Ship's Locker: Out of the Closet

[Condottiere]

Nerd Chat Line - SNL

The Exclusive Connections spokeswoman (Paris Hilton) says they know what kind of guy calls a sex line at 1 am: nerds! Whether the nerd likes Star Wars, Star Trek, or Hobbit, they have the girl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTs6FYgT_MU


For all those lonely Travellers that need a Help Line.

 

[Condottiere]

Should We Nuke Mars?

Is it possible to make Mars inhabitable by nuking the surface? Kyle breaks down the possibility of atomic terraforming in this week's episode of Because Science!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URC9ay6evT8

Better than hurricanes.

 

[Condottiere]

Space Sports

Get a free month of Curiosity Stream: http://curiositystream.com/isaacarthur
Humanity has a long and inventive history of sports and games, and the future will offer us many new options for athletics as we move out in space, be it racing around the Moon, climbing the mountains of Mars, hang gliding on Venus, or zero-g gymnastics. We'll also explore potential challenges and opportunities offered by genetic enhancement, cybernetics, and virtual reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q11w9UF5vKM

 

[Linwood]

Save for half....

https://kotaku.com/truck-carrying-gaming-dice-spills-onto-highway-rolls-a-1838218869

 

[Condottiere]

How To Check The Balance Of Your Dice | DIY Easy Trick

A quick video on the DIY salt-water dice balance test. It's super easy, super fast and you can tell which dice are fair to use in your next dungeons and dragons or pathfinder game! Or Traveller.

I used chessex dice when testing the weight, balance and spin of these dice. The clear dice seem to be the most FAIR dice to use, while the solid or swirly colored dice seem to not be 100% fair.

Dice like the ones shown are typically used in Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder or an infinite number of other tabletop games and RPGs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HhFz7fsFKk

 

[Linwood]

Apparently there’s been some serious scientific studies on this that suggests a 1 is ever-so-slightly more likely than other results on a D6. And that a rough die-rolling surface is more likely to generate more bounces and presumably more randomness.

https://www.insidescience.org/news/dice-rolls-are-not-completely-random

I’ve also recently come across a dice-rolling robot study that indicated machined dice are more fair than tumble-polished dice. The rounded edges from tumble-polishing apparently lead to variations in size of the faces. Edges from machining the faces are more consistent, but you may have to go in and polish the gate for best results. I’ll post a link if I can figure where that page was....

 

[Condottiere]

One would assume that if the dots are excavated, it should produce an imbalance in that the sixer face would have less material than the oner.

 

[Anonymous]

One would assume that if the dots are excavated, it should produce an imbalance in that the sixer face would have less material than the oner.

Casino dice are machined to avoid this.

edit: So I fact checked myself. More correctly, I should say manufactured not machined. They may use different paints or fills for the spots to balance the weight.

 

[Linwood]

Moppy is correct - typically the casino dots are paint-filled in way that keeps the dice as balanced as possible. They also use a clear plastic so it’s easy for people to spot voids and clumps of material that could make a die unfair.

Which makes me really wonder about a recent Kickstarter dice project where the dots were stainless steel ball bearings pressed into the material. Hard to see how those dice would be truly fair, although I believe the creator claimed they were.

 

[Anonymous]

Which makes me really wonder about a recent Kickstarter dice project where the dots were stainless steel ball bearings pressed into the material. Hard to see how those dice would be truly fair, although I believe the creator claimed they were.

Dig out some extra material under the bearings.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Condottiere]

Project Heaviside by Kitty Hawk

Project Heaviside is Kitty Hawk’s latest high-performance electric VTOL vehicle. It is designed to be fast, small and exceedingly quiet.
http://kittyhawk.aero/heaviside/

Noise levels
80dB - Large city intersection
60dB - Small town intersection
40dB - Rural intersection at night
**38dB - Heaviside at 1500ft overhead**
30dB - Bedroom at night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7mc3C19kE4

 

[Linwood]

Electric commercial aircraft are on the near horizon...

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48630656

Sadly we still seem to be a ways away from grav vehicles.

 

[Condottiere]

Closed combustion (bi)cycle.

 

[Condottiere]

Trading (Interstellar) Spaces: Scheming Onions

In this video:

Remember that scene in the movie Trading Places where Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd bankrupted those two old rich guys by cornering the frozen orange juice market? It turns out that a guy actually once did make many millions of dollars by doing pretty much exactly as they did in the movie, only instead of orange juice, he bought onions... millions upon millions of onions. Besides getting filthy rich in his clever little scheme, he inspired the Onion Futures Act, which banned selling onion futures in the United States. We can’t make this stuff up…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRgAYxuQE_E


You laugh, but India runs on onions.

Not all planets will be eco friendly to onion farming, so speculating on freighting onions may turn out to be quite lucrative.

 

[Linwood]

And then there was Timothy Dexter - the epitome of the contrarian investor. Anyone familiar with the “coals to Newcastle” idiom might be familiar with his story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Dexter

He’d make an interesting Traveller patron....

 

[Condottiere]

Ancestor of Forrest Gump.

 

[Condottiere]

The Sphere Handbook 2018

Percentage of the affected population who have adequate living space in and
immediately around their shelters to carry out daily activities
• Minimum 3.5 square metres of living space per person, excluding cooking
space, bathing area and sanitation facility
• 4.5–5.5 square metres of living space per person in cold climates or urban
settings where internal cooking space and bathing and/or sanitation facilities
are included
• Internal floor-to-ceiling height of at least 2 metres (2.6 metres in hot
climates) at the highest point

 

[Linwood]

Makes starship staterooms sound almost palatial...

 

[GamingGlen]

What size is Korben Dallas' apartment in the movie The Fifth Element?