I have a smart home setup. I originally used a Pi. Unfortunately, it started to become unreliable after about 12-18 months. Apparently it quite a common issue with long term Pi systems.

I eventually changed to a small NUC. A bit less power efficient, but it’s been bomb proof for a few years now.

Depending on the location (mostly motorway services), I will often do something else before picking up food. E.g. go wash my hands properly. I’ve been known to misjudge the time required and be a minute or 2 late. Sometimes the wait can be long enough that I will go sit down for a bit. Again, I sometimes misjudge.

That image will stick in the mind of every school boy (and possibly girl) who sees it. That’s a win for the textbook.

He could give lectures, but the computer massively slowed conversations. He also apparently had a bit of a temper. Some of his colleagues took to wearing steel toe cap shoes because of him (electric wheelchairs are heavy).

I would go with android auto, or Google maps. Nothing like having to log back into your sat back system, every 15 minutes, while driving.

The number of car crashes it would cause would bring a lot of countries to their knees for a while.

I’ve also come across these. There’s a lot we don’t know, all of these could be entirely wrong.

A 15’ chicken with teeth would be terrifying.

In fairness, the only thing many people will lack is water. It’s not an exclusive stash, but in addition to what’s in your cupboards.

You can get 10L or 25L quite cheaply. 1 should do per person, maybe with an extra for cooking. Or just grab some big bottles of water.

A hand cranked flashlight, candles and lighter are all a must anyhow, for a power cut. It might also be worth having a cheap camping stove tucked away.

Food wise. It’s just a big bag of pasta or rice, along with some cans/jars to make it pleasant to eat. Throw in some hiking snack bars and you’re sorted.

I fully agree that nuclear SHOULD have been part of the solution. I disagree that it should now be part of it. We have lost too much knowledge regarding nuclear power to lack of investment. We no longer have time to rebuild that to get it online. Hopefully it can become part of the solution eventually, but 10-20 years is now far too long to wait.

Orbits are all about speed, not height. To deorbit, you need to reduce your speed at the highest part of your orbit. This will lower the lowest part. You jump off the back. You would need to jump FAR harder than your legs are capable of though.

Unfortunately, the sheer speed will kill you, without shielding. As you hit the air, you are going so fast, the air can’t get out of your way. You compress it ahead of you, that heats it up. It gets hot enough to melt most metals. The air will cook you, long before you get slow enough to use your parachute.

For comparison, terminal velocity (max speed you reach falling) is around 200km/h. Orbital velocity is 7km/s or around 25200km/h.

You just need to snuggle your face into it and breathe deeply!

Are you saying there’s an issue with my kitchen shag carpet? It matches the bathroom and ceilings so well!

They do have different uses, as well as “flavours”.

E.g. if you end up in fairyland, you’d likely expect something more child friendly and whimsical. If you end up in the land of the fey, that’s a far scarier prospect.

It’s also akin to having different words for dwarf, elf, orc, and human. They are all big, with 2 legs, 2 arms and a head on top.

The problem is that nuclear reactors can’t be built fast. We’ve also lost a lot of the expertise to age and retirement.

Nuclear should have been a major factor in dealing with climate change. Unfortunately, we no longer have time for it to take up the slack. It will need to catch up with other renewable energy sources, we can’t wait for it.

Spiders don’t have to eat their mate. The female just tends to be hungry, after mating. The male is snack sized, right there, and of no further use.

Apparently, when trying to breen endangered spiders, they make sure the female is well fed prior. It gives the male a chance to make a quiet getaway.

There are several major hurdles, and no particularly strong evolutionary drive to overcome them.

The first is breathing. Fish “breath” water. Shifting to air takes a huge reconfiguration. It also compromises their ability to process water.

The second is power. “Flying” fish are actually gliders. They build up momentum in the water before launching themselves into the air. They don’t actually have the ability to flap and maintain their flight. Developing the muscles for this would likely compromise their swi.ing slightly. That would be a far bigger issue, compared to a bit of extra gliding.

A flying fish’s goal is to break contact with an underwater hunter, before reentering the water. A steerable glide is more than enough of this. There is simply no pressure to advance it further.

I work with radio camera links. The number of people who get upset over the receivers is depressing. They can make the 5G conspiracy theorists look educated.

Receive equipment is incapable of radiating at all.

The part that radiates is completely safe!

Seriously, any danger would be at the camera end. I am happy to sit with it fully powered and the antenna between my legs. (It stops the camera getting knocked over). It can’t put out enough power to do any harm. It’s comparable to home WiFi and weak compared to the mobile phone you are happy to put to your head!

In short, Facebook are incentivised to increase conflict and hate, it improves user engagement. They have also leveraged their large user base to boost numbers in threads significantly. Threads is already a cess pip of bigotry and hate.

Federating with them would be like connecting your house’s drinking water pipe with the sewage pipe of an industrial pig farm. It would pollute our community to the point of destruction.

They might try and control this initially. Unfortunately, it would almost certainly be part of an embrace, extend, extinguish attempt. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish ). They play nice till they have control of enough communities, then they stop the controls, to increase profits.

One of Sir Issac Newton’s famous phrases is

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”

This sounds very nobal and humbling. However, its meaning totally changes with a few facts. It was written in an open letter to Robert Hooke. Hooke was apparently quite short, and EXTREMELY sensitive about this. Newton was basically dissing Hooke. Nobody will be standing on your shoulders, shortie!

The fact they passed on legit information on d day, is still mind blowing. They relied on delays on the German side to make the information out of date by the time it would arrive. The German radio operator not being on station to receive it just made it funnier.