Related to the topic at hand ...

I posted this last year when the topic of dark energy and the acceleration of the expansion came up ...

Anyway ...

Watch Subir Sarkar's lecture on Beyond The Cosmological Standard Model.

Sarkar is a professor at Oxford who has done some interesting work providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is NOT accelerating.

Instead, he is saying that there is a dipole effect because earth, and the galaxy cluster that we are in, are all moving in space, and that gives the effect of accelerating expansion!

He provides compelling evidence (for a non-specialist at least) for what he says and also casts doubts on the evidence for acceleration by analyzing their data (supernovae as standard candles, and their red shift), since a dipole effect is observed on that.

If his hypothesis is confirmed by other research and observations, then the Nobel Prize for Saul Perlmutter and Adam Reiss maybe for nothing ...

An area to watch for sure ...

FYI ...

Canada lost its measles elimination status this month ...

Because of all the antivaxx disinformation and anti-science stance, problems that were basically solved are coming back ...

Now that I know this from reading TFA, the next time I find myself in the position of kidnapping someone for their Bitcoin, the first thing I'm gonna do is knock their teeth out with a pipe wrench.

Thanks, Slashdot. You've made my career of being a terrible person that much easier. :)

I will do you one better ...

Just tie their hands behind their back. No gnawing can get one out of that ...

You owe me 20% of the Bitcoin you get that way ...

Our modern Western economies are messed up.

But even before modern economics, inflation was a fact of life.
See what a house sold for in 1850 vs. 1900 vs. 1950 vs. now.

The modern era of economics started with unpegging of paper currency from gold started this cascade of events.
From that point, money was worth what the country as a whole produced.

And we have this continued growth imperative, otherwise it is called a recession.

That is why people not spending money is 'bad' in the view of modern economics.
Because spending money goes into other people's jobs.
If everyone sits on their money, then goods will not be sold, and no services will be delivered, making other people's jobs' vanish.

But it is what we have, until something better emerges.
Just like democracy ...

We are told that "inflation is good" by economists -- for me, it's nothing but a tax. Asking an economist whose very paycheck comes from inflationary measures is same as asking a christian Bible scholar whether the Bible is trustworthy.

Inflation is not a tax, despite many holding onto this notion.
Some inflation is good, when it is no more than 1-2% per year.

In our current Western economies that are based on continued growth, if there is deflation, then people will defer spending since the money they have today will have more buyer power tomorrow.

Japan is such a case: they have been in deflation for decades. Read up on the effects that made on society.

Another issue with no inflation is that there is no borrowing costs, and some investors will abuse this to gobble up real estate (e.g. some investors bought high rise rental buildings, then raised the rent, making it unaffordable for regular people.
Other people will buy homes, and the unnatural influx of buyers will raise the price for other people.

That is why central banks use interest rates as a tool to curb excessive inflation.

Under 2% inflation is the least bad of the options available.

If your needs for a table are simple, then Lenovo fits the bill nicely.

My tablet is several years old. It is the Lenovo Tab P11 Plus.

My use case is for 'normal' stuff, such as browsing, Youtube, email, ...etc.
I don't use it for drawing or with a stylus.

But it has been solid overall, and quite usable for a long time.

A friend of mine has a backyard astronomical observatory.
In the Great Lakes weather, it is challenging to keep the equipment inside safe year-round from humidity and condensation. Summers are hot and humid.
Other friends have an A/C that they keep running, so there is no condensation, and no mold on optics, and rust on electronics.
This friend though, does not use an A/C at all.
Instead he covered the observatory's roof with something that commercial building use to safe energy. It reflects all the incident Infra-Red, and keeps the building within 2C from ambient temperature.
The material is not a paint. It comes in flexible sheets, similar to neoprene, but not porous.
It is made by Lexan and is called Hi-Tuff TPO.
It does not shrink, and is relatively impact resistant.
He had it for ~ 19 years, and only uses water, detergent and some bleach to clean the green algae that grow on it.

Related: Inside the observatory, he uses a large fan to keep the air moving inside, and has a mesh covered vent on the other side. He says that moving air causes mold to never grow.

Is there anyone else in the consumer/SOHO space you would recommend?

There are some routers now that ship with OpenWRT, and you can update them to later versions.
So these won't be plagued with security issues to the same extent as proprietary firmware from the manufacturer.

Many of them use the MediaTek Filogic SOC.

One such company is Cudy, which is available for purchase on Amazon. For example, their WR3000H has 1 x 2.5Gbps port, used to be C$99 on Amazon.

Well said ...

Mod parent up more!

Ah - yes, I did misread it. Jobs did push people and created the Reality Distortion Field, but he could not have gotten much going without Woz.

And, yes, I was talking about Woz' accomplishments.

Some of his logic designs were amazing. I was learning digital logic when I got my //e and started studying schematics. (The //e was a generation removed, but had some features from the ][ series and I studied those as well.) For one example, the ][ disk drive. Just as a quick and simple example, he had a 7400 chip needed and used 1 ro 2 of the NAND gates on it. He used the other gates as amplifiers from the disk signal. Not something that was at all standard at that time (don't know if it is now). That's the one I can remember, but he was using ONE gate as an amp instead of at least one, if not three more chips. Things like that kept the costs down more than most would think.

I can't remember other examples, but his habits of having to keep chip counts down, so he could make what he wanted when his family didn't have a lot of money, came through in a number of ways in his designs.

Hmmm...

That's being a little bit harsh.

He sold *new* cars! ;)

They really should be honoring Steve Wozniak instead. He's the one that did the work, did the innovation, made a floppy disk drive work for a price lower than anyone else could imagine by innovating. He's the one who did the designs and made it all possible. But Jobs was more visible and knew how to capture headlines.

Seriously, Jobs and Apple would have been NOTHING without Woz doing the kind of stuff he can do.

This has been tired before, and ended no where ...

Anyone remember Openmoko and the hype around it in the Open Source community?

There were also Nokia's Maemo (before Nokia abandoned it and the underlying hand sets after that CEO took over) then the Linux Foundation's MeeGo.

I hope this effort succeeds though despite the odds.

Here is a non-paywalled article that even has a summary at the top:

NY judge sanctions lawyer for fake AI citations.