Same here, we loved it at school. Also a liquid simulator called "Aliquid" has just popped into my memory. Hours of fun.

Despite playing hours and hours of Elite on the school BBCs before we got a room full of Archimedes machines, I've only just today noticed that Lander was also made by David Braben.

> Same here, we loved it at school. Also a liquid simulator called "Aliquid"

We had that too, think our copy was just called ‘Water’. Spent a lot of my teenage coding experimenting trying to recreate that, but none of the engines I had access to were suitable for the task as they didn’t have direct pixel access. Wasn’t till I learnt Processing way later that I managed to replicate it.

Wish I’d shared my replication around more because this was a good 8 or so years before the “falling sand game” genre got memetic.

I also wasted a lot of my youth playing Elite, so much fun. Check out the page--it also has annotated source code for Elite (a few different versions up there).

...E-Type...

(who's up next?)

Chocks Away anyone?

Loved Chocks Away!

+ Nevryon (rip off of R-Type)

"High quality" and "can buy on aliexpress" huh. I'd drop the latter requirement.

Kester rosin core is available everywhere including Amazon and is excellent quality. 60/40 works nicely, #44 too.

That's not how I read it:

“Through a partnership with Microsoft, Kroger plans to place cameras at its digital displays, which will use facial recognition tools to determine the gender and age of a customer captured on camera and present them with personalized offers and advertisements on the EDGE Shelf.”

Then in the next paragraph:

“EDGE will allow Kroger to use customer data to build personalized profiles of each customer … quickly updating and displaying the customer’s maximum willingness to pay on the digital price tag—a corporate profiteering capability that would be impossible using a mere paper price tag,” they wrote.

That's exactly dynamic pricing save that the driver is not external factors (weather, proximity to Thanksgiving) and the price is not universal. It's adjusting the displayed price of an item based on the identity of the person looking at it to target a specific price to an identified consumer. A very fine-grained value of 'dynamic'.

It was this line here that says dynamic pricing is happening now, but other sources say only the digital labels have been deployed.

>Since its introduction in 2018, Kroger’s dynamic pricing strategy has expanded to 500 of its nearly 3,000 stores.

That's not what they're actually doing though. It's what two senators up for re-election this year claim they could do.

OK fair.

Yes exactly. Teenage humans frequently do monumentally stupid and destructive stuff because they're bored or want to impress peers. Everything on a continuum from egging and TP'ing houses to keying cars, graffiti/tagging, breaking windows on abandoned buildings, shoplifting, vandalizing public structures, breaking into cars, stealing cars and joyriding, to actual gang murder.

Humans don't handle news story with neutral actors well. We're very conditioned to expect motivated overtly good/bad characters in all stories so people don't handle the possibility well that some things are just agents of chaos. Similar to the recent assassination attempt.

> move the rudder and fins back in the boat

What does that mean?

Not sure but retracting outboard devices out of water?

Short of a 10' dinghy I can't think of any boat where you can remove the rudder and even if 'fin' means 'centerboard' that's still dinghy stuff. Nobody (bar a once-a-generation daredevil) is dinghying across the Atlantic.

There are a number of 40+ foot boats with centerboards, e.g., the Wellington 44 (first that came to mind). Rudders removable underway are less common, but not unknown. Additional rudders like you might find on a non-integrated autonav/windvane system can frequently be moved out of the water. Same with emergency rudders. Still, non-standard language here.

You may be interested to know about the annual trans-atlantic rowing races, where crews compete on boats as small as 6m (Rannoch 10 solo) to cross from the Canaries to Antigua. 40+ crews of 1-5 are scheduled to compete this year.

Not quite 10 foot dinghies, but still impressive in a "mildly unhinged" way. Nothing but respect for these folks.

Oh interesting - I'm familiar with the combination shoal keel/centerboard from daysailers like the Montgomery 17 but wasn't aware of it at the scale of something like the Wellington. I can imagine that being very popular out in the Bahamas (in common with most of the planet it's somewhere I haven't sailed, which is probably why I'd never come across that.)

Point taken on the auxiliary rudder/autopilot hydrovane though damage to that isn't going to sink the boat.

And yes, totally agree with your thoughts on those rowers!

Glad we could get something out of the low alpha end of the thread. Thanks for the knowledge there.

Hydrovane! That's the bloody brand. Couldn't think of it before first cuppa. Agreed it won't sink the boat, but it might reduce the appeal of the boat as a toy (or not... Wish we knew why this was happening.)

Planning a long-term Bahamas-/ICW- capable trip for family, or I probably wouldn't know about those either.

Fair winds and following seas, friend.

You too! Enjoy the cruise.

And I had an unfair advantage - I was already drinking my first cup.

They're attacking exclusively sailboats, which are silent. Granted, not many motor yachts are transiting the straits and those that do tend to be larger than 40 feet, but some do. Their method of attack (disable the rudder) is also only effective on sailboats (the rudder is much, much larger and consequently easier to break.)

I'm really not sure that's the reason. Someone else in this thread had an idea that they were trying to replicate a prior result (obtaining something desirable from a disabled yacht) but I'm inclined to believe they're just being dicks. And why not? We hunt for sport. And we know that orcas engage in play, even quite cruel play with cornered seals. It could be adolescent orcas challenging each other, like pelagic ding dong ditch.

EDIT: The boat in the article was motoring, not under sail. So strike the word "silent" for "a lot quieter than a motorboat."

The article talks about a descent stage built by a private space company* that won't be delivered on time. So even if the rover tested out perfectly, they can't land it.

(*which might just mean "contractor")

I knew this sounded too much like the "already finished rover" wasn't actually finished, which is a very reasonable explanation for not sending it yet.

That seems like the key point!

Assuming this is the case, is there some kind of meaningful penalty for a contractor blowing up an entire mission like that?

I mean... beyond just not getting another contract?

Unless they're very small, they'll still win other contracts. Failure is always an option for companies in the defense sector (NASA being defense adjacent, their contractors are almost all also defense contractors).

Oh, that's a shame. The big willy I drew is only visible at exactly the width I have it set at. I wonder what random things I'm missing. It takes a while to reflow too so it's not like it's easy to resize the window and see in realtime what other people are ding.

I agree with you in terms of how it feels. I haven't yet made up my mind about the balance of benefits and drawbacks. When I get cross about them I try to remember that I've never really minded airplanes crossing my path when stargazing and they're a lot brighter and more distracting. And I think I'd like to keep my righteous anger powder dry for when some gigantic asshole tries to show adverts in the night sky.

It requires active investment to maintain the contsellation, so at least the null case is that they'll all burn up within a few years if SpaceX fails. (And that's something that I think even many fervent Elon-haters don't particularly want to see: given the choice between betting the next 50 years of access to space on Starliner or Falcon and Starship, I know which I'd pick.)

Oh very very well done.