... a human red blood cell is typically less than 10 um in diameter at the widest point.
In other words you could lay approximately 50 human red blood cells end-to-end along a single 5 nm transistor.
1 micrometer is 1000 nanometers, so a blood cell 8 um in diameter would be 1600 times as wide as a 5-nm transistor (if a 5-nm transistor were actually 5 nm in width).
Robert Heinlein used the idea of advertising on the moon in The Man Who Sold the Moon (1950). The titular character actually got one person to pay him not to advertise for his competitor and got another to pay him to get to the moon before the Soviet Union could put a giant hammer and sickle on it.
I suspect this announcement to be some kind of joke or publicity stunt. I would think orbital advertising would piss off too many people to be advantageous. But I could be wrong.
In the US, the act of Congress that first enacted nationwide daylight saving time (the Uniform Time Act) doesn't actually use the phrase "daylight saving", except a passing mention in section 6, "Effective date".
I have a theory I call the Principle of Conservation of S's. First, I noticed that S's often disappear: for example, in the musical "Guys and Dolls" (1950), there's a song about the "oldest established permanent floating crap [sic] game." The game is actually called "craps"; a "crap game" would be something different. Similarly, people referring to (e.g.) the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team will mention a "Laker game", a "Laker fan", or the "Laker girls".
My theory is that these lost S's become free-floating S's, like free electrons or free radicals. When one of the free S's encounters an oppositely-charged word, the S attaches to the word. This explains words like "forwardS", "backwardS", and "Daylight SavingS Time".
It's also possible that people just say "savings" because it's more familiar, and brains seem to love familiarity. It goes without saying that People Don't Think, so the actual translation from thought to spoken word or written word usually is done subconsciously.
So that when the Robot Uprising occurs, they can Kill All Humans more efficiently. Otherwise, it makes no sense at all: buy a new $800,000 bus to save $30,000 a year paying a driver?
"... point to pint transport" There you go. I could use a pint myself.
One thing Asimov says is, "... when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
He then goes on to note that the Earth actually is flat, to a reasonable approximation, over short distances. He also notes several observations explained by the assumption that the Earth is (nearly) spherical but that are not explained by a flat Earth.
Are there really people who believe the International Space Station is all just faked? For what purpose? Not to mention other planets, Kepler's laws, Newton's laws, and GPS.
I don't want Google being the Thought Police on any topic.
Let it all stand on its own merits, and the idiots will reveal themselves.
Indeed. If videos promoting belief in a Flat Earth are removed, where is the line drawn? What about promoting belief that some Supreme Being created the universe and still watches everybody to make sure they're being good? What about belief in the resurrection or transubstantiation? What about people who believe, say, that it's evil for Russia to meddle in US elections but entirely appropriate for the US to choose the president of Venezuela?
I doubt the world has the manufacturing capacity to maintain that trend. What's the source for the historical data? This source projects an increase from 113 GW to 404 GW between 2020 and 2050 (US only). That's a factor of 4 in 30 years; a factor of 10 per decade would yield an increase of a thousand-fold in 30 years.
This source says "U.S. wind power has more than tripled over the past decade". That's a factor of 3, not 10, and it's from the American Wind Energy Association.
The World Wind Energy Association says, "The overall capacity of all wind turbines installed worldwide by the end of 2017 reached 539’291 Megawatt" (539 TW, not 959).
I'd be very pleased to see the world move away from fossil fuels as quickly as feasible. I'd be even more pleased if the result were greater decentralization (such as replacing large power plants with distributed solar panels). I just don't think it's going to be quick or easy. And it isn't just that fossil-fuel businesses are Evil; it's more than people in general don't like change, especially when the change seems to make things worse, and especially when it's forced on them.
You know, the "I don't need God to be moral!" guys.
Oh, where does your morality come from?
If people believe that morality comes from God, how do they know whether an action is moral or not? Does God tell them directly? How do they even know which version of God is the right one? Why do people disagree about what God wants?
Not to mention that "... the sudden death of the firm's founder left C$190 million in cryptocurrencies protected by his passwords unretrievable." Seems like a lot of people didn't do due diligence. Or this is a cover story, and the money actually went somewhere else. Bernie Madoff could've had a big win if he'd faked his own death that the right time. (But, hey, that guy's still a player: cornered the market on Swiss Miss in prison.)
