In other news today...
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What do cassowaries eat?
Cassowaries are predominantly frugivorous, feeding on fruits that have fallen to the forest floor, but will predate on small vertebrates where available. The seeds of digested fruits are passed in the cassowary’s faeces and so cassowaries play an important role in seed dispersal.
I don't see people in there. Unless you count weak spined people like beancounters and managers as 'small vertebrates'.
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@cvi said in In other news today...:
What do cassowaries eat?
Cassowaries are predominantly frugivorous, feeding on fruits that have fallen to the forest floor, but will predate on small vertebrates where available. The seeds of digested fruits are passed in the cassowary’s faeces and so cassowaries play an important role in seed dispersal.
I don't see people in there. Unless you count weak spined people like beancounters and managers as 'small vertebrates'.
Nope. Those are hemichordates.
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
@cvi said in In other news today...:
we can create our own dinosaurs
Why not just stick with the ones we've got, aka birds?
THEY. ARE. NOT. REAL.
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
@cvi said in In other news today...:
@dkf said in In other news today...:
Why not just stick with the ones we've got, aka birds?
There aren't that many birds that can hunt and eat people.
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@dcon said in In other news today...:
"Thin Mints"
Sadly, they're not gluten-free.
Happily, there is a gluten-free non-Girl-Scout imitation Thin Mint that's pretty good.
Sadly, I can't eat them, either, because sugar.
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@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
non-Girl-Scout
I remember when they were just called Boy Scouts.
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@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
@dcon said in In other news today...:
"Thin Mints"
Sadly, they're not gluten-free.
Happily, there is a gluten-free non-Girl-Scout imitation Thin Mint that's pretty good.
Sadly, I can't eat them, either, because sugar.Remember folks, you can taste
's sadness in every genuine fresh-baked Girl Scout cookie. Mmm, mmm, diabetears.
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@Zecc said in In other news today...:
@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
non-Girl-Scout
I remember when they were just called Boy Scouts.
Nah man. Boy Scouts is where you buy acid.
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The girl was bitten by an unknown species of shark
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US shoots down balloon. No link included, because you can't get more than 2 hops on the internet without stumbling over one.
The commentary of the peanut gallery is great, though. Really hope the pilot gets to paint a balloon on the aircraft...
Edit: Ah, whatever. There's this
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https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/bermuda-hit-by-major-internet-and-power-outage/
the ships and planes that went missing there are rising up for their revenge.
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@cvi a missile? Seriously? You can’t make this shit up.
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@topspin They had mounted a long and sharp metal stick onto the business end, but it exploded anyway
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@topspin Apparently too high up for anything else.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
@cvi a missile? Seriously? You can’t make this shit up.
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@kazitor copy-pasta is
.
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@coderpatsy said in In other news today...:
@cvi Also, guns reportedly aren't effective against large high-altitude balloons.
Jet fighters trying to bring the balloon down fired more than 1,000 rounds into it
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@Applied-Mediocrity
Canadians ... so after every round they had to ask politely and in the end they ran low on maple syrup
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in In other news today...:
@coderpatsy said in In other news today...:
@cvi Also, guns reportedly aren't effective against large high-altitude balloons.
Jet fighters trying to bring the balloon down fired more than 1,000 rounds into it
It was discovered during the first World War that regular bullets don't do much to balloons. The resulting holes are too small compared to the volume of gas inside. Plus, balloons tend to be made of a tough, yieldy material, so the holes might not even be the diameter of the bullet that passed through. Back then they fixed this shortcoming by issuing incendiary rounds.
By the time WWII rolled around, everybody had explosive-ordnance AA guns. And cannons in at least some of their fighter jets. So the problem didn't resurface.
Most aircraft have gatling type guns now. It's how they managed to put thousands of rounds through that balloon. But what you'd really want here is a cannon. Seems like some fighters can still have cannons. E.g. the Eurofighter can be equipped with a Mauser BK-27.
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@acrow I'm so disappointed I could burst that WTDWTF hasn't seen fit to have a new thread for all this balooney, and instead has taken the reasonable route of calling out internet armchair pilots full of hot air and moved on. Y'all blew it.
...
Well, best not get carried away, I suppose.
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@acrow said in In other news today...:
Most aircraft have gatling type guns now.
That does not preclude them being cannons. The M61 Vulcan cannon on F-22 is only 20mm, but there is 20mm high explosive ammunition they could load into that. Question is whether the contact fuses of HE cannon rounds would trigger on contact with the rather insubstantial balloon, whereas the sidewinder has a proximity fuse (and enough shrapnel to shred the balloon to ribbons).
