Comment Remote driver != "no driver" (Score 1) 185
The fact that the driver is not in the vehicle does not mean that there is no driver.
Comment Came from Amateur Observers first. (Score 3, Insightful) 31
I believe that this was figured out in the amateur observer community before NASA confirmed it. I saw it go by in my twitter feed. Not sure I can find it now...
Comment Re: Radioactive soil (Score 4, Informative) 180
Comment Re:Radioactive soil (Score 2, Informative) 180
It's not radioactive. When high-energy particles strike it, they break apart into lower-energy particles that are more harmful. So, you need enough shielding to catch the particles that break apart in the top layer of your shielding.
Comment Re:Radiation? (Score 2) 71
While radiation mostly results in transient errors, it can also cause latch-ups that blow a gate off of the die. For rad-hard equipment in space this is mitigated by silicon-on-insulator fabrication, so that you can't have a latch-up between the substrate and a silicon feature.
Comment Re:Dystopian Nightmare (Score 1) 87
We could have REAL ZOMBIES! YEAH!
:-)
I hear you. Going to be an interesting future, if we live.
Comment Re:Dystopian Nightmare (Score 5, Insightful) 87
Someone who broke their neck and was suffering from paralysis. You can control a chair or exoskeleton. People who can not hear today have cochlear implants, this is not all that different and might (eventually) work better. Or speak, or see. Other people who are disabled in various ways.
Comment Mitchell Baker takes $2,458,350 per year (Score 5, Informative) 124
I'm a huge fan of Firefox but an LWN comment just pointed out that they've been paying Mitchell Baker 2.5 million USD per year.
https://assets.mozilla.net/ann...
I was going to sign up for their VPN service as a way to support them (and I probably stil will) but damn this makes me feel like a punk.
Comment Re:Web Pages Use Same Imaging Model (Score 1) 227
Oops. To continue: I'm just not seeing that it is so hard to access. But then, I use a Linux desktop, which has always come with a proper PDF renderer, there has never been a need to download "Acrobat".
Comment Web Pages Use Same Imaging Model (Score 1) 227
Web pages use SVG to render vector graphics. It uses the exact same imaging model as PDF and is implemented in all modern browsers. The web in general has taken a lot of lessons from Adobe because Warnock and Geshke, in the PostScript Red Book, got so much right about how to build an image model that many GUI developers are still learning today. If you start with a PDF, it should be possible to machine-translate it to SVG and present it as a web page.
PDF exists because it is trivial to generate it from the document renderer meant for printing. Although I have once in a while run into an improperly scaled PDF meant to be printed 8-up, I'm just not
Can You Get Covid-19 Again? It's Very Unlikely, Experts Say 55
An anonymous reader shares a report: The anecdotes are alarming. A woman in Los Angeles seemed to recover from Covid-19, but weeks later took a turn for the worse and tested positive again. A New Jersey doctor claimed several patients healed from one bout only to become reinfected with the coronavirus. And another doctor said a second round of illness was a reality for some people, and was much more severe. These recent accounts tap into people's deepest anxieties that they are destined to succumb to Covid-19 over and over, feeling progressively sicker, and will never emerge from this nightmarish pandemic. And these stories fuel fears that we won't be able to reach herd immunity -- the ultimate destination where the virus can no longer find enough victims to pose a deadly threat.
But the anecdotes are just that -- stories without evidence of reinfections, according to nearly a dozen experts who study viruses. "I haven't heard of a case where it's been truly unambiguously demonstrated," said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Other experts were even more reassuring. While little is definitively known about the coronavirus, just seven months into the pandemic, the new virus is behaving like most others, they said, lending credence to the belief that herd immunity can be achieved with a vaccine. It may be possible for the coronavirus to strike the same person twice, but it's highly unlikely that it would do so in such a short window or to make people sicker the second time, they said. What's more likely is that some people have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after their initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies. Several teams have recently reported that the levels of these antibodies decline in two to three months, causing some consternation. But a drop in antibodies is perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University.
But the anecdotes are just that -- stories without evidence of reinfections, according to nearly a dozen experts who study viruses. "I haven't heard of a case where it's been truly unambiguously demonstrated," said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Other experts were even more reassuring. While little is definitively known about the coronavirus, just seven months into the pandemic, the new virus is behaving like most others, they said, lending credence to the belief that herd immunity can be achieved with a vaccine. It may be possible for the coronavirus to strike the same person twice, but it's highly unlikely that it would do so in such a short window or to make people sicker the second time, they said. What's more likely is that some people have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after their initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies. Several teams have recently reported that the levels of these antibodies decline in two to three months, causing some consternation. But a drop in antibodies is perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University.
Comment Re: Pistons? (Score 1) 67
Lithium battery fires are in the news because they are new. There are many more gasoline fires every day.
Comment Pistons? (Score 1) 67
Pistons? We don't need no stinking pistons! Next thing, they'll be adding a bridle and a bit!
Comment Re:Virtue signaling. (Score 1) 285
Consider that it is evangelism. Saying "We did this, we're a big investment bank" implies "It's OK, and you should do it too". I've heard people refer to arguing a vendor to lower a price as "jew them down". Enough with that.
Comment Citation needed (Score 1) 311
Italian doctors are saying "strange flu" cases were reported in the Chinese immigrant population as early as October.
Citation needed. I'd really like to have a source for this.
-- MQR
