Tavern on the Meta

John Dvorak

03:23

black and white in 2021, really? /s

fish-eye projection with this low field of view?

Journeyman Geek

@JohnDvorak cause spaaaaaccceeeeee

John Dvorak

~~implying the bottom one is a shot of a terrestrial desert~~

Feeds

04:45

stackoverflow.blog/2021/05/21/…

rene

05:05

@Rob well, for their first attempt I would say kudos to them. The two camera's/lenses are not comparable. The lower one is from the Mastcam, the top one from what perseverance would call hazcam or navcam, I think. By the look at the map they are not close to any geological formations that stand-out so I wonder if we get tp see more exiting images then these.

Rob

05:21

Yes, they missed the volcano formation by a bit, and are on a particularly flat spot.

rene

05:33

Do we know if they aimed for that spot? IIRC the mars rover drifted a bit too close to terrain that was deemed a hazard zone. On the other hand, Viking II landed also in a rather flat area. Maybe landing at all was their first priority.

Rob

07:28

@rene Replying to your third sentence (will get to the other points when I get a break), the Utopia Planitia area (where the Viking II landed) looks different than where the Chinese landed:

Define "flat".

Meta Andrew T.

It is flat enough, for a certain distance...

Coastline paradox

The coastline paradox is the counterintuitive observation that the coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined length. This results from the fractal curve-like properties of coastlines, i.e., the fact that a coastline typically has a fractal dimension (which in fact makes the notion of length inapplicable). The first recorded observation of this phenomenon was by Lewis Fry Richardson and it was expanded upon by Benoit Mandelbrot.The measured length of the coastline depends on the method used to measure it and the degree of cartographic generalization. Since a landmass has features at all...

rene

@Rob Ah, I judged it based on the map: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-1#/media/… That looks indeed more "rocky"

Rob

08:07

@rene That Wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-1#Mission_planning says:

> "In July 2020, CNSA provided landing coordinates of 110.318° East longitude and 24.748° North latitude, within the southern portion of Utopia Planitia, as the specific primary landing site.".

While other reports from the Chinese space agency (now removed from their website) report their landing at google.com/search?q=109.9E%2C%2025.1N%20 109.9E, 25.1N, Utopia Planitia

We'll have to wait for HiRISE to grab a snapshot to know the exact location.

@MetaAndrewT. True, if it were ant sized it would be flat enough; like some parts of the Earth appear flat.

Meta Andrew T.

Confirmed: the Earth is flat (for ants)

Rob

and some humans.

SPArcheon

08:35

A month later.

Apr 29 at 12:11, by SPArcheon

Quick question - does anyone know if stupid Edge has a way to disable hiding the "HTTP://" on not-https sites?

still didn't found a way to stop this annoying behavior.

Rob

09:47

@rene 4th: Landing in one piece is probably a first priority. 2nd: Difficult to determine the size of rocks from a relatively low resolution aerial view, one pixel can be a few hundred meters; the Spy Satellites on other planets (where there's no people) aren't as high a resolution as the one over your head. 1st: Here's the aiming and landing areas:

rene

10:15

@Rob nice. I guess it takes a few orbits before Hires will capture images: mars.nasa.gov/imgs/mro/whereismro/MROdisplay.png ?

John Dvorak

did they intentionally stay away from any recognizable terrain features?

Journeyman Geek

probably safer for landing I'd guess

Rob

10:30

@rene Nice image, yes a few orbits or less should be enough for a flyover; then a few days to analyze and post the photo - it will be a few pixels, after image enhancement.

@JohnDvorak Apparently it's a combination of low risk and high scientific value, heavily weighted towards one of those objectives: e6r3ayc2dqk5m6vt5vlyq7cmzi-ac5fdsxevxq4s5y-spaceflightfans-cn.t… space.com/china-mars-rover-tianwen-1-landing-site

rene

@Rob I expect something like this: mars.nasa.gov/resources/25634/… ?

John Dvorak

oh, nice, I was briefly wondering if they did that so that they could fake a successful landing by taking pictures of a desert :P

Rob

Yup

John Dvorak

urgh! Is that a delayed email nag? :fire:

autoplay videos on hover? :rage:

Meta Andrew T.

10:48

:tableflip:

Rob

^^^^ That remains to be seen:

Image Credit: travel.mongabay.com/china/images/china_107-7184.html

John Dvorak

ooh, nice find!

Feeds

12:03

stackoverflow.blog/2021/05/21/…

Ekadh Singh

SO is just a SpaceX advertisement at this point :(

Spevacus

The reception to the SpaceX stuff has apparently been pretty good, which is why they're pushing it so hard.

Ekadh Singh

I do like SpaceX, but IMO this is a bit much

Journeyman Geek

lol

Or its a way to get material, in a theme, for a period of time

Writing fresh stuff is hard

Ekadh Singh

True

Journeyman Geek

12:13

Also I need to read that series at some point :D

Ekadh Singh

It just feels like

Journeyman Geek

Oh, it was all careers ads once.

59

Q: StackOverflow.Blog isn't that great

I've been here a while, and done a few rodeos and, the quality of blog posts feels like its hit rock bottom at times. I admit there's some great ones but considering Stack Overflow as a company is in a wee bit of a transition, it might be a good time to go "maybe you guys should revisit it". I d...

Though, its a little dark that the response I got is "We fired everyone involved"

( Think there's been one major (the loop) and one, minorly major (meta being used for feedback) change at least since that was posted)

Ekadh Singh

In which part of Taryns answer did they say that everybody involved was fired?

