zelos

Some years after the incident, my hidden fears of high speed flight came to the surface and I had to spend two periods in hospital. I had not come to terms with the emotional side of the event

Comment · 2 months ago

> The objects are pretty faint and at best, you will see a milky smush

With an 8 inch dob, things like globular clusters are going to look granular and pretty amazing in reasonably dark skies. Similar for bright nebula.

But, yes, it's a philosophical question.

Comment · 2 months ago

There is something fundamentally different about actually looking at Jupiter... The image might be faint, imperfect ... But it is live.

The astrophotography/live viewing split in astronomy is interesting. For me, the whole reason I do backyard astronomy is to find the objects myself and observe directly, to the point where even using an app like Stellarium feels a bit like cheating.

Comment · 2 months ago

Yes, in the wide shot of the band the left side looks significantly better to me, are the labels the wrong way round?

Comment · 3 months ago

Does Germany have anything similar to the cheap off-peak electricity tariffs we get in the UK? Generally 6-10c/kWh.

Comment · 3 months ago

US gallon is 3.8 litres. Even so, that's pretty inefficient.

Comment · 4 months ago

Locations as well. Carplay picks up locations from calendar appointments, messages etc, so very often you just plug it in and click "Go".

Comment · 5 months ago

I totally agree about school-level homework: it was many years before my pre-frontal cortex developed enough that I could have forced myself to do the work.

That said, though, one thing I don't understand about the heavy users of AI in academia and software development is that the thinking and coding is the fun part. And that's the part so many people seem to be so keen to automate away.

Comment · 5 months ago

Seeing and hearing the last remaining Avro Vulcan pull up over the chalk cliffs at Eastbourne a few years back is something I won't forget for a long time.

Comment · 6 months ago

It’s the same in the UK, house prices in the catchment area of a good school are significantly higher.

Comment · 6 months ago

"a college degree made you stand out. But now that so many have them, it’s table stakes. Now, we spend four years and tens of thousands of dollars to end up in the same place."

That kind of depends what you're measuring, doesn't it? A better educated population is presumably generally a good thing. My life is probably more interesting because I spent 4 years at university learning.

Is that worth the price? I don't know, but it's not the same place.

Comment · 6 months ago

That 100kW claim seems pretty unlikely, or maybe it's UK only? Driving long distance in Europe I see the max ~230kW charging of the car everywhere apart from the rare times the charger's broken.

Actually, although UK provision is pretty bad, I got 235kW sustained last week in some small charging station off the M4.