1) Message boards : Number crunching : Unknown Noise From Computer (Message 1974454) Posted 10 Jan 2019 by JakeTheDog Post: when my hard drive became 3-4 years old, it started vibrating my case, causing a faint, high pitch buzzing or whining sound. i suspended it in a 5 inch bay with elastic bands and that noise stopped. but it seems unlikely that it would be the cause for your noise, though, since you only notice it during SETI tasks. i suppose you could rule that out by unscrewing your hard drive and placing it on a towel or rubber pad while you run SETI.

2) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : SpaceX ready to launch again. (Message 1921012) Posted 25 Feb 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: I think Curiosity used a heatshield with a drogue chute and parachute. Then near the ground, they switched from parachute to hovering with rockets. While the whole thing hovered, it lowered the rover with a winch. Winch detached and the delivery thing rocketed away and landed/crashed somewhere else. From what I read about the SpaceX fairings, they use small gas thrusters to orient the fairing to survive reentry. Then later on deeper in the atmosphere, a "parafoil" deploys and it has some degree of control on directing which way the fairing falls. I believe they want the fairings to avoid touching the water. There might be some metal devices or components inside, or maybe to prevent water from getting in between the different layers of plastics and carbon fiber. I'm guessing, the less water that gets on it, the less refurbishment needed to reuse it.

3) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : SpaceX ready to launch again. (Message 1920788) Posted 24 Feb 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: If you mean the Mach 8 mentioned in the tweet, I think you may have missed the mention of the parachute later on? I know I miss stuff when I skim through stuff

4) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : SpaceX ready to launch again. (Message 1917421) Posted 7 Feb 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: Greatest engineering feat, at least in aerospace, I'll have seen played live for some time to come, until the next line of rockets SpaceX comes up with makes its appearance.

5) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : SpaceX ready to launch again. (Message 1912647) Posted 12 Jan 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: My guesses are either the satellite did make it to orbit and the owners want to feed misinformation, or the satellite didn't separate from the 2nd stage and it was Northrup Gruman's responsibility. Northrup built the satellite adapter. Some articles are saying because it was so secretive, Northrup mounted and enclosed the satellite to the 2nd stage themselves. Either way, it's bad PR for SpaceX. However, SpaceX is not opening any investigations, and other customers and NASA haven't asked for any. So SpaceX must be pretty confident that their rocket didn't have any problems during the mission. Can't wait for the Falcon Heavy launch. Looks like it will be delayed until February. The static fire was been delayed multiple times.

6) Message boards : Number crunching : Spectre vulnerability effects Nvidia cards (Message 1912646) Posted 12 Jan 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: I didn't make any quantitative comparisons, but completion time of tasks doesn't seem too different. The "Device Peak FLOPS" in the task results are the same before and after the update, but don't know how accurate that is. My system did become a little unstable after the new driver, though. I did a system restore and a clean install of the driver, seemed to solve the issue.

7) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Star Wars: The Last Jedi -- SPOILERS! (Message 1912644) Posted 12 Jan 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: Why does it look like these two can be father and son? I think so, the resemblance is there. My goodness! You have certainly put a lot of thought into this. Well, I didn't nitpick so much about Force Awakens. It was alright, so I just moved on. But the moment Last Jedi ended, I kept scratching my head, so I sat down and took time to review what was bothering me. Just watched this trailer. KENOBI: A Star Wars Story They have their own issues, but some things I like about the standalone films are that we get to see new stories apart from the main characters of the franchise, and they don't have to follow the same formula. It's also why I like the Expanded Universe. The original trilogy set up a whole galaxy of possibilities. While most stories were about the central characters, many were about supporting characters, and sometimes entirely new characters. And the genres can range between fantasy, sci-fi, military, and space opera. Even more, a lot of stories made an effort to participate in the same timeline and sometimes reference each other. That's kind of why I was hoping for something really new in the Disney trilogy. So many stories to choose from, but even if they didn't choose to draw from the Expanded Universe, I'm sure they could've thought of something new. Instead they chose to take fewer risks and do a reboot/remake. I suppose the standalone films are where they decided to do things differently.

8) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Star Wars: The Last Jedi -- SPOILERS! (Message 1911991) Posted 9 Jan 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: About the movie being a remake. Reviewing the protagonist: Rei and Luke's stories are very similar. Looking for a teacher, finds the teacher, teacher is resistant at first, then teacher comes around, student has some kind of vision or experience and wants to leave, teacher disagrees, student leaves, teacher has a talk with a Jedi ghost, student has a confrontation with their antagonist while failing to achieve their goal for having left the teacher, teacher dies, student meets up with friends and hugs or hold hands then camera pans out into space. My opinion is the overall chain of events for Rei in Last Jedi and Luke in Empire Strikes Back were nearly identical. Even the title "The Last Jedi" seems to suggest the protagonist's story is being reused. Rei is the last living Jedi with some form of training, after Luke dies (although I'm not sure about Leia). Luke was the last living Jedi with some form of training, after Yoda died. Then the rest of the movie is not as identical as the protagonist's subplot, but has a lot of similar subplots. The beginning of the Empire Strikes Back was an Imperial attack on a Rebel base on an ice planet. I might be wrong, but I believe there was a failed attack from orbit (shield generator and ion cannons stopped the star destroyers bombardment), so then they fight it out on the ground. The Rebels make an escape. In the Last Jedi, It also starts out with a failed attack from orbit (base was already empty, dreadnaught gets hit by bombers). But there's no fight on the ground, and the Resistance escapes. The ground fight is delayed until the end of the movie. The ground fight has some similarities to Empire Strikes Back: ice planet (or salt), big AT-AT walkers, turrets and trenches in the snow, giant blast door in front of protagonist base, snow speeders (although 1 version can't fly). What's different is The Last Jedi has a weird car chase arc that allows the delay of the ground battle to the end of the movie. The other subplot was Han/Leia going to Cloud City, and Finn/Rose going to the casino. These were not as similar as the lead protagonist's story, nor the Imperial/Rebel battles, but borrows a lot of ideas. The reasons for separating from everyone else and going on this detour were different. But they both end up meeting another rogue character. The rogue character is supposed to help them, but ends up betraying them. The specific contents of the parallel arcs have a lot of differences. For example, Han got captured, but Finn did not. However, Han does outlive his antagonists (Jabba and Bobba) in Return of the Jedi, while Finn defeats Captain Phasma in a much earlier resolution. The specific order of events and the places where they happened were different. As the final result of both movies' detours, there is a kiss. In Empire Strikes Back, it makes sense. In Last Jedi, it was totally unexpected and weird. My opinion is the movie was a remake. Replying to the comment about the size of the Resistance. The New Republic should have millions of planets, and the Force Awakens only showed 1 star system getting devastated. By the end of that movie, Finn is in a coma. Finn wakes up early in Last Jedi, so the time in between should have been short. How did the New Republic go from millions of planets to a tiny fleet? Even if it was just a small group that got caught unawares, why was there no response from any of the tens of thousands of military garrisons around the galaxy? This plot hole is a little of a nitpick, since galaxy-wide considerations are more for the Expanded Universe instead of the movies. Or perhaps the First Order had thousands of fleets that destroyed the New Republic's military off-camera. Replying to the comment about Luke dying. There are a few times in the Expanded Universe where Jedi have died from channeling too much force through their bodies, so what happened to Luke isn't entire unreasonable. But I don't know if the writer intended to use the same explanation, since the new movies appear independent from the Expanded Universe. And people who only watch the movies, I think some were left confused about the way it happened. Same with Leia surviving vacuum. Some Jedi have done the same in the Expanded Universe, but I also think some audience would have found Leia's scene a bit bizarre. There are dozens of other things I can complain about. The utility of arcs that didn't seem to result in much story progression (Vice-Admiral's lack of communication, the casino detour, celebrating the injury of people and property in the casino), use of characters as the 2nd movie in a trilogy (what happened to all the set-ups from the Force Awakens?), lots of plot holes (car chase that made no sense, driving a convertible through a laser beam, walking and dragging someone across a flat field many kilometers wide right in front of enemy tanks). I'll just leave it alone since I've already written to much.