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@Bulb Since they wanted to recover the balloon's payload, outright ribboning it is a bit counter-productive. Also, the balloon isn't quite that insubstantial. It has load-bearing structures, even if the envelope material itself were insufficient to detonate the shells.
That brings to mind though, would Hellfire missiles work that high up? Because there's the kinetic-energy variant with the pop-up blades...
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There's also the point that this thing had been in the news all over the world. Imagine the news headlines if you had a F22 doing multiple passes at the balloon, trying to gun it down (which might not even be that easy at the altitude of the balloon). Plus the gun has a relatively short range (~500m according to Wikipedia), so you need to get a fast-moving airplane pointed at a very slow balloon, in a place that's apparently at the limits of the plane anyway.
Single, comparatively cheap missile taking it out on a first pass is a better look and seems less risky.
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@acrow said in In other news today...:
@Bulb Since they wanted to recover the balloon's payload, outright ribboning it is a bit counter-productive.
They want to recover enough of the payload to determine what it might have been doing, which is possible even if it get badly shredded. It got smashed into smithereens on impact on the water anyway. The point of shredding the balloon thoroughly was making sure the payload falls straight down so they knew where to look for it, and there was nothing underneath it could damage.
If they wanted to recover it with minimum damage, shooting it with a machine-gun would actually be better as in that case it would start to leak and descend slowly. But they'd have to chase it and it could damage something on the way down so they didn't want to go that route.
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@Bulb I meant ribboning the envelope which, as you pointed out, caused the payload to get smashed by the impact. Whereas a controlled hole in the side of the balloon and the resulting slower descent might have preserved more for analysis.
The balloon getting blown about while slowly descending is a bit of a nonpoint. Winds are predictable in the short term, so that could have been taken into account in the selection of the puncturing location; they already waited for it to drift to the sea, so what's a couple hours more to choose the best place and time. Also, as a giant balloon it could be followed visually from a rather long range. Fighter pilots are selected for good eyesight. There was zero danger from escorting it down by the fighters.
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@cvi The stated effective range for the main gun is for conventional targets of warfare; ground targets or other aircraft. (And, yes, F22 pilots are generally trained for ground-attack strafing runs. It's part of the combined arms doctrine.) If a pilot missed a balloon the size of a bus, I'd expect him to get drug-tested upon landing before he managed to get out of his cockpit.
That the plane is near its service ceiling means it'll have trouble climbing, and has to keep its speed. But it will remain maneuverable. And, again, the target wasn't exactly small.
The looks of the thing I do understand. Makes for a good showing for the civilians. But if they're more concerned about looks than the potential intel, it bodes badly for the army's actual warfighting prowess.
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@acrow said in In other news today...:
@cvi The stated effective range for the main gun is for conventional targets of warfare; ground targets or other aircraft. (And, yes, F22 pilots are generally trained for ground-attack strafing runs. It's part of the combined arms doctrine.) If a pilot missed a balloon the size of a bus, I'd expect him to get drug-tested upon landing before he managed to get out of his cockpit.
That the plane is near its service ceiling means it'll have trouble climbing, and has to keep its speed. But it will remain maneuverable. And, again, the target wasn't exactly small.
The looks of the thing I do understand. Makes for a good showing for the civilians. But if they're more concerned about looks than the potential intel, it bodes badly for the army's actual warfighting prowess.
The gun in use has a very high cyclic rate. The usage doctrine for a rotary cannon on fighter aircraft is because of their painfully short engagement times on slow targets. Thousands of rounds means the gun was fired on target, Sky Admiral!
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@acrow said in In other news today...:
That the plane is near its service ceiling means it'll have trouble climbing, and has to keep its speed. But it will remain maneuverable.
No, it will not remain maneuverable. It will be flying close to stall, because the engine power is not enough to fly much faster, but then the lift can't be increased much without stalling, and lift needs to be increased to effect a turn.
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
That the plane is near its service ceiling means it'll have trouble climbing, and has to keep its speed. But it will remain maneuverable.
No, it will not remain maneuverable. It will be flying close to stall, because the engine power is not enough to fly much faster, but then the lift can't be increased much without stalling, and lift needs to be increased to effect a turn.
However, it's already an intrinsically unstable airframe, so,
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@Gribnit That is irrelevant. If it can't get more lift, it can't turn.
