Watercooler Talk

[DennisD]

So I assume this means there will be no more changes to the platform (not that I had high hopes to begin with)?

I think they discontinued the steering committee because there were so few changes remaining that they could or would make and they were tired of us harping on them. We had a long laundry list of things we wanted to see different. Many of them were not physically possible with their "platform". Those were the things they could not change. One of our frequent solutions, as you've suggested yourself, Glenn, was to just provide a link from that platform to a real forum site. That was a change they would not make.


So figuratively and literally here we are.

The water is fine here. It is good to avoid their 3DSwamp.

[zwei]

Brilliant web design
A new window when clicked, but you cant resize the window

[AlexLachance]

That's a limitation of Edge I believe.

You can download the file to open it and zoom it at will to "work around" the limitation.

[Frederick_Law]

Brilliant web design
A new window when clicked, but you cant resize the window

It's perfect size for a tablet

[zwei]

That's a limitation of Edge I believe.

You can download the file to open it and zoom it at will to "work around" the limitation.

It is actually on chrome. Tried with Edge, it is the same too.

It's perfect size for a tablet

I actually went and tried viewing the mobile/tablet view... it cant even show the file and ask me to download

[Tom G]

[Frederick_Law]

Work from home

[zxys001]

Ya can't make this $%*@ up,...this is effn hilarious!

[zwei]

I think this deserve a shout-out. Never thought i will still be seeing this these days.


From our VAR website.

image.png (9.7 KiB) Viewed 5025 times

[AlexLachance]

I think this deserve a shout-out. Never thought i will still be seeing this these days.


From our VAR website.
image.png

Uh..? Why don't they have the actual real adresses..? Is their keyboard broken?

[Frederick_Law]

At least it's not in Morse code ... --- ...

[Glenn Schroeder]

I may not be checking in much the next week or so. My wife and I are spending a week in the mountains in northern New Mexico. I'm enjoying the weather. The daytime high temperatures here are about 25 degrees cooler than back home, and the nighttime lows are about 30 degrees cooler.

We drove through some lonesome country to get here. I passed a slow moving vehicle shortly after leaving Texas, set my cruise control on 75 (the speed limit was 60), and didn't catch up to another vehicle for 75 miles.

[zwei]

Uh..? Why don't they have the actual real adresses..? Is their keyboard broken?

AFAIK, this is quite a common practice many years ago (?) (gosh i suddenly feel so old).
People use (at) and (dot) to avoid spam bot.... other user will need to manually "decode" the text to get the email address.

However, i doubt the effectiveness of this practice...

[AlexLachance]

AFAIK, this is quite a common practice many years ago (?) (gosh i suddenly feel so old).
People use (at) and (dot) to avoid spam bot.... other user will need to manually "decode" the text to get the email address.

However, i doubt the effectiveness of this practice...

Oh, that does make sense, I remember seeing that once in a while too but never really made the link.

[AlexLachance]

I may not be checking in much the next week or so. My wife and I are spending a week in the mountains in northern New Mexico. I'm enjoying the weather. The daytime high temperatures here are about 25 degrees cooler than back home, and the nighttime lows are about 30 degrees cooler.

We drove through some lonesome country to get here. I passed a slow moving vehicle shortly after leaving Texas, set my cruise control on 75 (the speed limit was 60), and didn't catch up to another vehicle for 75 miles.

Hey Glenn,

Enjoy the time off with your wife, it's well deserved. I envy the temperatures you are having, we're slowly getting closer to freezing temperatures over here.

[Tahhhd]

Hey Glenn,

Enjoy the time off with your wife, it's well deserved. I envy the temperatures you are having, we're slowly getting closer to freezing temperatures over here.

We'll hit 101 (F) today, and will be down to 57 (F) tomorrow night - I believe the low next week is 46 (F)
Gotta love the temp swings in the flyover states!

[Frederick_Law]

It was 7C in the morning sometime last week. Around 17C in the morning this week. Could be 27C in the afternoon.
You can get all four seasons in a week in Toronto.

[AlexLachance]

We'll hit 101 (F) today, and will be down to 57 (F) tomorrow night - I believe the low next week is 46 (F)
Gotta love the temp swings in the flyover states!

Yep, pretty similar swings over here too! I woke up one morning freezing because I had forgotten to close all the windows in my appartment the night before.

