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The company is being paid $843 million to a build a rocket to "deorbit" the space station. They're going to use the Tesla self-driving code?
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Kent Sharkey wrote: They're going to use the Tesla self-driving code?
Then NASA had better put an emergency vehicle running it's lights on a barge at the target point. 
Actually, deorbiting the ISS is a perfect use case for the cargo variant of Starship. Starship is big enough that once disassembled, each module could fit in Starship's cargo area. Let's bring it down and study the long-term effects on the various materials.
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Pretty smart... I'm behind though. Why are we wanting to deorbit a space station? Can't we do something with it?
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jochance wrote: Why are we wanting to deorbit a space station?
It probably is too big for Wall-E
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
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Kent Sharkey wrote: They're going to use the Tesla self-driving code?
I hope not... if they do, instead of landing in the ocean it would hit a big city
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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We're doomed! Again... Plan for the future. The far future.
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That was five minutes I'll never get back.
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Plan for the future. The far future.
what for? IF we are still around, we will be controlled by our Robot Overlords
Maybe that's the last chance to get free, when they get bugged around
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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We should delete these posts then and try to wipe the internet of the information. 
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No need to delete everything. Just replace it with cat videos. Then maybe our overlords will be more benevolent.
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If we ever built actual empathy into it, it probably really would replace everyone.
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In the scenario described, it is meaningless to introduce a new linear time scale. It must be relativistic, affected by gravitation and acceleration (OK, I know that those two terms are identical in the models!)
A former co-worker of mine was earlier working on GNSS systems. He told that when the first GPS satellites were launched, the programmers were divided into two camps: One claimed that because gravity is weaker out there where the satellites orbits, time runs at a different speed. The other camp said: Bullsh*t! The camps were so evenly divided that two versions of the software was included in the first satellites, with the 'non-relativistic' alternative enabled.
Gradually, errors from the satellites accumulated, making the readings more and more incorrect. The relativistic guys showed their calculations: Look! Exactly as we calculated! So an order was sent to the satellites to switch to the relativistic software, and the GPS positions turned stable as rock.
My primary source is oral, from my co-worker. When I mentioned this to another guy at a social event, he nodded, confirming that he was aware of it. Yet, I do not have any URL to confirm it. Sorry!
In any case: If you plan for a time standard for cosmological time scales, you should most certainly make it aware of acceleration, distances and c. A time stamp will be a lot more than a 64 bit (or 128 bit) count of nanoseconds. And, as the GPS example shows, it may be essential not only in billions of years or lightyears - it may come into plays with something as earthy (?) as GPS satellites.
Side remark: Astronomers do have their own time scale differing from the Christian one: They recognize zero! The Christian church doesn't - year -1 goes directly to year 1, with no year 0 inbetween. So for years before 1 AD, the Christian time and the the astronomical time differs by one year.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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I believe your tale is apocryphal.
Time dilation had been experimentally verified decades before GPS came to be.
In the mid 1970s a colleague was working on refining software that used the US Navy Transit satellite doppler navigation system, and we had a light hearted discussion around the fact that the relativistic corrections weren't necessary for a system that had a fundamental accuracy on the order of a hundred or more metres.
Transit was a very ingenious system, getting a fix from a 2 minute pass of one satellite.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Peter_in_2780 wrote: I believe your tale is apocryphal.
Time dilation had been experimentally verified decades before GPS came to be.
Oh, most certainly.
The question is whether programmers, even of GPS software, would think that it would be of importance to their software.
When I see how to which degree of detail I have to explain to even well seasoned programmers how meaningless it is to use a window protocol on an transatlantic optic fiber, I can well believe that even GPS programmers laugh: Time dilation? That has to do with stars and galaxies, not satellites circling earth! I never checked how many orders of magnitude below transatlantic transfer times we are, but we are talking about a few
So I am not at all doubting that quite a few programmers would think that relativistic corrections is just silliness when writing software for (near) earthly things such as a GPS satellite.
If you were to write the driver for a digital clock display in a high speed train, and someone insisted that you have to include corrections for the acceleration and breaking down as the train leaves a station and arrives at the next? Most likely, you would laugh at it. But fact is that the acceleration/de-acceleration would cause the clock display to gradually deviate from the stationary station clocks. Even though theoretical physicists (and even some real ones) has known this to be a fact for a hundred years, you would probably laugh it away, for your clock display.
That's what a significant part of the GPS software team did for their clock.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Microsoft pulled the June Windows 11 KB5039302 update after finding that it causes some devices to restart repeatedly. Who could have...who could have...who could have...
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A restart loop was perhaps the most feared scenario in the products I worked on. Plus ça change...
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In the age of GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Google Gemini and all the rest, one of the most-used AI coding assistants is still the venerable IntelliCode feature of Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE, whose six-year-old tech now seems positively ancient. If it works, don't AI it
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This threw my head off a bit. Intellisense vs Intellicode.
The latter is sort of the former after reworking it when they did AI it.
Had to go poking a little because I knew Intellisense has been kicking way longer than 6 years.
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Yeah, Intelli{foo} was the new Active{foo} or Direct{foo} for a while with Microsoft.
TTFN - Kent
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In a new PwC survey, 28% of respondents said they were likely to switch jobs within the next year—up from 19% in 2022. So, get out before the rush
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Kent Sharkey wrote: So, get out before the rush
or before the next mass layoff
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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It ain't over till it's over then?
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The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published research looking into 172 key open-source projects and whether they are susceptible to memory flaws. But that's OK - they have plenty of eyes looking at them
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Kent Sharkey wrote: they have plenty of eyes looking at them
but... do they see something?
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Continuous scrolling search results on desktop will be removed today, as well as on mobile devices ‘in the coming months.’ Worthless results moved back to page 2
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