toucana
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Posts posted by toucana
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10 hours ago, iNow said:
MBS, Putin, Xi… or a hundred others are taking steps like this S part of the new standard operating procedure
Presumably Donald Trump is taking careful notes for his post-2024 'Revenge List', and adding BA ✓ - underlined with a black sharpie - to the names of all his really *special* enemies
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Reports circulating on Twitter and Reddit say that Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov had his Deputy Prime Minister and former Minister of Health Elkham Elkhan Suleymanov buried alive on suspicion of poisoning him. Suleymanov has neither been seen nor heard from since October 2022.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1700800571920228402
According to the VchK-OGPU Telegram channel, Kadyrov’s health deteriorated sharply not long after Suleymanov had personally administered certain injections to him. The Chechen government then unexpectedly published a decree on 25 October 2022 stating that Suleymanov had been ‘released’ from his position as Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Chechen Republic ‘on his own initiative’ from 21 October 2022.
Suleymanov’s frequently updated Instagram channel fell silent from that date onwards, and a web page which he had founded called the ‘Republican Oncology Dispensary’ now points to a site selling cocaine in Dubai.
Unofficial sources claim that he was murdered by being buried alive in the ground.
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A report by NATS (National Air Traffic Services) says that a catastrophic failure of the UK air traffic control system on the August 28 Bank Holiday this year was a caused by a “one in 15 million’ software failure event.
According to this report, a key sub-system called FPRSA-R (Flight Plan Reception Suite Automated) was thrown into a fail-safe shutdown mode when it attempted to process a flight plan submitted by an un-named airline which included two identically named (but geographically distinct) waypoint markers. The back-up system which runs the same software shut down as well.
During the 4 hours it took to identify and resolve the issue, flight plans across the UK had to be processed manually, lowering the number that could be handled to just 60 per hour - instead of a normal 400. Around 1500 flights had to be cancelled on the Monday alone, and knock-on effects lasted for several days more.
The ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) and other bodies have been trying to eradicate the use of non-unique waypoint names, but duplicates do exist around the world. Latest standards state that identical designators should be geographically widely spaced apart. But long-haul flight plans may include duplicates.
In this instance both of the waypoints were located outside of the UK, one towards the beginning of the route, and one towards the end; approximately 4000 nautical miles apart
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Captions ?
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An amateur video posted on YT shows the plane falling to the ground. The Russian commentary by a woman - who apparently thought it was a drone being taken out by local air defences - suggests that the Embraer jet was hit by two SAM missiles.
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The TASS news agency has just reported that Yevgeny Prigozhin the leader of the Wagner Group was one of 10 people killed when a private jet crashed near the Tver Region in Russia while on a flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-66599774
Presumably it was logistically simpler than trying to position him next to an open window.
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On 8/12/2023 at 4:18 PM, TheVat said:
As someone with extensive time in rural settings, I have encountered a fair number of people who still find the bolt action rifle quite sufficient. And would view the assault style AR15 as unsuitable for a sporting hunt. A well-aimed shot from Grandpa's rifle will bring down a mule deer more effectively than an AR15. The rifle will shoot more precisely and will usually have a round that works on larger game, like a 30-06, while the .223 round that most AR series weapons use is not as good. (though its report is fine for scaring off cougars) Most pests were scared off, in my and my wife's family history of ranching and farming, by banging kitchen pots together, which saves ammunition and decreases chances of a stray round sailing through your herd...or your neighbor's kitchen a half mile away. 😀
So the computer chip analogy might need work.
I can’t help wondering how rural conservative gun-slingers would fare nowadays if they were forced to use smooth-bore flintlock muskets that had to be loaded by ramming hand-made black powder cartridges of twisted paper, wadding, and musket balls down the muzzle with a rod ?
Fanciful ? Perhaps, but that was the type of firearm that the Second Amendment was predicated on when it was originally passed in 1791. Bolt action rifles didn’t come into general use until they were adopted by the Prussian army in 1841.
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On 8/12/2023 at 3:27 AM, Steve81 said:
A fun fact for those unfamiliar with it, Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever tested, utilized a lead tamper to limit fallout. With a uranium tamper, yield would have supposedly doubled.
The Tsar Bomba (Царь-бомба) tested by the Soviet Union on 30 October 1961 had been designed by a team led by Andrei Sakharov to have a theoretical yield of 100 Mt. For test purposes the bomb was deliberately down-rated to a predicted yield of 50 Mt by replacing much of the Uranium-238 tamper with lead.
This was done partly because there were real fears that the TU-95V bomber scheduled to drop the bomb by parachute at 4000m over the Novaya Zemlya peninsula would have been destroyed by the blast from a 100 Mt detonation. The Soviet Union military leaders were also distinctly nervous about proof-firing a 100 Mt weapon over their own territory because of the radioactive fallout that would ensue.