It leaves space for pretty nice light-shows in terms of storms and also in terms of northern lights

[Glenn Schroeder]

I may not be checking in much the next week or so. My wife and I are spending a week in the mountains in northern New Mexico. I'm enjoying the weather. The daytime high temperatures here are about 25 degrees cooler than back home, and the nighttime lows are about 30 degrees cooler.

We drove through some lonesome country to get here. I passed a slow moving vehicle shortly after leaving Texas, set my cruise control on 75 (the speed limit was 60), and didn't catch up to another vehicle for 75 miles.

Having a good time. Yesterday we went on a Jeep tour. As part of it we went to the top of one of the mountains, at 11,100' elevation, which is 10,900' higher then where I've spent my whole life.

It was raining while we were up there, which obscured what otherwise would have been a great view, but that's okay. It was an odd experience for me to be looking down and see clouds.

[zwei]

Ugh.
Black text on blue background sounds like a good idea

[Tom G]

Tonight!
NASA will impact an asteroid with a 1320 pound spacecraft, DART, to analyze how it changes its trajectory. This is a part of a Planetary Defense Strategy, to prepare to avoid a possible future Earth-impact like the one that ended the dinosaurs.

You can watch it Live(-ish)!
Coverage begins at 5:30pm Eastern US Time (still images at 1 frame per second), and more at 6pm ET (TV coverage). The scheduled moment of impact is at 7:14 PM ET. There's a post-impact press briefing at 8pm ET.

How to watch: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/schedule.html

[AlexLachance]

The more I think about Cloud, the less I'm interested in it, especially when I see things of this nature pass.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmonckt ... 42eae52736

I mean, corruption can happen on a local server too, but it shouldn't happen on a Cloud. They should have 'backups' to trace back to when the file became corrupt and bring it back from it's corruption. There's no reason for them to not have backups besides not being preventive.

[Frederick_Law]

So far only the "thumbnail" is "corrupted".
Original are intact.

Do read the fine print on Cloud photo storage. Most free one compress the photo first to reduce size.

Maybe Google or Apple will make it a feature.
Old photos will slowly turn yellow.

[AlexLachance]

Maybe Google or Apple will make it a feature.
Old photos will slowly turn yellow.

Okay, that seriously made me laugh out loud.

"Gold membership allows your photos to slowly turn yellow!"

[Glenn Schroeder]

I saw a post on another discussion about saving old data "just because." It reminded me of some years ago when a cabinet holding 20+ year-old over size drawings, that will likely never be seen by human eyes again, was in a large room where the student workers were stationed. They needed more room there and wanted it moved out. The boss didn't want to get rid of the drawings, and decided that it should be moved to my office. I wasn't crazy about the idea, but the boss is the boss.

Fast forward a few years, and they were painting and putting down new carpet in our office building. We were instructed to put sticky notes with our office number on all of our furniture so it could be put back in the correct place after the work was done. Our office manager walked in my office a day or so later, looked around, and noticed the sticky note on that drawing cabinet. She said "That's the boss' office." My reply was "Yes, I know." She started laughing, but walked away without saying anything else about it.

When the work was finished they somehow found another spot for it (though it wasn't in the boss' office).

[AlexLachance]

Tonight!
NASA will impact an asteroid with a 1320 pound spacecraft, DART, to analyze how it changes its trajectory. This is a part of a Planetary Defense Strategy, to prepare to avoid a possible future Earth-impact like the one that ended the dinosaurs.

You can watch it Live(-ish)!
Coverage begins at 5:30pm Eastern US Time (still images at 1 frame per second), and more at 6pm ET (TV coverage). The scheduled moment of impact is at 7:14 PM ET. There's a post-impact press briefing at 8pm ET.

How to watch: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/schedule.html

Anyone followed this..? I've read that it was succesful, but I've also read that they'll only know if it truely was succesful in about a month or so, so I was wondering if anyone had read into it following the event.

[Tom G]

I watched it live. It was exciting and impressive to see what has never been seen before. It was like a clump of gravel.

The ground and orbital satellites will be watching for measured redirection by a change to its orbit around the larger asteroid. The impact is supposed to alter the smaller asteroid's orbit so that it should be closer to the larger one. This is the month-long analysis of success / effect.

