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Comment Well, most of it... (Score 1) 26

Anything that goes slow enough to be captured into an orbit will eventually spiral inwards.

Well, most of it (when we're talking matter not already in another black hole). Ordinary stuff orbiting near a black hole gets torn apart by the enormous tides and forms a disk-like structure similar to a gas giant's rings. Interactions among it and with the black hole's magnetic and gravitic fields can eject a bit of it in a pair of jets out along the axis of the disk, powered apparently by the rest of the stuff falling in.

Comment Re:Hypothetical question (Score 1) 26

These two black holes wouldn't stick to each other, but start swirling around each other and eventually merge together.

This is partly because of friction with and among other stuff in orbit around the black holes in their "accretion disks". (Black holes experience friction by eating the stuff in the other hole's disk of debris, with the momentum of the black-hole-plus-dinner thus being different from the black-hole-before-dinner.)

It's also partly because the rapid acceleration of things passing near a black hole or orbiting it causes the emission of gravity waves to be strong enough that it carries off substantial energy. (In less extreme environments, like suns and planets, the waves are not detectable by current instruments. In the case of two black holes,orbiting each other, they're detectable from across pretty much the whole universe.) This loss of energy amounts to "friction" that eventually causes co-orbiting pairs of black holes to spiral in and combine.

Comment Re:I asked Perplexity why I should use it (Score 1) 25

Answer
Based on the search results provided, I do not believe there is enough information to definitively answer whether a cool refreshing Coca-Cola would feel good after using Perplexity AI. Here's a summary of the relevant details:
[2] The search result mentions that a Coca-Cola would "feel good after using Perplexity", but this appears to be a sarcastic or rhetorical statement, not a factual claim. The article is focused on Perplexity's plans to introduce native advertising, not on the user experience of Perplexity compared to drinking Coca-Cola.

Link 2 was to the very comment I am responding to.

Comment I asked Perplexity why I should use it (Score 2) 25

Q: why should I use perplexity instead of chatgpt? I hate ads

A: Answer
Based on the search results provided, here are the key reasons why you should consider using Perplexity AI over ChatGPT:

  1. No Ads: The search results indicate that Perplexity AI is completely free to use and does not contain any ads, unlike many other AI assistants and search engines. This addresses your stated dislike of ads. [1][3]
  2. Better Search Functionality: Perplexity AI is focused on providing accurate, up-to-date information through its search capabilities, which are powered by GPT-4. It can provide detailed summaries and citations for its responses, unlike ChatGPT which may not always cite its sources. [2][3]
  3. More Transparent: Perplexity AI clearly shows the sources it used to generate its responses, allowing you to verify the information. This transparency is lacking in ChatGPT. [3]
  4. Faster Responses: The search results indicate that Perplexity AI provides responses very quickly, often within a second or two, which is faster than many other AI assistants. [3]

Contextual Understanding: Perplexity AI seems to have a better understanding of context, allowing you to ask follow-up questions that build on previous queries, making the interaction more conversational. [3]
However, the search results also suggest that ChatGPT may be better suited for open-ended, creative tasks like content generation, while Perplexity AI is more focused on providing factual, research-oriented responses. [2]
Overall, if your primary needs are fast, ad-free, and transparent search capabilities, Perplexity AI appears to be a strong alternative to ChatGPT based on the information provided. [1][2][3]
Sources linked included a reddit thread, em360tech.com, digitaltrends.com, runtheprompts.com, and blackhatworld.com.

Comment Reminds me of "Jan 6 insurrection" guilty pleas (Score 2) 94

This reminds me of the sentencing of the "January 6 insurrection" guilty pleas. As I (a non-lawyer) understand it...

Regardless of whether you consider it an insurrection or a protest march petitioning the government for redress of grievances...

In the wake of the events, the fed busted a bunch of the participants and left them rotting in prison for months (over a year), with no end in sight. In many cases this left families with no breadwinner, enormous legal costs, and expectations of losing all their property as part of some eventual conviction.

Then the prosecutors offered some of the defendants a plea deal; Plead guilty to a misdemeanor or short-sentence felony and we'll drop any other charges.

Rule of thumb: a misdemeanor generally is a crime with a max sentence of no more than a year in prison, a felony more than a year - which is why you see "year and a day" max sentences on some crimes. An accused person already in prison for over the max sentence would expect that accepting the deal would result in immediate release with "credit for time served" (and others near the max might expect release much sooner). So some of them went for it.

Came the sentencing some judges applied a two-year sentence enhancements for "substantial interference with the 'administration of justice.'" OOPS! No release for you.

I'd expect them to pull the same sort of thing on Assange if he were foolish enough to plead guilty to anything, no matter how minor.

(By the way: This particular form of the practice, as used on the Jan6 participants, was just recently struck down. But the decision was based on Congress' certification of the presidential election not qualifying as "administration of justice.'" So this wouldn't apply to whatever enhancement trick they might pull on Julian.

