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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Within section 2.1 choose only one subsection to follow. Those are all alternative bootloader options.

    The bootloader subsection chosen in 2.1 on this page should match what is done in Configuring the Bootloader. The default path on that page is GRUB, which does not require any systemd components.

    If following the GRUB path, follow instructions in 2.1.1 and skip the rest of 2.1. This is not at all clear in the handbook.

    I believe that sys-kernel/installkernel is a utility script internal to the Gentoo project that can be configured to work with various bootloader solutions, including (optionally) systemd, and that is what this section 2.1 is talking about.

    This appears to be an out of order dependency in the handbook


  • Companies used to (and some still) transfer profits to shareholders by paying periodic dividends. The stock buyback transfers profits to shareholders by raising the stock price. It became popular because capital gains are taxed at a lower flat rate than dividends.

    Also, dividends are taxed when they are paid, but gains are taxed when the stock gets sold. Wealthy shareholders can sit on unrealised capital gains for years or decades, pay no taxes, and still access the wealth by putting the shares up as collateral for personal loans.

    Stock buybacks are certainly popular with big and wealthy investors.




  • Guy looks kinda like he’s wearing a jacket with a gap at the waist. That would totally not work. You can’t have a gap that lets air out. The Apollo suits were one piece designs; two piece with a hard shell locking waist ring came later.

    We’re talking nowadays about compression suits that are only inflated around the head and maybe some upper body. Those would help a lot with mobility, but nothing like that has been deployed yet.





    • “Case law,” meaning deciding court cases by referring to the results of previous cases, is much less important in Louisiana. Courts of appeals and the Louisiana Supreme Court are more liable to go against previous precedents than they might be in common law states.
    • A lot more basic stuff in Louisiana is written into law statutes. The Louisiana constitution was completely rewritten in the 1970s, but today it is still the size of one of those old fashioned phone books.
    • Louisiana has parishes instead of counties.
    • In a criminal case, the Louisiana constitution does not guarantee defendants the right to trial by jury. That’s an English law tradition thing, not French (or “continental European”). Louisiana criminal defendants do get a right to jury guaranteed by the US constitution and by Louisiana statutes.
    • Louisiana is (basically) the only state in the Union that doesn’t require a unanimous jury verdict in criminal cases. They got partially overruled by the feds on this recently, though.
    • Louisiana does not participate in the Multistate Bar Exam. The Louisiana bar exam is the longest one to sit in the Union.
    • You cannot disinherit any of your children. All children are entitled to a minimum fractional share of your estate. This is a reform actually from Napoleon, getting rid of “primogeniture” that was all the rage in England.
    • Louisiana has a thing called “usufruct” that could be used to, say, let your spouse keep using your assets after you die (and your assets were force-inherited to your children).
    • The governor of Louisiana is required to recite the oath of office twice, in English and French.






  • It seems difficult to have enough bottled oxygen to deorbit yourself, but maybe doable.

    The MMU backpack units on the space shuttle had a total delta v of ~30 m/s. You need about three times that amount to deorbit from ISS. So imagine you need 3 MMUs give it take worth of expendable propellant oxygen, and you can do it. (The MMUs used nitrogen, but for this purpose oxygen is pretty much the same.)

    After you deorbit, you will of course burn up on re-entry with no heat shield. But it might be conceivable to design a personal heat shield surfboard.

    You could also avoid the whole burning up things by braking a lot more during the deorbit maneuver. But instead of 100 m/s, you need to slow down by more than 7000 m/s. That’s quite a few more MMUs worth of gas. But if you do that, then you’re essentially making a free fall jump from space, which has more or less already been demonstrated.

    Edit:

    To address the linked article in some way: each astronaut on the station has a dedicated seat on a capsule to come back down in an emergency. Usually, it’s the same space capsule you came up on, but not always. Those are maintained ready to go at all times, and the astronauts can be back on the ground in 60 minutes whenever they need to. These spacecraft can be operated to splashdown by astronauts alone with no ground assistance, if needed.