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Comment I'd put that proudly in my resume if I were them (Score 1, Interesting) 264

Getting fired for protesting unethical things your employer engages in is something to be proud of, especially when you're willing to endanger a cushy or prestigious position at Google. If I ran a company, I'd hire someone like that in a heartbeat.

Comment Re:I don't get why scientists need real eclipses (Score 1) 19

Well yes, of course. That's how literally all telescopes observing the sun currently do it.

Then my questions stands: why do teams of scientists chase lunar eclipses around the world at great expense? What's the added value of a real eclipse.

I think you missed the detail that making an eclipse is not at all needed here.

Not really, because I didn't in fact read the article :) My question about the value of eclipses for solar observation is tangentially related to the satellite thing, which doesn't really interest me at all.

Comment I don't get why scientists need real eclipses (Score 2) 19

I understand that, by sheer coincidence, the moon has the right size and is currently at the right distance to mask the just enough of the sun and let only photons from the sun's upper atmosphere and corona through, making their observation easier.

But why is the moon needed? Why are even clever sun-blocking satellites needed? Do sun-blocking things need to be placed far away to observe the corona? Couldn't a beer coaster placed a few feet away from the telescope serve the same purpose?

I'm oversimplifying of course, but you get the idea.

The only reason I can think of is that the farther the sun-blocking object, the less fuzzy its boundary is when the observed through a telescope focused at infinity, making the moon truly useful when observing the thin boundary layer between the sun and the corona. Other than that, I don't see why a beer coaster - or perhaps a larger round object placed a bit farther out - wouldn't do the job.

Perhaps a reader who is better versed in solar observations can shed some light (pun not intended :)

Comment Re:But, but ... (Score 1) 185

Ironically, it's is more of an argument for them. They were not saying there would be no more updates, be them major or minor to windows, but rather than they wouldn't have "numbers" and transition into more of an OS as a service model.

The market doesn't like the sound of that. That's fine, but it's not like if Microsoft stopped numbering their releases they wouldn't be doing the exact same thing: sunsetting older versions of windows and pushing users towards newer supported versions.

I know some people think they should be able to "buy" an OS and stay on it forever, but the internet has rendered that largely impossible. If you want to air-gap your PC and stay on whatever version of Windows you want, go for it, but as soon as you're connected to the internet, they're doing the right thing trying to push people off of codebases that no longer support an economic case for security updates.

Comment Re:And they're supposed to know which works are... (Score 2) 57

... copyrighted... how? There is no registry.

It's not because it's inconvenient that it doesn't exist. If you want to reuse a photograph you found somewhere for example, you're supposed to research who owns the rights to it and figure out if and how you can use it.

The problem AI companies have is, they hoover up billions of copyrighted works to train their AIs, but of course they don't have the time or resources to do due diligence on each and every one of those works.

So with typical big tech hubris, instead of taking the time to figure out this particular conundrum legally and cleanly, the tech bros just said "fuck this" and pushed ahead with their massively copyright-infringing products, arguing that you can't stop progress, this outdated copyright stuff is in the way and their bright future can't wait - and nevermind all the people whose work they essentially stole without compensation.

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