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Submission + - Candy Corn Is Made of Bug Secretions (archive.is)

Submitted by know-nothing cunt
know-nothing cunt writes: The Atlantic reports:

Here's a tip if you ever want to ruin a Halloween party. Seek out the most squeamish-seeming adult or child you can find in the act of consuming candy corn. Then tell them they just filled their mouth with bug secretions. If this fact alarms you — or if you’re an inveterate hater of candy corn and thus think that you have been spared — I regret to inform you that by eating many classic Halloween candies, you are, to some extent, eating bugs. More precisely, you are eating a bug by-product that is in many cases listed on the package as "confectioner’s glaze." This glaze is used on jelly beans, Milk Duds, Junior Mints, Whoppers, Lemonheads, and Sugar Babies, to name a few.

Submission + - How Much Do Optics Improve Shooting Performance? (army.mil)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Iron sights force your eye to line up three things at different distances—a rear notch, a front post, and the target—while your eye can only truly focus on one. A red dot sight collapses that into a single aiming point using a neat optical trick: an LED sits at the focus of a curved, partially mirrored lens, a collimator, which reflects its light back as parallel rays. To the eye, parallel rays read as coming from infinity, so the dot appears projected onto the target plane and stays put as your head shifts, rather than drifting the way a reticle at a different depth would. That is what “parallax-free” means here. The catch is that it is only perfectly parallax-free at infinity; at closer range, a small residual error remains, roughly equal to the diameter of the collimating optics.

That optical simplification is why red-dot sights are often described as fast-acquisition sights: the target and aiming point sit on nearly the same optical plane, so the shooter can keep attention on the field of view rather than switching focus among three reference points. They are used in civilian target shooting, hunting, police work, and military applications, and non-magnified designs also avoid the eye-relief constraints of a conventional telescopic sight. [1]

The U.S. Army makes a broader case that optics are one part of a system: “Soldier + Weapon + Ammo + Optic + Training.” Its Dual Path Strategy document argues that optical sights can improve target-acquisition speed and first-round hit probability, but it also emphasizes zeroing, training, backup iron sights, and the fact that environmental conditions and shooter skill still matter. [2]

A retailer article on sight selection applies a similar idea to civilian shooting, arguing that sight choice affects accuracy, target acquisition, and adaptability, and that shooters should budget for an optic alongside the firearm itself. [3]

So how much of the improvement is the optic itself, and how much is simply better training with a simpler sight picture? For close-range practical shooting, red dots seem compelling; for precision at distance, magnification introduces a different set of tradeoffs. Where have you found optics to be a clear upgrade—and where are iron sights still good enough?

Comment Re:The Mystery of the Soggy Shipment (Score 1) 131

by jred (#64432522) Attached to: America's First Big-Rig Hydrogen Fuel Station Opens in California
It's adding to the cloud cover, which will reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth, which will cause temperatures to drop, which will plunge us into the next ice age. Then us humans will need to start burning fossil fuels again to drag us out of the ice age, just like we did last time.

Comment Re:No thanks. (Score 1) 21

by jred (#63942243) Attached to: Google Takes Aim At Duolingo With New English Tutoring Tool
I've been using duolingo for a bit because I work on a demolition crew, and apparently I've been designated liaison with the hispanic construction workers we occasionally work with. I've pretty much reached the limit of progress with duolingo, and really just need to hang out with some native spanish speakers for a bit. Luckily one of my wife's friends is moving back to town, and her Mexican husband is all on-board with hanging out with a bottle of tequila and making fun of me in spanish :)

Comment Re:potential profit lost vs. cost (Score 1) 273

by jred (#63109504) Attached to: Remote Work Is Gutting Downtowns, Will Cost Cities $453 Billion
Lost revenue can indeed be loss. They don't pay cash for those buildings. If the revenue is reduced, they still need to pay the bank their monthly notes. To simplify, if you buy a car and have a $100 monthly note, but you drive for Uber and make $200 month, your revenue covers your costs. If you stop driving for Uber, that $100 becomes a loss.

Comment Re:No rear sensor? Pass (Score 1) 45

by jred (#62949227) Attached to: Google Unveils Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro Smartphones
Not necessarily a deal killer for me, but it's one of the reasons I stuck with Pixel 5. It's right where I put my finger holding the phone, anyway. A bigger deal killer for me is size. Am I the only person who doesn't want to carry a backpack for my phone? The 5 just barely fits in my pocket. When do we get a Pixel Mini? I'm seriously looking at the flip phones or (gag) the iphone mini.

Submission + - Wild solar weather is causing satellites to plummet from orbit.It will get worse (space.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The change coincided with the onset of the new solar cycle, and experts think it might be the beginning of some difficult years.

"In the last five, six years, the satellites were sinking about two and a half kilometers [1.5 miles] a year," Anja Stromme, ESA's Swarm mission manager, told Space.com. "But since December last year, they have been virtually diving. The sink rate between December and April has been 20 kilometers [12 miles] per year."

"Generally speaking, increasing solar activity — and its effect on the upper atmosphere — is good news from a space debris perspective, as it reduces orbital lifetimes of the debris and provides a useful 'cleaning service,'" Lewis said.

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