Saturday, October 22, 2022

I had not realized that exoplanetary geology was an option when I was in college.

I had not realized that exoplanetary geology was an option when I was in college.


The team is creating a "library of composition" of possible exoplanet surfaces based on the James Webb Space Telescope date. And the are creating Lava with it!


https://www.popsci.com/science/synthetic-alien-lava-exoplanets/


Ps. Apple spell checker choked on "exoplanetary".  Shame on it!


Saturday Tech Humor

Satan: Welcome to hell, the WiFi password is…

Me: Wait! You have Wifi?


Satan: Of course.


Me: Well, that not so bad then.


Satan: As I was saying, the WiFi password is Pi.


Friday, October 21, 2022

Alex "Foxicorn" Nekrasov provides good reasons to use Cocoapoad over Swift Package Manager.

Alex "Foxicorn" Nekrasov provides good reasons to use Cocoapoad over Swift Package Manager.


Even now, CocoaPods does seem to be more customizable. And it does not require stable Internet.


https://blog.foxicorn.com/why-cocoapods-is-still-a-thing-in-2022-b1478f03852


Folks who are used to subclass objects and calling super.init() first, will learn things may be different with Swift.

Folks who are used to subclass objects and calling super.init() first, will learn things may be different with Swift.


Dinesh Kumar gives us a good breakdown of how it works.


https://medium.com/@dineshk1389/swift-why-super-init-is-called-after-setting-all-self-properties-d6827e9f4eb2


Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Thanks to John Sundell for his article on using SwiftUI stack views.

 Thanks to John Sundell for his article on using SwiftUI stack views.


I like John’s idea of “a DynamicStack view that dynamically switches between an HStack and a VStack depending on the current context.”


https://www.swiftbysundell.com/articles/switching-between-swiftui-hstack-vstack/


Tuesday, October 18, 2022

When will I grow tired of looking at the Stars? The day I die.

When will I grow tired of looking at the Stars? The day I die.

The James Webb Space telescope is giving us essential complex scientific data. Along with some simply beautiful images.

https://www.popsci.com/science/skeleton-galaxy-james-webb-space-telescope/


40%-60% of Naval aviation may soon become unmanned, according to this Popular Science article.

40%-60% of Naval aviation may soon become unmanned, according to this Popular Science article.

The success of the Navy's Stingray tanker drone seems to have sped up development and deployment.

https://www.popsci.com/technology/navy-carriers-robot-planes/

Personal Side note: 

A few friends know that I was a Navy Midshipman at UC Berkeley, intending to become a Navy Pilot with expertise in Computers. During these years, the officers and the students often talked about future development, including the possibility of entirely computer-controlled planes. The advantages were staggering. Most aircraft performance is limited by the endurance of the Pilot, both in G-factors in turns and length of time in the plane. Removing the cockpit, with its life support, visual avionics, ejector seat, and other human-required equipment would radically change the aircraft's weight. We could even bring back single jet planes for some missions since the Pilot's life is no longer an issue  (the duel-engined plane is the policy when flying over water). While we agreed there were significant advantages, we thought that an AI pilot would be significantly limiting in a combat environment. In a perfect mission, they might work great, but when the mission goes sideways, the AI would have difficulty adapting. Adapting is one of the most human abilities.

We completely missed the idea of remotely controlled drones being possible in combat scenarios. The concept of the perfect radio remote control being worldwide, unjammable, and not being detectable by the enemy was outside our imaginations. Boy, did we miss the boat on that one.

Being young midshipmen, we possibly also missed the idea of remote drones being used for non-combat missions. Yeah, we were all going into fighters. In reality, drones are perfect for supply delivery, refueling, surveyance, and more.