Comment Re:Substack is trash (Score 1) 28
FWIW, they did say the push notification promoting a Nazi was an error that got debugged. https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
Comment Re:Chilling (Score 1) 200
There is a school of thought which holds that past a certain scale, effective moderation becomes impossible. I've done moderation work and it took tons of judgement.
Comment Re:seems excessive (Score 1) 79
I know what that would do to my morale.
Comment SF explored this a very long time ago (Score 1) 65
The story "Q. U. R." had an inventor simplify robots which were going insane from having humanoid features they had no use for. 1943.
Comment Don't believe this for one second. (Score 4, Informative) 42
Just last week, we received notification that IBM is rolling out a "program" to upper-level employees with decades of experience. The idea is that we would work reduced hours for the next year at full pay, and then leave IBM after a year (next March, I believe.)
Of course, this is for US employees only. I think we can be sure that the replacements for these employees (if there are any) won't be in the US.
Comment Misleading... (Score 4, Interesting) 31
You didn't "cut cable" if you didn't have it in the first place; the number they're citing is a percentage of total households without cable, not the number of total households that had cable and got rid of it.
Submission + - Another large Black hole in "our" Galaxy (arxiv.org)
RockDoctor writes: A recent paper on ArXiv reports a novel idea about the central regions of "our" galaxy.
Remember the hoopla a few years ago about radio-astronomical observations producing an "image" of our central black hole — or rather, an image of the accretion disc around the black hole — long designated by astronomers as "Sagittarius A*" (or SGR-A*)? If you remember the image published then, one thing should be striking — it's not very symmetrical. If you think about viewing a spinning object, then you'd expect to see something with a "mirror" symmetry plane where we would see the rotation axis (if someone had marked it). If anything, that published image has three bright spots on a fainter ring. And the spots are not even approximately the same brightness.
This paper suggests that the image we see is the result of the light (radio waves) from SGR-A* being "lensed" by another black hole, near (but not quite on) the line of sight between SGR-A* and us. By various modelling approaches, they then refine this idea to a "best-fit" of a black hole with mass around 1000 times the Sun, orbiting between the distance of the closest-observed star to SGR-A* ("S2" — most imaginative name, ever!), and around 10 times that distance. That's far enough to make a strong interaction with "S2" unlikely within the lifetime of S2 before it's accretion onto SGR-A*.)
The region around SGR-A* is crowded. Within 25 parsecs (~80 light years, the distance to Regulus [in the constellation Leo] or Merak [in the Great Bear]) there is around 4 times more mass in several millions of "normal" stars than in the SGR-A* black hole. Finding a large (not "super massive") black hole in such a concentration of matter shouldn't surprise anyone.
This proposed black hole is larger than anything which has been detected by gravitational waves (yet) ; but not immensely larger — only a factor of 15 or so. (The authors also anticipate the "what about these big black holes spiralling together?" question : quote "and the amplitude of gravitational waves generated by the binary black holes is negligible.")
Being so close to SGR-A*, the proposed black hole is likely to be moving rapidly across our line of sight. At the distance of "S2" it's orbital period would be around 26 years (but the "new" black hole is probably further out than than that). Which might be an explanation for some of the variability and "flickering" reported for SGR-A* ever since it's discovery.
As always, more observations are needed. Which, for SGR-A* are frequently being taken, so improving (or ruling out) this explanation should happen fairly quickly. But it's a very interesting, and fun, idea.
Remember the hoopla a few years ago about radio-astronomical observations producing an "image" of our central black hole — or rather, an image of the accretion disc around the black hole — long designated by astronomers as "Sagittarius A*" (or SGR-A*)? If you remember the image published then, one thing should be striking — it's not very symmetrical. If you think about viewing a spinning object, then you'd expect to see something with a "mirror" symmetry plane where we would see the rotation axis (if someone had marked it). If anything, that published image has three bright spots on a fainter ring. And the spots are not even approximately the same brightness.
