I doubt too many haven’t seen this yet, but here’s the new Star Wars: Rogue One trailer:
Aug 122016
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Aug 112016
Starting in the 1970s and running through much of the 1980’s, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ran numerous studies of Thousand Astronomical Unit (TAU) spacecraft. These were somewhat akin to Voyager class probes, but with important differences. instead of small RTGs for power, they would use SP-100 class fission reactors, mounted many dozens of meters away at the end of long booms. Located at the center of mass of the system would be a bank of ion engines; the nuclear electric propulsion system would operate for *years* to boost these craft to extremely high speeds. Still, it would take decades for them to travel 1,000 AU from the Sun, many times further than Pluto. There, large optical telescopes would take parallax measurements on distant stars; by positioning numerous TAU craft in every direction, the measurement baseline would be vast, and precise distance fixes could be made for stars on the other side of the galaxy.
A number of TAU designs were examined, but the one shown here in JPL art seems to be pretty representative. These probes would have to be engineered with a high degree of both reliability and autonomy as their main observation missions would only begin something like 50 years after launch. Diagrams of a different design and more information were presented in US Spacecraft Projects #3.
Aug 112016
And here’s a list of ’em:
All Upcoming Movie Remakes/ Reboots (2016 – 2020)
All Quiet on the Western Front, A Star is Born, Pet Semetary, Point Break, The Crow, An American Werewolf in London, Barbarella, Dirty Dancing, Death note, Drop Dead Fred, Fletch Won, Starship Troopers, The Neverending Story, The Seven Samurai, Wargames, Time Bandits, Akira, American Psycho, the Birds, Commando, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Death Wish, Escape from New York, Heavy Metal, Highlander, House Party, Little Shop of Horrors, My Fair Lady, Romancing the Stone, Scarface, Short Circuit, The Bodyguard, the Phantom Tollbooth, The Wild Bunch, Flight of the Navigator, Videodrome, Jumanji, Weird Science, The Toxic Avenger, Van Helsing, Expendabelles, All of Me, A prophet, Untitled Big Man Japan Remake, The Black hole, Bloodsport, Daredevil, Flatliners, Jacobs Ladder, Logans Run, Mortal Kombat, Police Academy, Rebecca, Suspiria, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Timecrimes, Timecop, Tomb Raider, Young Sherlock Holmes, Overboard, Cliffhanger, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Voltron, The Thin Man, Perry Mason, Angel Heart, Battle Royale, Chopping Mall, the Cineplex, Day of the Dead, Firestarter, Ghost Graduation, Hellraiser, The Mummy, Private Benjamin, Spawn, I Am Legend, Ben Hur, Friday the 13th, Leatherface, the Magnificent Seven, The Thomas Crown Affair, Beauty and the Beast, A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Craft, Alien Nation, Big Trouble in Little China, the Blob, Blue Thunder, Cabin Fever, Charlie’s Angels, Clue, Dungeons & Dragons, The Entity, Explorers, Fantastic Voyage, Flash Gordon, the Fugitive, Ghost in the Shell, Going in Style, The Grudge, Headhunters, The Howling, I Know What you Did Last Summer, the Invisible Man, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Manhunt, the Man who Shot Liberty Valence, Masters of the Universe, Memento, Mulan, Murder on the Orient Express, Nosferatu, The Naked Gun, Ocean’s Ocho, Power Rangers, Red Sonja, Retribution, Road House, Shaft, She’s All That, Sister Act, Sleepless, Stargate, Strangers, The Sword in the Stone, The Wolfman, Z.
Now, whoever said Hollywood doesn’t have new ideas…
Aug 102016
‘Ghostbusters’ Heading for $70M-Plus Loss, Sequel Unlikely
Well, not completely accepting reality:
“We’re very proud of the bold movie Paul Feig made, which critics and audiences loved,” a studio rep tells THR. “It has enlivened a 30-year-old brand and put it into the modern zeitgeist. As a result, we have many ideas in the works to further exploit the Ghostbusters universe.”
Audiences didn’t love Ghostbusters to any real degree. The brand hasn’t really been enlivened, and “further exploiting the Ghostbusters universe” is pretty much about half the reason why fans of the original didn’t like the remake. The other half being that the remake just wasn’t very good.
The article says that an animated movie is a possibility for 2019 and an animated TV show in 2018. These are being helmed by Ivan Reitman, who helmed the original Ghostbusters and who was shut out of GB’16.
