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Comment headlights too bright (Score 1) 187

This could have been solved decades ago. I remember a TV science program in the middle 1960s where the fitted vertically polarised filters to a cars headlights and horizontally polarised one to a windscreen mock up. Through this you could clearly see everything the car was illuminating, but it's lights looked very dim.

Comment Stop! (Score 1) 114

Totally contrary to what's wanted (as usual) :( The project I work with has multiple resizable windows, that also remember the size and position they were last used. All windows give real information in the title bar (including which instance of the software it's from). Our users can set things up exactly as they want... provided some self opinionated twat hasn't screwed up the windowing system - yet again!

Submission + - SPAM: Proof of Concept Verifies Physics That Could Enable Quantum Batteries

An anonymous reader writes: For the first time, a team of scientists has now demonstrated the quantum mechanical principle of superabsorption that underpins quantum batteries in a proof-of-concept device. “Superabsorption is a quantum collective effect where transitions between the states of the molecules interfere constructively,” James Quach, corresponding author of the study, told New Atlas. “Constructive interference occurs in all kinds of waves (light, sound, waves on water), and occurs when different waves add up to give a larger effect than either wave on its own. Crucially this allows the combined molecules to absorb light more efficiently than if each molecule were acting individually.” In a quantum battery, this phenomenon would have a very clear benefit. The more energy-storing molecules you have, the more efficiently they’ll be able to absorb that energy – in other words, the bigger you make the battery, the faster it will charge. At least, that’s how it should work in theory. Superabsorption had yet to be demonstrated on a scale large enough to build quantum batteries, but the new study has now managed just that.

To build their test device, the researchers placed an active layer of light-absorbing molecules – a dye known as Lumogen-F Orange — in a microcavity between two mirrors. “The mirrors in this microcavity were made using a standard method to make high quality mirrors,” explained Quach. “This is to use alternating layers of dielectric materials – silicon dioxide and niobium pentoxide – to create what is known as a ‘distributed Bragg reflector.’ This produces mirrors which reflect much more of the light than a typical metal/glass mirror. This is important as we want light to stay inside the cavity as long as possible.” The team then used ultrafast transient-absorption spectroscopy to measure how the dye molecules were storing the energy and how fast the whole device was charging. And sure enough, as the size of the microcavity and the number of molecules increased, the charging time decreased, demonstrating superabsorption at work.

Link to Original Source

Submission + - Mozilla stops accepting cryptocurrency Wikipedia may be next (techrepublic.com)

Ol Olsoc writes: When the Mozilla Foundation took to Twitter on New Year's Eve to announce it was going to begin accepting cryptocurrency donations, it likely didn't think about potential blowback from one of its founders, but that's what it got. In response, Mozilla has said it's pausing cryptocurrency donations. Wikipedia is now discussing whether it should stop accepting Cryptocurrency as well.

Mozilla co-founder Jamie Zawinski a co-founder of Mozilla has some strong feelings about the matter, noting "Anyone involved in cryptocurrencies in any way is either a grifter or a mark," Zawinski told me. "It is 100% a con. There is no legitimacy," he said.

I cannot disagree with him.

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