This one magnitude 7.6 ; 2011 was a 9.2, 9.1 thereabouts (I can't be bothered looking it up).

That's 2.5 or so orders of magnitude lower which, for earthquakes is a 10^(1.5*diff.magnitude) factor of difference in energy release. Which, for those who can't do mental maths (see "dollar store" rant) is 10^-(3.6 to 3.7) or between 4 and 6 THOUSAND times less energy release.

You didn't need to wake up fully. I saw the alert on my phone, did the maths, and went back to sleep.

Since "deeply discounted" does not necessarily mean a price tag of 1.00 pound-dollar-euro (or 2000 TzSh or 10000 Won) and such stores routinely post non-simple prices (integers, half integers, etc), there is a sub-story here : an appalling (or hilarious) proportion of people who cannot do simple mental arithmetic like adding up the purchases in their basket as they go round the shop.

I should be appalled, but seeing the number of morons on X or YT (and to a lesser extent here ; lesser, but not zero) who think that posting their prompt to Chat.GPClaude.Grok and the AI's response, I'm not even surprised. And they do it for what are simple matters of arithmetic, or recall of uncontentious science which is at most a Wiki search away using the keywords in their Chat.Prompt. And they seem to think that theirs is a useful contribution to the discussion.

[shakes_head.EMOJI]

People - they're skills you worked to gain (and paid, in cash, hours, or tax) ; and you need to exercise them, regularly, or you will lose them. And if you lose them, you will be fucked over - be it by a street grifter, the clerk at the grocery store, or your elected representatives.

Kids today! Gerrorf moi lawrnn!

I realise that I'm talking from a UK perspective not the US, but here, if a store sells it to the general public, the store is primarily liable for it. If it's not fit for sale, the holding company is liable for both the value of the goods and consequential losses. So if that one pound-dollar-euro power lead burns down the house, killing one and putting a couple of other people into long therm 24-7 nursing care, the store (chain) is liable for the quarter million pound-dollar-euro house plus maybe 20 or 30 million to go into trust to pay for care for the injured for the rest of their lives.

Plus punitive "don't do it again" damages on top, to the judge's satisfaction.

I know it's not America - land of the chlorinated chicken as an alternative to farm-to-table food hygiene standards - but that's why I'm rather less concerned about buying such things here.

I still look carefully at purchases, but the situation is somewhat different here.

(I also noticed, on second reading, that the link is to the Grauniad-dot-com not -dot-co-dot-uk, which did puzzle me for a few seconds - what are the Manchester Grauniad doing writing about "dollar" stores rather than "PoundLand" and the like. Who also have plenty of products which are not GBP 1.00 either, just heavily discounted. Those claims of false implied advertising sailed back out of the doors of court decades ago, when a pint still was a pound in any pub on the high street.)

I love it the Canada still uses the administrative division of the "riding", which noun has pretty much disappeared outside Yorkshire with it's North, East and West Ridings.

Ride on!

Interesting, because I've never met either foldable or rollable "In Real Life" (or even, "On Reel Life"?), but came here to say "a rollable screen sounds mechanically more feasible than a foldable one", because with fairly modest engineering (sprung steel side rails, and maybe a midline support/ stiffener) you could considerably reduce and control the minimum radius of curvature, which I would expect (from having damaged all sorts of materials by rolling or folding them too tightly, or even creasing them) to be the most damaging aspect of use. Ribbon cables trapped while sliding a 50kg 19in rack of analysis equipment back into the rack is a good one for that. Even 1.2mm insulated wires can fail if they get kinked between frame and instrument module.

Plus, a laptop screen extension is likely to have far fewer fold-cycles per month than a phone screen whose only purpose in life is to make a big screen fit into a small pocket and still be accessible at a moment's notice.

Both of those I would expect to improve such a screen's life in service. Whether it's enough to make it acceptable - is a different question. But I know I have no practical experience - though I have heard reports from several launches in the last several years that screen life-in-service was, and maybe still is, a serious problem for the tech.

If I were implementing it in that context, I'd have the extra screen space permanently attached (could you get the data rate over a detachable USB-C?) in a tubular mount on the long axis (? maybe one side or other? Needs a focus group ; as a left-hander, I'd very likely pick fault with a RH-mounted screen-extension) so you unrolled the screen from inside it's protection tube, in the process clicking side supports into place to keep it reasonably flat in use.