The Italian partner micro-spacecraft was separated from DART days before the impact, so that it would be in place to capture video of the impact, showing its debris ejections upon and after impact. From what I had read and seen in simulations, I expected to see this also, like a 2nd perspective view, like a sports instant replay. However, it was not shown, and I believe it may be due to longer processing and transmission times of its data. I look forward to this data first, before the telescopes measure the effectiveness of the test.

[AlexLachance]

I watched it live. It was exciting and impressive to see what has never been seen before. It was like a clump of gravel.

The ground and orbital satellites will be watching for measured redirection by a change to its orbit around the larger asteroid. The impact is supposed to alter the smaller asteroid's orbit so that it should be closer to the larger one. This is the month-long analysis of success / effect.

The Italian partner micro-spacecraft was separated from DART days before the impact, so that it would be in place to capture video of the impact, showing its debris ejections upon and after impact. From what I had read and seen in simulations, I expected to see this also, like a 2nd perspective view, like a sports instant replay. However, it was not shown, and I believe it may be due to longer processing and transmission times of its data. I look forward to this data first, before the telescopes measure the effectiveness of the test.

Yeah I had read about that too! I can't wait to see it, even though from what I recall reading, the impact should be shown at about 1 FPS, it still is interesting to see nonetheless how it will interact. If I remember correctly, someone from the University of Montreal helped coordinate the impact point on the asteroid, I thought it was pretty dope to read someone "local" worked on something of this magnitude.


Well, now I got to googling it and here is the 1FPS picture of the impact:

[Glenn Schroeder]

Now I know I'm getting old. I'm sitting here watching a cooking show on TV. There are two teams. The people on one team are in their twenties, and the other in their forties. I'm having trouble telling which is which.

[DennisD]

Yeah I had read about that too! I can't wait to see it, even though from what I recall reading, the impact should be shown at about 1 FPS, it still is interesting to see nonetheless how it will interact. If I remember correctly, someone from the University of Montreal helped coordinate the impact point on the asteroid, I thought it was pretty dope to read someone "local" worked on something of this magnitude.


Well, now I got to googling it and here is the 1FPS picture of the impact:

[Frederick_Law]

So ACME was running the project.

[AlexLachance]

Sad day for the Province of Quebec...

The government which had the most restrictive measures of the continent has been reelected, winning with a crushing majority vote. Freedom of speech has taken another step back.

The party isn't even rejoicing from their victory, they're dissatisfied with the fact that they didn't completely eliminate most other parties.

During that time, the media is acclaiming that same party while celebrating the defeat of the party that posed the closest thing to a threat.

Elections weren't fixed, but it feels like they were. The "crushing majority" represents 44% of the vote, while the rest was split over 4 or 5 other parties, depending on the region.

Hopefully in 4 years, there will be less of the "Baby boomer" generation around and things will finally start changing for the better of the province..

[Frederick_Law]

In less than 4 years you'll be in a new country LOL
(Quebec always talk about leaving Canada)

[AlexLachance]

In less than 4 years you'll be in a new country LOL
(Quebec always talk about leaving Canada)

Interests of Quebec do not equal Interests of Canada
Interests of Canada do not equal interests of the people.

Quebec will always be Quebec because Quebec is not Canada, just like Alberta will always be Alberta because Alberta is not Canada. Where I live, we had a participation rate of 82%, whereas the rest of Quebec had a participation rate of approximately ± 68%. The same can be said about Canada where the participation rate of 62%.

Why is that? Because the political parties do not represent the people's interest anymore, rather they represent either a popular vision such as "Let's be green" or they represent the "country's interest", even if the country's interest has to stampede over the interest of provinces and citizens.

When parties diverge from these visions and try to represent The people, they generally get categorized into the "looneys and crazies" by the medias.

[Frederick_Law]

Let split up like Russia

[dave.laban]

I think they discontinued the steering committee because there were so few changes remaining that they could or would make and they were tired of us harping on them. We had a long laundry list of things we wanted to see different. Many of them were not physically possible with their "platform". Those were the things they could not change. One of our frequent solutions, as you've suggested yourself, Glenn, was to just provide a link from that platform to a real forum site. That was a change they would not make.


So figuratively and literally here we are.

The water is fine here. It is good to avoid their 3DSwamp.

It wasn't so much disbanded as the meeting frequency dropped to align with whenever they actually release an update. I made the observation that there was no point meeting monthly if half the time was "we've got this change coming at some indeterminate point in the future". Might as well align the meetings to the releases to see what's about to arrive and chase the other things.

