Comment Re:Did they really increase? (Score 1) 76
"If I say "all white people should die"
That is 100% protected speech, full stop, and is absolutely your right to express in a free and open society.
Comment Re:"Speech Rules" (Score 1) 76
"I've always been pro free speech, but"
You can always just stop posting after the 'but' because it means that you are not in fact pro-free speech.
Comment If only we had a way to fix this (Score 2, Interesting) 154
If only we had technology that would allow us to breed crops that could eradicate micronutrient deficiency and prevent its resultant illnesses and deaths.
Oh, wait, we do, but neo-Luddies who want everyone to live in a state of impoverishment and suffering don't want us to use it.
Comment Mazda has its finger on the pulse (Score 3, Informative) 47
Right as other manufacturers realize physical buttons are good actually and are changing back:
https://www.businessinsider.co...
https://www.autoblog.com/news/...
Comment Re:What do they want them to do instead? (Score 0) 111
Wonderful, export it to third world countries and destroy local jobs and companies because they can't compete with free shit from Europe.
Comment Perhaps they could consider marketing (Score 1) 31
"The documentation is the primary channel through which developers discover Tailwind's commercial products"
Turns out there is a place for advertising your product and bringing it to peoples' attention rather than just expecting them to find you.
Comment Re:who (Score 0) 110
If that's what an independent agency is, then independent agencies are blatantly unconstitutional. "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America" is literally the first sentence in Article II. If it is serving an executive function, then the executive branch "calls the shots."
Comment Re: Simple... (Score 1) 199
"Weather alerts, flood, tornado, etc. should be able to wake people up."
They're already *able* to wake people up. What do you do about people not wanting to be woken up who silence their phones? Do you pass legislation making it illegal for phones to be able to silence certain alerts? Okay, some people will put their phones somewhere other than their bedside so they can't be woken up. Do you make that illegal, or at some point do you just say "Okay, you know what, this is on you"?
Comment Re: Simple... (Score 1) 199
Okay, all those alerts saved one life.
And all those alerts convinced a bunch of people to silence their alerts, and resulted in lives lost.
Have you bothered to compare the two numbers to see whether the alerts are, in fact, justified? Or do you always only look at a benefit and ignore any associated costs?
Comment Re: You're replying to a bot (Score 1) 60
No, it was ~45% democrat and ~55% republican from what I've read.
Comment Re:Now all England needs (Score 1) 158
What does that translate to in watts/square meter?
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:I'm skeptic (Score 1) 62
Primordial black holes are sub-microscopic. They would be orders of magnitude smaller than a hydrogen molecule. They will not be accreting anything.
Comment Re:I'm skeptic (Score 2) 62
No, 1 nanometer is orders of magnitude too high an estimate. Observed data constrains primordial black hole masses to about 10^13kg, which gives a Rsch of about
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