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Submission + - SPAM: The Aftermath of the Coruscant Celebration Scene

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: You may remember it — at the end of 'Return of the Jedi: Special Edition', a rare glimpse of Coruscant — the seat of the galactic empire — is shown in a celebratory state as news of the empire's defeat at Endor reverberated throughout the patchwork of worlds that make up the Star Wars universe. One might imagine that most viewers at that time might have thought — "Oh, cool, so that's what Coruscant looks like" — then went on with their lives rarely to think about that scene ever again. In a recent ScreenRant article ,they take a deeper dive into what happened on Coruscant as explored in the various book series that expanded on that moment:

Although Palpatine died during the Battle of Endor, Coruscant remained the capital of his Empire. This meant that the citizens who set off fireworks, toppled statues of The Empire, and attacked Stormtroopers were met with violent retaliation from Imperial forces, resulting in numerous extrajudicial killings and executions of civilians. Coruscant continued to serve as an Imperial stronghold until its liberation by the New Republic, which happened a year later in canon and two years later in Legends.

Depending on which book source you use, the Empire's grasp on Coruscant lasted two years in the Legends books and only one year in the canon Aftermath trilogy. With all of the new Star Wars spinoffs being created lately, perhaps this transitory period for Coruscant would be a subplot worth exploring as its own mini-series.


Link to Original Source

Submission + - US science advisors desperately want to probe Uranus Again (msn.com) 2

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: Is it time we gave Uranus a closer look again?:

"The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have released their newest decadal survey. Apparently, at the top of the list of priorities is a goal to probe Uranus. The report, which was published this year, calls for a spacecraft to orbit Uranus. That spacecraft would then map its gravitational and magnetic fields. It would circle the planet for multiple years. During that time, it could deliver an atmospheric probe to the planet to study it."

Scientists would also like to learn more about the various moons and the ring system surrounding the planet. Mark Hofstadter, a planetary scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab wrote a white paper outlining their goals. Another target would include Enceladus, Saturn's icy moon that could be a candidate for being the host of microbial life.

Time is of the essence for inserting the Probe into Uranus's orbit, however, as a mission would need to be launched by 2031 to take advantage of a gravity assist from Jupiter.

Submission + - The Exotic Legend of the Dark Knight Alien Satellite Meets Mundane Reality (space.com)

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: In what has become a stubborn sibling to the 'Face on Mars' phenomenon, the legend of the Dark Knight alien satellite has persisted for years and is the fascinating story of a seemingly mundane NASA photo tied together with reports of seemingly mysterious radio waves captured in the early days of radio, all combining to make the ultimate space conspiracy theory.

It goes something like this — an ancient alien space probe, dubbed the 'Dark Knight, has been long orbiting Earth and covertly monitoring its blissfully unaware inhabitants for mysterious purposes for roughly 10,000 years. Flash forward to the 1899, where technological pioneer Nikola Tesla, while experimenting with radio technology in his Colorado laboratory supposedly captured mysterious emanations from an unearthly object. Later in the 1920's, Norwegian engineer Jørgen Hals found that radio signals he transmitted were being echoed back to him a few seconds later, something called 'long delayed echoes' — still unexplained to this day. It has been proposed that these echoes were signals being relayed back to earth by something called a 'Bracewell Probe', a hypothetical automated spacecraft sent out with the goal of making contact with other intelligent species.

Flash forward to 1998, an unassuming photo from the STS-88 mission in 1998 to attach the U.S. module to the Russian portion of the ISS captured a tantalizing glimpse of an unnaturally geometric shape menacingly loitering toward the bottom of the frame. To true believers, this was evidence of an ancient probe keeping tabs on the earthly locals. Combined, these disparate events swirl together to create the stuff of dreams for the ardent conspiracy theorist and even the causal sci-fi buff. Ultimately, the object in the STS photo was most likely a thermal cover. The radio waves Tesla heard? Likely natural radio emisions of a natural or terestial source.

Space.com took a deep dive into this myth and explored how it — and the - dark knight myth has taken a hold on the imaginations of those who find themselves peering out into the inky blackness of the night and wonder to themselves "are we being watched from above"?
Earth

How the Fossil Fuel Industry is Pushing Plastics on the World (cnbc.com) 113

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
We're in the midst of an energy transition. Renewable power and electric vehicles are getting cheaper, the grid is getting greener, and oil and gas companies are getting nervous. That's why the fossil fuel giants are looking towards petrochemicals, and plastics in particular, as their next major growth market. From a report: "Plastics is the Plan B for the fossil fuel industry," said Judith Enck, Founder and President of the nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Plastics. Plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, are set to drive nearly half of oil demand growth by midcentury, according to the International Energy Agency. That outpaces even hard-to-decarbonize sectors like aviation and shipping.

