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User: doug141

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  1. Federalist papers: Rant or Whistle Blowing? on Linus Torvalds on Social Media: 'It's a Disease. It Seems To Encourage Bad Behavior.' (linuxjournal.com) · · Score: 0

    "Anonymity is important if you're a whistle-blower, but if you cannot prove your identity, your crazy rant on some social-media platform shouldn't be visible, and you shouldn't be able to share it or like it."

    I'm now curious how the criteria used by Finnish-American Linus Benedict Torvolds would have contemporaneously labelled the anonymous publishing of the Federalist Papers: whistleblowing, or rant.

  2. Permafrost bomb on Canada Warming At Twice the Global Rate, Report Finds (www.cbc.ca) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When the permafrost thaws, the carbon in it starts getting converted to CO2 and methane. There's enough carbon in the permafrost to torch the planet.
    https://phys.org/news/2018-12-...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    Geoengineering options include increasing albedo through deforestation.

  3. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs on Scientists Find 66-Million-Year-Old Fossils From The Day The Dinosaurs Died (usatoday.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    He wants you to get a NEST?

  4. RoadToVR coverage on Valve Reveals High-End VR Headset Called the Valve Index (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Outside-in lighthouse compatible, adjustable IPD:
    https://www.roadtovr.com/valve...

  5. Re:So, pilot error? on Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 Day Before Deadly Crash (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's both. They made a frankenstein plane that needs extra special training to not die, and failed to adequately train the people who would be flying them.

  6. Near IR, not far IR on Nanotechnology Makes It Possible For Mice To See In Infrared (sciencedaily.com) · · Score: 2

    Near infra-red makes it to the retina, but far infra-red doesn't make it through the cornea. With this tech, you could see in the dark with in IR light source, but you won't see thermal IR.

  7. Re:Not surprised on YouTube Will Disable Comments on Nearly All Videos With Kids (variety.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    [comments are] so incredibly useless that I definitely wouldn't miss them.

    I disagree. When I see a video making an incorrect statement, I often see the highest voted comment is one making a correction. I think this is great.

  8. Similar: grocery delivery by robot car available on Amazon Begins Using 'Sidewalk Robots' In Seattle Delivery Tests (fortune.com) · · Score: 1

    Rolling out in Arizona. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

  9. (Vader voice) "I have altered the terms..." on Taking the Smarts Out of Smart TVs Would Make Them More Expensive (theverge.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Two smart TV reviews I recently read: One had a minimalist remote, which was mostly just a microphone for telling the TV what to do. Another review, which was for a Visio, was from an angry customer who had opted out of data collection 6 months prior when he bought the TV, but a software upgrade pushed a new data collection option, which he said could not be opted out with the included remote!

  10. posting to fix a fat finger mod mistake.

  11. Brains do a billion times more than we thought on Artificial General Intelligence is Nowhere Close To Being a Reality (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    If quantum computations are happening in the brain's micro-tubules, rather than classical computations in the neurons, we are very very far from that kind of computing power.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  12. Retest, it'll pay for itself. on What Happens After Surprising DNA Test Results? (bloombergquint.com) · · Score: 2

    If you really think an error, submit another sample, under a false name if you have to. I saw a journalist submit 2 doggy DAN samples to the same company, along with the (required) photo of the animal. The results for second sample he submitted (with the false photo) came back totally different, and matching the photo, not the original DNA "results." $180 bucks for the two samples gave him a notable news story.

  13. Sun's core too cold for fusion, sort of on China's Fusion Reactor Reaches 100 Million Degrees Celsius (abc.net.au) · · Score: 5, Informative

    The protons in the core of the sun are in a temperature distribution, like a bell curve, and the average of this bell curve is way to cold for fusion. The only reason fusion happens is there are so many protons, a very few have freakishly high temperature way up the high end of the bell curve. Only those statistical outliers are fusing.

  14. Summary left out the best improvement: It'll have radar to see icebergs.

  15. FTA: "Space Junk" they deployed on Space Junk Successfully Captured In Orbit For the First Time (with Video) (surrey.ac.uk) · · Score: 4, Informative

    They deployed a target for their capture device test. It wasn't found space junk.

  16. FTA: how they got the million-fold amplification on For Decades, Some of the Atomic Matter in the Universe Had Not Been Located. Recent Papers Reveal Where It Has Been Hiding (wired.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    "First, the scientists looked through catalogs of known galaxies to find appropriate galaxy pairs — galaxies that were sufficiently massive, and that were at the right distance apart, to produce a relatively thick cobweb of gas between them. Then the astrophysicists went back to the Planck data, identified where each pair of galaxies was located, and then essentially cut out that region of the sky using digital scissors. With over a million clippings in hand (in the case of the study led by Anna de Graaff, a Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh), they rotated each one and zoomed it in or out so that all the pairs of galaxies appeared to be in the same position. They then stacked a million galaxy pairs on top of one another. (A group led by Hideki Tanimura at the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Orsay, France, combined 260,000 pairs of galaxies.) At last, the individual threads — ghostly filaments of diffuse hot gas — suddenly became visible."

  17. suggested further reading on The Psychedelic Drug DMT Can Simulate a Near-Death Experience, Study Suggests (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence Hardcover
    by Michael Pollan
    May 15, 2018

  18. from TFA: on Evidence Detected of Lake Beneath the Surface of Mars (cnn.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "I can't absolutely prove it's water, but I sure can't think of anything else that looks like this thing does other than liquid water," says Richard Zurek, chief scientist for the Mars Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was unaffiliated with the study.

  19. Re:Best flying game ever on 'Descent' Creators Reunite For a New Game Called 'Overload' (steampowered.com) · · Score: 1

    Back in the day, 2.5D meant only the environment was 3D modeled, the actors/sprites/enemies were all 2D sprites, scaled big or small depending on distance.

  20. Google could fix all those problems... on Google Will Ban Bail-Bond Ads (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...if google used their influence to increase bail bond competition and demand clear and fair terms as a condition of being listed on google. Google could become the go-to place for fair and affordable bail bonds!

  21. Re:Actually the reverse was true for me on Comcast Won't Give New Speed Boost To Internet Users Who Don't Buy TV Service (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    ...cable modem of my own, one call and it was working.

    Around here it's operational faster if you don't call! Just plug it in and fire up a web browser, you get hijacked to a modem registration page, then it's working!

  22. If you buy AMZN today, you are paying $350 for every $1 of annual profit the company makes. A that rate, it'd take 350 years to make your money back. Good luck!

  23. Re:How do they track without cookies? on The Slow Death of the Internet Cookie (axios.com) · · Score: 1

    "people-based marketing," which is all the services you need to log in to use. Fitbit, amazon, facebook, alexa....

  24. oops

  25. Re:I was watching some videos about this guy on Longest-standing Video Game Record Declared 'Impossible,' Thrown Out After 35 Years (polygon.com) · · Score: 1

    I have reviewed the video, specifically the run around 19:30, and note that the tester is leaving a bug unexploited here. I remember getting crazy fast times by holding the throttle (button), and shifting to fifth as quick as possible, then fluttering the joystick left to keep it redlined in fifth, producing constant wheelies. If exploits such as this are specifically disallowed, then fine.

    FWIW, I also discovered en exploit in decathalon's pole vault that allowed jumping the whole way up the screen: if you repeatedly hit the button to let go, each press restarted your "parabolic" arc. So, if you let go just after placing the pole in the hole, than kept mashing the button, you'd keep gliding upward at a very high angle to crazy heights.