The headline is poorly written and ambiguous. Should be something like "new estimate is 1/7 of previous estimates". There also seems to be an assumption that the new estimate is right and all previous estimates were therefore wrong.
Scientists predict temperatures to rise X % a year based on current models
Scientists predict sea levels to rise > 1 meter in Z years based on current models
The scientists' models extrapolate out a number of years...
I'll just extrapolate out the rate of reduction from 1 meter sea level rise to 15 cm and go on a few more years to predict that the sea level rise will be 1.5cm (90% lower) than predicted....and then another few years predict it will be 0.15 cm).....
Given that content of CO2 in atmosphere is so tiny, does it really do any perceptible greenhouse effect?
Yes, but the problem with estimating the quantity of warming is that there are several non-linear feedback loops. In particular, global warming causes increased evaporation from the oceans, putting more water vapor into the air. Water vapor is a more-powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (producing even more warming) -- but, on the other hand, more water vapor also means more clouds, which reflect sunlight before it hits the ocean or the land.
I'll stick to midsize cars and rent from Home Depot the couple times a year I need to haul something large.
Where I live, I can rent a pickup truck from U-Haul for four hours for less than Home Depot charges for 75 minutes. And Home Depot often doesn't have any trucks available, because they're all in use.
... because, you know everybody can. (There are so many of these videos on YouTube, I suspect people are intentionally teaching their birds to do this. Or faking the videos: can't lip-read a beak.)
It occurs to me that there are two categories here: first, there are the languages these devices "understand", in the sense that they respond to these languages in predictable ways. But that's separate from surveillance: the devices don't need to understand the language if they're just routing it elsewhere.
The prosecutors and agents who have been investigating these hacks celebrated the conviction, and said they hope that this will serve as an example for the other alleged criminals who have already been arrested....
Seems to me it's a bit late to deter people from committing crimes after they've already been arrested. But surely the "prosecutors and agents" know what they're doing.
First, this "why should you trust us" is actually a pretty good list of rules. If they abide by them, it'll be pretty sweet. The moment they break them, or appear to be bending them for a bias, they'll have lost all trust.
Their rules seem pretty vague to me. Here's all I need to know to distrust News Guard: apparently they rated a Web site called "The Palmer Report" (which I've never heard of before). The Palmer Report complained, and News Guard published the complaint. Good for them, acknowledging all two complaints they received, but the response from News Guard is really stunningly inadequate. The Palmer Report made 12 specific points. The response from News Guard was, "this letter does not point to any specific errors." Their credibility dropped from low to zero, as far as I'm concerned. Not to mention the credibility of anyone who trusts News Guard to be objective and unbiased.
That headline is misleading. From the article, "These companies, led by Saudi Aramco, Russian gas giant Gazprom, and Exxon Mobil, have produced about 923 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalents between 1988 to 2016."
Those companies produce oil and natural gas. So who's "responsible" for carbon emissions: the people who produce the oil and gas, or the people who burn the oil and gas? (As another note, people can use oil indirectly, for example by buying goods transported by ship, truck, or air: people tend to concentrate on their direct consumption while ignoring the indirect.)
Meaningful change is only going to come at the the policy level.
Probably true. A very large collection of individuals, acting together, could make a difference, but how likely is that?
I think one mistake people make is blaming, e.g., Big Oil. Corporations (in the US) have a disproportionate effect on government policy, but if people stopped buying oil-related products, Big Oil wouldn't be Big any more. It's always tempting to blame Somebody Else for problems, but I think the main problem is that billions of people just don't want change -- especially if they view the change as making them worse off. In addition, there's a lot of propaganda to convince people they don't need to change, or they don't need to change much.
I actually have some reusable plastic bags with the slogan, "I'm saving the planet". As if reusing plastic bags is going to save the planet.
Slashdot Mirror
... a human red blood cell is typically less than 10 um in diameter at the widest point.
In other words you could lay approximately 50 human red blood cells end-to-end along a single 5 nm transistor.