The test was scheduled to coincide with the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, so they couldn’t take the risk of anything going wrong.
(Footage of the drop) -
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On 8/2/2023 at 8:59 PM, Genady said:
If you have a care for your digestion, my advice is: avoid the subjects of Bolshevism and medicine at the dinner-table. And whatever you do, don't read the Soviet newspapers before dinner.
Back in the days of the Soviet Union, there were only two official newspapers available for reading. One was called Pravda ( Правда - ‘Truth’) - the official newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party, and the other was called Izvestia (Известия - ‘The News’) which was the organ of the Supreme Soviet.
A popular salt-mine joke was that ”There is no Pravda in Izvestia, and no Izvestia in Pravda”.
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One of my special favourites was Nuntii Latini - a news website in classical Latin run by the Finnish radio broadcaster YLE. Sadly they shut down about 4 years ago (as noted in this BBC article)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-48661183
Quite apart from the fun of reading news headlines in Latin that could have come straight off the pages of Julius Caesar e.g. "Naval forces set sail to combat pirates off the coast of Africa", you often found topical news stories from Finland that weren't covered anywhere else.
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There is an Omniversum Dome Theatre version of the Imax which uses a gigantic hemispherical screen. The start-up on those machines is even more terrifying, because once you have laced the film, the entire projection head is then lifted up on a massive platform jack system to the projection porthole position located some 6 metres above the floor of the projection room.
There is a good YT video showing one of these rigs being set up at the IMax Dome Theatre in San Jose CA.
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Director Christopher Nolan shot his new biopic ‘Oppenheimer’ (2023) in 70mm Imax format, and the new film has been given a rare theatrical release in that format (the first since ‘Tenet’ in 2020).
The Imax format film roll for this new 3 hour film is about 11 miles long, and weighs some 600lbs. The Imax engineers not only had to design a new enlarged platter system to carry this amount of film: they have also issued a software emulator for the long defunct PalmPilot m130 hand-held PDA - because back in the day in 2002 this was the platform for the custom PDA app most often used by Imax projectionists as their ideal tool to control the long-play Imax Quick Turn Reel Units.
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Yes - a tech should know better - but attaching a variable 30v PSU to electric toys designed for 5v turns out to be quite entertaining..
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A leaked copy of a transcript of the final text messages between the Titan submersible and its surface support vessel has been circulating for some days on the internet. There is a considerable amount of discussion in progress as to whether this log is veridical or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dj8IJbP41c
The transcript indicates that an emergency of 19m duration preceded the loss of contact. The crew apparently reported that they had jettisoned their ballast weights and the craft’s metal landing frame after an abnormally fast descent, and red light alerts had appeared on their RTM (Real Time Monitoring) system which uses ultrasonic sensors to monitor hull stress. This indicates the crew had already aborted their descent and were attempting an emergency ascent.
Further messages indicate the craft was struggling to ascend, and that the crew who had reported hearing crackling sounds from the aft area, had also lost the use of their A Power Bus, and had switched to the backup B power Bus just moments before contact was lost. All of which suggests that one of their main electrical battery units had been compromised.
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I have seen a couple of estimates of the energies involved in the implosion of a submersible like Titan. The figures usually suggested are these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOoRLkC2wKs
- The hydrostatic pressure at 3500 metres deep is around 350 atmospheres.
- The speed of the implosion is around 800 kilometers/hour which occurs in less than a millisecond.
- The air pocket inside the submersible is compressed and heated to around 5777ºK
This compression heating of the air is momentarily equivalent to the temperature of the surface of the sun. The occupants are simultaneously incinerated as well as pulverised - which happens well within the 13ms needed to receive sensory nervous inputs.
- The implosion shockwave turns into a short explosive expansion as equilibrium is regained, completing the destruction of the submersible
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4 hours ago, Brainee said:
How do you inject the nuetrons, the deuterium and tritium are in way? I mean in boosted fission bomb.
This sounds like an oddly specific question. Are you trying to design and build a boosted fission bomb yourself by any chance ?
If so, a word of warning - You will find it very hard indeed to acquire quantities of Tritium in particular - without attracting the sort of attention from the authorities that trying to buy large quantities of green ink and certain types of paper will usually attract in the USA.
Some years ago I heard a story about a physics student in Britain who embarked on a similar 'proof of concept' project and got arrested at the point where he tried to obtain the Tritium he required. His design was sent off for expert assessment which indicated that it would have been a 'fizzle' - but a fizzle of around 1 kiloton yield ! The guy allegedly wound up working at the top secret Aldermaston atomic weapons R&D station.
