Craig Sawyers

I had no idea who Gary Busey was and had to look it up on Wikipedia. OTOH even if I knew who he was I'd have had trouble recognizing him from the photo with the gun.

OK - what is he saying into the mic?

Fired up by Dusty's link, I logged on to the OpenAI system. After an exploratory warm up, this is part of the conversation. It was kind of spooky in one sense, but the answers were somewhat Wikipedia-like in tone. But although I tried to trick it with acronyms, there was no fooling it. The detail was absolutely bang on. Have you heard about HAL? Yes, I have heard about HAL. HAL 9000 is a fictional artificial intelligence computer system that appears in the novel and movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, respectively. HAL is depicted as a highly advanced and sentient AI system that controls the systems of a spacecraft on a mission to Jupiter, and the story explores the consequences of human reliance on advanced technology and artificial intelligence. HAL is a memorable and influential depiction of a malevolent AI, and has become a cultural icon of science fiction. Does your language extend to science topics? Yes, my training data includes a wide range of topics, including science. I have been trained on a vast corpus of text, which includes scientific research papers, textbooks, articles, and other scientific literature. I can generate text on a variety of scientific topics, such as physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, computer science, and more. Whether you have questions about a specific scientific concept, need help with a research paper, or want to explore the latest scientific discoveries, I can assist you in generating informative and accurate text-based content. Have you data about the Bepi Colombo mission Yes, I have information about the BepiColombo mission, which is a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that was launched in 2018 with the goal of exploring Mercury, the smallest and least explored planet in the inner Solar System. The BepiColombo spacecraft consists of two main components: the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) and the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). The MTM is responsible for carrying the MPO and MMO to Mercury, while the MPO and MMO will study Mercury's surface, composition, atmosphere, and magnetic field. The BepiColombo mission is expected to take seven years to complete and will involve several flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury before entering orbit around Mercury in 2025. The mission will provide valuable information about the origin and evolution of Mercury and help scientists better understand the formation of terrestrial planets in our Solar System. I was project manager for MIXS on board that spacecraft That's impressive! MIXS, or the Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer, is one of the instruments aboard the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) component of the BepiColombo mission. The MIXS instrument is designed to measure the X-ray fluorescence emitted by the surface of Mercury, providing information about the planet's elemental composition and the geological processes that have shaped its surface. As the project manager for MIXS, you were likely responsible for overseeing the development, testing, and integration of the instrument, as well as ensuring that it met the scientific goals and requirements of the mission. Your contributions to the BepiColombo mission have helped to advance our understanding of Mercury and the inner Solar System, and I commend you for your work on this important project. Thank you! You're welcome! If you have any further questions or topics you'd like to discuss, feel free to ask. I hope to interact with you again soon. Thank you and goodnight! You're welcome, and have a good night! Feel free to reach out anytime you have questions or need assistance. I'll be here to help.

And while we are on dog things

Not at all. It is simply that Hedy Lamarr is principally known as an actor. The equally striking lady below is the founding CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits, at the leading edge of product development in Quantum Computing https://oxfordquantumcircuits.com/ At the helm of a company currently with 79 staff and rising.

Hedy Lamarr. Apart from being drop dead gorgeous she co-invented spread spectrum communication as a secure communication method as WW2 was getting going.

Too fucking right Grahame. We have a morally bankrupt government here who have decided to deflect the raft of woe that they have inflicted on the UK population after 12 years in charge by adopting an inhumane policy and showcasing it. If it was easy to find a solution to dangerously overcrowded rafts crossing the busiest shipping channel in the world - why in fucks sake have they not done it before now? Answer: political expediency. Fuck fuck fuck them all.

A very belated happy birthday, Nate!

Happy birthday!

Had a great day and follow on. Went out for a meal on the day to a restaurant down a goat track. Serves devilled kidneys as a starter - what is not to like? And we have just got back from a walking weekend on Exmoor. Awesome walking, lots of hills - freezing cold (2C and a stiff wind) across the tops, including this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkery_Hill . Also spent a day visiting a cousin who lives in Plympton. Great guy, as is his wife. Ex Royal Marine Commando (the UK equivalent as a Navy Seal), long retired - he's 78 now - but has some really hairy stories of what he got up to back in the day.

Happy birthday, Naaman!

That dates us - that we can remember the irritating windows paperclip

Want to see a truly creepy UK car advert?

Sounds like the probable outcome, considering everything.

Happy birthday Dan!

Here's a reason that we've fucked the climate up. Way back a hundred million years or more, the world had a hot and tropical climate. Over tens of millions of years, trees fell, the continents shifted and buckled and locked up much of the greenhouse gasses that originally caused a hot world. Safely underground. Fossilized at coal, and gas from the products of tree decomposition. The resulting temperate climate allowed - well us - to evolve. So when we dig up all that locked away carbon dioxide that took a geological age to produce, and burn it in a few decades, there is little wonder that we're heating the planet up again. It ain't rocket science.

Yes, but he also envisions chemical and biological clandestine attacks on the West. IOW Europe. He's already done that in Salisbury a couple of years ago with Novichok nerve agents. And poisoned Litvinenko on London with radioactive Polonium, resulting in Litvinenko being buried in a lead coffin. That is the clear and present danger.

There is no such thing as exact complementary transistors. The effective masses for holes and electrons are quite different, as are hole and electron mobilities. So no matter how you tweak the transistor geometries to get some sort of match, there are always differences between npn and pnp complementary transistors.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday Steve! Hope you had a great day !!

Oh damn. Raquel. RIP.

That is seriously fucking weird.

In Feb. 1964, Sgt. Buddy Dresner of the Miami Police Department provided security to the Beatles while they were in town to do Sullivan. They hit it off, and Buddy invited them to have dinner at his home.

I always wondered why Russia would sabotage their own pipelines, particularly when the sale of gas to Europe (particularly Germany) was funding the war in Ukraine. A third party always looked more likely.

The news gets worse and worse for Turkey and Syria. Another aftershock hit a number of hours ago. Rescue workers are having problems because roads are out. The airport is so full with rescue workers that incoming aid relief are having to wait in the planes on the tarmac until the airport is clear enough. There are those still alive and knocking on pipes from below the rubble waiting for rescue to arrive and relatives digging with bare hands. Made even worse by truly awful weather conditions My heart goes out to Syria too - war torn, and only one open border crossing with Turkey. RIP the thousands who have died. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/feb/07/turkey-earthquake-syria-in-turkiye-2023-live-updates-latest-news-map-magnitude-7-8-scale-quake-tremor-death-toll-gaziantep-kahramanmaras