Writing a password down physically isn’t so bad if you’re aware of the physical security risks and limitations of that. Especially for things like one-time-use passwords meant to recover encrypted drives or multi-factor systems where a security-token can be lost, writing down these passwords is not poor practice, its…

Now, I’m a doctor of other-than-medicine, but my legal name is still the same thing it was the day I was born and my title is whatever I prefer at that moment in time. Is it really different for medical doctors?

Fun fact: you can add the words “using physics” to a description of any physical action without changing the meaning of the sentence.

One major issue of confusion is that power and torque are listed as singular values, peak values, that a vehicle will only operate at for a brief instant. That ‘oomf’ Pobst describes is merely acceleration (also jerk, but for sake of a simple explanation I’ll ignore that). So what gives you the highest acceleration?…

Although to be fair, scheduled flight times have grown faster than measured flight times. Most of this is to accommodate hub-and spoke models and transfer banks, especially within airline alliances.

Regardless of civil noise issues, they all fly at a similar speed to avoid mach divergence, which is the asymptotic increase in drag and dramatic falloff in lift near mach 1. This mode of flight is so inefficient, that even though Concorde could supercruise, it would use its afterburners on climbout just to avoid…

Concorde and the 747-100 spent roughly the same amount of fuel to cross the Atlantic. The 747 carried about five times the number of people, along with several tons of paid cargo. The value of Concorde was time; if a highly-paid business executive loses less work or sleep time, then maybe the fuel burn is worth it.…

“Why can’t Europe manage its own affairs?” is a common redoubt regarding defense. It fundamentally misses the point that Europe can manage its own affairs. It is a technological and economic peer to the United States, it is nuclear armed, and it is not willing to accept a loss of security. And in turn it misses the…

If market forces were to dominate, there’d be no chance of a team leaving Calgary for a US city (at least not one that doesn’t already have a team). Calgary’s attendance is damn-near capacity and sells tickets well above the league average. Its local television viewership is phenomenal by US NHL standards.

But the NHL…

‘LGV’ was obviously a typo. But it shouldn’t even be “TGV trains”, just “TGV”.

I actually re-read the article three or four times looking for where the second alleged ‘US-bashing’ was, and I can’t find it. And the first one already seemed like grasping at straws; the US has only one high-speed line that only does 150mph, and it’s only operated in all-business class configuration. That is, you…

A friend of mine worked for Ontario Power Generation (operator of two nuclear plants). Apparently a startup company came to sell them on internet-connected monitoring equipment, and just got laughed out of the room.

From what he said, a lot of their control systems still consisted of “you have to physically be in this…

It might be 1960s technology, but when several nation-states are actively trying to prevent you from doing something, you can have major hiccups well aside from know-how.

There’s also the fact that, in engineering terms, a lot of development happens in test-refine cycle. Knowing in general terms how a missile should…

195, including airframes reserved for testing.

I’ve had a few meetings where someone said a “can’t you just ...” that was followed by 4-5 seconds of silence and a meek “... that would make sense, yeah.” But I work in basic science / research, which is a weird world.

Which is why in places that actually face terrorist threats, they spread people out. Security is done over a longer path to keep people moving. It’s done at multiple parallel points to keep people apart.

This sounds a lot like a conversation for Bill Clinton

It makes perfect sense from the NHL’s perspective. They’re a brand; any damage to their brand of marketing potential needs to be fought aggressively. The possibility of alienating some fans who might be offended might sound petty when applied to an individual, but when applied across the entire international hockey…

Ironically, the reason why the attempted ‘debunking’ in part #2 failed so terribly is because it is subject to the exact myth they were trying to debunk: the conflation of a low-calorie diet with a healthy diet. Weight loss is, in fact, completely defined by calories in versus calories out, unless there is new…

Assuming humans maintain agency over this whole system, ‘design’ may well be reduced to determining design goals, whereas every other aspect can be automated. There’s nothing special about the wetware between your ears. Everything it does can be automated.