1 micrometer is 1000 nanometers, so a blood cell 8 um in diameter would be 1600 times as wide as a 5-nm transistor (if a 5-nm transistor were actually 5 nm in width).
The sail doesn't have to be equally reflective on its whole surface. It could have a picture on it or shaped holes in it.
"I was born on the cusp of Pepsi and Verizon, with Taco Bell in retrograde."
I suspect this announcement to be some kind of joke or publicity stunt. I would think orbital advertising would piss off too many people to be advantageous. But I could be wrong.
True doctrine. Also, the Pope gets to decide what's a bug and what isn't.
In the US, the act of Congress that first enacted nationwide daylight saving time (the Uniform Time Act) doesn't actually use the phrase "daylight saving", except a passing mention in section 6, "Effective date".
I have a theory I call the Principle of Conservation of S's. First, I noticed that S's often disappear: for example, in the musical "Guys and Dolls" (1950), there's a song about the "oldest established permanent floating crap [sic] game." The game is actually called "craps"; a "crap game" would be something different. Similarly, people referring to (e.g.) the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team will mention a "Laker game", a "Laker fan", or the "Laker girls".
My theory is that these lost S's become free-floating S's, like free electrons or free radicals. When one of the free S's encounters an oppositely-charged word, the S attaches to the word. This explains words like "forwardS", "backwardS", and "Daylight SavingS Time".
It's also possible that people just say "savings" because it's more familiar, and brains seem to love familiarity. It goes without saying that People Don't Think, so the actual translation from thought to spoken word or written word usually is done subconsciously.
"... point to pint transport" There you go. I could use a pint myself.
Isaac Asimov wrote an essay called "The Relativity of Wrong". (One of several links thereto.)
One thing Asimov says is, "... when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
He then goes on to note that the Earth actually is flat, to a reasonable approximation, over short distances. He also notes several observations explained by the assumption that the Earth is (nearly) spherical but that are not explained by a flat Earth.
Are there really people who believe the International Space Station is all just faked? For what purpose? Not to mention other planets, Kepler's laws, Newton's laws, and GPS.
I don't want Google being the Thought Police on any topic. Let it all stand on its own merits, and the idiots will reveal themselves.
Indeed. If videos promoting belief in a Flat Earth are removed, where is the line drawn? What about promoting belief that some Supreme Being created the universe and still watches everybody to make sure they're being good? What about belief in the resurrection or transubstantiation? What about people who believe, say, that it's evil for Russia to meddle in US elections but entirely appropriate for the US to choose the president of Venezuela?
I doubt the world has the manufacturing capacity to maintain that trend. What's the source for the historical data? This source projects an increase from 113 GW to 404 GW between 2020 and 2050 (US only). That's a factor of 4 in 30 years; a factor of 10 per decade would yield an increase of a thousand-fold in 30 years.
This source says "U.S. wind power has more than tripled over the past decade". That's a factor of 3, not 10, and it's from the American Wind Energy Association.
The World Wind Energy Association says, "The overall capacity of all wind turbines installed worldwide by the end of 2017 reached 539’291 Megawatt" (539 TW, not 959).
I'd be very pleased to see the world move away from fossil fuels as quickly as feasible. I'd be even more pleased if the result were greater decentralization (such as replacing large power plants with distributed solar panels). I just don't think it's going to be quick or easy. And it isn't just that fossil-fuel businesses are Evil; it's more than people in general don't like change, especially when the change seems to make things worse, and especially when it's forced on them.
You know, the "I don't need God to be moral!" guys.
Oh, where does your morality come from?
If people believe that morality comes from God, how do they know whether an action is moral or not? Does God tell them directly? How do they even know which version of God is the right one? Why do people disagree about what God wants?
Not to mention that "... the sudden death of the firm's founder left C$190 million in cryptocurrencies protected by his passwords unretrievable." Seems like a lot of people didn't do due diligence. Or this is a cover story, and the money actually went somewhere else. Bernie Madoff could've had a big win if he'd faked his own death that the right time. (But, hey, that guy's still a player: cornered the market on Swiss Miss in prison.)
The headline is poorly written and ambiguous. Should be something like "new estimate is 1/7 of previous estimates". There also seems to be an assumption that the new estimate is right and all previous estimates were therefore wrong.