Comment Re:I heard pregnant women are (Score 2) 29

I don't know what you heard, but baby cells can only stay baby cells, they can't become mommy cells,

Sez who?

There's been evidence for some time that post-pregnancy mothers often have clones of stem cells derived from the previous foetus. Sure such a clone would likely start out with its epigenitc programming set for whatever function it had in the baby's development (unless, say, some error in its differentiation is what led to it migrating to the woman's body to set up shop). But once established on the mother's side of the placental barrier, and especially after the birth, the stem cell clone can be expected to continue to run its program under direction of the growth factors in the mother's blood.

That amounts to a transplant of younger stem cells which could be expected to produce differentiated cells for tissue growth and replacemtnt,, with the aging clock set farther back and with some genes from the father to provide "hybrid vigor", filling in for defective genes in the mother's genome or adding variant versions of molecular pathways.

Comment Re:Dark matter (Score 1) 243

If it only interacts with regular matter by gravity, why do we not see it everywhere on earth.

Picture yourself observing (how?) the descent of an asteroid made of dark matter that somehow holds together. What happens? It falls. It reaches the ground you're standing on. It does not stop, because it can only interact with normal matter via gravitation, not electromagnetism, so it does not bounce. It continues falling. If its interaction is strong enough to result in a kind of friction, it might not settle to the center of the Earth. But it probably will.

Comment Re:Pay Up, Or Else (Score 1) 33

This strikes me as a bit of a shakedown, settle with out patent claims or we'll screw up your IPO by creating a new potential liability.

Back in the early days of the personal computer explosion there was a patent for the "XOR cursor" which I hear was used as a trolling operation. Story goes that every time a new hi-tek company was in that sensitive period just as they're about to go public, they'd get a notice that they were believed to be violating that (even if whatever they were doing didn't even involve a display with a cursor, XOR or otherwise) and an offer to license the patent for something substantial but far lower than the cost and risks of fighting it. ($10,000?) So the companies generally paid up rather than derail their IPO.

It was jokingly referred to as a tax on incorporation. There are rumors of discussions of buying a hit on the trolls. Apparently this netted over $50,000,000 before the patent expired. (Also there was apparently prior art discovered - AFTER the expiration.)

Comment You could also get started with two molecules ... (Score 2) 127

You could also start with:
  - two molecules that (moderately) accurately copied each other (though getting them both at the same time makes the time scale to the big event much longer.)
  - A molecule that makes NEARLY always inacurate (but occasionally acurate and complete) copies of itself. (This also drastically pulls in the time to a two-molecule solution.)
  - A molecule that makes inaccurate copies but with string of typical errors that occasionally loops back to an accurate and complete (mod a few errors in unimportant places) copy of a previous version.

These could eventually mutate into a version that can perform a one-step copy-itself loop.

=====

I've always been partial to an RNA-only origin. RNA can do it all (self-copy, enzymes, energy transport batteries in at least two sizes with self-pluggin-in connectors: ATP/ADP and UTP/UDP, expression regulation, directed genetic code editing, etc.). It's also still doing a lot of that in current lifeforms, especially in key parts (such as many of the components of the DNA duplication, DNA repair, DNA-to-MRNA copy, gene expression regulation, MRNA exon-eliminating editing, and MRNA directed protein synthesis machinery)

Comment They've know why for a while now. (Score 1) 110

They've known for a while now, and been talking about it for well over a year.

On Jan 1 2020 a new IMO (International Maratime Organization) regulation went into effect. The shipping industry drastically lowered the sulfur content of its fuels and the SOx content of ship exhaust plumes dropped by about 77%. (Other aspects of the fuel change also reduced some particulate pollution, too.)

The COVID sequestration also reduced shipping (and cloud-seeding exhaust from it), along with aircraft contrails and upper-atmosphere dust, and dust-generating industrial processes and transportation activity, which (like volcanic dust) also reflect sunlight over the ocean and lower temperatures.

I've seen claims that the reduction in ship exhaust plumes, alone, are enough to account for ALL the sea temperature rise since 2020, and that with the low-sulfur fuel in continued use the bulk of that excess heating will continue even as activity ramps up post-COVID.

Comment Regarding the hockey stick graph. (Score 1) 272

Regarding the "hockey stick" graph. (Taking absolutely no position on whether Mann was honest or not, competent or not, etc.)

I was under the impression that the Hockey Stick graph had been shown to be defective as an indicator of warming, primarily because it took tree ring data as one of its proxies for temperature, but carbon dioxide concentration increases alone have been shown to substantially promote tree growth even in the absence of temperature increases. So how much of the sudden rise in the graph is from temperature increase (if any) and how much just from increased CO2 levels is unknown.

But I don't have any links to reliable scholarly articles examining this issue. Do any of you?

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