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Comment Re:I'm Still Not Seeing It (Score -1) 34

by dada21 (#65456913) Attached to: AI Will Shrink Amazon's Workforce In the Coming Years, CEO Jassy Says

I don't own a computer. I am not a programmer. I do everything from my iPhone.

In the past 10 years, I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on human programmers to create 3 web apps. Zero of them ever were finished. ZERO.

I used Grok AI to create 5 web apps. 3 of them were monetized almost immediately and have paying clients. All 5 have passed security checks that look for bugs or hack entry points.

One of the 3 monetized web apps took me all of 30 minutes using Grok, on an airplane, using my iPhone. I was able to download the files and upload them to a web server and the site was live. Literally 30 minutes and that website has created thousands of dollars of passive income.

I use vibe coding DAILY to make spreadsheets better for me and clients (I am not in IT). I use vibe coding DAILY to come up with cool functions for my web apps that people pay me to use.

Comment Re: Would anyone have noticed? (Score 0) 61

by dada21 (#65428340) Attached to: Hollywood Already Uses Generative AI (And Is Hiding It)

I own a tiny indie studio in Chicagoland and my peers own the some of the huge studios in Chicagoland.

Cinespace is dead right now. It has ONE show active. The other studios are so dead that they're secretly hosting bar mitzvahs and pickleball tournaments for $1500 a day just to pay property taxes.

My studio is surprisingly busy but I'm cheap and cater to non-union folks with otherwise full time jobs.

Comment So strange (Score -1) 56

I used to be such a huge Google fan. My businesses spent tens of thousands a month on Google.

But now, I think I spend $19.99 a month on Google. Maybe. I need to cut that off.

I don't use gmail anymore. I haven't used google search in forever. I am using Chrome right now but need to replace it.

Who uses Google anymore? For anything?

Submission + - Another large Black hole in "our" Galaxy (arxiv.org)

Submitted by RockDoctor
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.

Submission + - Surado, formerly Slashdot Japan, is closing at the end of the month. (srad.jp) 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo
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.

Comment Re: Poor savings habits strike again! (Score 1, Interesting) 211

by dada21 (#65173873) Attached to: The 'White Collar' Recession is Pummeling Office Workers

I have no empathy for people who put all their eggs into one basket.

6 months emergency savings in a local bank. Rolling 12 month CD ladder. 401K or IRA in a three fund portfolio. By age 25 anyone making mid-high 5 figures can have a year of income saved, but instead they want tattoos and nice cars and big apartments and every concert memory.

No empathy for slaughtering yourself.

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"If there isn't a population problem, why is the government putting cancer in the cigarettes?" -- the elder Steptoe, c. 1970

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