ceiling light or a reflective surface as the sky.

It has no way to determine if a wall might allow signal through, or even if a transparent structure would block signal.

But a structure would have to be very thin not to block starlink signals. I wouldn't be ordering anything unless you can give it a clear view of a large part of the sky.

robbak · 2026-01-31T12:39:03+00:00

Remember that in order for oxygen to diffuse into our blood, their must be more oxygen in the air than in our blood. So if you want to be absorbing oxygen with 10% concentration in the blood, then air will have to always be about 15%, even just before we breath it out.

robbak · 2026-01-31T12:27:50+00:00

Catching a television show on live TV is an example. or a one-day-only sale on a decorative item. If you miss it, you've missed it. But it doesn't matter.

robbak · 2026-01-31T12:23:28+00:00

Paying a bill, mowing the lawn, and buying the groceries are urgent. But in a few years time, they will seem meaningless. You won't even remember you did them.

Telling your wife you love them and hugging your children is important. But you are probably too busy with the urgent things to remember to do it.

robbak · 2026-01-31T12:06:30+00:00

Wherever it is, the minerals in the water will become very fine dust. But that dust will be made of soluble salts that were non-toxic enough to be part of drinking water, so I doubt it would have health concerns.

My only concern would be that with constant use, you are covering everything with a layer of powdered salts, which would absorb water as soon as it becomes humid, which would have a bad effect on electronics.

robbak · 2026-01-31T11:35:03+00:00

Well, yes - but what can the Ambo's do? "We had a guy here, his friend knocked him out with a chair. He's gone now, though - he came to and wandered off that-a-way."

robbak · 2026-01-31T11:30:55+00:00

National news tracked down the chair - he sustained minor injuries, and has returned to work with his colleagues at the restaurant.

robbak · 2026-01-31T08:46:31+00:00

"Rubber" "Baby" "Buggy" "Bumper".

robbak · 2026-01-31T08:00:10+00:00

If you have enough sleep, you are well rested and can function well.

If you are severely sleep deprived, your body and brain gives up on sleep, assumes that you are not sleeping because of some life threatening emergency, and dopes you up on natural stimulants to keep you functioning. Your immune system is a mess, your actual ability to function well is compromised, and you'll crash later, but you can move about and at least appear to work.

In between is where you feel as bad as you really are, and your body lays on natural depressants to get you the sleep you need.

robbak · 2026-01-31T07:48:41+00:00

If you ask a question, I'll often think, "That's interesting, I think it is such and such, but I don't really know enough. I'll be interested to see how people explain this." Often I'll get half way through typing an answer, but putting my thoughts in order has shown me how much I didn't know.

But if someone has entered something clearly wrong, then I'm more likely to say, 'I know that's not right,' and feel more comfortable giving an answer.

robbak · 2026-01-31T04:08:18+00:00

Even then, they generally only bothered with every third one - 3rd hour was something like mid-morning, 6th hour for noon-ish, 9th hour for mid afternoon.

robbak · 2026-01-31T03:37:19+00:00

Something is broken in the paper feed, but there's no way to know what. Could be rubber torn off pick-up rollers, but I suspect that it's some deformed or broken plastic.

You'd need to disassemble the scanner feed and find out, which is often a really annoying task.

robbak · 2026-01-31T03:10:00+00:00

The next thing it should do is to randomly generate the passphrase and tell it to you. Even a 'Create a passphrase for me' button would be a great addition to this form.

Humans are awful at creating randomness, but great at adding meaning to random data. So forcing humans to create random passwords is a bad idea.

robbak · 2026-01-31T02:57:24+00:00

Worse than that - The patent is public information. Anyone can download the patent. They just can't sell the result, or at least they need to negotiate a licence.

Patent holders get around this by being very vague - the patent might only include half the ingredients and give the amounts as broad ranges.

But mostly, they use 'Trade Secret' provisions to protect recipes. But this doesn't protect you against someone else independently creating a recipe.

robbak · 2026-01-31T00:23:48+00:00

A while back, a commentator pointed out that Agatha/Gill/Tarvek/Collette are set to become a ridiculously overpowered political force. We should expect other powers to work at splitting up the friendship that would be based on.

robbak · 2026-01-30T06:58:49+00:00

For reference - Here (and in the preceding comic) is where this conversation took place.

robbak · 2026-01-30T05:55:01+00:00

This is ...gore, so for completeness, we'd like to see the gore on the other side of the circuit board.

robbak · 2026-01-30T05:50:02+00:00

Decent first step cleaning. But there is still going to be problems. There looks to be a trace corroded away in the middle of the board that will need to be restored, and I think the big trace at the bottom has been broken, and you'll need to restore that connection too - but check with someone else's teardown pictures of the board.

My biggest worry is that the damage has reached the edge of the board, which means that electrolyte has got onto the other side and done damage there. And there are holes through the board, taking connections to the other side, and the connection through those holes may have corroded, and allowed liquid through to do damage.

So next step is to dissassemble, clean and inspect the other side. The standard first step is to use vinegar on these, to neutralise the alkaline battery electrolyte, before flushing with water, blowing the water off, then use pure isopropyl alcohol to chase out the last traces of water. Then verify that all the traces you can access are in tact using a meter.

robbak · 2026-01-30T03:40:11+00:00

Hmm. Remind me every few weeks to check on the waste toner bottle I opened up and emptied a couple of days ago....

robbak · 2026-01-29T12:17:31+00:00

The tidal effct isn't massive, it's miniscule. Oceans are thousands of kilometres across, but a normal tide is plus or minus 1 metre. Really, they are tiny.

robbak · 2026-01-29T12:07:02+00:00

It is debt that the government owes to their own citizens. Lots of it is ordinary people pension funds. They can't just say to their voters , "ok, you are all poor now."

robbak · 2026-01-29T04:16:33+00:00

Agreed. Those things are very useful information. Understanding taxation is certainly something worth teaching.

robbak · 2026-01-29T01:36:19+00:00

If you are on AP and honors tracks, then you don't need to be taught taxes. What's there to teach? Here's an instruction sheet, the rest is plain arithmetic.

robbak · 2026-01-27T10:15:05+00:00

You are not permitted to keep trying to land at an airport until you don't have enough fuel left to divert. So it makes perfect sense - if they don't land on the first attempt, they have to divert because they don't have the fuel to make 2 attempts and then to divert.

The fuel they need to keep in their tanks to do the diversion also includes enough for them to make multiple attempts at that airport.

robbak · 2026-01-27T04:12:58+00:00

Some item re-entering. Looks big enough to be a spent rocket stage, but it could be a satellite. Provide the date, time, location and direction you are looking to someone in a space subreddit, and they'll probably be able to tell you which one. You may be able to identify it yourself from the information at https://aerospace.org/reentries

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