"Professor" means very different things at different universities. There are universities (often what people refer to as "small liberal-arts schools") where professors teach most of the courses, and getting tenure is much more of a "can you teach students?" decision. At research-focused universities (usually larger institutions), professors often don't teach many of the courses, and getting grants and being able to successfully manage a lab and coach graduate students are weighted more heavily in the tenure decision. In any case, where you get your PhD (and postdoc) are huge factors in whether you'll get a tenure-track position -- about 20% of schools produce about 80% of professors:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticle...

Either way, there are many more PhDs awarded than there are professor positions available; most people with a doctorate will wind up in industry just by the law of averages. The less-realistic amongst them may spend a long time as adjunct faculty, teaching heavy course loads for punishingly low wages, before going into industry. I know this is not, like, 100%, but I generally hear "I'm taking a job as an adjunct" as "I will never get tenure but I have not admitted it to myself yet."

If you're in a PhD program or postdoc and want to get a tenure-track job, it is worth having a frank conversation with someone you trust about your prospects and what you can to to improve them.

People have thought about this; lunar lava tubes are a theoretically viable space for long-term lunar habitation. We probably could do it at today's technology levels, though of course we haven't tried it.

Still: Maybe show me a self-contained habitat with multiple humans living for multiple years on Earth before getting all excited about that prospect on another planet. This should be super easy and cheap in comparison (everything we need is right here!) but we have yet to manage it.

Measuring expected and actual thrust from firings, and then running through a root cause analysis when those numbers started not matching up.

Sigh, GPGP. Why does my brain do the typo over and over again

To a first approximation, the GCGP is made up of fishing and construction debris. Buoys alone make up nearly 60% of the patch, by weight. All single-use plastics make up less than 15% of the patch. Source: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fp..., Table S2.

Not saying as we shouldn't reduce single-use plastics, and keep them from winding up in the ocean — we absolutely should! But accountability for the fishing industry is where the margins are for eliminating the GCGP.

And that's super hard —a ton of fishing takes place in international waters, with an industry operating on razor thin margins, outside the easy observation of regulators, and where a bunch of the governments in charge of regulation don't give two shits about a patch of trash in the ocean anyhow.

Fishing is a $320B industry in the US alone. Spending 1% of that annually to improve fishery habitat seems like an eminently reasonable thing to do -- removing the GCGP and keeping it gone on an ongoing basis would be a very worthwhile way to spend some of that money. And getting other Pacific-bordering nations to cooperate on that front would also be a pretty reasonable thing to do.

Thing is, sometimes when those bullets and missiles start flying, it's a surprise! And while those 18-25-year-olds may think "it's worth that risk" they don't get to make that call. The mission is to provide an effective, survivable naval force for the US.

There's the old list of steps to not die: "Don’t be seen. If you are seen, don’t be targeted. If you are targeted, don’t be hit. If you are hit, don’t be penetrated. If you are penetrated, don’t be killed."

Operating a radio network with whatever-the-fuck-devices blapping GPS coordinates to whatever-the-fuck commercial services can really impact the "don't be seen" and "don't be targeted" parts of that defense strategy.

Yeah -- you don't need to make currency counterfeit-proof, you just need to make it resistant enough that it's not economical to make counterfeits you can pass off without getting caught.

American currency has a lot going against it (eg, all our paper bills are the same size and printed in roughly the same basic color scheme, so things like turning $1 bills into $20 bills are more possible than with European or British currency) but even here you still need to invest a lot of time and money into doing a decent job of it. And ultimately... there are easier ways to grift that have much less stringent punishments.

This point seems ambiguous to me. I'm not sure if this is a "if you modify an AGPL product, you must share the source to the product, even if you are only using it as part of a service" or if it's "If you use an AGPL product as part of a service, you must provide the source to the AGPL product as well as your service."

Regardless, it's pretty much a moot point. OpenSearch exists, is wire-compatible with ElasticSearch, and has a thriving developer community and an unambiguous, well-tested license. I struggle to think of a reason why someone would choose ES at this point.

