Interesting Links for 03-02-2022

[andrewducker]

When Microsoft Office Went Enterprise

(tags:microsoft office business development )

The International Space Station to be retired and crashed into the Pacific Ocean

(tags:space iss doom )

Britain's Equalities Watchdog Met Privately With Anti-Trans Groups, Works Closely With Right-Wing Christians

(tags:lgbt uk rights OhForFucksSake )

It's possibly to go completely round in a circle on a swing

(tags:video children physics )

Eysturoyartunnilin - the world's first underwater roundabout

(tags:tunnel driving Ocean Denmark )

Feed two themes into an AI and let it produce the start of a story

(tags:writing ai )

Apple protecting users' privacy costs Facebook $10Billion

(tags:apple facebook privacy advertising )

Squabble - multiplayer Wordle (with a Battle Royale option!)

(tags:games words )

Low-Carbon Beef still isn't very low-carbon

(tags:co2 cows meat )

Energy bills to rise by 54% a year for millions

(tags:electricity money uk doom )

Comments

[cmcmck]

The EHRC needs to go and go soon!

[poshmerchant]

Why not simply sell the ISS to the private sector if NASA wants the private sector to operate space stations? Are there no buyers? Is it really cheaper to build new than to repurpose? Is it because too much of ISS runs on 486 chips and Novell Netware 4.x or something?

[andrewducker]

My understanding is that it's already outlasted its original expected lifespan, and it's probably time to launch the next generation.

[autopope]

NASA intends to keep operating the International Space Station until the end of 2030, after which the ISS would be crashed into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo

Meet the new plan, same as the old plan (except the deadline keeps getting kicked further out into the future).

The ISS was due to be de-orbited two years ago, and indeed bits of it -- the original Russian modules -- have been detached and dumped, but they've also been replaced and as long as there's a budget it keeps on ticking along.

I predict it won't be abandoned/destroyed unless something better comes along, or the USA descends into civil war. (Tip: multiple private space station proposals are currently on the drawing board, and that doesn't include NASA's Lunar Gateway, which is a somewhat smaller 3rd generation space station in the design stage as part of the Artemis program).

[calimac]

"It's possible to go completely round in a circle on a swing ..."

if the swing hangs from a solid rod and a free-circulating attachment that rotates around the horizontal frame. But most swings that I see are hung from flexible ropes or chains that are attached to a bolt in the horizontal frame. If you went completely round on one of those, the rope or chain would start wrapping itself around the frame, which would strictly limit the number of times you could go round in one direction, and would probably make it harder to achieve the feat in the first place.
(What you can do with these is make the swing go round in place and twist the two supporting ropes around each other, then let them untwist and twist up the other way, making yourself dizzy in the process, and that I've often seen done and even did it myself back in the day.)

[jack]

My impression for swings was that if the supports from the seat to the pivot are rigid, you can make it loop. But that if it you have flexible supports like chains, then when you rise above 90 degrees, you fall down which doesn't transfer your momentum to the upswing on the other side, so you can only go higher by propelling yourself from 90 to 270 in one go (and risk falling as the oscillation damps)...

[adrian_turtle]

It's odd that the measurements for "low-carbon beef" do not consider transportation. Is this just a difference between the US and the UK? If I eat locally raised beef (no matter what it ate), we save the emissions of transporting the animal however many hundreds of miles from farm to slaughterhouse out west, and transporting the meat however many thousands of miles from slaughterhouse to here.