9) Message boards : Number crunching : Spectre vulnerability effects Nvidia cards (Message 1911648) Posted 8 Jan 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: Nvidia initially made an announcement that they thought they were not affected, but would look into it. This new announcement comes out a day later. It says they are not affected by Meltdown, which is the good news, because that vulnerability has much to do with hardware. Then it says they don't have a fix yet for 1 of the Spectre variants. But they have a patch for the other Spectre variant coming out this week. No details on whether there is any effect on GPU processing speed.

10) Message boards : Number crunching : Intel security flaw (Message 1911060) Posted 6 Jan 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: This is my understanding of what should be done for these vulnerabilities. 1) Updates your operating system. Windows 10 patch is out. Windows 8 and 7 come out Tuesday the 9th. Dont know about older Windows, like Vista. Some virus scanners might block installation of the Windows updates. Check your virus scanner's website for info, or do additional research if you are unable to get the updates. OS will probably come out with more patches in the future. 2) Update your browsers. You type a specific command in Chrome's address bar, search for a "Strict Site Isolation" feature and enable it. Chrome will have more patches released at the end of this month. Firefox has an update out. The description says it "mitigates" the vulnerability, so I don't know how good this patch is. Safari will have one soon? Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer are supposed to have them already, but I don't see it for my Windows 7. Possibly they are for Windows 10, I will have to check again on Tuesday. I'm sure all the developers will be working on new patches as time goes on. 3) Reduce your visits to suspicious websites and sites that have a lot of ads, until more security has been checked out. 4) There are motherboard patches for Intel Management Engine. Im not sure how this works. Each motherboard manufacturer should have info. However, they seem to include only those made in the past few years. I do not know what to do about my older rigs. WARNING: I think these are firmware update. Firmware updates for motherboards have high risk, if the update process is interrupted. 5) Cell phones. I believe Apple phones already have OS patches. Android patches have been given to Google phones, and manufacturers. It's up to the manufacturers to send their own updates. The Android security patch should say Janaury 2018. 6) Android browsers. I only checked Chrome Mobile. The current thing to do is also enable "Strict Site Isolation." Might have more patches in future updates.

11) Message boards : SETI@home Science : The Most Mysterious Star in the Galaxy (Message 1910386) Posted 3 Jan 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: Today I'm seeing news articles quoting Jason Wright saying the analysis of the observations are now leaning towards the dust cloud explanation. https://phys.org/news/2018-01-alien-megastructure-dimming-mysterious-star.html The team studying the star released a draft paper today. I think this is it below. I don't understand it, but the finding that is driving the suggested conclusion is that the dimming of light isn't even across all wavelengths, which would NOT be consistent with opaque objects obscuring the star. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.00732.pdf

12) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Alternatives to cable and satellite tv (Message 1910171) Posted 2 Jan 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: I think Internet streaming services will pretty much replace cable TV. More choices, and the flexibility of not having a schedule. And it's a pricing factor. If people can get what they want for a lower cost, they're going to switch. The problem is the initial cost or effort for the technology. There are still a lot of people who don't have much experience with computers and the Internet. So cable TV will linger on. Cable companies will still make money off of their Internet connections. I wonder if they will start their own full streaming services and try to compete with Netflix, since they can now legally change bandwidth however they like. Or maybe they will make using Netflix cost more, in order to give themselves time to transition.

13) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Star Wars: The Last Jedi -- SPOILERS! (Message 1910170) Posted 2 Jan 2018 by JakeTheDog Post: The actors were good, lots of neat effects and CGI designs, and a lot of effort was clearly put into the film. But there was just too much I didn't like about the movie. First, I kept hearing phrases like "bold new directions" in interviews with the director, and I thought that meant they were going to stop with the remakes. Turned out to be a remake of The Empire Strikes Back. But not wanting a remake is only my personal preference. As the 2nd part of a trilogy, it didn't connect very well with The Force Awakens. It seemed to toss out ideas from the previous film, in order to fit the characters into an altered version of The Empire Strikes Back. The writing wasn't so good. The humor wasn't very funny or else out of place. There were plenty of plot holes, big and small. The remade scenes didn't have very good payoff vs the originals. There were scenes that I couldn't think of a purpose for. SPOILERS SPOILERS ****** Then back to a personal preference. Luke went through a traumatic experience and became a hermit, and so did Obi-wan and Yoda. But Luke really went from the hero of the original trilogy, to trying to murder his own nephew while nephew was sleeping? And then Luke's sacrifice was done to buy a few minutes of time for the others to escape. Oh, but there was a way out of that base all along. No one bothered to physically look for it after checking the blueprints. I thought the writer could have came up with a more creative scenario. *****END SPOILERS SPOILERS The movie was exciting, and visually nice, but there were so many moments throughout the movie where I had to pause and scratch my head. It's a fantasy space movie, and I have a very low threshold for suspension of belief. I came out of the theater wondering what in the world I had just watched.

