Comment Most importantly... (Score 2) 28
We MUST be able to inspect and age verify every AI slop porn image to protect the fictional children!
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Comment "Smaller than a hair" - no (Score 1) 15
If you read the article carefully, they are talking about lenses THINNER than a hair. I see several of the posts here thinking the width/radius of the lenses is this small, a reasonable mistake given the way this was written. Having a radius that small would severely reduce their light gathering ability, requiring very bright light or very dim images or very long exposure times.
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Comment 13ft (Score 5, Informative) 81
I'll just leave this here:
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 Re: LOLZ! (Score 1) 30
"misconfigurations" If you use a trivially guessable root password or install sketchy vulnerable third party software all bets are off regardless of how good Linux is. But I bet that had they had SELinux enforcing or running fapolicyd (standard built in security features) they wouldn't have been hacked.
Comment Re: PHP (Score 1) 30
PHP has been a disaster since the beginning. People start out as novice programmers who don't know about better with PHP and it happily lets them shoot themselves in the foot. It's as if the language was specifically designed to encourage it, even. Also check out https://reddit.com/r/lolphp for a long list of PHP fails. Go update your WordPress and all plugins, too. You know it needs it.
Comment Re:How funny (Score 4, Interesting) 63
I am founder/mod on 8 subreddits. They are not censored or "managed" in any way other than removing obvious commercial spam and harmful scams solely per my own personal preferences as the moderator. I've never had any communications with reddit corporate.
Also, fuck you
Comment How funny (Score 2) 63
Comment Seems pretty simple (Score 1) 283
It seems pretty simple to me. If corporations are allowed to outsource our jobs to cheaper workers, we should be allowed to buy cheaper products from overseas.
Comment Time to eliminate some tax breaks (Score 1) 124
A lot of these tech companies were given state and local tax breaks in exchange for employing people in those areas. If these tech companies have decided against employing people, it's time to start clawing back those concessions.
Comment Obligatory - Magnets! (Score 1) 37
F*****g magnets! How do they work?
Comment Nonsensical quantum computing on nonquantum PC (Score 3, Funny) 129
Is this the same guy that proved time travel was possible by generating a negative energy density gravitational lens using any common coffee maker?
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Comment Their engineers are also paid like shit. (Score 4, Insightful) 72
More importantly, their engineers are generally paid like shit, comparatively. I've known a lot of British engineers who have come to the states for the better stock options and compensation. If you want world-class feats of engineering, you need world-class engineers.
Comment The Year Of The Linux Desktop was 1995 for me. (Score 1) 141
I was 100% Linux since before Win 95 came out. Windows 3.1 was the last Windows I ever had installed on any machine I owned.
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