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The internal combustion engine won't stay the same. It will lose 150 kW of power. That's why they're tinkering with the aerodynamics. They need to reduce drag to avoid embarrassingly low speeds on the straits. And the ICE will run full throttle in  slow corners to charge the battery because recuperation from braking won't be enough.

18 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

I'm more in the traditionalist camp there (even if I admittedly have no horse in this race).

Notre Dame is a historical landmark, so it should remain as original as possible.

Ain't no such thing as the original with a building that old and construction work that took centuries to complete. They started remodeling before the building was even finished. As Ran mentioned, the pre-fire state was the result of extensive remodeling in the 19th century. The church had no spire before 1859, so a modern design would have been just as (un)original as the old one. 

On 4/13/2024 at 8:27 AM, TheLastWolf said:

Was hoping Mick would make a comeback in their colours. Or Seb. Or both . Sainz is good enough that multiple teams may vie for him even earlier. 

What options are there that are better than Audi? Apparently he could go to Mercedes, but only on a short-term contract. Audi would be a long-term commitment. The downside is that he'd be in bad car in 2025.

Would be nice to see Mick racing in F1 again (he does WEC with Renault), but I don't know how realistic that is. Seb seems to miss racing but I don't think he'd commit to F1 full time again. He did a WEC test with Porsche, though. Maybe he'll race for them in 2025. 

Meanwhile, there's concern about the 2026 engine rules. In simulator tests, the cars were slower than F2... But 2026 is the year Alonso is powered by Honda again, so it's kind of appropriate.

Sainz could go to Sauber. They'll be Audi from 2026 on, and with the new regulations, they're as likely to be competitive as any of the big teams.

Alonso has renewed his contract at Aston Martin. Which makes it more likely that Verstappen goes to Mercedes if the situation at Red Bull escalates.

Making a big-budget movie is quite a gamble, particularly when the source material is rather nerdy. The JJ Abrams Star Trek movies weren't really a success. Dune Part 1 must have lost money, too. Part 2 is a moderate success, but no more. 

David Lynch's Dune lost the studio a lot of money, but it was great promotion for the books. 

43 minutes ago, horangi said:

I'll add also to fionwe's comments that the expansion of the universe itself diminishes the ability for light and thus anything to move between points and bit by bit eliminates the ability for communication between them.  With sophisticated technologies we might be able to move close to light speed, but the universe is foiling our plots by constantly expanding.  The reason other galaxies aren't on the menu for our future near-light speed vessels isn't because of current distance, but because those other galaxies are moving away at nearly the same speed. Our current galaxy is probably the only petri dish we have to play in and as noted above, its as equally large as it is old.

Our Galaxy is about 30 kpc or 100,000 light years in diameter, so distance definitely is an issue as the universe is now. On the other hand, if by some magic we could travel across the galaxy in a reasonable time, we could also reach our neighbor galaxies. They don't move away from us either, because of gravity. Of course, that's just our backyard.

As for intelligent life, there's probably a lot of it but it doesn't really matter because we won't make contact. Maybe we'll find signatures of life in the atmospheres of planets orbiting nearby stars but that's about it.

That landing operation certainly wasn't a routine operation. IIRC, it would have taken the Harkonen decades to pay back the debt it left them in. That's also why the Atreides didn't expect a force of that size. It was practically unheard of. 

The Fremen weren't good fighters before Paul came. They couldn't take on the Harkonen, much less the Sardaukar. And they weren't just a few thousand. I think the figure of ten million is mentioned. That's the total population but it would still make a force of above one million. 

Space travel is the monopoly of the Spacing Guild, and that includes stuff in planetary orbit. So the emperor can't just put his own satellite there. And it was the Harkonen who ran the planet to begin with. 

As for the planet's ecology, that probably doesn't hold up to close scrutiny, especially based on what we know now, but I don't see much of a problem there. Particularly in a setting where there is interstellar travel (which is apparently instantaneous) or genetic memory. There's certainly nothing wrong with there being no rain on a planet without water. I don't remember if they mine the polar caps for water but I think they do. 

I object to calling the KJA books fanfiction. If the authors were fans, the books shouldn't be so full of deviations from Frank Herbert's Duniverse. It has been a long time since I last touched one of those books, but they felt as if the authors hadn't even read Dune.

14 hours ago, Liffguard said:

My dad is currently in hospital. He doesn't normally use a tablet but he asked me to bring my mum's old ipad up to him so he could read his various newspaper subscriptions and watch netflix while he recovers. I wanted to deliver it to him fully charged. It's one of the ones with a USB-C slot. So I plugged it in, it didn't charge. No worries, dodgy charger, tried a different one. Didn't charge. Tested the charger on my phone, charged just fine. Maybe the charging port on the ipad is busted? Eventually discovered that while the ipad has a USB-C shaped charging port, it's not universal. It will only charge with an Apple branded USB-C charger, thus defeating the entire point of moving away from a proprietry standard to a universal one.

I fucking hate Apple so much. They also started the lunacy of removing audio jacks from devices. Literally paying more for reduced functionality.

People calling USB C a universal standard always reminds me of this:

https://xkcd.com/927/

The only thing universal about USB C is the plug. What the port or even the cable can do varies. As for your dad's ipad, I'd check if the charger provides enough power. Not sure if this is still the thing with newer chargers but the ones that came with iphones used to be too weak to charge an ipad.

