Nick K

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• Commented on Announcement time!
  I wish I still had a microwave with a power and timer. Dunno 'bout you, but I have no trouble at all remembering how long I want to nuke something. Esp. when heating leftovers. I recently had to replace my...
• Commented on Announcement time!
  The wonders of analog simulators https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Machine...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  The question is this: given a moonless Earth-sized planet that has a Uranus-scale axial tilt, if you could maneuver a large asteroid into polar orbit around it, would the pull of the asteroid perpendicular to the planet's axial tilt decrease...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  If I was writing a technothriller I'd have a nuclear-capable power with a demonstrated computer expertise hack into the ship's control systems (likely running on an old unpatched version of a commercial operating system) and cause glitches at just the...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  If I was writing a technothriller I'd have a nuclear-capable power with a demonstrated computer expertise hack into the ship's control systems (likely running on an old unpatched version of a commercial operating system) and cause glitches at just the...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  multiple reasons for why a 'hangar queen' ends up in that status... aircraft, cars, trucks, computers, lawnmowers, etc To add to your list. The railways around here are electrified with overhead wires. When snow is predicted a diesel engine appears....
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  What was it like in Europe in the 1930s? I know a lot about Germany. A bit about France in that it was the government of the week at times as if flipped between fascists and communists. But the UK...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  Not that this would fly, but I can fantasize some (dis)gruntled English teacher would start this section of the course with "Romeo and Juliet is the story of how an 18 year-old boy lured a 13 year-old away from her...
• Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
  They are accurate and cheap, but I do wonder how resistant they are to gas diffusion through the very thin membrane. Perhaps if you kept the phone in a helium or hydrogen atmosphere you could fill the aneroid capsule with...
• Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
  ...and in all societies there were lots of men without a limp walking around with varying types of canes... closer examination would reveal the shocking fact of so many canes were lead rods sheathed in wood Not just men. My...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  I wonder if anyone has thus retrospectively copy edited classical works, Shakespeare [...] I'm pretty sure any normal Shakespere book you buy will have the spelling fixed for the modern reader. Shakespere couldn't even spell his own name consistently!...
• Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
  History shows that conscript armies are pretty good when they are defending their homes from invaders. History also shows that conscript armies are crap when they are sent to some tropical hellhole they never heard of, to kill people who...
• Commented on The coming storm
  That said, something anomalous happens with shipping containers. The A14 is saturated with HGVs from the East Anglian ports going west, but very few carry containers. Either they do break bulk at Felixstowe into non-intermodal trailers or all the boxes...
• Commented on The coming storm
  last time I was on a team attempting to deploy a multilingual version of a massive app developed for world wide operations by a gigabuck banking corporation, the UK vs US (mis)spellings bemused the Spanish-speakers whereas the arguments about word...
• Commented on The coming storm
  [people in The Line] aren't supposed to need to commute long distance to work on a daily basis And if they change jobs? My commute changed from a 10 minute walk to a 1 hour bus/tube ride...
• Commented on The coming storm
  Maybe it is where you live, but here in Northern Europe peak power usage is midnight in winter! I'm in the balmy SE England (still 52 N) and my heating isn't on at midnight. In fact I was away for...
• Commented on The coming storm
  The link is to "The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History"...
• Commented on The coming storm
  This is quite readable https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0044KLOXO/...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  The British Library ransomware attack happened in November and is still causing ongoing chaos. Ask me about my Public Lending Rights payments, grr ... According to the BBC some of it back up https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67976183...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  What real chance does he have of being elected? Decent, err reasonable, err not bad, err ... I don't like any of these worlds. There's a non trivial chance. [Breakdown of US electorate] What worries me is gerrymandering, which has...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  you might want to look at Ana Mardoll's deconstruction of Narnia (she's part way through book 6 at present). Do you have a title? I can find her blogs on Narnia but not books...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  There is a credible story of someone in the USA DoD (possibly the UK MoD) arguing with a superior over the contents of a document on his desk, to be told that he was not cleared to see it. He...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  And then the Americans (through Pakistan) supported warlords and fundamentalist fighters (including likely the Taliban) to fight the Soviets, and provided arms and training for fighters. One of the few times my mother expressed a political opinion. On hearing the...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  There are QR code reader apps on Apple iOS devices. But they have mostly fallen away as Apple built the function into their camera app. You start the app and point it at a QR code. Without taking a picture...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/argentina/#military-and-security...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Meaning to read some Lem. [...] in translation, until I hopefully learn some Russian Stanisław Lem was Polish. Born in Lvov/Lviv...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  "Piece of Paper" - yes, well, about 20 years ago - looking for work that wasn't "minimum wage" I tried "Electrician" ( I do have an engineering MSc, after all ) ... No-one was the slightest bit interested - I...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  I get the distinct feeling that the word "Freedom" in America means something different than to does to the rest of the world (especially when capitalized). It is something unique to the American Way of Life™, and exceptional I caught...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  basic evolution shows that a 'superior' race will necessarily emerge at some stage that's not actually how evolution works. For starters you have to define "superior". I can program a computer (well sort of), so I'm "superior" to a chimp....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  By the way, if anyone is going to re/read Stranger in a Strange Land, be sure to check out the full unedited version that his widow found maybe 30 years ago. The full version is almost twice as long as...