Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Uh... I have a bad feeling about this. (Score 2) 28

F = G * (m1 * m2) / r^2

Or as we call it, Newton's inverse square law, where the force of gravity on any two objects is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Space is really really really really really big (the observable universe has a diameter of about 93 billion light-years), so it is literally impossible for any combination of mergers to have any effect beyond an infinitesimal region of the universe. Even a galactic merger which caused two supermassive blackholes to merge would have little or no measurable effect on a neighbouring galaxy as far away as Andromeda is from us (about 2.54 million light years away).

In fact, it's not until LIGO that we have even been able to detect the mergers of super dense and super massive objects like neutron stars and black holes, just to give you an idea of how the inverse square law limits the influences of gravity over very large distances.

Comment Re:Traffic Signals (Score 1) 71

Can it manage reduce gridlock and improve traffic flow by improving signal coordination during rush hour?

I think that is totally doable, but I'm not holding my breath for it to actually happen. If it worked, traffic would flow a few percent more smoothly, and only the traffic engineers would notice the difference. If it went wrong, anyone involved with the project would be mercilessly mocked, and their careers curtailed. Given that (combined with AIs' well-known penchant for occasionally going wrong), there's not a whole lot of motivation to implement such a system. Traffic engineers would prefer a system that works just okay 100% of the time, over a system that works optimally 99.9% of the time and does something crazy 0.1% of the time.

Comment Re:Fully autonomous (Score 1) 241

Just wait until these little bastards have on-board AI that visually identifies targets and kills them autonomously. [...] This is not good.

Agreed, that is a scenario straight out of a Terminator movie.

That said, it won't happen (much) until they get the energy budget of all that AI down to something that can be powered by a drone battery for a sufficient period of time.

Comment Re:It Depends (Score 3, Interesting) 43

We've invented nanoscale architectures which can meaningfully mimic human intelligence, but we won't be able to figure out a way to keep crops a few degrees cooler?

Oh, we can figure out a way easily enough. Figuring out a way to do it that doesn't quintuple food prices is the more difficult part.

A lot of people don't realize how valuable "environmental services" (like crop-friendly weather) are to the economy until suddenly they don't have them anymore, and have to start spending money to try to reproduce those same conditions artificially. Building air-conditioned indoor farms is going to be hell of a lot of capital-intensive than just essentially planting seeds in the ground and gathering the result food afterwards.

Comment A difficult decision (Score 2) 61

we have made the difficult decision to end technical support for older Wemo products, effective January 31, 2026. After this date, several Wemo products will no longer be controllable through the Wemo app.

What made the decision so difficult was that they decided they had to give refunds to everyone whose devices no longer functioned properly, because their customers were no longer getting the functionality they had paid for.

Right?

Comment Re:I prefer solar (Score 1) 104

Result? Overproduction of electricity on sunny days. To the extent that you have to pay to put energy on the grid.

Between Bitcoin and AI, "too much electricity" shouldn't be an insurmountable problem for anyone. Either of things will happily consume as much electricity as you can throw at it, and want more. Of course, if you think those things are a waste of power, you could start using excess power to synthesize fuel to sell.

Slashdot Top Deals

There's no such thing as a free lunch. -- Milton Friendman

Working...