"Every company who is currently engaged in producing plastic, if you look at their capital budgets for the next two to three years, they're all talking about expansion plans," said Ramesh Ramachandran, CEO of No Plastic Waste, an initiative from the Mindaroo Foundation that's working to create a market-based approach to a circular plastics economy. Yet much of the developed world is already awash in plastics. So fossil fuel and petrochemical companies are relying on emerging economies in Asia and Africa to drive growth. Alan Gelder of Wood Mackenzie forecasts that every year through 2050, there will be 10 million metric tons of growth in the market for petrochemicals, which are used to make plastics and other products. He says much of that will be shipped overseas.

Comment Re:No worse than 98se (Score 1) 269

by alaskana98 (#62073177) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Do You Remember About Windows ME?

I ran Windows ME since it was in beta and never had any issues. It was basically Windows 98se with some minor changes. I don't think it was really any worse than Windows 98se. During this era I dual-booted with Windows 2000 as there were still apps and games that ran better on 9x. Was ME really "bad" compared to 98, or was it just that the NT-based operating systems that came afterward (XP, etc) were so much better?

Yeah, Windows ME was basically Windows 98 TE (third edition), or Windows 95 fourth edition. It is a good point that people look back on Windows ME with so much disgust because of the NT codebase variants that came out later (granted Windows 2000 did come out many months before ME).

But if memory serves, people really did think ME was a steaming pile of dog doo at the time, just comparing it to (most likely) Windows 98 SE. I think part of the problem is Microsoft actually charged people money for it. It should have been a free upgrade to those who bought 98 SE IMO.

Submission + - Reexamining Windows ME: A brief look at what it got wrong, and what it got right 2

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: Released on September 14, 2000, Windows ME is beyond the memory of many computer users today but yet retains its place in computing history as a curious anomaly in the saga of Microsoft's Operation System releases, joining the ranks of other unfortunate Microsoft releases such as Windows Vista and Windows 8.

Windows ME was the last Microsoft OS to use the Windows 95 codebase. While rightly being panned as a buggy and crash-prone OS — indeed it was labelled as the worst version of Windows ever released by Computer World — it did introduce a number of features that continue on to this very day. Those features include:

-Windows Movie Maker and Windows Media Player 7, allowing home users to create, edit and burn their own digital home movies. While seemingly pedestrian in today's times, these were groundbreaking features for home users in the year 2000.
-The first iteration of System Restore — imagine a modern version of Windows not having the ability to conveniently restore to a working configuration — before Windows ME, this was simply not a possibility for the average home user unless you had a rigorous backup routine.
-The removal of real-mode DOS. While very controversial at the time, this change arguably improved the speed and reliability of the boot process.
-Software support for DVD playback. Previously one needed a dedicated card to playback DVDs.
-A personalized start menu that would show your most recently accessed programs, today a common feature in the Windows landscape.

Love it or hate it (well, lets face it, if you were a computer user at that point you probably hated it) — Windows ME did make several important contributions to the modern OS landscape that are often overlooked to this day. Do you have any stories from the heady days of late 2000 when Windows ME was first released?

Comment Re:Oh, it's Serious Sam (Score 3) 60

by alaskana98 (#62051147) Attached to: After 25 Years, Quake 1 Gets Major 'Horde' Mode Update
I'm pretty sure Doom 1 did not have a TCP option for multiplayer. I believe it was all dial-up IPX/SPX. I remember how much of a pain it was to set up death matches on Doom 1 or Doom 2 as you had to pre-arrange the details such as who was going to be the caller and who the receiver, not to mention the network settings needed to make everything 'talk' so to speak. Quake revolutionized that whole process, IMO, in that it allowed TCP which made for fairly easy multiplayer match setups. You didn't have to worry about all the overhead in an IPS/SPX setup, you just needed your Internet connected and then choose multiplayer, find an open game and done.

Submission + - Oumuamua May Not Be A Frozen Nitrogen Chunk After All (livescience.com) 1

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: In the latest move in the war on who gets to define what exactly OuMuaMua is, Harvard astrophysicists Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb have countered the prevailing hypothesis that it is a frozen chunk of nitrogen with their own — that it is simply not possible:

"According to Siraj and his co-author, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, Jackson and Desch's conclusion that 'Oumuamua is a nitrogen iceberg is flawed because there isn't enough nitrogen in the universe to make an object like 'Oumuamua, which is somewhere between 1,300 and 2,600 feet (400 and 800 meters) long and between 115 and 548 feet (35 and 167 m) wide. Pure nitrogen is rare, Siraj said, and has been found only on Pluto, where it makes up about 0.5% of the total mass. Even if all of the nitrogen ice in the universe was scraped off every Pluto-like planet that's predicted to exist, there still wouldn't be enough nitrogen to make 'Oumuamua."

Although Oumuamua probably isn't some probe looking for humpbacked whales, it does continue to deliver plenty of intrigue — and controversy — for those astronomy buffs out there.

