Brandon Kahler said:

I so very much love having one single device in a server room that is incapable of taking 208/240v power like literally everything else.
I'm looking at you Adtran. Their SBCs (at least the 908e) with PSUs integrated to the system PCB that are strictly rated for 120v.
The magic smoke has been let out of at least two because of that nonsense.

This means both a step-down transformer off the room UPS, and a separate switched PDU just for that one device. Oi

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We've used APC AP9627's for this, not a cheap date.

DJ Farkus said:

Probably has nothing at all to do with NPR's recent discolsure of threats lodged against an NLRB IT whistle-blower calling out suspicious activity by DOGE staff.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security

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Reposting this. Absolutely do read this. It’s a long & detailed article but the meat is in the first section (before the article dives into the background of the whistleblower).

One particularly chilling part:

“In the days after Berulis and his colleagues prepared a request for CISA's help investigating the breach, Berulis found a printed letter in an envelope taped to his door, which included threatening language, sensitive personal information and overhead pictures of him walking his dog, according to the cover letter attached to his official disclosure. It's unclear who sent it, but the letter made specific reference to his decision to report the breach.”

Samare said:

Either you're suffering from paranoia, or there's something really bad going on with law enforcement in your country if you think they're somehow guilty and shouldn't have access to criminals' phones.

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or there's something really bad going on with law enforcement in your country

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Yes, there is something really bad going on with law enforcement in the US. It has been a multi-decade problem that has ramped up to incredible levels in the past two months culminating in a legal US resident here on asylum from MS13 being deported to foreign prison filled with MS13 gang members. This situation has gotten so bad that the highest court in the country has demanded his return, and the law enforcement has stated that they will not follow the court's orders.

You don't get out much, I assume.

compgeek89 said:

The big question then isn't if it is possible, but if it is economical. In that, there is big debate. What is mars trading back to earth? Tech patents? Tv shows? Emigration and tourism (an interesting take from the book Artemis about the moon)? Unobtanium?

There is a clear case to go and start the process, but how to make it economic until it can be self supporting is a big unknown.

Edit: and, my apologies on the wrong argument. Got confused with another thread discussing how the tech needed was magic.

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In the history of civilization, colonies have been founded to provide resources to the founding country that they themselves either did not have, or did not have in sufficient quantities. In other words, they had a business case to found them in the first place. Even so, the colonists already had all the basics available at the colonization site: food, water, air, building materials. They brought tools with them to build housing out of the existing trees, plows and draft animals to create and sow fields. On Mars, almost none of that is going to be available, so a colony will be far more expensive to establish. As a result, it makes it hard to make a case that a Mars colony would be anything but a massive economic drain for many years to come, and may not even break even for decades. I can't see any government or company willing to take on such a long-term money pit for years on end.

Can we establish a Mars colony? From a technical standpoint, we probably will be able to do so in the near future, but finding the money that will be needed year after year is another thing entirely. I would love to see it happen, but doubt that it will happen in my or my children's lifetime.

Those are muskheil's secret LGBTQ satellites beaming cuckold gayness unto all of texas. FAAAABBulous!

Snark218 said:

I'd like to remove that part of the argument just because it's fuckin' silly, but

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Honestly I feel like people who raise that argument make their entire premise absurd. Short of the entire planet being physically destroyed by impact from something more like the size of at least the moon, what possible disaster do they think is going to be harder to keep some number of humans alive through and to mitigate and grow back from, compared to a self sustaining colony on a planet that's as uninhabitable as Mars is?

Claiming we don't have the technology to survive some hand wavy nightmare on Earth is practically admitting we have no business even talking about living on Mars until we do… and then the entire argument has basically been mooted.

Claiming we have the societal capacity to even consider settling Mars even if we did have the technological progress needed is some real bullshit in current contexts.

Other than the romantic appeal of adventure and exploration, especially if given a fantasy twist (let's be realistic here), colonizing Mars really only is "a thing" because it's so conceptionally perfect for some Ayn Rand "remove yourselves to a perfect libertarian utopia" impossible bullshit. Everyone else who doesn't see that when it enters discourse as some kind of supposedly realistic near term goal, particularly when raised by anyone with related ideology, is, bluntly, being treated like a useful fool. There's a reason the right wing is so rabid to crush science in space (and everywhere else) but still talking about colonizing Mars, and it's predictably truly that idiotic.

The whole thing is a gigantic make believe with absurdly poisonous foundations, all to fuel a bunch of narcissists' egos and wealth. There's no upside to it in that context: even if they had the capacity, the outcome would be a terrible farce, and them boondoggling it just as a source of grift is going to set us back terribly, alongside all the issues of how wherever all that wealth goes ends up affecting things long term.

It's terrible to have another cherished child hood fantasy co-opted and corrupted like this, but pretending otherwise isn't making it better.

Republicans: We take it as an article of faith that if government does it, then it's bad. Except the military. You can't have too much military.

chekk said:

Still can't get over how this is announced on social media (FFS!) by the president himself.
It's like listening to a 14 year old.