Scientists predict temperatures to rise X % a year based on current models Scientists predict sea levels to rise > 1 meter in Z years based on current models
The scientists' models extrapolate out a number of years...
I'll just extrapolate out the rate of reduction from 1 meter sea level rise to 15 cm and go on a few more years to predict that the sea level rise will be 1.5cm (90% lower) than predicted....and then another few years predict it will be 0.15 cm) .....
Let's try this thing called "Google": It seems sea level has already risen by 9 cm in the past 26 years.
Given that content of CO2 in atmosphere is so tiny, does it really do any perceptible greenhouse effect?
Yes, but the problem with estimating the quantity of warming is that there are several non-linear feedback loops. In particular, global warming causes increased evaporation from the oceans, putting more water vapor into the air. Water vapor is a more-powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (producing even more warming) -- but, on the other hand, more water vapor also means more clouds, which reflect sunlight before it hits the ocean or the land.
Yes! People should cease flaunting their ignorance by flouting the conventional definitions of words!
From the linked article at Wired: "In the Philippines, for example, fertility rates dropped from 3.7 percent to 2.7 percent from 2003 to 2018."
Fertility rates are children per woman, not percent. Journalists.
I'll stick to midsize cars and rent from Home Depot the couple times a year I need to haul something large.
Where I live, I can rent a pickup truck from U-Haul for four hours for less than Home Depot charges for 75 minutes. And Home Depot often doesn't have any trucks available, because they're all in use.
... because, you know everybody can. (There are so many of these videos on YouTube, I suspect people are intentionally teaching their birds to do this. Or faking the videos: can't lip-read a beak.)
It occurs to me that there are two categories here: first, there are the languages these devices "understand", in the sense that they respond to these languages in predictable ways. But that's separate from surveillance: the devices don't need to understand the language if they're just routing it elsewhere.
The prosecutors and agents who have been investigating these hacks celebrated the conviction, and said they hope that this will serve as an example for the other alleged criminals who have already been arrested ....
Seems to me it's a bit late to deter people from committing crimes after they've already been arrested. But surely the "prosecutors and agents" know what they're doing.
First, this "why should you trust us" is actually a pretty good list of rules. If they abide by them, it'll be pretty sweet. The moment they break them, or appear to be bending them for a bias, they'll have lost all trust.
Their rules seem pretty vague to me. Here's all I need to know to distrust News Guard: apparently they rated a Web site called "The Palmer Report" (which I've never heard of before). The Palmer Report complained, and News Guard published the complaint. Good for them, acknowledging all two complaints they received, but the response from News Guard is really stunningly inadequate. The Palmer Report made 12 specific points. The response from News Guard was, "this letter does not point to any specific errors." Their credibility dropped from low to zero, as far as I'm concerned. Not to mention the credibility of anyone who trusts News Guard to be objective and unbiased.
I was wondering the same thing: when is a loan philanthropic?
100 corporations are responsible for 71% of carbon emissions.
That headline is misleading. From the article, "These companies, led by Saudi Aramco, Russian gas giant Gazprom, and Exxon Mobil, have produced about 923 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalents between 1988 to 2016."
Those companies produce oil and natural gas. So who's "responsible" for carbon emissions: the people who produce the oil and gas, or the people who burn the oil and gas? (As another note, people can use oil indirectly, for example by buying goods transported by ship, truck, or air: people tend to concentrate on their direct consumption while ignoring the indirect.)
Meaningful change is only going to come at the the policy level.
Probably true. A very large collection of individuals, acting together, could make a difference, but how likely is that?
I think one mistake people make is blaming, e.g., Big Oil. Corporations (in the US) have a disproportionate effect on government policy, but if people stopped buying oil-related products, Big Oil wouldn't be Big any more. It's always tempting to blame Somebody Else for problems, but I think the main problem is that billions of people just don't want change -- especially if they view the change as making them worse off. In addition, there's a lot of propaganda to convince people they don't need to change, or they don't need to change much.
I actually have some reusable plastic bags with the slogan, "I'm saving the planet". As if reusing plastic bags is going to save the planet.
Birth control is a way to remove people without killing them.