You're correct. In fact they have imaged more than one at this point which are in that range. (100,000-billions of solar masses)

The article was not written by a scientist, but they failed to grasp how a solar mass black hole differs from the theoretical/physical concept of a black hole. Solar mass black holes are a certain variety of black hole, with a certain lifecycle. Since they form from stars, scientists base their properties on what we know about stars, and how they collapse into black holes. If there are undiscovered types of stars, or stars which collapse into black holes earlier in their life, maybe this is the first sign of that. They are other possibilities, as well.

That's a little bit like asking "is Linux dead?", simply because it's not a popular desktop OS. Just because the majority of users don't realize they're interacting with something, doesn't mean it's not widely used. In the case of Java, the Android platform is a major client-facing deployment. However, the majority of enterprise and webservices are still Java/Java EE and that application is growing, driven by the move to the cloud and the popularity of microservice architecture in new enterprise installations.

JavaScript obviously is a bit deal too, given the increasing importance of heavy client-side web-apps. But most of those webapps have Java on the back end.

15 Joules a day is about 175 microwatts continuously, enough to power very simple integrated circuits, perhaps a simple LCD watch. Not enough to produce light or sound or to power much of a processor. It would be a challenge to find an application that wouldn't require a large number of them.

It's a chemical reactor, not a nuclear one. Catalytic activity is a chemical phenomenon, not nuclear.

Mod the hell out of this. This person gets it!

"the primary desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems"

Well, well, aren't we full of ourselves...

Right on. That bugs the heck out of me. It's bad enough that a news outlet does it, but then for Slashdot to re-post that without correction is irritating. Gigawatts per hour is a meaningless unit unless you're talking about the rate of capacity installation or production, which this article clearly isn't. Where they get this unit from is beyond me, but it shows up very frequently.

It's almost as bad as when reporters compare two batteries of very different voltages and configurations based on their charge (in mAh). Basic electricity and magnetism really should be mandatory for everyone, but people who write about it for a living have absolutely no excuse.

I know it's in the original article, but one gigawatt per year??? Someone doesn't understand energy. That's a rate of growth of capacity, not a capacity. I'm guessing what was intended was "one gigawatt hour per year" which is a measure of energy produced in one year. Divide by the number of hours in a year and you have the average power output.

I think the intent was "its eponymous management system runs globally on roughly 229,300 solar plants that typically pump out [5.66TWh] of electrical energy [annually]." It makes more sense to average over a long period of time with solar which is presumably what they were doing. A smart editor would have caught that.

So, a partial sphere would work, but a hemisphere would be less effective. The reason being that part of the design ethos here is to be able to collect sunlight as the sun moves without moving the collector. That implies that the cross-section perpendicular to the sun must have maximum surface area. My understanding is that the sun completes nearly a 180 degree arc during the day, making at least most of a sphere necessary for maximum efficiency.

Seriously, when I hear conspiracy theory crap like this, even if it's true, you've still got to tell me what the harm is if more people have access to treatment, even though some of them might not need it. It's the same with autism diagnosis: they favor the diagnosis over not giving it because it allow the child access to therapy which can significantly improve outcomes. If you're going to err, overdiagnosis for these disorders is a reasonable direction to lean, much safer than underdiagnosing them. And especially when there's no definitive test.

Wait, there's a debate about whether or not the climate is warming? That's news to me. There's certainly a debate about exactly how quickly it's rising, which is something the scientists have not expressed certainty about. But the fact that the planet is warming as well as the question of the main cause very well studied, well demonstrated and not heavily debated among scientists.

Science really isn't about confidence. It's about evidence. If holding the line, even when you know you're wrong, is what makes people feel confident, it's no wonder they turn to religion. But I'm personally thankful that at least one discipline isn't afraid to publish results that contradict earlier findings, if that's where the evidence leads.

As someone who understands this process, findings like this lend tremendous credibility to the scientific community, and yes, boost my confidence in the work they're doing and the integrity of the published results. It's what makes science the best method we know of for understanding reality.

Well, one of the best arguments for upgrading from a system that old is computation power per watt. It costs a lot to run a very old power-hungry system to do something that a tiny micro-controller can do today for fractions of a penny on the dollar in power consumption. You're paying an exorbitant rate per CPU cycle with something like a PDP-11.

That doesn't quite equate to it always being worthwhile to replace a dated system. In some applications, it is critical that a well tested software/hardware combo not be messed with. I suspect this is one of those cases, where the difficulties and cost in maintaining such a system are deemed more economical than the alternatives.

I'm not fond of this in the least. I wonder how long before major ISPs finally jump to v6.