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Comment Re:So a private Reddit puts more stress on the sys (Score 1) 308

I'd guess that having so many subs go private meant that fewer requests got routed to Reddit's CDN, so that their central servers wound up more heavily loaded. Just a WAG, though -- grahamsz's theory about needing more requests to build a user's main page is attractive, too.

Comment Re:This is your hobby, not your job. (Score 2) 53

Since when does posting something online mean it has "no saleable value"? That's gonna come to a shock to the many webcomic authors selling hundreds or thousands of print copies of their free-to-read-online comics: XKCD, Questionable Content, SMBC, Kevin & Kell, Skin Horse, and more. Narbonic ended thirteen years ago, has remained free online ever since — and the author just put out a new print edition two years ago.

Submission + - Nosleep subreddit goes dark in IP-theft protest

Fortran IV writes: In an attempt to "start a conversation" about copyright and IP theft, one of the largest subreddits on Reddit.com, the horror sub r/Nosleep, has gone private for a week. Nosleep, with nearly 14 million subscribers, is one of the largest collections of horror fiction on the internet; MIT used it to train an AI system to write horror stories. Authors retain copyright to all stories on Nosleep, but piracy remains an ongoing problem, so the moderators have elected to shutter the sub from 02/24/2020 to 03/02/2020 to draw attention to the issue.

Comment Re:I need to see more (Score 1) 711

Plug in the claimed numbers. At 1kW in, it generates 1.2mN of thrust. At 100km/s that is a power of 1.2kW. Clearly such over-unity numbers are bogus, and the only place for bogosity to enter in is in the 1.2mN/kW. That's why it must be bogus.

I'm not arguing; I'm ignorant and genuinely curious. (My last formal exposure to physics was over 35 years ago.)

Can you explain why this same reasoning wouldn't apply to any constant-thrust drive, such as a laser or microwave drive? Is it a matter of the thrust/power ratio? Is the "no-perpetual-motion" argument not that the EM drive can't produce any thrust, but that it can't produce so much?

You mentioned elsewhere that you support light-sail research. Hypothetical: Shine an ideally-focused laser upon a light sail. Does the light sail maintain a constant acceleration up to relativistic speeds?

Comment Re:Tides (Score 1) 77

I agree. The entire image is only about four times the Moon's diameter wide, which means (if my calculations are correct, bwa ha ha!) the Moon only travels through about 1-1.5 degrees of arc during the video (which is why DSCOVR could shoot it in only 5 hours). The effective pull of the Moon on the Earth is pretty much straight toward the observer the whole time.

But there are no real depth cues, so it's hard to judge that the two bodies are nearly a quarter-million miles apart.

Comment Re:The power button (Score 5, Insightful) 698

Bingo. The whole point of the Caps Lock key is that you don't have to press it over and over. "...Around 0.1% of all keypresses" is a completely useless measurement. A measurement of how many other keys were pressed while the Caps Lock was on might actually mean something.

That said, the size and placement of Caps Lock are simply a historical accident. If keyboard manufacturers wanted to halve the size and stick another key left of A, that would be fine with me. (The "context menu" key that's missing from so many keyboards these days would be a great choice.)

Comment Just who's really being hurt here? (Score 5, Insightful) 188

Actually, who's hurt if Google delists the movie's IMDB page? Heck, Google should just delist every page about every Universal Pictures title in current release. See how fast Universal finds the problems with their automated takedown notices when all their titles—all their theater listings—disgoogle at once.

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