Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

A cool result a long time in the making: using variations in the signal of distant pulsars to measure the ripples in spacetime and learn about the gravitational wave background.

In case you needed a reminder of Musk's hypocrisy on free speech. #Twitter #birdSite

https://gizmodo.com/10-times-elon-musk-censored-twitter-users-1850570720

There's been some discussion recently of the idea that Betelgeuse could go supernova in a matter of decades (not certain at all, see the link below). Since it's hundreds of lightyears away, that would raise the possibility that it could already have gone supernova in the past and the light just hasn't reached us yet.

When situations like this come up, people sometimes want to quibble about whether to talk about the event as being in the past or the future. But an interesting facet of relativity is that in a situation like that the event has a "spacelike separation" from our current moment, and whether it is in the past or the future is a matter of perspective; observers at our current position and instant in time will disagree about whether the hypothetical supernova event is in the past or the future if they have sufficiently different velocities.

By contrast, events in our past light cone (whose light could already have reached us) lie unambiguously in the past; all observers agree they happened at an earlier time regardless of their velocity. All events in our future light cone (events to which we could still send light signals) lie unambiguously in our future. These two classes of events have "timelike separation" from the here and now. But the timing of spacelike separated events is a matter of perspective, and in some sense they can be thought of as lying neither in the past nor the future.

In any case, I always find it silly to quibble about the wording for these cases in casual conversation. Everyday English doesn't really contain the words you need to capture the situation without turning to physics jargon.

https://www.universetoday.com/161751/betelgeuse-is-almost-50-brighter-than-normal-whats-going-on/

I'm not sure that I agree with this, but I definitely find it interesting that Heisenberg said it.

I was just shown this PasswordPocket "offline password manager" and I'm trying to figure out what to make of it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atlancube/passwordpocket-your-personal-data-guardian/description

They say their whitepaper is forthcoming, so I wouldn't put any trust in it until knowledgeable #infosec people have reviewed that. The information in the Kickstarter seems pretty vague to me (what are the details of the E2EE they keep mentioning, what parameters are used with PBKDF2, what mode is AES256 being used in, etc.) .

I guess I'm also not convinced it is much better than using KeePass and a thumb drive, since it sounds like in general as soon as you use the backup function with a device it will have access to both the master password (in memory) and the encrypted vault. I'm definitely interested in what others think.

#security #password #passwords #passwordManager

Everyone pray for those Germans in your life, because we have again entered the time of the year for...Spargel madness!

I have wondered about how people use image generating AI like #StableDiffusion in practice. This #Vox video gives one example that clarified a lot for me.
https://youtu.be/Zc5Z63hX0j0

What Mastodon servers currently support #LaTeX? The only ones I know of are #QOTO (where it's currently somewhat broken) and #mathstodon. Also are there any #apps that support displaying it? I currently use #Tusky on my phone, which does not.

Looks like #aurora might be visible tonight in parts of the USA and most of Canada.
#northernLights #auroraBorealis
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-viewline-tonight-and-tomorrow-night-experimental

Another reason not to buy IOT devices locked in to a particular cloud service I guess.

It looks like maybe there are some services/sites that partner with #Authy to provide #2FA based on your phone number (distinct from the more standard TOTP), so if you've got accounts on those sites setup with your phone number and then you setup an Authy account with that phone number, these are already pre-populated. I'm basing that on these two Reddit posts:
https://www.reddit.com/r/2fa/comments/o8izzb/can_anyone_explain_the_difference_these_two_types/
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/8szsbx/authy_is_an_awesome_app_but_there_is_one_major/

Someone I know has these weird entries in their #Authy app under a section labeled "authy accounts". These seemed to already be present when they created the Authy account, and they can't seem to remove/delete the entries. I don't have anything similar in my Authy, only the next section, "authenticator accounts", so I have no idea what these are, and the generic names makes web searches difficult.

I'm hoping someone out there who uses #authy or is knowledgable about #2FA or #infosec can enlighten me (so please boost if you're connected to such people).

TIL that the Curie family has received the most Nobel prizes of any family: "...with four prizes awarded to five individual laureates. Marie Curie received the prizes in Physics (in 1903) and Chemistry (in 1911). Her husband, Pierre Curie, shared the 1903 Physics prize with her. Their daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, received the Chemistry Prize in 1935 together with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie." #Physics #historyofscience
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize#Family_laureates

"LastPass, one of the leading password managers, said that hackers obtained a wealth of personal information belonging to its customers as well as encrypted and cryptographically hashed passwords and other data stored in customer vaults."
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/lastpass-says-hackers-have-obtained-vault-data-and-a-wealth-of-customer-info/

Perhaps some #physics folks out there on #ScienceMastodon who study #GeneralRelativity can clarify: Has it been shown that one can have naked singularities in AdS? I thought it had, but a quick search suggests maybe those results were in error or arguably unphysical.

I'm seeing headlines like "Scientists just made a wormhole to learn more about traversing space and time" in response to this recent Nature paper:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05424-3

In fact, from what I can tell, they ran a computation on a quantum computer that would correspond to a certain quantum field theory if you expanded it from a limited number of quantum bits to an infinite number. And that quantum field theory has a conjectured relationship (duality) to General Relatively in 1+1 dimensional Anti-De Sitter space (which is neither the dimensionality nor geometry of spacetime that we actually inhabit). They did a calculation on the quantum computer that should approximate a quantum teleportation in the field theory, which (if the conjectured duality is true) should correspond to traversing a wormhole.

Now, I think that's an interesting result, but I also think it's being way overhyped to the public, and people are imagining that someone has built a literal wormhole in their lab. I suppose there's a certain symmetry, though, since I have always thought that the name "quantum teleportation" over-hypes that technology and gives laypeople a totally incorrect, Star Trek-y impression of what's happening.

I guess it's time for a #introduction. I'm a theoretical physicist by training (PhD in quantum open systems/quantum information) and currently paying the bills as an engineer working in free-space optical communication (implementation) and quantum communication (concepts). I'm interested in physics and math, of course, but I enjoy learning about really any area of science, philosophy, and many other academic areas as well. My biggest other interest is hiking and generally enjoying nature.

I'm definitely interested in following #ScienceMastodon, but I'm also just curious to see the mix of interesting photos and thoughts on myriad topics that may show up here.

I'm sort of part of the #TwitterMigration, but I honestly haven't used the bird site all that much in recent times, and as a FOSS/Linux geek I've been interested in federated services like Mastodon for quite a while.