This paper suggests that the image we see is the result of the light (radio waves) from SGR-A* being "lensed" by another black hole, near (but not quite on) the line of sight between SGR-A* and us. By various modelling approaches, they then refine this idea to a "best-fit" of a black hole with mass around 1000 times the Sun, orbiting between the distance of the closest-observed star to SGR-A* ("S2" — most imaginative name, ever!), and around 10 times that distance. That's far enough to make a strong interaction with "S2" unlikely within the lifetime of S2 before it's accretion onto SGR-A*.)
The region around SGR-A* is crowded. Within 25 parsecs (~80 light years, the distance to Regulus [in the constellation Leo] or Merak [in the Great Bear]) there is around 4 times more mass in several millions of "normal" stars than in the SGR-A* black hole. Finding a large (not "super massive") black hole in such a concentration of matter shouldn't surprise anyone.
This proposed black hole is larger than anything which has been detected by gravitational waves (yet) ; but not immensely larger — only a factor of 15 or so. (The authors also anticipate the "what about these big black holes spiralling together?" question : quote "and the amplitude of gravitational waves generated by the binary black holes is negligible.")
Being so close to SGR-A*, the proposed black hole is likely to be moving rapidly across our line of sight. At the distance of "S2" it's orbital period would be around 26 years (but the "new" black hole is probably further out than than that). Which might be an explanation for some of the variability and "flickering" reported for SGR-A* ever since it's discovery.
As always, more observations are needed. Which, for SGR-A* are frequently being taken, so improving (or ruling out) this explanation should happen fairly quickly. But it's a very interesting, and fun, idea.
Submission + - Surado, formerly Slashdot Japan, is closing at the end of the month. (srad.jp) 1
AmiMoJo writes: Slashdot Japan was launched on May 28, 2001. On 2025/03/31, it will finally close. Since starting the site separated from the main Slashdot one, and eventually rebranded as "Surado", which was it's Japanese nickname.
Last year the site stopped posting new stories, and was subsequently unable to find a buyer. In a final story announcing the end, many users expressed their sadness and gratitude for all the years of service.
Last year the site stopped posting new stories, and was subsequently unable to find a buyer. In a final story announcing the end, many users expressed their sadness and gratitude for all the years of service.
Comment People make fun of Bulwer-Lytton (Score 1) 14
But they still quote "the pen is mightier than the sword", which in context is a superb description of good government:: "Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword". He should get credit. Besides, the opening of Paul Clifford was standard Victorian style.
Comment Re:Despite slashdot's hate (Score 1) 26
By the toochain, do you mean Cargo? I thought it had delightful features, and it was reliable in my small educational programs.
It's way cool to have your API example documentation included in automatic tests.
Comment The alignment problem vs. the halting problem (Score 1) 133
I was talking to a CS prof specializing in software ethics and made fun of myself for saying the alignment problem was harder than the halting problem. What could be harder than being impossible?
She quickly replied that of course it's way harder because there are special cases where the halting problem has solutions.
Comment Re:Big Tech isn't worried (Score 1) 158
They do have an economic issue. The advertisers who keep them in business prefer to have their ads next to non-toxic content.
Comment The Constitution includes property rights (Score 4, Interesting) 158
Nobody has a 1A right to trespass on your servers, or Zuckerberg's, or Musk's.
https://xkcd.com/1357/ as everyone has seen.
I'd like to see an honest administration do antitrust action which might alleviate problems like the suppression (NOT censorship) of abortion information: https://www.emarketer.com/cont...
Comment Re:Clarifying the problem (Score 1) 226
I plug my Prius Prime into a GFCI outlet because it's in the garage and they've been required there for a long long time. There has never been a problem, and I don't see offhand why there would be a difference between Level 1 and Level 2.
Did I misunderstand the fine article? Was it saying that EVSEs might have ground faults more than 5 mA? Uh, how? With, as you pointed out, their own protective equipment on board.
Comment No sense of history (Score 1) 320
This is the organization that eradicated smallpox.
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