Nick @internic@qoto.org

Here are some pics of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft after it performed a successful landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, at 12:01 a.m. ET earlier today. Overnight, Boeing and NASA teams gathered test data and unloaded cargo from the spacecraft.

More pics at https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/albums/72177720316689585/with/53975292273
#NASA #Starliner
4/n

My #PineTime #smartwatch arrived earlier today, and although I don't expect to use it, I was pleased to see that there is an option to have this very geeky watch face.

Me when running a service:
"Oh no. One of our back-end services is down. This is causing latency spikes on the front-end and in the mobile app. Users don't understand what's happening, so they keep hitting reload. This is adding even more load to the server and making things worse. Only technical users know to just wait a while, and then try again later.

Me when using a service:
What the hell?! This should've loaded already! Why so slow?! I'll click reload a few more times! *ReloadReloadReload*

Ginni Thomas Privately Praised Group Working Against #SupremeCourt Reform: “Thank You So, So, So Much”
==

In a call with donors, First Liberty Institute’s Kelly Shackelford read the supportive email he said came from Thomas.

The leader of the religious-rights group also labeled Justice Elena Kagan “treasonous” for backing a stronger #ethics code.

#News #Law #SCOTUS #ClarenceThomas #GinniThomas #Government #Court #Politics #Religion

https://www.propublica.org/article/ginni-thomas-email-scotus-ethics-reform-first-liberty-institute

Seriously #anaconda this am I have messages from every other #nasa IT admin to get you off our system asap.

Your brilliant bu$ine$$ strategy has driven me back to macports. 🙄

My boss had me dump #matlab because of its price. Let me tell you how few #idl folks remain.

For computer science mastodoni— I’d welcome advice.

I use python principally as an olive branch to my students. Still rocking Fortran and compiled codes (like NCO) to do most of my analyses

Python and R are mostly for plots

While in South Africa I learned about the concept of floristic kingdoms and regions (I did not know 🤯) and fell in love with proteas (and the fynbos vegetation in general, but proteas especially, they are just so unreal!):

▶️ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Floristic_Region

#florespondence #SouthAfrica #GardenRoute #KirstenboschBotanicalGarden

Boeing Starliner touched down successfully at 10:01 PM MT/12:01 AM ET at White Sands, closing out a troubled and complicated mission. The future of the Starliner program is unclear; it remains to be seen whether Boeing will need to do a second crewed flight test.

Heads up (literally, if you’re in the South Pacific) 👀

At ~18:48UTC / 20:48CEST tomorrow, 8 Sep, the first of the four ESA Cluster II satellites, Salsa, will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, bringing an effective end to the constellation’s 24-year mission to probe our magnetosphere & its interactions with the solar wind.

I’ll be back at ESOC in Darmstadt, helping film this sad but celebratory moment for a documentary coming soon from #SpaceRocks 🖖🤘

#SpaceScience

https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2024/09/07/all-is-ready-to-observe-salsas-reentry-from-the-air-at-1848-utc-sunday-8-september/

Shimmering in the night of space, a solar sail is pushed by the pressure of photons from the sun as it orbits the earth. It's just a test - it's tumbling, its engines aren't keeping it aligned. But it's a step toward the dream of solar-powered space flight.

This photo is taken from the solar sail itself. It has four black-and-white wide-angle cameras, centrally located aboard the spacecraft. Near the bottom of the photo, the view from one camera shows the reflective sail quadrants supported by booms. At the top of the photo is the back of one of the sail's solar panels. The booms are mounted at right angles, and the solar panel is rectangular, but they're distorted by the wide-angle camera.

The sail is called the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System. In my next post, check out a prettier picture of what it might look like from afar.

(1/2)

This isn't a knock on the fediverse - I have tremendous respect for the community here, or I wouldn't even post this - but the cratering of social media by oligarchs in the last year or five just makes me so unbelievably sad sometimes. These incredible communities have been destroyed by greed and it makes it so hard to invest emotionally in anything any more. This is particularly hard when you're an introvert & those spaces were a huge support. I wonder how many, like me, just haven't recovered.

Had a crank weigh in on an old blog post I wrote titled "How much does a photon weigh?" and that's as good an excuse as any to share it again: https://skullsinthestars.com/2016/10/01/how-much-does-a-photon-weigh/

I'm happy that the Massachusetts Audubon Society isn't affiliated with the National Audubon Society (in fact MAS was the first audubon society in the country and came into being before NAS), because that means I don't have to stop donating to MAS and cancel my membership because NAS has joined Elon Musk in trying to get the NLRB ruled unconstitutional. Ref: https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/birds-feather-audubon-joins-elon-musk-challenging-constitutionality-labor-law-after
#unions #solidarity #politics #USPol #MassachusettsAudubonSociety

Armed with two rooted Android phones and three Wi-Fi hotspots running cell site simulator detection software developed by EFF, @WIRED conducted a first-of-its-kind wireless survey of the signals around the Democratic National Convention.
https://www.wired.com/story/dnc-hidden-signal-hunt/

Our newest "Change Technically" episode is out, in which @grimalkina and I tackle biological determinism, the truth about ~ gamma and dopamine (IN MICE) ~ , and the ways in which programmers can get involved in neuroscience!

All aboardddddddddd 🚂 🧠

http://changetechnically.fyi/

produced by the wonderful @danilo

I'm tired of invasive subscriptions designed to get worse over time! Our newest video dives into these problematic services and how to navigate them for your sanity, your wallet, and your private data. Watch the video now:
https://youtu.be/agewQEn7MmI

Finally it happened to me as well: developers complaining that the behavior of my OSS libraries does not match what ChatGPT explains to them. 🤦‍♂️