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wnewsdaystalestupid
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155482953
comment
byortholattice
er 20, 2021 @12:18PM
(#62005157)
Attached to: Harvard Astronomers Challenge Theory That 'Oumuamua Was a Nitrogen Iceberg
Here is the actual paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.14032
154583377
comment
byortholattice
ber 03, 2021 @06:54AM
(#61953705)
Attached to: Zuckerberg's Meta Endgame Is Monetizing All Human Behavior
P.S. Even though itÃ(TM)s not my thing, I bet FacebookÃ(TM)s software can handle iPad apostrophes. Hey Slashdot, perhaps you should ping them for technical advice? Then again, I donÃ(TM)t mean to rush you. ItÃ(TM)s only 2021. WeÃ(TM)ve only had web boards for about 30 years. These things take time IÃ(TM)m sure.
Ever consider that maybe the problem is that the iPad apparently can't produce standard ASCII apostrophes? 99% of the posts here have no problem with apostrophes, only those that are "Sent from my iPhone".
148611114
comment
byortholattice
1, 2021 @07:05PM
(#61542270)
Attached to: Microsoft Engineer Stole $10 Million By Selling Xbox Gift Cards For Bitcoin
And in the meantime, his bitcoins may now be worth $100 million. After his restitution and prison term, the remaining $91.7 million will go quite far in Ukraine.
147630200
comment
byortholattice
09, 2021 @07:53AM
(#61468926)
Attached to: National Geographic Recognizes New 5th Ocean
Rupert Murdoch now owns the National Geographic Magazine and TV show. I think there is still a non-profit arm that pays for explorations etc. (which provides the material for the magazine and TV show, presumably benefiting Murdoch). Even so, people who donated large sums of money and even their estates before the takeover are probably are probably not too happy (or are spinning in their graves).
144795652
comment
byortholattice
07, 2021 @04:14PM
(#61248602)
Attached to: Particle Mystery Deepens, As Physicists Confirm That the Muon Is More Magnetic Than Predicted
My guess is that they have bought into Ayn Rand's rhetoric (sounds like a paraphrase of the John Galt speech in Atlas Shrugged).
144096732
comment
byortholattice
2021 @07:13PM
(#61177686)
Attached to: Police Warn Students To Avoid Sci-Hub
"The police are just passing along Elsevier BS, trying to shut down access to it however they can. ... There are no SciHub accounts, no logins, no credentials of any kind."
Isn't making false reports to the police against the law?
143021828
comment
byortholattice
ry 25, 2021 @05:59PM
(#61100584)
Attached to: iRobot Says It'll Be a Few Weeks Until It Can Clean Up Its Latest Roomba Software Update Mess
Exercise: If a house is 2000ft large, and a roomba is 1ft large, how many times does the house need to be cleaned with a random walk till every sq ft has been cleaned?
Model the house as a circle with 2000 sq ft area. Its radius is thus about 25.23 feet.
A 2D random walk with 1 sq ft steps takes about
(4/pi)*n^2*(log n)^2 steps to cover the room with radius n ft,
or about 8447 steps when n=25.23. So it is about 8447/2000 = 4.2 times
less efficient than doing the whole room without repeating a spot.
See http://annals.math.princeton.e...
138564018
comment
byortholattice
er 14, 2020 @03:55PM
(#60724732)
Attached to: Iron Powder Passes First Industrial Test As Renewable, Carbon Dioxide-Free Fuel
Those hand warmers that fit into your mittens use the same principle, turning iron into rust, with additional ingredients to slow down the reaction so it will last ~10 hrs. I use them all the time in the winter because I have Reynaud syndrome and as a result am susceptible to chilblains (bad blisters that last for weeks).
Occasionally the packs don't work, maybe because the packaging developed a leak or something. It turns out that a magnet will attract the good ones (with iron) but not the bad ones (with rust). Fortunately bad ones are rare; I think I've seen only a couple over several years that were not past the expiry date. But a magnet lets you avoid an unpleasant surprise outdoors, as well as letting you know if ones that have expired are still good.