Then I'd roll it up by pushing it back into the tube (springs to tension it internally?) when no longer needed. That would limit my current laptop to about a 20mm rolled diameter - but I've never seen the point about screaming for thinness in a working tool. Lightness I can see the point of ; thinness, I don't really give a shit about. I still need to carry a rucksack or briefcase.

I could see that working, with larger curve radius than around a pocket phone. Whether the market would find it sexy enough - "meh".

But I don't honestly know what the state of play on reliability for this month's foldable phone designs, because I've never considered risking my money on such fragile-seeming tech. Maybe it's getting better, but it's a hard set of requirements.

Thankfully I don't recognise that description of anything I read - but I read less social media than I did last month, pretty much every month. It gets tedious and repetitive after a time.

But it does remind me of, if I remember correctly, George Bernard Shaw describing some book as

one could write this forever - if you could abandon your mind to it

(It may have been in reference to the pornography-writing machines in "Brave New World" when it was published in the 1930s.)

Does America have a version of the annual "bad sex writing" awards, or is it a global award? I forget the award's name but it's along the theme of the "Razzies", "the IgNobels" and ... oh, we're approaching movie award season, aren't we. All of them, too. The "bad sex writing award" has some stuff that will curl your toes faster than an outdoor blowjob in a snow storm.

I post every now and then, but there isn't much to talk about with the old folks 'round here these days. Eventually every comments section looks like a Thanksgiving dinner! Most of my rambles are now on Reddit now.

Keep sharp!

The linked paper isn't clear, but it rather implies that the material density does not monotonically increase from light-emitting surface to the accreting (proto-)SMBH, but has a minimum somewhere between "core" and "surface". If it did increase monotonically, it'd be a TáO - an interesting alternative engine for stars (but probably not the Sun), I think.

But if the commentary from ScienceDirect explains how this object maintains that low-density zone, and isn't a TáO, then I've missed it. and I can't summon the enthusiasm to track down the original paper on ArXiv.

(I would have given this submission a "+" vote, but that option has been removed and replaced with a link to a help page anchor named "#i_use_noscript" which is true and somehow makes me a bad person. Your, and Slashdot's, loss. )

(With or without a cat-staffing job too.)

What is the normal result of forcing a dog to eat it's own vomit?

who set prices at retail. Or at least, printed them onto the shelf label. Do they send people - invisible people - running around the stores to change the labels ahead of me looking at them? I used to have that idea about how the TV worked - with tiny changing rooms in the cabinet - but I understand now that they work differently and the miniature actors go through a Rick'n'Morty-esque "portal" to their changing rooms, allowing for thinner TVs.

Or, does "retail" mean something different in EN_US?

A week or two ago I noticed that the "vote" buttons for submissions had been changed to link to some part of the "help" system, under the anchor "iusenoscript". Which means I can't vote for, or against, submissions. Which I used to do.

But, to be honest, I'm wasting less and less time here. The problem of it being American-centric is getting worse (and it has always been bad) ; the lunatic right-wingers that come with that are getting madder ; the stories are getting more boringly uniform - obsessing over AI, and it's coming collapse. I can't even bring myself to make the effort to submit some good astronomy stories.

Shrug. If it dies, it dies.

Unfortunately (?) Slashdot replaces the voting buttons with a link to a "I_use_Noscript" page, rather than registering a vote. Which, yes, I do. And if that offends the powers that be at Slashdot, tough shit. I'm not disabling it on your site, or anyone else's. Get over it.

It's more likely to get that engineering in America.

Asia in general and China in particular have had due respect for the lethality of respiratory viruses for a long time. I remember wondering about the Oriental habit of wearing respiratory masks in public places through the 2000s and 2010s - and it's largely down to their reasonable concerns about SARS (2004 to 2006) and then MERS (2012 to 2021).

No, I'd expect any lunatic gene engineering to take place in a Texas garage, performed by an anti-vaxx campaigner with delusional beliefs about how viruses spread. Because "Feee-dumb!"

(Yes, dear AC, you are being treated with contempt. It goes with being an AC.)

Yup. It's pretty hard to do the right thing when the oil cartel that has invaded Alberta keeps threatening to shit itself and is actively trying to engineer a separatist movement entirely for its own benefit. Here's hoping Carney eventually finds a way to disembowel them.

The last game Sweeney did the artwork for was ZZT. As much as I love playing around with AI art generation for fun, he's really not an expert on this.