Alex_H - Network

Once we've finally stopped breaking our climate, worked out quantum computers and designed a truly free internet ... could somebody...

Once we've finally stopped breaking our climate, worked out quantum computers and designed a truly free internet ... could somebody please get around to including citations in PDFs in such a way that I don't have to manually scroll back from the References section to wherever I was before I clicked the citation link?

About to go and watch #Mindlab, a theatre piece about #socialsafety in academia, and probably a few other things too.Not sure what to expect...

About to go and watch #Mindlab, a theatre piece about #socialsafety in academia, and probably a few other things too.
Not sure what to expect but fairly certain it will expand my horizon.

The audience seems to be mostly female. A significant observation at a technical university.

More news from #ICAS2024:The DLR designed an aircraft which may soon be opened up for anyone (yes please!), and it suggests that a...

More news from #ICAS2024:

The DLR designed an aircraft which may soon be opened up for anyone (yes please!),
and it suggests that a redesigned A321neo could have about 10% less drag/lift *and* be some 8t lighter.
https://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE/ICAS2024/data/preview/ICAS2024_0398.htm

And my former colleagues at the DLR have outdone themselves on laminar wing design:
https://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE/ICAS2024/data/preview/ICAS2024_0102.htm
That's another 10% drag reduction.

On that plane, the #APPU engine would net 20% of total thrust, and kerosene burn would be <60% of the A321neo.

The #APPU trick: Add a small hydrogen tank, a small engine, and downsize the main engines accordingly. Most of the aircraft is unchanged. If...

The #APPU trick: Add a small hydrogen tank, a small engine, and downsize the main engines accordingly. Most of the aircraft is unchanged. If you update the main engines to latest technology too, the total savings is 23%.

It can fall back to kerosene, which is important while we're not sure when "green" H₂ will be available everywhere, and if the fancy new technology has reliability issues, we still have the conventional main engines. That should help get it developed and accepted much quicker.

Something more pleasant:ICAS 2024 has just published their proceedings:https://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE/ICAS2024/, including my own...

Something more pleasant:

ICAS 2024 has just published their proceedings:
https://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE/ICAS2024/

, including my own contribution on the APPU project:
https://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE/ICAS2024/data/preview/ICAS2024_0179.htm

Bottomline: It seems plausible that we could introduce small hydrogen engines on a large scale, on passenger planes, and do a lot of good.
With some smart choices, 14.5% thrust contribution nets 15.5% CO₂ reduction, with modest modifications to the aircraft, and fairly low technological risk.

So what?I see a pattern here:Dassault markets 3DX to managers, not to engineers: It took me >1h to even find out what 3DX *is*...

So what?

I see a pattern here:
Dassault markets 3DX to managers, not to engineers: It took me >1h to even find out what 3DX *is* (replacement of Catiav5).

Simultaneously, whoever decides doesn't seem to figure in what the people who actually use the tool think about it. Including my own employer. Nobody was asked if this was useful, there were no test users, no discussion, barely a warning.

I think this is a trend, and I'm not in favour.

7/7
(phew! Had to get that out of my system!)

This also means that the useless error messages they introduced in 2003 or whenever Catia v5 originated are still exactly the same...

This also means that the useless error messages they introduced in 2003 or whenever Catia v5 originated are still exactly the same ("one of your guide curves does not intersect with a profile", with 20 guides, and 100 profiles...), including funny French->English translation errors.

But now it runs through a browser engine, so it's much slower, and if you press the hotkeys to quickly, you'll break it.
They did update the colour scheme, and added ambient occlusion!

6/x…

…the only things new (for parametric surface/solid modelling!), are forced online storage, on Dassault Servers, of everything, inability...

…the only things new (for parametric surface/solid modelling!), are forced online storage, on Dassault Servers, of everything, inability to download or work on local files, and anything saved from our group landing in the same friggin' shared folder, so you have to search and hope that everybody gives meaningful names to every little thing they make. Oh, and version control, but without branches, commit messages or diffs. It just increments a number, and you need to know what that means.

5/x…

The "funny" thing is that my university decided to force us to use 3D Experience instead of Catia v5 because they got it for free,...

The "funny" thing is that my university decided to force us to use 3D Experience instead of Catia v5 because they got it for free, but now it's causing unmeasured amounts of time spent finding workarounds.
Meanwhile, we got the 10+ years old Catia v5 licence back, but we can't get our stuff out of 3DX because it will only export the full parametric model to the very latest v5 version, which we haven't got.

Of course, the modelling itself is entirely unchanged…
4/x

…eventually it crashes because the frickin' hard drive is full. The 3D Experience program folder now weighs in at 90 GiB, and nothing...

…eventually it crashes because the frickin' hard drive is full. The 3D Experience program folder now weighs in at 90 GiB, and nothing works.
The installer says that something went wrong and recommends uninstalling. But there is no "uninstall" button, and 3D Experience is always installed through the browser, not using regular old Windows installation files, so there is no clearly-documented way to uninstall it. I know because I've tried.

That's 1.5 working hours spent creating an IT issue.
3/x…

Then, some 7-ish Gigabytes of updates to a few modules."Generative Shape Design" has been renamed, after 20+ years (Catia v5)....