14) Message boards : SETI@home Science : What did you think about? (Message 1907821) Posted 18 Dec 2017 by JakeTheDog Post: i don't think the cost of the $22 million program, or the existence of the program, is unusual. $22 million doesn't seem like a lot, when the contractor builds a warehouse and investigation facility, and then the government has expenses to oversee the contractor. the existence of the program also isn't unusual. when pilots report UFOs, someone has to make sure it's not some kind of hazard to planes and people. many countries has similar programs, and the US also had them in the past. what i am concerned about is why there's so much secrecy. and also why pilots and soldiers in the US will get ridiculed or have their careers potentially affected if they report UFOs. they could be natural phenomenon that can affect flight safety, why discourage pilots to report about them?

15) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : SpaceX ready to launch again. (Message 1907475) Posted 16 Dec 2017 by JakeTheDog Post: SpaceX's rate of progress is impressive. NASA seems to be OK with reused rockets for space station resupply. Not sure about manned missions, yet. But I'm sure they will be by the time SpaceX is ready for the Dragon 2 demonstration flight. Blue Origin is also making progress, although at a slower pace. They released some footage of their most recent flight just a few days ago.

16) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : SpaceX ready to launch again. (Message 1892474) Posted 29 Sep 2017 by JakeTheDog Post: Musk said that they need to generate methane and O2 from CO2 and ice at Mars, in order to have a ship return to Earth. The speech yesterday didn't give much new information. The design of his ship and booster had some changes, compared to last year's speech, but it's pretty much the same overall idea. The big changes I heard was that Musk is interested in the Moon now, previously he was not. Maybe he hopes to generate revenue from Moon missions to help fund his R&D. And he eventually wants to switch most of his factory/workforce to this new rocket, and only have the Falcon 9 and the yet unflown Falcon Heavy as backups. He wants to do a Mars mission in 2022 as a test and to deliver cargo. Also to search for sites with plenty of water for generating fuel, and test the fuel equipment. Then 2024 he wants a manned mission to build permanent facilities for the fuel generation. This also isn't new information. I think SpaceX will eventually carry out their goals, but I doubt they can do this so soon. At the end of yesterday's speech, he mentioned and showed an animation of using this new rocket/ship for suborbital flights on Earth, the go anywhere in less than 1 hours. But it seemed like a thought exercise.

17) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : SpaceX ready to launch again. (Message 1892295) Posted 29 Sep 2017 by JakeTheDog Post: Musk is about to give a speech with updates about SpaceX progress and future plans. Should be in 1.5 hours from now, September 29 04:30 UTC, or 00:30 US Eastern. It will be broadcasted live on SpaceX's YouTube channel.

18) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : SpaceX ready to launch again. (Message 1869028) Posted 24 May 2017 by JakeTheDog Post: In about 8 days, June 1st just before 6pm Eastern US time, SpaceX is going to fly another ISS mission. This time, they are reusing a Dragon capsule for the first time, although I believe a large number of components have been replaced because of seawater. But it shouldn't look different from previous missions, as far as visuals. It's a daytime launch, so should have good video. But it's starting to feel expected to see a rocket land now.

19) Message boards : News : Free Speech and SETI@home (Message 1869027) Posted 24 May 2017 by JakeTheDog Post: everytime i log in and see there's an update in the "news" subforum, i wonder if there's actual news or if people are just tricking me and still posting to this thread. and now i have made a post as well.

20) Message boards : SETI@home Science : The Most Mysterious Star in the Galaxy (Message 1868735) Posted 22 May 2017 by JakeTheDog Post: Does the initial findings say anything about that 1 theory I heard in the livestream from a few days ago, about how maybe a planet crashed into the star a while ago. That might have made the star abnormally brighter, and it's been irregularly trending down in brightness back to normal levels?

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