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3 hours ago, StringJunky said:
And it wasn't spherical to more uniformly take the pressure over its surface. Apparently, it was sub' carrying fees to the Titanic site that triggered him to use carbon. The non-spherical shape was to allow him to carry passengers. One thing is clear: you shouldn't test physics with peoples lives
Another point first raised on the Sub Brief YT channel and elsewhere, is the manufacturing process involved of bonding the Titanium end-caps onto the cylindrical CF hull with an epoxy glue - as shown below in a screenshot taken from a promotional video originally published by OceanGate.
Bonding such dissimilar materials with an epoxy is a highly dubious procedure to start with, because it creates a potential weak point whose real strength under a compressive stress of hundreds of atmospheres is very difficult to predict or test. But if you are going to adopt such a technique, then you don’t do it like this - out in an open warehouse space with a bunch of guys in carpenters aprons, standing on wooden step-ladders, and slopping the gunk on from a tin with paint brushes.
A safety critical jointing procedure of this type should really be carried out in a sterile dust-free environment with fume extraction running, and all the operatives clad in those special lint-free white hooded suits - the sort of precautions you would normally see in publicity photos of NASA technicians assembling satellites ready for launch into deep space.
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Documentary video footage taken during a previous dive by the Titan submersible about a year ago has emerged, which shows an incident when the crew discovered that one of the craft’s unidirectional thrusters had been re-installed backwards during its last maintenance overhaul.
https://www.reddit.com/r/titanic/comments/14gnn9q/horrifying_footage_of_previous_dive_from_the/
The crew discovered this problem when they were 13,000 feet deep under the surface, and just 300 yards off the bow of the Titanic. The pilot found he could only drive around in circles when applying normal inputs on the PS3 controller.
Instead of of aborting the dive, the pilot conducted an urgent text dialogue with CEO Stockton Rush and the crew on the surface support vessel 3 mile above, to figure out how to remap the PS3 controller inputs ("Try turning the controller around” ...) - and carried on with the dive.
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4 hours ago, Genady said:
I see. Thank you. Such input is a significant factor. However, it is not a Bayesian update. The latter would've been an update based on intermediate results of an ongoing search, i.e., the step 6 in Bayesian search theory - Wikipedia:
Bayesian Search Methods are based on Bayesian Statistics (as your own citation points out in its first paragraph).
Bayesian Statistical modelling (as far as I understand it ) doesn’t just refer to the process of making computational updates of probabilities in the light of new data - it also takes account of the degrees of belief in an event - which may be based on prior knowledge about an event - such as the results of previous experiments - or the personal beliefs about the event held by the observer.
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3 hours ago, Genady said:
I think that rather than Bayesian Search Theory, this information was more helpful:
Titanic director James Cameron accuses OceanGate of cutting corners - BBC News
In the case of the 1968 search for the USS Scorpion which I cited, it was the triangulation of recordings of an underwater explosion recorded by several secret US Navy listening stations which persuaded John Craven’s team to relocate their search area to the Azores. The analysis of these audio recordings was a key input into drawing up the Bayesian probability density maps which led to the discovery of the wreck.
Subsequent surveys of the wreck site disclosed that the USS Scorpion had suffered a devastating explosion in its forward torpedo room, and that uncontrollable flooding had caused the vessel to sink below its crush depth and implode - which was the event recorded by the listening stations.
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The process of conducting an underwater search for a lost submarine has been based on the use of Bayesian Search Theory ever since 1968, when the technique was first successfully used in the hunt for USS Scorpion (SSN-589).
This nuclear powered submarine had gone missing while returning from combat patrol to its base in Norfolk Virginia, and might in theory have sunk anywhere between there and its last known location near the Canary Islands. A team of mathematicians and acoustic specialists led by John Piña Craven calculated an optimum search box area, and subsequently located the wreck at a depth of 3047m, and within about 500 metres of the central X of the primary search box near the Azores - (The US Navy thought it had sunk off the Eastern Seaboard).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory
In the case of the Titan submersible, the search teams could define an optimum ‘box’ based on the known time of the loss of contact at 1h 45m into the dive, and the planned descent route to the wreck of the Titanic.
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BBC & other news sources report that a debris field has been found by an ROV from Horizon Arctic:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-65967464
US Coastguard has announced it will give a press briefing at 15.00 EST
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UK Air Traffic Control System Failure - A “one in 15 million” event
in Engineering
Posted
I can't help wondering if it was a one-off special charter, (possibly a military cargo flight shipping weapons to Ukraine ?) which generated this malformed flight plan ?. Statistically speaking, it had to be quite a long-haul transatlantic flight to be capable of inadvertently snagging navigational waypoints with identically named designators (given that theses are supposed to be geographically widely separated) - but if it was a regular scheduled passenger flight plan, then surely the same software failure would have happened many times before ?