Thoughts from Sarah Hoyt on the Cold Civil War.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Computer Problems
Yesterday, while installing a new router, my ethernet connection quit working. This morning, when I plugged the cable back in to troubleshoot, the computer died, and won’t reboot. This is a recent new motherboard. Not even sure how to start troubleshooting.
[Update a few minutes later]
I unplugged the cord from the power supply, plugged it back in, and the machine came back to life. Still no eth0, though.
[Update late morning]
OK, this is making me nuts. I went out to Office Depot, who didn’t stock any PCI-E ethernet cards, but they had a USB wireless dongle for thirteen bucks. I bring it home, plug it into the back of the machine, and the machine dies again. And this time, I don’t seem able to resurrect it.
An exact replacement for the mobo would be $150. But I’m not sure if I want another one.
[Update a while later]
OK, apparently when I was futzing around on the back panel, I was killing the switch on the power supply.
So I’ve plugged in the USB dongle, but the OS isn’t seeing it.
[Afternoon update]
OK, the OS is seeing the dongle, but it won’t connect to my wireless network. It attempts, then drops it.
In better news, I now seem to have a wired connection. The bad news is that I have no DNS. I can only ping by IP, not by domain name.
[Update a while later]
OK, I think I found the problem. Apparently my ExpressVPN account has expired, and it had written its nameserver into /etc/resolv.conf. I changed it to the router IP, and now it’s working (though I’m still getting a question mark on the network connection).
Doug Cooke’s Op-Ed
My IAC Paper
I presented it on Friday. Joanne Gabrynowicz complained about it during questions, so I’ll take that as a win.
Unfortunately, though I did a final polish on it this weekend, it was apparently too late to upload it for the final proceedings, but here it is.
SARGE
Exos Aerospace had a bad day.
An Argument Too Far
I don’t necessarily agree that the 737-MAX fiasco was a result of climate hysteria. Yes, the new design reduced emissions, but it did that by reducing fuel consumption, which is intrinsically a desirable goal for airlines. I’m sure that Boeing wanted to claim that it was lower emissions, for PR purposes, but fuel efficiency has always been a driver of new-aircraft design.
BTW, got home from DC yesterday morning. I had quite a week at IAC, but posting may return to the (subdued) normal this week.
Training Rats
… to drive tiny cars.
In the interest of science, and at the risk of sounding racist, it seems like they should do it with Asian rats for comparison.
The Latest NASA Corruption
Brian Wang is unimpressed with the new cost-plus gift to Boeing.
More thoughts from Bob Zimmerman.
Going Off The Air
I’m flying to DC this afternoon for eight days of space stuff, culminating with a brief talk on space property rights at the International Astronautical Conference a week from tomorrow. I’ll have my laptop, but not sure how much time I’ll have to post. But be good in comments.
NASA And The Media
Bob Zimmerman isn’t impressed with the coverage, to say the least.