Then, some 7-ish Gigabytes of updates to a few modules.
"Generative Shape Design" has been renamed, after 20+ years (Catia v5). Okay, so I better install the new one... which takes the whole installed size to just above 60GiB -- to do nothing that Catia v5 can't do.
...but it still won't run.
I find another module that wants an update, incl. >20GiB extra content, abort before anything is downloaded, and now every single module is listed as uninstalled. I try to install again, and …
2/x

Gah, another rant about software I'm forced to use:Tried to start 3D Experience again after a few months. Of course it refuses to start...

Gah, another rant about software I'm forced to use:

Tried to start 3D Experience again after a few months. Of course it refuses to start without an update. Clicking the "update" button sends me to the "dashboard" site in Firefox, where I have to figure out which modules need an update, and trigger it, separately, for each installed module.
(nothing new, so far, this is as intended -- we can't just automate updates!)

First, it installs a few gigabytes worth of "Chromium Embedded Plugin"

1/x…

dangit, what is it with that picture? Sometimes it shows up in the web interface, sometimes I only get a blurred version and a note...

dangit, what is it with that picture? Sometimes it shows up in the web interface, sometimes I only get a blurred version and a note "media hidden". In Fedilab, from another account, the entire post is invisible in the public profile until I click the link to the web version of the profile. It's there, and then it shows up in Fedilab too. Except when I'm logged in to the web version as me, on a different device, in which case it's gone again ...
... I'm still failing to even spot the pattern.

I switched from #ICEMcfd and (shudder) ANSYS workbench meshing to Pointwise last fall, and never looked back.Alright, there are some...

I switched from #ICEMcfd and (shudder) ANSYS workbench meshing to Pointwise last fall, and never looked back.

Alright, there are some features in ICEM that I do miss, but ANSYS has not updated the GUI in *decades*, or made much of an effort to modernize its capabilities. Pointwise lets me mix & match structured and unstructured parts of the mesh so much easier!

(And yes, Pointwise also has some dark sides, but let's just enjoy it while it lasts)

I'm really annoyed right now.I set this account up to talk about aircraft design, aerodynamics and what we know (and what we're...

I'm really annoyed right now.

I set this account up to talk about aircraft design, aerodynamics and what we know (and what we're still figuring out) about getting planes to use a lot less energy, and get that energy from renewables.

But then this stuff keeps happening.

I could just shrug and move on, but I've got this idea about individual responsibility, and I'm watching MS methodically constrain how I can work, and why would I accept that?

So, it has come to this...#Office365 is now mandatory, has been installed on my work laptop, and I need to accept the licence agreement (and...

So, it has come to this...

#Office365 is now mandatory, has been installed on my work laptop, and I need to accept the licence agreement (and implicit privacy violations). So, let's have a look at that agreement, shall we?
No, we shan't! Because all I get as a mere peasant is four paragraphs describing which licence might apply to various scenarios, and a link to information about "Microsoft's other connected services". Nothing at all about privacy

This is not what I came to work for today.

Hoi @SURF , de Delftse ICT heeft net ons #BBB server afgesteld ... dus is er geen systeem meer voor videoconferenties dat ook bedoeld is...

Hoi @SURF , de Delftse ICT heeft net ons #BBB server afgesteld ... dus is er geen systeem meer voor videoconferenties dat ook bedoeld is voor onderwijs.

Argument: "something something Teams is more professional". (hoe professioneel is het als je niet eens aan het AVG voldoet?)

Ik zou het erg graag zien als #SURF een BBB server of #openTalk voor Nederlandse universiteiten zou kunnen opzetten. Dat kan toch niet zo moeilijk zijn!

Aand another interesting find:#Slack is loved a lot more than #MSTeams -- who would have thought? For my part, I only have access to MS...

Aand another interesting find:

#Slack is loved a lot more than #MSTeams -- who would have thought? For my part, I only have access to MS Teams and #Mattermost, and Mattermost is my favourite, by far (Stack Overflow agrees at least somewhat). Sadly, most people around me don't even know of its existence.

Heck, most people don't even know that MS Teams is just a belated and badly-done implementation of things that have been working better elsewhere, for a long time...

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-synchronous-tools

Also interesting to see that #julialang has increased its lead slightly over #python in the "loved/dreaded" category, although...

Also interesting to see that #julialang has increased its lead slightly over #python in the "loved/dreaded" category, although it's still being used much less. I need to find some time and justification to start learning Julia...

In the meantime, #Matlab has fallen to the last place in that list.

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-programming-scripting-and-markup-languages

(of course, that's not a representative sample etc., but likely large enough that the data is not complete rubbish either)

I just saw the developer survey on Stack Overflow, and it's remarkable how the percentage of developers using Linux went from 25% to 40%...

I just saw the developer survey on Stack Overflow, and it's remarkable how the percentage of developers using Linux went from 25% to 40% from 2021 to 2022:

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-popular-technologies-operating-system

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-popular-technologies-operating-system

... goes to show how relevant #Linux is for "serious" use of computers. I wish it got the same amount of attention from IT services in academia.