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Comment I'd put that proudly in my resume if I were them (Score 1, Interesting) 265

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 Theo-Fascism at its "best". (Score 1) 229

I consider Theo-Fascism the worst type of fascism, because it abandons reason even way earlier than regular fascism. Both have a quasi-religious perversion of government, but at least with regular fascism religion is more of a sideshow. In Theo-Fascist regimes its front and center which turns it evil way faster and harder. On top of that, because its religion at the center, reason has been abandoned at the onset of fascism and not as a final result, making it much harder for a society to turn around or find "justifiable" ways to make life work.

Religious fanatics are the worst and these days its the Islam variants are the most ridiculous, are causing the most damage and are the most dangerous. Somebody needs to off the troika leading that country.

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.

Comment Close to 30ÂC here in Germany. (Score 0) 158

Early April, close to 30ÂC here in Germany. This isn't normal. I'm in western Germany where April weather lasts months. This year it was like a few days, maybe 2 weeks if you're generous. We had weeks of 35ÂC+ last year and the year before I was driving back from Portugal through the Toulouse Area and it was 37Â+ even as the sun was about to set behind the Pyranees. The Mediterranean last year was so warm the tourists stayed away. And we're taking about water temperature. The _water_ was so warm the tourists stayed away. This year's skiing season didn't happen in Germany. .... What we where warned about is happening: Cascading runaway effects of man made climate change are kicking in and we're headed for a new global equilibrium. Let's just hope that that will be survivable for modern civilization.

We are screwed. The chance to avoid that has passed. How hard we are screwed however is still up to us.

Comment I have one of those keyboards (Score 3, Informative) 82

A Wooting Two HE and I love it.

I'm not even a gamer: I'm a bit of an old school terminal kind of guy and I bought it to see if I could type faster with it. And I sure can!

It is a bit light for my taste, but it's nice to define different actuation depths for it. For example, I set the spacebar to work only at the very bottom, so I can rest my thumbs on it while I type (bad habit, I know). And HJKL are set to trigger higher for faster navigation in VI.

The absolute lack of friction feels nice too. And while it's noisy, it's not overwhelming like a Model M.

I'm also hoping the contactless action will make it last a long time. But I've had it for 8 months now and I can see it's getting clogged up with lint, what with the switches being exposed and all. That's a bit concerning.

Lastly, it's eye-wateringly expensive. But I reckon it's worth it if you're a heavy keyboard user like me. And I want to support them for making a configuration utility that works well in Linux. So I guess it's money well spent.

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