Now, here’s my idea for a new Ghostbusters movie: It stars the main cast of GB’16, but Kristin Wiig’s character starts off the movie with flashbacks to GB’16… and then wakes up. GB’16 was all a nightmare. But she and her pals are all, in fact, Ghostbusters… just working out of, say, San Francisco, as part of the larger Ghostbusters, Inc. franchise that is still being run out of NYC by Venkman and Stanz. The women are still the same characters, just not written by Adam Sandler; wit, rather than fart jokes. Put Reitman back in charge. Use writers and directors who aren’t Paul Feig. And limited the budget to, say, $80 million. Get rid of the obnoxious CGI. Use practical effects. Talk to the “Deadpool” people.
Whatever the storyline for the San Fran Ghostbusters is, at the end have them file a report (maybe via Skype, whatever) with the home office. This involves cameos by Annie Potts and Dan Akroyd. The SFGB’s tell their tale… and the head office responds with “yeah, we’re getting a lot of that.” This opens it up for Ghostbusters: Paris (starring whoever the hell is popular in French comedy these days) and Ghostbusters: Tokyo and GB: Moscow and GB: Peoria and GB: Mumbai. Film them all with local actors and talent and whatnot, but with oversight from central producers assuring a consistency of look and a link of storylines. Heck, film them all in the local *language.* And then… have an Avengers-style crossover movies with all the different GB’s.
Aug 102016
Seagate Introduces 10GB/s PCIe SSD And 60TB SAS SSD
Seagate has brought out another SSD tech demo with eye-catching specifications. The unnamed SAS SSD packs 60TB of 3D TLC into a 3.5″ drive.
A sixty terabyte drive is a *lot* of data. I think we’re finally getting to the era where data storage capacity will comfortably exceed data storage needs for most applications. 4K ultra-high def movies are something like 100 gigabytes… this means the 60 TB drive could store about 600 movies, maybe 1200 hours in UHD. Maybe something like 5 times as many Blu-Ray quality movies/hours.
Aug 102016
The FAA recently approved plans by the company “Moon Express” to send the MX-1E probe to the lunar surface. This has garnered some press, a lot of it focused on plans to land human ashes on the moon (with some outlets being spectacularly wrong about some aspects of human ashes in space, such as claiming that this will be the first time ashes have been launched into space). Moon Express is claiming that once proven, they will be able to send missions to the moon for $10 million a pop. Included here is requisite verbiage about mining helium 3 from the moon for fusion reactors, though that of course remains a market without a market.
Moon Express has apparently contracted with Rocket Lab to launch their small lunar lander atop Rocket Lab’s “Electron” launch vehicle. If, like me, you reacted to that sentence with “Who? What?” it’s because Rocket Lab, a New Zealand company, hasn’t actually launched one of their Electrons yet. Electron *looks* like a smaller Falcon 9 made out of carbon fiber.
Aug 102016
Russian dashcams continue to prove their worth.
I bet the driver is *thrilled* that the passenger side windows were rolled up.
Feel free to use this as your new favorite metaphor for politics.
Aug 092016
Remember the leak of those Democratic National Committee emails, publicized through Wikileaks? Remember how Russian hackers did that under orders from Putin in order to aid the Trump campaign? A challenger arises:
In short, Julian Assange, darling of the Left, strongly suggests that DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was killed in a “robbery” a little while back (where the robbers didn’t take his wallet, watch, phone, money, credit cards or *anything*), was the actual source of the leaked emails.
In other words…
Aug 092016
Fingers was in a state of bliss here, purring loudly enough to be heard several rooms away.
Aug 092016
The latest line of attack on Hillary is that she’s suffering from ill health, some sort of seizures. I dunno, seems unlikely; she’s been in the spotlight for decades now, you’d think someone would have noticed before this point. I suspect the “seizure” recently caught on camera is just an attempt at humor, a concept that, not being a fully sentient AI with an emotion chip, she has a difficult time in replicating. Still, some interesting things:
PHOTOS=> Hillary’s Handler Carries DIAZEPAM Pen for Patients Who Experience Recurrent Seizures!
And…
PHOTO: Multiple staffers help unstable Hillary up stairs
If nothing else, this’ll give Trump something to needle her with during the debates. Assuming, of course, that Trump doesn’t just outright take a dive during the debates as a way to assure that his old friend and donation-recipient wins handily. But if there is truth to Hillary having these sort of health issues, it just might be that Trump acting like Trump on stage just might trigger Hillary to melt down. And if that happens… how will the electorate react? Rationally, with “well, can’t have *that* hand on the nuclear trigger, so I’m’a votin’ for Johnson,” or sympathetically? I guess we’ll see.