The Weekly Weird - 2021-02-26
- Who catches the IMSI catchers? Almost anyone
- A thorough roundup of what it takes to make mRNA vaccines: What's so hard about making a few billion vaccine doses ?
- Oh good. What we really needed is twitch plays "teleoperate an armed robot".
- Add Leonard Perroots to the why we're not all radioactive dust list.
- We should all thank the NFPA for giving us such an entertaining road trip game but you should probably be aware that a 0 in the red diamond does not mean it can't go boom.
- An oldie but a goodie: How to make an everyday orange into a highly classified object.
- Texas' freak snowstorm is a reminder that the tails matter (a "hundred year event" makes it sound rare. A 1% chance of it happening every year sounds rather different). There are some options to provide power in exigent circumstances like this:
- Just ask Ford to borrow a pickup truck
- Plug your Tesla in! Just don't tweet about it.
- If you have a nuclear-powered transport ship handy, Bob's your uncle.
- Sure, those are in short supply nowadays but Navy ships can probably do it (pdf)
- Finally, it turns out that diesel locomotives are just generators with wheels. Where they're going, they don't need tracks.
- Much hay was made of the UK's not-entirely-coherent purchse of OneWeb to use as a GNSS. Turns out, it's possible and there's already chips doing a similar thing with Iridium.