Pretty solid evidence that the the Obama administration was using government agencies to illegally surveil its political opposition (including Trump) for years. And now the Biden administration is doing the same.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
New VB Problem
So, I gave up on trying to solve the problem, but just found a page that explains how to install it properly, and when I followed those instructions, it went fine.
Now when I try to create a new Windows machine, from what appears to be a good Windows boot disk (and the one that I created my previous Windows machine from), I get a message “Creating process for virtual machine,” at 0% progress, and it’s stuck there. I’ve done a search, and come up pretty much empty. Any ideas?
When Will SN15 Fly?
An interesting new video.
The Martian Atmosphere
…just became slightly more breathable.
This is the kind of thing that NASA should be spending more money on, instead of unnecessary giant rockets.
Nelson’s Confirmation Hearing
NASA’s Choice Of Starship
…shows that the government fully (and finally) accepts capitalism in space.
I think there may still be a rear-guard action from Boeing and Lockmart’s bought-and-paid-for congressmen and senators, though.
Virtual Box
OK, so I’ve given up on restoring my previous Windows guest machine, and am going to create a new one (I only lost a couple files that I cared about). But now VB won’t work properly. Without getting into detail on the error messages, I’d like to just completely remove it, and do a clean install. But I can’t figure out how to do it.
I apparently installed it from a script, so there are no Fedora packages for it, so dnf can’t do anything. When I click on the details of the icon in Gnome, and select remove, it just shrugs its digital shoulders. Anyone have any suggestions?
[Tuesday-afternoon update]
Continue reading Virtual BoxEnd Of The Line For Falcon Development
SpaceX is throwing in the towel on fairing recovery, at least in terms of catching them.
There is always a tradeoff between reusability and expendability in terms of minimizing cost per flight. Shuttle had some notoriously bad design decisions, because they anticipated a higher flight rate than they ever got. At the end of the program, it was clear that it would have been cheaper to expend the SRBs than to recover and refurbish them, because of the high fixed costs of the recovery fleet that had to be amortized over a low flight rate. Expending the ET cost tens of millions per flight.
Elon was determined early on to recover as much of the vehicle as possible (they spent years trying to figure out how to recover the upper stage of the Falcon), but he finally decided that the only solution was to scale the vehicle up, and go to stainless steel to handle entry heating, so the focus is on Starship now, and Falcon 9 has reached the end of its development cycle.
An Experimental Anti-Viral
…is effective at treating Covid.
Between this kind of thing and the vaccines, I think this is all over but the shouting. I am definitely done with wearing a mask outside, especially in sunlight. Masks outside never made any scientific sense.
[Update a few minutes later]
Popular new mask says “I’m not a Democrat; I just forgot to take off my mask when I left the store.”
NASA’s Lunar Surprise
They’ve selected SpaceX for the lunar lander. Eddie Bernice Johnson is not happy.
I think this is a message to Congress that if they want to increase the amount of money NASA has to waste on Artemis, they’re going to have to increase the budget.
[Update a while later]
Here is the source-selection report.
I haven’t read it yet, but I wonder if the fact that SpaceX can takeoff and land with minimal blasting of regolith, with its engines so high on the vehicle, was a significant factor?
[Update a few minutes later]
Glancing through it, ouch. Dynetics Technical Rating was “Marginal.” For the highest bid…