Journeyman Geek

Not Taryn's answer

Ekadh Singh

Oh

Journeyman Geek

12:22

Taryn's an old CM and SRE

See Rachel's answer

Spevacus

> The editorial staff who managed stackoverflow.blog for the past year or so are no longer with the company. With this change, we are revisiting our blog strategy entirely and starting fresh.

Well that's concerning.

Well... Was concerning.

Journeyman Geek

@Spevacus Well - a lot of internal stuff is less visible

At most, I dimly keep track of community team and some SRE stuff (and they're not as visible as they used to be)

I'm not really going to know what's going to happen on the content/media side of things

Spevacus

Oh I'm sure it wasn't a case of "We think you did a horrible job, pack your things" and there was a whole lot more to that decision, or they left (they did say "No longer with the company" not "Were let go")

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek wow

thats a high standard to hold your bloggers too

Community doesn’t like it? Fired!

Journeyman Geek

Actually no

Ekadh Singh

12:26

?

Journeyman Geek

I posted it after the layoffs

Ekadh Singh

Oh

Journeyman Geek

Figured anyone involved would be safe

Ekadh Singh

Ok

Journeyman Geek

I really hate criticizing people in public :D

So generally if it happens, I'm angry or tried to time it :D

(but also - apparently marketing had it bad, but I didn't know at the time. I was more worried about the network facing folks)

Ekadh Singh

12:32

Got it, thank you for taking the time to explain this :)

rene

@JourneymanGeek I was pretty sharp on an answer there ...

Journeyman Geek

@rene That's... unclear

:D

That part of the company basically dosen't contribute directly to Q&A and vice versa :D

rene

true

Shadow The Vaccinated Wizard

13:04

tru

Journeyman Geek

Indirectly maaaybe

DavidPostill

14:04

So that's the first time I've seen a spam answer to a question I migrated to another site :) ^^^

Rob

14:48

@Spevacus Inability to consistently onebox their blog posts in chat.

Kevin B

@EkadhSingh better than it only being for self promotion

Spevacus

Lol

Ekadh Singh

@KevinB I disagree, on stack exchange I respect them to advertise stack exchange. I do not expect them to advertise SpaceX

Mad Scientist

15:03

Rockets are cool, so I don't mind

Kevin B

I would expect them to advertise blog posts that are relevant to their audience

these are

Ekadh Singh

How are rockets relevant to the SE audience?

Exempt for space exploration beta

Kevin B

They're presenting the development/coding side of it.

directly relevant to SO

Ekadh Singh

Oh

rene

@MadScientist before the engines are fired ....

Mithical

15:06

"all our users are nerds and nerds like rockets"

Mad Scientist

well, the liquid oxygen and the RP-1 in the tanks do stay cool even while the engines are fired ;-)

it does get a bit hot below the rocket, yes

Ekadh Singh

@MadScientist how would you know, have you been there? :troll:

rene

@MadScientist lol

Tinkeringbell

Now I wonder about inside the rocket.... do people notice any temperature change there?

Mad Scientist

@EkadhSingh they tend to abort launches if random people run around the rocket before it is supposed to launch

Ekadh Singh

15:10

@MadScientist XD

rene

@Tinkeringbell yes, but that is more due to the raised heartbeat and blood pressure ...

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh there's a lot of software in spaceX's capsules

and they're a very 'different' way of doing things than what the old american spacecraft were

Is spaceX a teams client? :D

Tinkeringbell

@rene Ah. Boring.

Mad Scientist

@JourneymanGeek I wouldn't expect that. I'd assume that SaaS solutions are a problem when you deal with ITAR

Journeyman Geek

@MadScientist Well or enterprise. Though - since both are US based...

Mad Scientist

15:18

I don't know the rules exactly, but I could imagine that it's an issue if there is even just one sysadmin with SE that has potential access to Teams data who isn't a US citizen

Journeyman Geek

@MadScientist I wouldn't think that's true of spaceX itself, but ITAR's not something I've stayed up at night thinking about 😂

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek got it, thank you :)

Mad Scientist

In the end Elon Musk has his own fleet of ICBMs, you just need to put something other than a satellite in the rockets.

Journeyman Geek

More or less

And the starship's cheap, and probably has bigger throw weight....

Ekadh Singh

16:26

@JourneymanGeek “cheap”

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh compared to an ICBM? Actually... Yes.

Mad Scientist

if you throw it away after launching, it's probably not that cheap. I think there's about 30 Raptors on one, those alone cost a bunch

Ekadh Singh

16:43

Good to know

Rob

17:12

@EkadhSingh We know that the engine is cool because it's covered in a thick layer of ice while it's in operation:

499.6 seconds: NASA and Boeing Complete Hot Fire-2 for Space Launch System Core Stage

►

Ekadh Singh

17:29

Interesting

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

Can someone please edit the review audit FAQ, section What happens if I fail?, with a screenshot of the new review UI's audit failure message?

John Dvorak

~~No need to. The first person to ask about it on meta gets a free unban because they're definitely paying attention.~~

Spevacus

18:16

@JNat Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/21649928/mae-ann

M.A.R.

20:57

@EkadhSingh I prefer SpaceX subtracts

Ryan M

21:42

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog You might have better luck asking over in SOCVR, probably more people there running face-first into audits of occasionally questionable quality.

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