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 :)

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this" and pushed ahead with their massively copyright-infringing products, arguing that you can't stop progress, this outdated copyright stuff is in the way and their bright future can't wait - and nevermind all the people whose work they essentially stole without compensation.

More like thirty or forty huge corporation submitting their list and waiting forever for approval, legally unable to release their AI products.

To each his own. Personally I don't really like clicky keyboards. The feeling annoys me. I much prefer linear keys.

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.

I meant active computing.

As long as those robots keep thinking with their tiny sixties electronic brains, they're as close to humanity's living children outside of the solar system.

When they stop thinking, sure, they'll carry data for aeons for someone or something to discover one day maybe, but no differently than a dead body would carry information in a side pocket. It's useful but it's not alive anymore.

I might very well stop thinking before they do. I'm a few years away from retirement and I smoked for 25 years. So it's certainly not impossible.

Who needs Doom when we have Duke Nukem...

Need to be celebrated loudly and publicly - those who are still alive.

The engineers who keep this thing going too.

The Voyager probes are literally part of my life. I've always known them. For me, they're a fixture of the sky like the Sun and the Moon. They're precious little bits of living humanity far out there. If they die, something inside would die too, and I sure hope I kick the bucket before they do.

Almost certainly not. It's likely open-source distributed training using people's spare computing in a manner similar to BOINC (if not within it) will pop-up for free-model enthusiasts to continue developing such models.

That, right there, this very start of a sentence, is where the entirety of the nonsense right-wingers wave around when it comes to this topic, start. Why don't all "I'm not a psychiatrist, but..." people go and check what the actual psychiatrists say on the matter?

Here's a good starting point. This is what the largest psychiatric organization in the world, the American Psychiatric Association, composed of 37,400 registered psychiatrists, and responsible for the DSM, the manual used for the diagnosis and treatment of mental issues in the US and who doubles a core source for the ICD, the general illness diagnostic manual used worldwide, says: What is Gender Disphoria? # Treatment.

No need for "I'm not a psychiatrist, but...", the actual psychiatrists have spoken.

As have done, for that matter, the actual psychologists through the 157,000-members strong American Psychological Association: Transgender Identity Issues in Psychology. So no need for "I'm not a psychologist, but..." either.

I know you're trolling, but these feel like interesting questions on their own, so I'll bite:

That'd fit my "there's some of a gray area in this". It's the kind of situation in which a thorough investigation of the details would be needed. For example, such extremely voracious hunger would suggest the person suffers from extreme polyphagia, on a level approaching that of Tarrare. If that was the case, then it'd be a strong mitigating factor in any punishment.

In the above example, pitied is more the term. And then, ideally, lead to an inquiry on why and how the State failed addressing his extreme medical needs, and on how to fix that failure mode, followed by such fixes being adopted.

if he hadn't posted in the Fediverse through fucking Facebook. I would have been more impressed if he had done it directly on Mastodon or Lemmy.

This is sending all the wrong messages. Thanks whoever-runs-Biden's-internet-PR :(

You angry? (-:

True. Those two sets of laws and enforcement are wholly inconsistent, not to mention unjust in two different directions, which is a lot worse than it being merely one way or the other.

Needs or wants? This makes a huge difference.

IMHO someone going through hunger is perfectly justified in shoplifting food and not be imprisoned for it, particularly if they sought government of charity-provided free food and found none. Not so much for someone shoplifting a mobile phone or two -- per day.

There's some of a gray area in this, but for the most part the two extremes of the line are clearly distinguishable.