137518488
comment
byortholattice
18, 2020 @03:24PM
(#60622474)
Attached to: Zeptoseconds! Scientists Measure the Shortest Unit of Time Ever
Well, the Higgs boson lifetime is said to be
156 yoctoseconds = 0.156 zeptoseconds, which is over
1000 times shorter than 247 zeptoseconds. I wonder how
they measured that. With 3 digit resolution, to boot.
136723482
comment
byortholattice
r 03, 2020 @10:06AM
(#60568236)
Attached to: Trump Goes To Hospital After Testing Positive For COVID-19
but made me wonder if maybe he was hugging and kissing Hope,
I read that Hope lost her sense of smell, so that may have made her more receptive.
136457376
comment
byortholattice
r 27, 2020 @06:05PM
(#60549022)
Attached to: Teenager on TiKTok Resurrects an Essential Question: What is Math?
There is also formalism, which is starting from a set of axioms and rules, and seeing what evolves. The starting axioms and rules that most mathematics can be derived from is first-order logic and ZFC set theory. Whether or not you believe the axioms isn't even relevant; it's just a game of mechanically manipulating the symbols in the axioms according to a set of rules.
Mathematicians don't work this way because it's much too inefficient. But just knowing the actual rules and how to start from them can be enlightening in itself, especially for people who sort of understand math intuitively but feel vaguely uncomfortable that they don't "really" understand it. Here is a comment from a high-school student who "discovered" formalism https://groups.google.com/g/metamath/c/CEhsDt9i6Zw/m/ITqazdzHBAAJ:
Metamath [a system based on formalism] was what I needed to overcome the discomfort that I had
with mathematics as I had been taught: intuitively grasping the concepts
while lacking any understanding of the underlying logic.
135996742
comment
byortholattice
ber 12, 2020 @10:02AM
(#60499072)
Attached to: The Gateway PC Brand Returns With New Laptops
My Gateway (in the late '90s I think) was beloved for one reason: it had a physical volume control wheel, mounted on the side like in old transistor radios. I used it all the time, for instantly turning down some obnoxious blaring site and instantly muting it when I saw the boss approaching.
I hated the lack of it on my next PC that required multiple two-key-combination presses to turn the volume down, with a lag in the response. I was very close to modding it with an external potentiometer in series with the speaker but didn't quite get that far.
133446563
comment
byortholattice
2020 @08:03PM
(#60309007)
Attached to: Airbnb Criticized For Asking Its Customers To Donate to Their Past Hosts
Earn over $2million? 90% over $2 million. I'd even say the first $100,000 is tax free - that's right, a standard deduction of a $100,000.
A problem with this is that the people who most easily afford to pay i.e. have already accumulated a vast wealth can end up paying nothing, like Zuck who (I've read) pays himself a $1/year salary.
What I think would be better is an asset or "wealth" tax of some kind. This isn't a new idea; middle-class homeowners already pay a "wealth tax" i.e. a percentage of their home value as real estate tax.
Indeed, I think it would be interesting to explore abandoning income tax all together and base all federal tax on net assets (assets minus outstanding loans on them). BTW it wouldn't necessarily mean that the asset (like a farm) would need to be sold to raise the tax money. Instead it could be owed to the gov't, possibly as a percent of the asset rather than a fixed dollar amount, that would be collected when the asset is sold. There would be many such details to be worked out of course. But it has worked for real estate ownership (which is worse because the tax is based on full value, not net value after mortgage).
133175478
comment
byortholattice
08, 2020 @06:42PM
(#60277292)
Attached to: Warning of Serious Brain Disorders in People With Mild Coronavirus Symptoms
What does this have to do with liberal/conservative? Just because some wacko may be liberal doesn't mean all liberals are wackos. And whatever misguided point she's trying to make, I doubt she actually believes 2+2 != 4 when it comes to adding up the numbers on her grocery store bill.
I'd say someone Trump's illogical rants about COVID-19 (such as less testing means there will be fewer cases) and other things are far more dangerous.
132966128
comment
byortholattice
2020 @08:32AM
(#60257696)
Attached to: JPMorgan Drops Terms 'Master,' 'Slave' From Internal Tech Code and Materials
blacklist and whitelist is pretty difficult to replace
How about redlist and greenlist?
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