Archive for the 'Off Topic' Category
Meet the Engineer Preserving The Last Analog Motion Graphics Machine
September 25th, 2017Via: Vice:
Won’t You Be My Neighbour?
August 31st, 2017Hello, Neighbour! Are you interested in a relatively cheap getaway shack for when the living hell of Auckland gets to be too much to handle? Maybe a bugout location… Our friends are selling their property. The entire thing can flood during winter storms, but you can park in our driveway during floods if you want. […]
Weekend Entertainment: Video Explorations Around Area 51
August 27th, 2017Visits to the various gates of Area 51 comprise an entire genre of videos on YouTube. Click bait titles and corny theremin soundtracks are par for the course here. If you are interested in the topic at all, you have probably seen many of these. I’ve watched dozens of videos where someone drives up to […]
Eclipse
August 21st, 2017I think the past few days have been the lightest posting period in fifteen years of running Cryptogon. People are wondering if I’m still alive. By the time I’ve read through 10 million headlines about Trump, the statues and the sign wavers, it starts to seem like not much is happening. I think that I […]
Call from Tesla
August 17th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — I had a call from a Tesla energy specialist yesterday. She confirmed what we learned a few days ago about the Powerwall 2’s ability to island grid tied inverters for backup purposes. She also said that Powerwall 2 demand is, “Extreme,” and far in excess […]
SpaceX Successfully Launches Used Dragon Cargo Ship, Then Lands First-Stage Booster
June 3rd, 2017Via: space.com: For the first time in the history of commercial spaceflight, a used spacecraft has blasted off on a mission to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). After lightning strikes delayed the launch on Thursday (June 1), lingering storm clouds parted just enough for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to safely lift off […]
Microsoft Co-Founder Built the World’s Largest Plane to Launch Rockets Into Space
May 31st, 2017Via: The Verge: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has spent the last six years working on a giant aircraft capable of launching rockets to space. Today, his company Stratolaunch Systems literally rolled that plane out of its hangar in the Mojave Desert for the first time ever. It’s called the Stratolaunch aircraft, and it’s massive. The […]
NASA: Ocean Below Ice Layer on Enceladus Could Hold Life
May 16th, 2017Via: Newsweek: Today Earthlings came one very giant step closer to finding life elsewhere in our solar system. In the final months of its 20-year mission, the spacecraft Cassini delivered its most noteworthy revelation yet: the ocean of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, is releasing hydrogen, an energy source for some microorganisms. In other words, […]
A Cosmic Burst Repeats, Deepening a Mystery
April 18th, 2017Via: Quanta: To nearly everybody’s surprise, as reported in January in the journal Nature, the bursts originated in a small “dwarf irregular” galaxy, one about a gigaparsec (just over 3 billion light years) away. This made the strength of the signal and its frequent repetitions even more astonishing. “If you’re detecting a bright flash from […]
Apple Calls Journalists to Explain That the Company Has Not Abandoned the Mac
April 6th, 2017Everything is great! Don’t worry. We love you. We’re sorry. Check back next year, mmmkay? The picture at the link looks like an action shot for a Touch of Gray ad. *chortle* Via: TechCrunch: The Mac has an important long future at Apple. Apple cares deeply about the Mac. We have every intention to keep […]
