Category Archives: Technology and Society

Technology and Society, Weird

Sprinkler Update

18 Comments

So I got two free timers from Orbit after I called them.

I hooked up one of the new ones, and it still doesn’t work. There is supposed to be 24VAC at the terminal when it’s running, and the voltage is zero. Just to be sure, I checked the resistance on a couple of the solenoids, and it’s about 70 ohms (the reactance is no doubt quite a bit higher on AC). But clearly, if there is no voltage at the terminal, the solenoid isn’t going to open. I went to the Orbit site for troubleshooting, and it says that if there is no voltage at the terminals, the timer has to be replaced…

At this point, I’m wondering if the system is haunted.

[Update Saturday evening]

People commenting, go back and read the original thread. I’m not clueless. I’m pretty sure that if there was a short to ground, I’d see it when I measured the resistance on the solenoids.

[Noon update]

OK, it finally occurred to me to check that it was getting 24VAC input. It wasn’t. The upstream GFCI had tripped and the transformer wasn’t outputting…

One of the ones I took off had an indicator saying “No AC,” but I swear I didn’t see that when I was working on it. I now have five of them, four of them (AFAIK) functional. I’ll return at least three to Home Depot (since that’s how many I bought there).

[Update a while later]

And yes, I was a dumbass.

Business, Space, Technology and Society

Is Today The Day?

69 Comments

I’m assuming they have clearance from the FAA now.

[Update a while later]

Here’s the story on what happened with the FAA. I’d like to understand more detail on it. I’d be surprised if SpaceX really knowingly launched without authorization. I wonder if there was a miscommunication?

[Update a few minutes later]

Bob Zimmerman has more, with links.

[Post-flight update]

[Thursday-morning update]

You have to appreciate that kind of honesty in a CEO.

[Bumped]

[Afternoon update]

Per the comment that he was being sarcastic:

Business, Law, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, Weird

First The FAA

18 Comments

…now this: “The Department of Justice filed a request for a court order to enforce an administrative subpoena in an investigation into Space X on a charge of discrimination in hiring. According to the filing, the DOJ’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER) said it received a complaint from a non-citizen in May, and Space X had not fully complied with information requests…”

I don’t know if this is hostility to SpaceX from the new administration, zealousness in “protecting” immigrants, or both.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SLS

5 Comments

It’s official; they’re going to do another static fire, perhaps this month. This almost certainly moves the first flight out to next year. Not that it matters.

[Update at noon]

Meanwhile…

[Afternoon update]

Business, Economics, Technology and Society

“Everyone Is Afraid Of The Open”

8 Comments

The Redditers are going after silver now.

Kind of wishing I hadn’t opened a new Iron Condor on it on Friday (February expiry). So I’m both short and long, betting it will stay within a range for less than three weeks.

It spiked up against resistance late day, but closed below that point, at $25.33 on the ETF. In order for it to gap through my stop in the morning, it would have to jump about 7% at the open, which would break a seventeen-year high from 2013. As long as it doesn’t do that, there will be huge resistance at ~$27. So I’ll be OK if they don’t bid the price up there before the 19th.

[Afternoon update]

Another story. Note that futures did in fact surge almost seven percent, but the underlying did not. On Thursday, it went from $23.34 to $24.72, with a smaller rise on Friday when it ran into resistance. Futures spiked to $27.79, near a September high, but retreated to $26.96 at the close. They spiked at the open tonight to an August high of $29.27, but then retreated again.

Since the futures have been tracking over two bucks ahead of the underlying, I don’t think it will gap through my stop (which would be worst case, since I don’t know how much money I’ll lose, because it depends on how large the gap is), at least at the open. Whether it can hold out until the 19th, when the spread expires, is another question.

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s also worth noting that, while the jump last week was big, it closed Friday at a price from which it had plunged on January 5th, so it wasn’t necessarily a surprise that it would go back to that level. The question is whether it will break it. It did for the futures this evening, so it may well, but it still has the stronger resistance at ~$27.

[Monday-morning update]

Welp, it did gap through the 2013 high, and I did get stopped out of the trade, but at the stop, so could have been worse.

[Bumped]

Update just before market close]

Dang. If I’d moved my stop up, just a little bit, to that previous seven-year high, I’d still be in the trade, because it retreated when it got there.

Business, Economics, Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society, War Commentary

John Kerry

10 Comments

He’s back, in all of his tone-deaf glory.

Forget the fact that to first order, there are no solar-panel manufacturers here. Has anyone done an economic analysis of shifting from a high-density energy source to a low one? Kerry et al say that solar-panel production is the one in which jobs are growing fastest, but that’s meaningless outside the context of how many there are, or how low labor productivity they are in energy production, compared to gas and oil. It’s easy to grow something that is minuscule fast, but that doesn’t solve the problems of all the people Biden just threw out of work.