I actually don't think it's ridiculous for the FAA to ground aircraft and spacecraft when there's an unplanned loss of vehicle. This will very likely be a short grounding while SpaceX says "there's no danger to the uninvolved public on these missions, we'll do an investigation before we fly anything with elevated risk."

In particular, it's important to make sure whatever caused this loss is not an early marker of something that could cause range safety issues on future flights.

Also: While they do land normal F9 launches offshore, for F9 Heavy launches, they fly two boosters back to the Cape.

Also also: While this should not factor into anything, Musk's penchant for giving regulators a vigorous middle finger probably does not encourage them to let things slide or hurry things along.

Not saying as NASA is blameless here, but it is very much worth looking into Congressâ(TM)s role in all this.

Itâ(TM)s hard to run an efficient space program when the organization that funds you is continually asking for stupid things and requiring that you do them in stupider ways.

Ah yes, just "solve the border crisis." Why couldn't she even solve a problem that is primarily a made-up problem used by Fox News and Greg Abbot to make people angry and upset, when the causes of migration have been around for as long as countries have existed?

Why couldn't she just solve the personal safety problems in countries that we don't control (without increasing foreign aid!) and also make farmers who rely on migrant labor not rely on migrant labor anymore, except without making food more expensive? Jeez. I did basically both those things just last week, it wasn't even hard.

Last I heard she couldn't even divide by zero.

The fact that I want to get to Denver doesn't give an airline pilot the right to walk over my neighbor's lawn, or park in his driveway, even if it is the shortest path.

And yet, if you launch ONE Sidewinder at a passenger jet, folks get all bent out of shape

If you're driving 300+ miles in a day, several times a month, I'd agree. An EV is not a great choice for your application. I don't think anyone's saying it is. And also: Your application is unusual. From from unheard of, but my wife and I are not the "work from home tribe" and driving more than 40 miles in a day for work would be a "once in ten years" kind of situation where either waiting for an EV charge or renting an ICE vehicle are totally reasonable options.

Even at my previous job where I did do client visits, a 150-mile round-trip day (eg, St. Paul - St. Cloud) would have been quite exceptional, but easily within the range of most EVs. I never clocked more than that. YMMV, literally.

Also: You don't need to be a dick. It doesn't help your "EVs don't work well for me" argument; it makes you look like someone who dislikes them and the people who drive them as a matter of principle.

From TFA:

Because it's effectively impossible to collect data from a spacecraft that's burning up, previous studies used analyses of micrometeoroids to estimate potential pollution. But micrometeoroids contain very little aluminum, the metal that makes up 15% to 40% of the mass of most satellites, so these estimates didn't apply well to new "swarm" satellites.

To get a more accurate picture of pollution from satellite re-entry, the researchers modeled the chemical composition of and bonds within satellites' materials as they interact at molecular and atomic levels. The results gave the researchers an understanding of how the material changes with different energy inputs.

In 2022, reentering satellites increased aluminum in the atmosphere by 29.5% over natural levels, the researchers found. The modeling showed that a typical 250-kilogram (550-pound) satellite with 30% of its mass being aluminum will generate about 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of aluminum oxide nanoparticles (1-100 nanometers in size) during its reentry plunge. Most of these particles are created in the mesosphere, 50-85 kilometers (30-50 miles) above Earth's surface.

It literally has wings and movable, aerodynamic control surfaces, and uses its pusher props for both yaw control and propulsion. Calling it a hybrid between a pure rotorcraft and a fixed-wing aircraft seems... not dumb? Yes, it looks like it operates as a pure rotorcraft at takeoff and landing; at cruise speed it would have significantly different flight characteristics and mechanics.

Also... I don't think the summary or article hates on helicopters? Who doesn't like helicopters? Rotorcraft are neat. But ones that can go faster, on less fuel, seem neat too?

TBH this doesn't actually even seem that much more complex than a traditional helicopter; they've basically traded the tail rotor for pusher props.