History, Politics And Current Affairs

Prufstand XII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_U-boat

They built a prototype towable launcher but it reads as though they didn't ever load a V2 into it.

I never knew driving a car in another country was "International Overlanding" ! Anyway the South Island is rather magnificent, the walking is tough as you usually have a 1000m climb to get to a reasonably horizontal path. Food is good, there aren't many people, west coast has far too many ...

Well they got me so I suppose it worked. I'd like to see a further riff on the TV series, as that is probably in my Top 10 or 20.

So far we've had the original comic (great) the film (pretty good) the sequel TV series (great) and now the animated version. Well it is pretty much the comic turned directly into a cartoon. I'm not quite sure what the point is. If you've read the comic or seen the film then this is just a low res a...

The descriptions I've seen make me puzzled. Why bother splitting the engine in two? If the generated oxygen is used to fire a boiler then the boiler produces steam exactly as if it were using atmospheric oxygen. Yes the timeframe was about right for mines and torpedoes, although the range of torpedo...

This is by the guy who wrote Fight Club, in itself a widely misunderstood book/film I suspect. So this is just a mashup of a less funny version of American Psycho merged with Fight Club and with a vastly unpleasant cast. The first bit is tedious, the rest of it is, in context, readable. Some of the ...

Picked up Fist of God... I'm a slow reader these days, a common affliction of those who read technical papers, and ripped through 140 pages in a flight. Bonza.

and curiously relevant.

Beanstalk or satellites. You choose.

Yeah the fan-service in Footfall is one of my gripes.

At first it seems obvious that SF is about aliens. And yet, over 100+ years, things have changed, not very surprisingly. Originally aliens were often BEMs (Bug Eyed Monsters) which behaved in various fairly predictable ways, not exactly human, but Terran at least. The last of these I read was Footfa...

Can anybody say 'word salad'?

Here's another one, summary grabbed from/. It is worth reading the tables in the paper which give various threats and so on. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15840# A pair of researchers investigating the ability of LLMs to coherently operate a simulated vending machine business have recorded hilariously ...

We'll be going to the V&A next time we're in London, which is no time soon. The Great Wen has little to attract me.

I vaguely remember seeing a video from a phone of this launch. If anyone else has seen it can they post a link?

Our local posh seaside resort has a nice op-shop (charity shop) which at the end of the season features some good stuff. Et voila, a clearing out of some Stones stuff Life by Keith Richards - very bloody good ghosted autobiography One and One ( a film by Goddard) the studio bits where they develop S...

Microsoft are about to launch a communication protocol to make it easier for a developer to plug an AI into an app. I haven't got the faintest idea what that entails, but it sounds like a great path for virusses.

Stern first launches need a lot of space, and put a big sagging strain on the keel (so they say). There's a non zero chance that the ship falls over at some point. Having said that it's been the usual method for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Yes, this is not going to be pretty. At the same time I amazed that it tore the ship apart.

"Range could be enhanced or reduced, depending on the design tweaks that would go along with such a configuration change."

ie, the author has put absolutely no thought into the article. What a waste of time.

Finally got around to watching TB. OK, my memory was bad. The underwater furball was still as dull as ditchwater, but otherwise it was good fun. I wonder why they replaced hammerheads with whatever those sharks were? Of course back in the 60s it seemed far more exotic, little did 12 year old me thin...