Archive for the 'Off Topic' Category
Headphones?
April 24th, 2018VERY OFF TOPIC! — I’m going to give my Audio-Technica ATH-M50s to my wife to replace her 17 year old, nearly-dead-and-not-good-to-start-with ATH-M20s. I was pretty amazed with the sound of the M50s when I got them back in 2010—at least for the first few minutes. After that, I went through multiple phases of modifying the […]
China Sending Plants, Insects to the Moon
April 13th, 2018Via: Quartz: Almost half a century ago, the first human landed on the moon, marking “a giant leap for mankind.” This year, China is sending seeds of plants and insects there. Seeds of potatoes and arabidopsis—a small flowering plant belonging to the mustard family—along with silkworm cocoons, will hitch a ride with the Chang’e-4 lander […]
VW Diesel Graveyards
March 30th, 2018Pretty wild video. Via: Reuters: Volkswagen AG has paid more than $7.4 billion to buy back about 350,000 U.S. diesel vehicles through mid-February, a recent court filing shows. The German automaker has been storing hundreds of thousands of vehicles around the United States for months. Volkswagen has 37 secure storage facilities around the United States […]
Two Weeks Before His Death, Hawking Submitted a Paper on Parallel Universes
March 19th, 2018I still miss Walter and the gang from Fringe. Via: ScienceAlert: Stephen Hawking submitted the final version of his last scientific paper just two weeks before he died, and it lays the theoretical groundwork for discovering a parallel universe. Hawking, who passed away on Wednesday aged 76, was co-author to a mathematical paper which seeks […]
Scott Kelly Spent a Year in Space, and Now He Has Different DNA Than His Identical Twin Brother
March 14th, 2018
Update: This Story Is Bullshit Via: LiveScience: So what really happened to Mark and Scott Kelly? It turns out that big changes in the expression of Scott Kelly’s genes occurred while he was in space, and 7 percent of those changes persisted after he returned to Earth, lead author Susan Bailey, a researcher at Colorado […]
SpinLaunch
February 23rd, 2018I just hope there’s plenty of 4K footage of the launch centrifuge facility when it experiences catastrophic failure. Via: TechCrunch: What if instead of blasting cargo into space on a rocket, we could fling it into space using a catapult? That’s the big, possibly crazy, possibly genius idea behind SpinLaunch. It was secretly founded in […]
SpaceX Launches Falcon Heavy Rocket on Historic Maiden Voyage
February 6th, 2018Update: Astronomers Spot Musk’s Roadster Via: Virtual Telescope: The car was about as bright as magnitude 15.5, requiring a large (more than 16? – 400 mm in diameter) to be seen visually. Below is a video, obtained with 54 images taken back to back, from 11:12 to 12:15 UT, 8 Feb. 2018. — Update: Was […]
Meet the Man Who Has Lived Alone on This Island for 28 Years
November 21st, 2017Via: National Geographic: Seventy-eight-year-old Mauro Morandi often walks along the rocky shores of Budelli Island and looks out over the disconsolate sea, feeling dwarfed by the phantom forces that tug and twist the tides. “We think we are giants that can dominate the Earth, but we’re just mosquitos,” Morandi says. In 1989 on a stretch […]
Peter Sripol’s Home Built Electric Plane
November 20th, 2017I have a young son who’s interested in aviation, so I knew about Peter Sripol from his FliteTest days. Peter’s segments were always our favorites on FliteTest because his builds were completely over the top. When I saw that Peter was building a real electric plane with R/C grade motors, 3D printed parts and stuff […]
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X: Owen’s First PC Build
October 30th, 2017This is totally off topic, but I felt like sharing the build in case it helps someone out. — My oldest son, Owen, is turning ten in November and I planned a new computer build for the occasion. He has been using my ancient, 2008-era Dell Vostro 410 and it’s not up to the job […]