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According to his niece, who's a psychologist, the damage was done sometime before he was 5, and he's been a howling singularity of vicious, self-obsessed need ever since.

Update:
HDMI-CEC is software you can run on the Raspberry Pi. Or I mean you can access those capabilities.
Tutorial on using HDMI-CEC on Raspberry Pi

msawzall said:

I, for one, would welcome Zombie Fred Rogers as my immortal neighbor.

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Lazarus, I mean Fred Rogers, come out!

Perhaps an NPR entirely dependent on viewer contributions can finally stop behaving like Nice Polite Republicans. The GOP will never love you, no matter how much you try to sanewash these monsters.

MedicalGeek said:

PET CT is not used generally. The only somewhat common use is looking for metastases in someone known to have cancer or in someone with an almost-certain diagnosis of cancer as part of planning.

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Yep, PET is both expensive and a massive dose of radiation.
The staff (nurses and etc) which handle patients during PET exams regularly runs against the limit of yearly dose.

joshuasmith1981 said:

I swear, these days any time I hear someone self-describe as "conservative" (or even worse, "Conservative"), I don't hear "this is where I land on the political spectrum".

Instead I hear "I'm a <insert sportsball team> fan!". I don't feel like it typically goes any deeper than that and is equally meaningless.

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Anytime I hear conservative, I hear "fascist Trump supporter." Because there is no difference between the two.

"...and nothing of value was lost."

first_citazen said:

Raise money, problem solved. We have some generous donors, then no one is beholden to whoever is in office.

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We already have a system of raising money for things in the public interest, its called taxes, but republicans wouldn't know anything about the public interest it seems, only their own interest

TheShark said:

Gosh, I wonder what could possibly explain them having such an attitude?

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Too many socialist idiots there. They just cannot see how weak they are and how magnificent the US is becoming. (/s) What a joke.

MacBrave said:

NASA needs to be looking more at pictures like this: View attachment 107657

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Imaging/systematics related artifacts? Similar issue to imagery of the sea floors on Earth. There are a hojillion examples of what appear to be straight geometric features that appear because of how the sea floor was imaged (strips scanned via ships moving in straight lines, not that those lines are there on the sea floor).

ScifiGeek said:

Mars would need to import everything and has no foreseeable export, it's nothing but massive financial drain until the funding inevitably ends.

Unless the USA goes full dictatorship, taxpayers are unlikely to fund this for very long, beyond even a single political term.

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Again, I said it was unknown because there are viable models, but they are somewhat longshots. If the cost stays to a few billion a year, there are many ways to fund it. If mars makes some discovery that it can export (tech, natural resource, entertainment, services), then things get much more interesting. But, we can't declare that it is not possible.

EricM2 said:

With all those things going on currently, I wonder what it will take to motivate people to start marching on the streets?
Not as Democrats or Republicans.
Not as conservaives or progressives.
But as American citizens taking back their country from an erratic, incompetent and law-ignoring government run by a selfish madman without a shred of responsibility?

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Those American citizens literally just voted for this (or just didn't give a shit), so it's going to get much worse before they care.

One of President Donald Trump’s top officials has warned European allies hesitant about working with Elon Musk’s satellite Internet company that they needed to choose between US and Chinese technology.

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You know... the EU does have its own space industry - EASA. If needed, the EU could just launch its own public comms satellites much as it did with its own GPS constellation (Galileo).

stormcrash said:

With Easter coming this Sunday someone might want to keep an eye on Fred Rogers grave in case some divine assistance is sent our way to save PBS again

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I, for one, would welcome Zombie Fred Rogers as my immortal neighbor.

thrillgore said:

I never realized how good John Turturro an actor was until Severance. I think something's wrong with me.

Anyways, I never really put any math into it besides aiming as straight or towards 3 or 5 as I could.

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Have you watched the last two seasons of White Lotus? It was like getting hit by lightening when I realized we were watching Uncle Rico from Napolean Dynamite.

Stephen Clark said:

Satellites in low-Earth orbit soar up to 40 times higher than a B-2 bomber and travel about 30 times faster.

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IE, 15,166.6m and 1037 km/h, or in more familiar terms, 356483.723 smoots at .0000288255 light.

SORRY, I accidentally used the measurements for the B-52 Bomber. I assumed higher was better. Who named these, Nvidia?

IE, 15,166.6m and 1037 km/h, or in more familiar terms, 356483.723 smoots at .0000331229 light.

Alfonse said:

To be completely fair to the fascist, he was going to do this to public broadcasting regardless. This probably is just coincidental; he's been moving this way for over a year.

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He tried to slash the funding last time too, this isn't new. I distinctly remember that weasel Mulvaney ragging how he "couldn't justify working parents paying for the corporation for public broadcasting" when it's those parents who benefit the most from PBS children's programming

first_citazen said:

Raise money, problem solved. We have some generous donors, then no one is beholden to whoever is in office.

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That's not an excuse for fascism.