MartianSands

joined 2 years ago
[–] MartianSands 26 points 3 months ago (16 children)

No, it couldn't. That's pure misinformation.

Kessler syndrome is only a possibility in orbits high enough that atmospheric drag is negligible. Starlink, by design, is at an altitude where the atmosphere is still thick enough to bring any debris or old satellites down to earth in a timely fashion rather than building up like Kessler syndrome requires. (To be clear, the air is still so thin that you'd need sensitive instruments to detect it at all. It's just enough to produce a tiny amount of drag, which adds up over weeks or months to lower the debris' orbit so that it meets thicker air)

There are plenty of perfectly legitimate objections you can raise to starlink without resorting to Kessler syndrome

[–] MartianSands 15 points 3 months ago (5 children)

your certificate request must come from an authorized email address at bank.com

That isn't true in general. In fact, it can't be.

It might be policy for most cases from the well-known certificate authorities, but it's not part of the protocol or anything like that.

If it were, then it would be impossible to set up your mailserver to begin with because you could never get a certificate for mail.bank.com

[–] MartianSands 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure their concern is their own birth rate dropping, actually. Have you seen the demographics graph for Russia? They're facing a complete collapse of their working-age population in a decade or two

[–] MartianSands 14 points 3 months ago

No, it would have been detected by various systems pretty much immediately. Those systems are military though, and probably wouldn't tell the general public about the movement of military satellites

It's also conceivable that it was detected in that orbit but not recognised, so it was treated as a mystery object

[–] MartianSands 2 points 3 months ago

Depends how hard you plan to make it work, and if you intend to overclock it.

I recommend just building it then seeing how hot it actually gets. Realistically you'll probably just find the fans all turn faster (making more noise) and that you should clean the dust out a bit more often

[–] MartianSands 13 points 3 months ago

They will have some kind of pressure relief valve, to let steam out and prevent an explosion. They only become dangerous if that valve isn't working (assuming that whatever keeps the lid on is intact and still strong).

Look for damage around the seal between the pot and the lid, and look for damage to the clamp or latch which holds the lid down against that seal.

Then look at the valve. It'll probably be a heavy object (such as a lump of metal) which sits on top of a hole of some sort, or it could possibly be something spring loaded. Either way, check that it moves freely.

After that the only additional thing you could do is a pressure test, where you basically deliberately overpressurise it and see if it explodes, but if you had the means to do that safely then you wouldn't be asking for advice here so I don't recommend it.

[–] MartianSands 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Their point still works though, just reword it for less unnecessary baggage if you prefer.

Do you press the button which saves some random human somewhere in the world, or the button which saves some random cow? I'm pretty sure most people choose the human

[–] MartianSands 4 points 3 months ago

I'll bet they deploy a bunch of starlink satellites basically as soon as they're able, if only for PR (and probably internal morale) reasons

[–] MartianSands 34 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The biggest problem is that the magnets will "quench", which is what happens when a superconducting electromagnet suddenly stops being superconducting.

There's a lot of energy stored in that magnet, and when it quenches the energy all turns to heat in a very short time. Any remaining helium will flash boil, turning into an explosive expansion of gas, and the thermal shock will seriously damage the machine

[–] MartianSands 21 points 4 months ago

Because it's feedback on how effective their targeting has been when confronted with whatever electronic warfare and misdirection Israel was using to defend themselves.

That sort of information might let the attacker make adjustments to be more accurate next time

[–] MartianSands 4 points 4 months ago (6 children)

They probably can do that, but a lot of the connections Ukraine are using will have been donated by third parties, rather than directly purchased by the Ukrainians. How do they tell the difference between those, and someone claiming to be doing that then shipping the dishes to Russia?

[–] MartianSands 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

It is guaranteed, actually. US law imposes requirements on telecoms providers to support wire taps

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