34 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think it’s justified, given that Russian oil revenues are funding the invasion.

Russia exports _crude_ oil. The refineries produce gasoline and diesel for domestic consumption. Would be rich if Russia had to import refined oil from India, though.

35 minutes ago, Zorral said:

My brother's response to this news:

... it would appear that the latest management, that is now leaving with their millions, really didn't have clue on what to do to fix the issues.  They are having quality audits of the entire 737 Max assembly process with the FAA observing.  However, I'm not so sure the FAA has good skill sets left after the agency has been stuffed with political appointees that really don't know the industry.  Only time will tell if they can find a skilled person that understands how to build aircraft to lead the company.

This is just killing his generation of former Boeing engineers. But they've been seeing this in process for a very long time now.

Corporate headquarters is now in Arlington, VA. Shows where their priorities lie.

16 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

But Max just confirmed he's staying out his contract, 2028 then right?

I haven't heard about that. Is there a source?

ETA: OK, found something to that effect, but it doesn't mean anything. Hamilton made statements like that up to the very moment the Ferrari deal was announced.

The latest rumor is that Horner might actually be promoted rather than fired. That would probably mean Max and Newey leaving. Mercedes would like to have Max, of course, but their car is rather mediocre this year. Aramco are trying to buy Aston Martin are ready to pay Verstappen and Newey a ton of money if they join the team. It's probably a better option than Mercedes and Ferrari doesn't have a free cockpit. 

1 hour ago, Toth said:

I also raised my eyebrows at that. Sure, on paper I'm certain switching to a war economy looks like it increases the economy, but if all that new industrial output ends up burning in Ukraine, it then doesn't mean anything in the long run except that you are bleeding money.

That's a weakness of GDP as a measure of wealth. It measures production, but not loss of assets through wear and tear. Neither does it count the depletion of natural resources. 

As Werthead explained:

Press agencies refuse edited photos for good reasons. Press photos are usually meant to document certain events, and once a picture has been touched by photoshop its documentary value is zero at best. Kate can post as many photoshopped pictures on Instagram as she wants but the press shouldn't touch them with a tentpole. 

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

The BBC's Andrew Benson hinting in the BBC podcast that the woman who started the complaint against Horner feels very angry about her own suspension and may come forward publicly (with the intimation that the BBC is negotiating with her to get her story ASAP).

Her name is already out: Fiona Hewitson. She was Horner's personal assistant.

Rumors about Marko being sacked. And Max Verstappen heading for Mercedes.

On 3/3/2024 at 1:26 AM, Werthead said:

Possibly a brewing UK-German dustup, with the UK suggesting it could buy Taurus missiles from Germany to replenish its cruise missile reserves with promises not to resell to Ukraine, and Britain would then release additional Storm Shadows to Ukraine. The Germans seem to not be keen, which is weird.

Everybody wonders why Scholz doesn't want to give Ukraine these missiles. There's some kerfuffle in Germany about a conference (not sure if it was video or audio only) that has been wiretapped and published by the Russians. Four generals of the German air force discuss Taurus and if the Ukrainians could use it without German service personnel being involved. Apparently it's possible (Sholz claims it isn't), but would take some extra effort and time. They also imply the presence of UK and US service personnel in Ukraine.

The Russian propaganda makes a big fuss about their discussion of how to destroy the Kherch bridge.  

Hewlett Packard was a great company. Then Carly Fiorina came and decided that you don't need expensive R&D when you can make money selling overpriced ink cartridges. Other companies that went under are Digital, Silicon Graphics, and Cray. But in those cases the demise was caused by competition from cheap PC hardware.

As for Americans studying science and engineering, the country has always relied on importing brainpower from Europe and Asia. Look at who runs Microsoft and Google.

double post.

On 2/6/2024 at 10:23 PM, Werthead said:

This off-season has been the craziest in some time.

Christian Horner is now being investigated for highly inappropriate behaviour at Red Bull towards a female colleague, which he is vigorously denying. However, Red Bull's parent company have stepped in to handle the investigation (overruling the racing team's internal HR process) and have brought in external investigators. Reportedly they are keen to avoid damage to the brand and they do not want it hanging over them for the car launch on 15 February, let alone the season start on 29 February, so unless they can wrap this up very quickly in Horner's favour, it looks like he might be booted. Also, the relationship between the parent company in Salzburg and the race team in Milton Keynes has become more fractious since Dietrich Mateschitz passed away in 2022, with apparent rumours of a rift between Horner and the new owners.

It's a bit more complicated. Dietrich Mateschitz owned 49% of the company but could run it as if he owned 100%. When he died his son Mark inherited the 49% but not the right to run the company. The other 51% are owned by Chalerm Yoovidhya, the heir of the Thai co-founder, who wants a say in the running of the company. Looks like the folks at Fuschl headquarters don't like that. As for the F1 team, Horner has Yoovidhya's backing, but not that of the Austrian faction. 

Meanwhile, Jos Verstappen has openly called for Horner's removal.

The Russians are obviously getting more reckless. Putin's reelection is less than four weeks away and he wants to see some success.

9 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

Russia is unlikely to be in shape to invade any other country for several decades regardless of whether they win the war in Ukraine. The war has accelerated their ongoing demographic catastrophe, which combined with sanctions, an aging and incompetent leadership, and severe economic issues puts them in bad shape.

 

Actually, Russia could be ready for the next war in six years.

https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/preventing-next-war-edina-iii