Submission + - The Man Behind The 'Tic-Tac' UFO Videos Claim They've Been Here Since The 1950s

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: In a recent GQ magazine interview with Luis Elizondo, the former head of the Department of Defense’s ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)’, he claims that the much publicized 'Tic-Tac' UAPs observed by the U.S. Navy have been flying in our skies for many decades:

“I have in my possession official US government documentation that describes the exact same vehicle that we now call the Tic Tac [seen by the Nimitz pilots in 2004] being described in the early 1950s and early 1960s and performing in ways that, frankly, can outperform anything we have in our inventory."

He then goes on to state that he's even heard from pilots who sufferered real-world health issues as a consequence of getting to close to the objects:

"I’ve got to be careful, I can’t speak too specifically, but one might imagine that you get a report from a pilot who says, “Lue, it’s really weird. I was flying and I got close to this thing and I came back home and it was like I got a sunburn. I was red for four days.” Well, that’s a sign of radiation. That’s not a sunburn; it’s a radiation burn." Perhaps most bizarre is a revelation that those who got closest to the UAPs experienced a form of time dilation: "“You know, Lue, it’s really bizarre. It felt like I was there for only five minutes, but when I looked at my watch 30 minutes went by, but I only used five minutes’ worth of fuel. How is that possible?” Well, there’s a reason for that, we believe, and it probably has to do with warping of space time. And the closer you get to one of these vehicles, the more you may begin to experience space time relative to the vehicle and the environment."

As the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence — but if these claims can be corroborated with evidence it would suggest that we've only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of information that has yet to be revealed on these things. Perhaps the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) will drive future efforts to get a better idea of what this phenomenon actually is.

Submission + - Star System With Right-Angled Planets Surprises Astronomers (nytimes.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Star systems come in all shapes and sizes. Some have lots of planets, some have larger planets and others have no planets at all. But a particularly unusual system about 150 light-years from our own has scientists scratching their heads.

In 2016, astronomers discovered two planets orbiting the star HD 3167. They were thought to be super-Earths — between Earth and Neptune in size — and circled the star every one and 30 days. A third planet was found in the system in 2017, orbiting in about eight days.

What’s unusual is the inclinations of the outer two planets, HD 3167 c and d. Whereas in our solar system all the planets orbit in the same flat plane around the sun, these two are in polar orbits. That is, they go above and below their star’s poles, rather than around the equator as Earth and the other planets in our system do.

Now scientists have discovered the system is even weirder than they thought. Researchers measured the orbit of the innermost planet, HD 3167 b, for the first time — and it doesn’t match the other two. It instead orbits in the star’s flat plane, like planets in our solar system, and perpendicular to HD 3167 c and d. This star system is the first one known to act like this.

Submission + - Man's picture used for 2 years to illustrate Wikipedia article on serial killer (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by Andreas Kolbe
Andreas Kolbe writes: For more than two years, Wikipedia illustrated its article on New York serial killer Nathaniel White with the police photo of an African-American man from Florida who happened to have the same name. A Wikipedia user said he had found the picture on crimefeed.com, a "true crime" site associated with the Discovery Channel, which also used the same photo in a TV broadcast on the serial killer. During the two-and-a-half years the Wikipedia article showed the picture of the wrong man, it was viewed over 125,000 times, including nearly 12,000 times on the day the TV program ran. The man whose picture was used said he received threats to his person from people who assumed he really was the killer, and took to dressing incognito. His picture is now all over Google when people search for the serial killer.

Submission + - Intel's Alder Lake Reviewed: 12th Gen Core Processors Bring Fight Back To AMD (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: After months of speculation and early look teases, Intel's 12th Gen Core processors are finally ready for prime time. Today marks the embargo lift for independent reviews of Alder Lake and it's clear Chipzilla is back and bringing the fight again versus chief rival AMD. Intel 12th Gen Core processors incorporate two new CPU core designs, dubbed Efficiency (E-core) and Performance (P-core). In addition to this new hybrid core architecture, 12th Gen Core processors and the Z690 motherboard chipset platform also feature support for the latest memory and IO technologies, including PCI Express Gen 5, DDR5, Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 6E. The new Core i9-12900K features a monolithic, 16-core (24-thread) die with 8 Performance cores and 8 Efficiency cores, while the Core i5-12600K has 10 cores / 16-threads, comprised of 6 P-cores and 4 E-cores. Alder Lake E-cores don't support HyperThreading but P-cores can process two threads simultaneously while E-cores can manage only one, hence the asymmetric core counts. In the benchmarks, the 16-core Core i9-12900K doesn't sweep AMD's 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X across the board in multi-threaded tests, but it certainly competes very well and notches plenty of victories. In the lightly-threaded tests though, it's a much clearer win for Intel and gaming is an obvious strong point as well. Alder Lake's performance cores are as fast as they come. The $589 (MSRP) 16-core Core i9-12900K competes well with the $750 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X, and the $289 10-core Core i5-12600K has a lower MSRP than a $299 6-core Ryzen 5 5600X. The new Core i5's power and performance look great too, especially when you consider this $289 chip outruns Intel's previous-gen flagship Core i9-11900K more often than not, and it smokes a Ryzen 5 5600X.

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