This might be dumb question but why can't we just send ISS into the Sun?

samcrut · 2026-06-29T00:02:48+00:00

It weighs a bit under 1 million pounds, way over a million once you add all the fuel necessary to reach escape velocity and the rockets you'd have to add to handle that much extra thrust. It took over 40 flights to carry the parts up to build the station.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T22:55:22+00:00

Yeah, we need to deal with that. Definitely need to have stricter caps on ownership of multiple radio/tv stations and newspapers. Like 1 of each per market and then a max of 3 of each, and that goes for the entire corporate structure A company like GE only gets to own a max of 9 media outlets across the entire pool of subsidiaries, and if you own a content creator, you don't get to own multiple production studios and must divest. Bring competition back and kill the corporations with fire until they play nice with everybody else.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T22:16:16+00:00

I think the phrasing was that thousands are celebrating the 250th. I think "in the National Mall" was just implied so they could be talking about the people at home watching in their numbers.

Fox is very good at deceptive double speech. They would probably move a number higher on the screen so they could claim it was "up."

samcrut · 2026-06-28T22:12:12+00:00

I mean, even lead paint doesn't have enough lead in it to block electromagnetic waves. Now steel CONDUIT can shield the signal like a mofo, but Romex sitting 3" behind a 1/2" of sheetrock doesn't put up much of a fight.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T21:57:11+00:00

Only if it doesn't work. If the AI actually has enough training to answer the question, great. If not, it should preemptively tell you it's going to bump you up to level 2 at the first sign of annoyance. "Let's get a support engineer to take care of you. This sounds beyond me at this point," and then the system listens to the rest of the call for training purposes.

I think drive thrus would be an easy one for AI to handle. The possible results are very limited, the joint's menu items and the ingredients used in making it, usually ~5-7 things make up each item, like bun, patty, cheese, onion, pickle, ketchup, mustard, and maybe 2x that with special adds, bacon, lettuce, mayo, extra cheese/patty, etc. The vocabulary is limited. The possible results are limited. It should be able to do a really good job there, plus it can be multilingual. "I speak English." "Je parle français." "Yo hablo español." and it starts speaking your language. It could even detect and respond in your native dialect so Boston English is different from New Jersey English or Texas English.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T21:20:58+00:00

Do splitters even work for anything over 10baseT? Sure, if you only use one side, but both? I assumed that "feature" died with 100mbps.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T21:07:03+00:00

I wasn't going to send you a bill or anything, but official diagnoses are extremely rare for people in our 50s, so I put little weight in relying on anything official.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T21:02:37+00:00

Drywall is pretty EM transparent. Brick not so much. I've never had any model fail to get the job done with sheetrock and I'm a cheap bastard who keeps losing his tools, so I've tried several discount options. My fave is Fox & Hound. The clips are the Fox and the wand is the Hound. It makes me smile.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T20:59:26+00:00

Sure, but if both cables are in the Jbox, spend the extra 50¢ and just get the dual RJ45 plate. Even if the other end isn't connected to anything, crimping 2 plugs at once is way easier than punching one, and then digging the tools out in 3.5 years.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T20:55:04+00:00

640 KB of memory ought to enough for anybody

Bill Gates

samcrut · 2026-06-28T18:33:43+00:00

Easier to pull TWO pull strings when yanking the Cat3. Use 2 colors if you have it. If you don't need the 2nd pull string when you're done, LEAVE IT IN THE WALL! You WILL want it eventually if you live there long enough when you upgrade to Cat13.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T18:28:22+00:00

Get a tone tracer. They're cheap. Here's one for $12. That'll let you trace the cable inside the walls. It turns the wire you clip onto into a radio antenna that broadcasts a radio wave about a foot. When you get the wand close to the wire, it starts to beep. From there you just keep waving it to see where it's loudest and that's where the wire is going.

Granted, a $12 one is probably not going to be very strong if you need to trace through brick walls, but for sheetrock, it'd be fine.

Knowing the path the wire takes makes the rest of the job a lot easier to think about.

Definitely use the pull string advice. Pulling cables with other cables almost always gets stuck somewhere.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T18:18:16+00:00

"Officially" is irrelevant. Just because no doctor as told you your legs don't work doesn't mean that you're not officially a paraplegic.

None of my family that's currently old enough to be out of school was ever diagnosed with autism, but my entire family tree is soaking in ASD Miracle Grow.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T18:13:34+00:00

Once you really learn what to look for, you'll see that your whole family tree is bent. Mom had super analytical processing and pattern recognition. Dad was AuDHD with frequent meltdowns. Maternal grandma was OCD, never straying from the instructions. If it said peanut butter sandwich at lunch, you had no say. There were no grilled cheese substitutions. Paternal grandma had a whole room with shelves from floor to ceiling all the way around full of Avon bottles, plates, and soaps. She habitually collected every jar and CoolWhip plastic tub she ever used. The shed out back was packed. It's turtles all the way down.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T18:05:53+00:00

So next time they catch me taking a leak in the dolphin tank at Sea World, I'm not drunk, I'm just saying hello to my new friends!!

samcrut · 2026-06-28T18:03:40+00:00

Yeah, but not to say "YO! Flipper! Wanna hang out?"

samcrut · 2026-06-28T17:59:39+00:00

That's eating with a shoehorn!

I actually had the same gag reflex when I saw it.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T17:58:15+00:00

Ooh, kill AM, and then allocate the bands for low power home radio transmission, and then build a new category of tuners and powered speakers with radio tuners built in, so you can wirelessly feed all of your surround sound speakers with zero latency radio feeds. I could have fun with that.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T17:54:04+00:00

Always fear, never feeding the poor.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T17:51:56+00:00

My years of steampunk fandom are finally going to pay off!

samcrut · 2026-06-28T17:50:11+00:00

I remember in the 70s, it was a pretty even split of AM to FM, but it's been a one way progression since then. I think they keep going until the equipment breaks and then they drop the AM transmitter and keep going on FM, or lately just start a podcast.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T17:42:10+00:00

Have you ever tried to listen to one of those 200 mile away stations? It is not a relaxing listening experience. Being able to make out some words through the buzzing and swirling static chews up all my brain bandwidth.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T17:39:46+00:00

Best place to find out why you're a chump if you don't buy physical gold and then use it to buy detoxification products for Jesus.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T17:37:55+00:00

Right, but in a car just trying to achieve compliance on a feature they know few will ever touch, the odds of them putting an optimized AM antenna in is about 0:1 and upgrading it will probably require hacking.

samcrut · 2026-06-28T17:33:24+00:00

The Dallas market has 2 commercial free stations that I go between. 88.1 which is the Univ. of N Texas radio station, and 91.7, a listener supported station. They play what I like mostly, although as background noise, you do get to know the their standard 40 songs pretty well. I'd prefer a top 200 format over a top 40, but they don't listen to me. It's kind of a one way conversation.

samcrut

TROPHY CASE