u/derekcz

I've learned that the planet Erid from Project Hail Mary and planet Vulcan from Star Trek are both located in the same real star system, one that also happens to be easily observable with a small telescope irl, which makes it a fun target for our volunteer run observatory to show to visiting members of the public.

But that made me wonder whether in the entirety of Stargate there ever was a star system (other than Sol...) mentioned by name that would also have a real-world analog.

For some reason I remembered Abydos canonically being in the Alpha Centauri system but it looks like I made that up.

I have once again found myself in need of a niche product that probably doesn't exist. For my very specific workflow I would benefit from having an extra row of function keys to map as shortcuts and hotkeys, but it looks like (perhaps understandably) nobody is making keyboards with all 24 function keys anymore. There is plenty of supply available online in the form of vintage terminal keyboards, and while their interface could be adapted they are stuck with an old layout that lacks the system and context menu keys which I also heavily use, or have some other outdated layout quirks.

I do not require high quality keys or even mechanical switches, I would be perfectly fine with just a generic membrane keyboard from Tesco that just has two rows of function keys instead of one.

The other option is having a separate macro keypad next to the keyboard, but I'd rather not have an extra device with an extra cable on the desk, and having to move one hand off the keyboard to access it could get annoying, but I feel like that's exactly what I will have to settle with.

To conform with rule 1, my budget for something like this would probably be up to $200, size not really a concern since I already have a full size keyboard with a numpad (and this would only add an extra row at the top), and the main physical layout constraint is having the system and context keys in the usual place (and keeping the numpad).

We often see people posting websites or apps generated with Claude or something that are supposed to predict objects visible at night from their location, and they usually get the expected pushback, but what is the actual go-to software for astronomy target finding and prediction? Something like Stellarium is useful when you already know what to look for, but I imagine a situation where you happen to have time one day to bring your telescope outside under the night sky and just want a target list filtered using your location and current conditions, such as planet distance from the Sun as well as their angular size, etc

Is there even such software that would incorporate a wide variety of things, like planetary positions, DSOs, bright satellite passes, maybe even various occultations and transits?

I want to use the handycam specifically for its nighshot feature as a "USB webcam" for streaming, I've already figured out that there needs to be a tape inside in order to hide the nightshot overlay, but now I'm finding out that the camcorder shuts off after a while when it's just sitting idle in the camera mode.

Is there a way to disable this, or do I actually need to have it recording? I don't want to be wearing out tapes and the heads for no reason

Hello, I am having trouble with using Bluetooth headphones with my PC running Windows 11 10.0.26200 Build 26200. I have tried different headphones as well as different Bluetooth adapters, across different manufacturers, and I have compared it against Linux running on the same hardware and isolated it to being an OS issue.

It feels like there is some process or service that puts the Bluetooth audio to "sleep" when there is no sound being played, that is noticeable when I start playing audio as maybe half a second gap where there is no sound. I can also sometimes hear the headphones "popping" which sounds exactly like a sharp cutoff of audio that just briefly sends a DC bias, you know what I mean.

This in itself isn't a problem, I'm guessing it's done to preserve headphone battery and Bluetooth bandwidth, but whatever is responsible for doing it sometimes fails and causes the audio to stop working in those moments, or when switching audio devices, or when a new app that uses audio devices is opened/closed, basically any audio-related event has a chance to just break the audio.

When it happens, the headphones are still connected, their buttons for volume and play/pause still work, the system acts as if there was nothing wrong, but there is no audio coming out. The only solution is power cycling the headphones.

Another problem is that the volume slider in Windows 11 doesn't really seem to work properly with Bluetooth headphones. It feels like it is logarithmic but the wrong way around. Going from 0 to 1% of the slider feels like 0 to 90% loudness and then the 2-100% of the slider just dials in the remaining 90-100, so effectively I get to pick whether I want no audio (0%), or whether I want audio that's too loud (1%). I have to rely on independent volume sliders in software or the volume mixer.

This may sound like a bit of a vent but I've been experiencing issues with Bluetooth audio and Windows for years now, and it feels like the sweetspot was somewhere around Windows 7 and since then Bluetooth support has only gotten progressively worse. Linux isn't much better to be fair, but usually a solution can be reached after a really long and annoying debug process.

TL;DR: what can I do to be able to label a floppy drive unambiguously "good" (within reason considering their age)?

