Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

It's mind-blowing how young some of our knowledge about the Universe is 🤯

⭐ It's only since the seminal thesis of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin in 1925 that we know that stars are mainly made of hydrogen & helium:
▶️ https://physicsworld.com/a/cecilia-payne-gaposchkin-the-woman-who-found-hydrogen-in-the-stars/

🌀 And it's just so less than 100 years ago since Hubble, building on Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s period-luminosity relation for Cepheids, has shown that our own Milky Way is just one galaxy among many:
▶️ https://mastodon.social/@mcnees/111681549432325681

#VicisAstro #Astrodon #astronomy

A reminder as the country remembers the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 by self-described ‘patriots’:

🇺🇲 Patriotism encompasses devotion to the country as a whole.

🇺🇲 Nationalism refers to devotion to only one group or people over others.

Pictured: An image from 1950 shows Superman – a refugee from another planet and a character created by two Jewish immigrants – teaching that patriotism should drive out nationalism.

https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-difference-between-nationalism-and-patriotism-208170

#USPolitics #Politics #Trump #Jan6

I wonder if people uploading to @internetarchive with a user account generally realize that the email address associated with the account gets publicly attached to every upload and that you can search for uploads by email address. The entire UI makes it seem like all this would be based on the (more-anonymous) screen name. Even the sign up page implies your screen name “is how others will see you”:

The hill I will die on re: Jan 6th is that we should stop referring to it as an assault "on the Capitol" (a building) and call it an attack on Congress (the legislative branch of the US government composed of duly elected officials who were in danger of being killed/kidnapped for political ends).

The lasting legacy of generative AI will be distrust. I assume over half the performance reviews & peer feedback I read from now one will be as fake as a birthday card.

I assume travel photos and videos are fake on Instagram. Now I can’t even trust a Zoom video of a coworker.

Generative AI reminds me of social media except we skipped all the years of blissfully thinking it could do no wrong and went straight to all the downsides & startups minting billionaires.

https://www.heygen.com

AI comes for your PC’s keyboard as Microsoft adds dedicated Copilot key

Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards, though not yet.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/ai-comes-for-your-pcs-keyboard-as-microsoft-adds-dedicated-copilot-key/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Clicks is a $139 iPhone case for people who hate touchscreen typing

Each key has 0.22 mm of travel.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/clicks-is-a-139-iphone-case-for-people-who-hate-touchscreen-typing/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Crypto scams surging on X use hijacked gold and gray checks from verified orgs

Reports come the same week X reduced the cost of buying gold checkmarks.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/crypto-scams-surging-on-x-use-hijacked-gold-and-gray-checks-from-verified-orgs/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

No, COVID mRNA Vaccines Won't Damage Your DNA. You have a “better chance of becoming Spider-Man” than being harmed by DNA from COVID vaccines. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-covid-mrna-vaccines-wont-damage-your-dna/

Criminal fines and fees do not improve public safety or serve as an effective deterrent in reducing further crime.

Also troubling: The negative consequences of fines and fees are disproportionately felt by people of color and those who are poor.

Some states, including Arizona, have begun scrapping court costs and fees for people unable to pay.
https://theconversation.com/certain-states-including-arizona-have-begun-scrapping-court-costs-and-fees-for-people-unable-to-pay-two-experts-on-legal-punishments-explain-why-217640
#criminaljustice #fedilaw #inequality

A minor mystery that'd been bugging me when I poked around the literature on slide rules was why the ones with scales for hyperbolic functions were called "vector type". What's the specific connection between hyperbolic functions and vectors? To me there didn't seem to be one unless the vectors were in Minkowski spacetime or a hyperbolic space.

As far as I can tell, the answer is that these were sold to engineers and what they called a "vector" was specifically what I sometimes heard called a "phasor", that is, a complex number, thought of as a vector in the Argand plane, used for solving differential equations in an electronic circuit or a mechanical system. And frequently the solutions to these equations involve hyperbolic functions as well as trig functions, hence the need to evaluate them.

https://www.followingtherules.info/vectorhyperbolic-calculations.html#vectorhyperbolic-calculations

It's interesting to me since this is not what I would call a "vector calculation" at all; it's solving differential equations with complex numbers. But subcultures had their own jargon and their own ways of thinking about things.

The hero Polish hackers who fixed DRM-bricked trains have explained how they did it. There was DRM that killed power to trains, broke emergency brakes and compressors if trains had been to independent repair yard. One train was also programmed to arbitrarily break on December 21, which actually happened two weeks ago:

https://www.404media.co/polish-hackers-explain-exactly-how-they-fixed-trains-that-the-manufacturer-bricked/

New from 404 Media: a Google contractor is paying parents $50 to film their children in sunglasses, hats, etc with the collected data including "eyelid shape" and "skin tone." Google confirmed the data collection in a statement; said to verify age https://www.404media.co/google-telus-pays-50-to-scan-childrens-eyelid-shape-and-skin-tone/

This visualization shows the weather patterns on the exoplanet WASP-121 b, also known as Tylos. This video has been slowed to observe the patterns in the exoplanet's atmosphere in closer detail.

Credit: NASA, ESA, Q. Changeat (ESA/STScI), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble).

New pod 👀👀👀👀: https://www.404media.co/404-media-podcast-inside-a-7-million-airbnb-scam/

I've fallen into "No Man's Sky"! I made it to the space station, and have selected an avatar that truly resembles what I look like... on the inside.

I now have a glowing ball for a head, which seems to be held in place by rotating electromagnets. Magnificent!

#NMS was created for PC but the #VR adaption (which I'm playing) is not at all bad. It's really... quite... addictive. I played for 4 hours and I'm eying my battery and wondering if I could hop on for a few minutes... before... bed...

According to Politico, Claudine Gay faced "plagiarism accusations" while Neil Gorsuch merely "borrowed" from other authors.

We need to move away from one-size-fits-all thinking about science reform.

Blindly following psychology’s lead here is like asking the guy with a house full of rats for advice on pest control: a bad idea in general and all the more foolish when you have no rats but an attic full of raccoons.

Me: #COVID19 is surging.
My friends: Look, I'm celebrating the holidays at a crowded bar!
Me: Risks are multiplying. Be safe.
Musicians: Come see my gig this weekend.
Me: No, really, COVID is now at the 2nd-highest level of the pandemic.
Friends: Here I am maskless on a plane.
Me: I give up.
Friends: Dammit, I got COVID. FML.

🙄 🤦

I've truly never known more people with COVID than I have in the past month.

Meanwhile, in Norway.

Photo: Adrian Smith / NRK

#Meanwhile #Norway #Snow #Winter