The whole "we can update things quicker" line is somewhat undermined by any changes affecting the entire 3DSwym platform rather than just the SW user forum bit.

[DennisD]

It wasn't so much disbanded as the meeting frequency dropped to align with whenever they actually release an update. I made the observation that there was no point meeting monthly if half the time was "we've got this change coming at some indeterminate point in the future". Might as well align the meetings to the releases to see what's about to arrive and chase the other things.

The whole "we can update things quicker" line is somewhat undermined by any changes affecting the entire 3DSwym platform rather than just the SW user forum bit.

Thanks, Dave. When was the last time you were in a meeting with them? It has to be at least six months for me and you were on that call.

[dave.laban]

Last one I was in was Aug 2nd. Releases seem to be on a roughly 3-month cadence so would expect another meeting sometime around beginning / middle of November.

I think I missed one around Easter time due to vacation? Chin-Loo at least still seems keen to try and get changes made, just the crushing weight of beaurocracy is slowing everything down. Even getting "Spam" added to the Flag Abuse list seems weirdly difficult.

[Frederick_Law]

NASA confirms DART mission impact changed asteroid's motion in space
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 234329.htm

Prior to DART's impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit its larger parent asteroid, Didymos. Since DART's intentional collision with Dimorphos on Sept. 26, astronomers have been using telescopes on Earth to measure how much that time has changed. Now, the investigation team has confirmed the spacecraft's impact altered Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos by 32 minutes, shortening the 11 hour and 55-minute orbit to 11 hours and 23 minutes. This measurement has a margin of uncertainty of approximately plus or minus 2 minutes.

Before its encounter, NASA had defined a minimum successful orbit period change of Dimorphos as change of 73 seconds or more. This early data show DART surpassed this minimum benchmark by more than 25 times.

[zwei]

An "interesting" interface...

Without looking at the tooltip, i thought i need to check the checkbox to Export Button Configuration....

However, what it really means is that it will only Export Button Configuration if the checkbox is checked

When your most important info is hidden by the interface

[AlexLachance]

Yep, pretty similar swings over here too! I woke up one morning freezing because I had forgotten to close all the windows in my appartment the night before.

It leaves space for pretty nice light-shows in terms of storms and also in terms of northern lights

Thought I'd share a picture courtesy from a sunday evening on my porch during sunset.

[Frederick_Law]

An "interesting" interface...

Without looking at the tooltip, i thought i need to check the checkbox to Export Button Configuration....

However, what it really means is that it will only Export Button Configuration if the checkbox is checked

When your most important info is hidden by the interface

image.png

Yeap I made that mistake.

[Frederick_Law]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 111321.htm
"An international team of scientists who analyzed centuries-old DNA from victims and survivors of the Black Death pandemic has identified key genetic differences that determined who lived and who died, and how those aspects of our immune systems have continued to evolve since that time."

What saved us is killing us.

[AlexLachance]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 111321.htm
"An international team of scientists who analyzed centuries-old DNA from victims and survivors of the Black Death pandemic has identified key genetic differences that determined who lived and who died, and how those aspects of our immune systems have continued to evolve since that time."

What saved us is killing us.

Thanks for the share, interesting read!

[Glenn Schroeder]

I'm leaving work at noon, heading to the beer camp (and no, that's not a typo). Y'all have a good weekend.

[AlexLachance]

https://www-transportroutier-ca.transla ... r_pto=wapp

[Frederick_Law]

I read a news about trailer with the back 3 wheels fold up on the bed to shorten the truck when it's empty.
Can't find it anymore.

Here, another interesting read, with links to a few other interesting read:
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/10/the-imp ... here-else/

We take shortcuts all the time with our physical models. We rarely consider that wire has any resistance, for example, or that batteries have a source impedance. That’s fine up until the point that it isn’t. Take the case of the Navy’s Grumman F11F Tiger aircraft. The supersonic aircraft was impressive, although it suffered from some fatal flaws. But it also has the distinction of being the first plane ever to shoot itself down.

[zwei]

Another for SaaS

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/adobe-p ... iption-fee

[AlexLachance]

Another for SaaS

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/adobe-p ... iption-fee

Color me surprised

[Frederick_Law]

Next we'll need a subscription to use all alphabet .....