The Pod Bay

12:52 AM

@OrganicMarble (it seems I failed to hit <CR> on this line last night) OK I will keep this handy. Thanks! I've accepted your answer in meta.

@PearsonArtPhoto that sounds promising!

@PearsonArtPhoto i'm on central time. what should i be looking for?

Organic Marble

1:13 AM

@uhoh This is but my 2nd foray into chat...I am not sure what you are referrring to.

@OrganicMarble sorry. I wrote "OK I will keep this handy. Thanks! I've accepted your answer in meta." last night (my time zone) but for got to hit Carriage Return. I did just now. Not a particularly captivating tale I suppose. Now searching for coffee...

Organic Marble

OK! Best wishes on your caffeine quest!

@OrganicMarble yes, the addition to the "help/on-topic page is a great idea as well!

@kimholder Never mind, I just went ahead and pushed the change without waiting to confirm I was right.

1:24 AM

I guess it wouldn't hurt, however, if you copy/pasted the Earth distance line from whereisroadster.com just to make sure.

But where is this vehicle? The current location is 8,743,511 miles (14,071,322 km, 0.094 AU) from Earth, moving away from Earth at a speed of 8,183 mi/h (13,169 km/h, 3.66 km/s).

@uhoh Carriage return... yes... that is the origin of 'Enter' isn't it....

Huh. That's not the same thing that I am seeing... Sigh.

The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile

►

an important cautionary tale...

I've watched it more than once...

Actually, now that I look at this, I think that confirms the problem, it just hasn't updated because of caching.

But where is this vehicle? The current location is 8,777,499 miles (14,126,020 km, 0.094 AU) from Earth, moving away from Earth at a speed of 8,204 mi/h (13,202 km/h, 3.67 km/s).

That is what I'm seeing right now.

and also note - daylight saving hasn't started for us :)

or is it ended...

1:32 AM

I suspected 2 hours difference.

Started.

54,000 km difference between our values, or about 4 hours...

Maybe I was doing the right thing in the wrong direction? Sigh...

But where is this vehicle? The current location is 8,745,018 miles (14,073,747 km, 0.094 AU) from Earth, moving away from Earth at a speed of 8,184 mi/h (13,171 km/h, 3.66 km/s).

Wait a second...

I had the DST code, you didn't. With me forcing a recache, we are now getting the same thing! And it would have been a 4 hour difference before!

14071542.177224174

That is what I show at 1:30 per the observational value in Horizon.

It all checks out! Yeah!!!

i'm impressed :)

i regularly couldn't even get the time right on the event announcer, thanks to bungling the conversion to gmt.

10 minutes difference. There might be a minute of difference somewhere in there, but I will take it.

I've had the wrong value in my code for 6 weeks, with millions of people seeing it...

I must have done something different with my old observational files, mixing time zones, and that correction fixed it, but broke everything else... Sigh.

At least, for EST...

most of us are happy if it is accurate to within a few thousand km.

Well, 10 minutes difference, when there should have been 8. So it's pretty close.

Yeah, I think it was right if you were in EST until I switched the methods, which was about a week ago. I think I did it with the launch of the new website.

I'll tell you, I'm becoming way more proficient with Horizons then probably any other API I've ever used...

1:54 AM

@PearsonArtPhoto I thought computers get their local time from the internet, which uses GPS time either from local GPS receivers or a NIST server. If each computer's system time is available to the browser in UTC, then can't the Time Zone Problem be completely avoided?

Sometimes computers like to assume that you are using one time zone, when you think they are using another one.

Can't your script just ask for UTC time instead of asking for local time?

In Python (the only thing I know) there's just time.gmtime()

It gives the system clock without any zoneification

I'm pretty sure system clocks are in UTC, and then wrapped in a method that adds the local time zone offset.

That is what I thought I was doing, but it turns out that I was using the wrong bit of code.

Not all clocks are in UTC, but that is a more modern approach.

okay I see.

They at least know how to convert from system time to UTC time.

End of Time (Unix) - Numberphile

2:12 AM

Well I really don't think any modern OS uses local time as fundamental, and "converts" to UTC. But I suppose the question is academic.

@kimholder this video is fun!

I'm a big fan of the Numberphile videos, I didn't know there was a Computerphile series as well.

►

Aha! At 07:50 in your video it links to the complementary Numberphile video!

spoiler alert: 32-bit integer time! The same problem that YouTube fixed in their views counter before Gangnam Style broke it.

3 hours later…

5:46 AM

"Okay, so we invented viable and fully functional jetpacks, what do we do now?" Japan : "SAMOURAI FIGHTS!!!" https://t.co/X8dy5XTN23

Tweeted by Fire_Sister_Bee on March 24, 2018 at 12:08 PM

Somebody reassure me this is not real?

Edlothiad

@uhoh In case you or others weren't aware, if it's on the help/on-topic page, it can be quickly linked to with a magic link [help/on-topic] which should render like this --> [help/on-topic]

Nope apparently it chose not to render, well it works in comments

No Mars Direct in the resource list. Or Roving Mars my Steve Squyres. Must be reading the wrong things...

6 hours later…

Quantum Computing Site Launches with the Help of Strangeworks

12:20 PM

I found this article while looking for a larger size of the impact probability plot that I needed for this question

La reale possibilità di essere colpiti da un rottame della navicella spaziale Tiamgong-1

The embedded video is humorous, but to hot for direct reference. Requires a historical perspective. Lyrics: "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun

3 hours later…

Feeds

3:49 PM

Rachel Ferrigno on March 27, 2018

Last week, we rolled out our latest feature designed to help tech industry leaders engage more directly with the developer community. In a partnership with Strangeworks, Stack Exchange launched the Quantum Computing Q&A site at the SXSW Convergence Keynote in Austin, TX. During his Keynote, Strangeworks Founder and CEO William “whurley” Hurley discussed how quantum computing will forever change the computing landscape with advances in fields like artificial intelligence and next-gen cryptography. To say that quantum computing will fundamentally change how we think about computers is an understatement. …

2 hours later…

called2voyage

5:55 PM

Aw, James Webb delayed again. :( space.com/…

2 hours later…

7:43 PM

man. wrong solvent run through system > must replace valves. what a giant, delicate thing JWST is.

2 hours later…