I have a few floppy drives (a literal tower of Babel composed of floppy drives), but I've had inconsistent experience with them. If I were to just go off my quick read/write testing I would have to say maybe 80% of them are faulty, which doesn't seem right and I'm inclined to believe I'm just experiencing issues with either the media or the operating system level support.

I would really like to be able to definitely say whether a drive is good or not, so I'm wondering what the contemporary way to "certify" floppy drives was? I have seen some old magazine articles showing oscilloscopes connected to the RF test pad on the drive, which is something I can do, however;

The way I understand these drives work is that there is no self-calibration or a way to tell the absolute position of the rw heads on the media, so a misaligned drive can behave as if it were perfectly functional if it is loaded with media that's also misaligned. Therefore to properly test the drive I would need to get a reference disk that I know is 100% for sure written in a perfect drive, but without this reference disk I have no way of knowing which drive is perfect, and that's how the paradox begins.

I suppose I could get some reference disks online, but then we are still talking about decades old technology that works by physically dragging its heads on the media so there's always a chance the reference disk could get damaged, so I'd rather not rely on some hard to get new-old stock akin to head cleaner disks.

I have a "floptical" LS-240 Superdisk USB drive which I've been using as my "reference", since it has its own controller and I am a lot more confident in it. Could I maybe use a computer running Linux and do some direct write to a floppy disk through that drive to just fill the disk with alternating 1s and 0s to produce a "reference" disk that I can more or less rely on being accurate?

Hello, I volunteer at a local observatory and we have a period-correct early 2000s computer operating the telescope, including a massive Samsung CRT. It's really cool and when you walk into the observatory dome you can pretend it's 2008 and that there's no such thing as Sam Altman, but we are really space constrained and would like to replace the CRT with a flat screen monitor. Seems simple enough, but after thinking about it for a bit I'm not sure how long an LCD screen could survive there.

There is no indoor heating so in winter the temperatures can probably dip close to -10°C, and in summer because it's the highest point in the building we get a greenhouse effect that can probably take it over 40°C.

I have seen LCDs that just turn yellow or purple when exposed to heat like this for a prolonged time, and panels that developed dead/faded spots when operating in cold like that. On top of the long term temperature changes the screen would also have to survive being turned on in like -5°C and heating up to its working temperature.

Is there some monitor technology that would be particularly well suited (or least bothered) by this? Obviously something like MicroLED that doesn't have liquid or organic layers but that's not realistic yet. Or is this an actual niche where the CRT is already the best pick?

EDIT: if you're here from a search engine and are having the same issues as me, rest assured that there is no solution. Windows is a borderline unusable POS operating system that many of us are forced to use for work or education. If you do have the liberty of leaving this garbage dump for Linux, you only set yourself up for a whole another subset of issues that you will spend hours and days and weeks troubleshooting. It is the year of our Lord 2026 and man has yet to create a functional operating system. Except that's a lie, and systems like Windows XP through Windows 7 were significantly more usable with their contemporary technology. Microsoft as a company needs to get humbled, and hopefully it will happen sooner than later. I pray and wish that government and corporate entities will one by one leave this hellish software suite spearheaded by an Epstein Island enjoyer and adulterer behind. I dream of the days when Linux is the dominant operating system for desktop computers and thus is forced to get itself into a more presentable shape than it is now. I hope that one day Microsoft goes bankrupt, and most of all I wish the most financial harm to its shareholders who deserve to lose everything they have for they are the main driving force behind the enshittification of a once great operating system. But also fuck Apple I'd rather keep struggling with Bluetooth than contribute to their locked down shit. Peace.

Every so often whenever there's any audio-related action happening (stopping/starting a youtube video, opening a video file, just opening bluetooth settings, opening new software that scans for audio devices, ...) the audio just stops working. The headphones still show up as connected and their play/pause and volume buttons still work. They are still listed as the selected audio device (in fact they are the only available audio device).

The only "fix" I found is just restarting the headphones, having them reconnect, and then waiting like 2-3 minutes for the audio to come back. This is 100% a Windows issue because the exact same hardware configuration worked perfectly fine with Linux, the headphones don't have this problem with Android either.

When this happens the volume slider often desyncs as well - the headphones remember their last selected volume but Windows thinks its 100%, so when I press volume down on the headphones Windows subtracts 1 step down from 100 which means it just blasts me with basically full volume.

Sometimes the audio will just break on its own after a while of inactivity. Literally nothing is happening in the system, I'm not using any software, everything is just idling and the audio disconnects.

Windows 11 Version 10.0.26200 Build 26200