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@Gribnit said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
@cvi The stated effective range for the main gun is for conventional targets of warfare; ground targets or other aircraft. (And, yes, F22 pilots are generally trained for ground-attack strafing runs. It's part of the combined arms doctrine.) If a pilot missed a balloon the size of a bus, I'd expect him to get drug-tested upon landing before he managed to get out of his cockpit.
That the plane is near its service ceiling means it'll have trouble climbing, and has to keep its speed. But it will remain maneuverable. And, again, the target wasn't exactly small.
The looks of the thing I do understand. Makes for a good showing for the civilians. But if they're more concerned about looks than the potential intel, it bodes badly for the army's actual warfighting prowess.
The gun in use has a very high cyclic rate. The usage doctrine for a rotary cannon on fighter aircraft is because of their painfully short engagement times on slow targets. Thousands of rounds means the gun was fired on target, Sky Admiral!
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@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
BMW confirmed to The Drive that there are other prerequisites that must be met as well:
[...]- The engine, if it has one, must be turned off
I know they likely mean "if it has an ICE" but that wording...
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@acrow said in In other news today...:
it bodes badly for the army's actual warfighting prowess.
We have a thread about that (in
).
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@Gribnit said in In other news today...:
However, it's already an intrinsically unstable airframe
That just means that the airplane needs to be actively corrected/steered at all times to keep it pointing and going in the right direction. All that is still done with the normal control mechanisms.
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@cvi I think what he meant was that the stabilization automation that's already in place due to the inherent instability will also render less-optimal flying conditions much easier for the pilot to manage; the pilot might not even notice that the control surfaces have less authority until he tries a more drastic maneuver.
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@acrow It will make the conditions easier for the pilot to manage in that the plane will simply refuse to turn more instead of stalling and possibly spinning out of control, but it still won't be able to turn much, because in that state the wings simply can't produce much extra lift.
(Actually the plane can turn for a bit, but since it puts it on the back of the power curve, it will soon run out of energy and will be forced to descend).
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In “how the fuck can this be legal” news:
Next up in future EULAs:
If you try to sue us, you automatically owe us onetrillion dollars.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
In “how the fuck can this be legal” news:
"Switch Joy-Con Drift"
I dunno...I mostly find legal jargon to be word salad.
EDIT: And I clicked through several links in TFA (
) and still have no idea what "joy-con drift" is.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
In “how the fuck can this be legal” news:
Next up in future EULAs:
If you try to sue us, you automatically owe us onetrillion dollars.
Unless the EULA is presented and agreed to prior to purchase, it is not legally binding in
but that's different in other places, in the other hand, this place isn't particularly litigious.
Arbitration is a valid alternative to litigation, so that much is at least not insane. The insane bit is that something that was unknown at time of purchase can be legally binding.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
In “how the fuck can this be legal” news:
"Switch Joy-Con Drift"
I dunno...I mostly find legal jargon to be word salad.
EDIT: And I clicked through several links in TFA (
) and still have no idea what "joy-con drift" is.
Joy Con drift is what happens when the springs or resistive elements in joysticks gets too worn so that they don't return to zero.
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@Carnage said in In other news today...:
Joy Con drift is what happens when the springs or resistive elements in joysticks gets too worn so that they don't return to zero.
I didn't read much of the article, but they did point out that Nintendo would already fix the controllers for free.
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@dcon said in In other news today...:
@Carnage said in In other news today...:
Joy Con drift is what happens when the springs or resistive elements in joysticks gets too worn so that they don't return to zero.
I didn't read much of the article, but they did point out that Nintendo would already fix the controllers for free.
That lawsuit didn't have much of a leg to stand on them, even if arbitration'd not been specified in the EULA
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@dcon said in In other news today...:
@Carnage said in In other news today...:
Joy Con drift is what happens when the springs or resistive elements in joysticks gets too worn so that they don't return to zero.
I didn't read much of the article, but they did point out that Nintendo would already fix the controllers for free.
Yeah, after they ignored the issue completely and got their hands forced by the lawsuit.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
In “how the fuck can this be legal” news:
"Switch Joy-Con Drift"
I dunno...I mostly find legal jargon to be word salad.
EDIT: And I clicked through several links in TFA (
) and still have no idea what "joy-con drift" is.
It means their game controller hardware was defective, systematically, which they (at first) refused to fix. EULAs don’t affect the hardware and “you can’t sue us” forced arbitration is insane, either way.