Posts
Archive
wtf
Donate
<< 2024-09-12 (-1 day)
<< 2024-09-06 (-1 week)
<< 2024-08-16 (-1 month)
<< 2023-09-14 (-1 year) 		Archive (+1 day) 2024-09-14 >>

2024-09-13

etc

  • It’s Embarrassing To Be A Stay At Home Mom

  • The Long Road to Fiber Optics - by Brian Potter

    The path to getting fiber optics was long and meandering. It required a broad range of technological advances in a variety of different fields to make possible, and for many years the technology did not appear particularly promising. Many, perhaps most, experts felt that other technology like millimeter waveguides were a better bet for the next step in telecommunications. And even once fiber optics seemed possible, it took over a decade to go from the early development efforts to the first field trials, and several more years before it was used for major commercial installations. Unpacking how fiber optic technology came about can help us better understand the nature of technological progress, and the difficulty of predicting its path.

    the development of fiber optics provides something of a counterpoint to the point in my recent piece that Bell Labs was a unique innovation engine. While Bell Labs was a key participant in the development of fiber optics technology, most of the important firsts (the first laser, the first semiconductor laser, the first ultra-high clarity glass fibers) were developed elsewhere. And while AT&T had historically been known for being slow to introduce new technology (its northeast corridor project made relatively conservative technology choices, such as multi-mode fibers and LED light sources), the rush of many telecom companies to deploy fiber and get an edge over their competitors following AT&T’s breakup probably helped accelerate not only the deployment of fiber optics but its rapid improvement. There’s some evidence that despite its long record of achievements, AT&T and Bell Labs actually held back innovation overall. Fiber optics provides an example.

  • Consciousness will slip through our fingers

Horseshit

celebrity gossip

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

Musk

  • Neither Elon Musk nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars

    Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars's dead core? No? Well. It's fine. I'm sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let's discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth. OK, so you still want to talk about Mars. Fine. Let's imagine that Mars's lack of a magnetic field somehow is not an issue. Would you like to try to simulate what life on Mars would be like? Step one is to clear out your freezer. Step two is to lock yourself inside of it. (You can bring your phone, if you like!) When you get desperately hungry, your loved ones on the outside may deliver some food to you no sooner than nine months after you ask for it. This nine-month wait will also apply when you start banging on the inside of the freezer, begging to be let out. Congratulations: You have now simulated—you have now died, horribly, within a day or two, while simulating—what life on Mars might be like, once you solve the problem of it not having even one gasp worth of breathable air, anywhere on the entire planet. We will never live on Mars.

  • FAA defends Starship licensing delays.

  • X's AI chatbot spread voter misinformation – and election officials fought back

Electric / Self Driving cars

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

TechSuck / Geek Bait

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

Crypto con games

Economicon / Business / Finance

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

  • USPS' long-awaited new mail truck makes its debut

    The current postal vehicles — the Grumman Long Life Vehicle, dating to 1987 — have made good on their name, outlasting their projected 25-year lifespan. But they’re well overdue for replacement. Noisy and fuel-inefficient (9 mpg), the Grummans are costly to maintain. They’re scalding hot in the summer, with only an old-school electric fan to circulate air. They’re have mirrors mounted on them that when perfectly aligned allow the driver to see around the vehicle, but the mirrors constantly get knocked out of alignment. Alarmingly, nearly 100 of the vehicles caught fire last year, imperiling carriers and mail alike.

  • House passes $1.6B to deliver anti-China propaganda overseas

Harris / Democrats

Biden Inc

  • ‘Don’t eat cats and dogs,’ Biden tells voters while wearing Trump hat

    Joe Biden donned a Trump baseball cap and told a crowd of people “not to eat dogs and cats” during a light-hearted exchange on the campaign trail. The US president was referring to wild claims repeated by Donald Trump during his debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the pets of the people that live there”. Mr Biden was initially persuaded to wear his former opponent’s hat by a Trump supporter after a humorous back-and-forth between the two men. It started off by Mr Biden offering to give his presidential hat to the Trump supporter, who asked him: “Are you going to autograph it?” Mr Biden said he would autograph the hat before the Trump supporter quipped: “Do you remember your name?” The president joked back that he “doesn’t remember my name” because he’s “slow”, which sparked laughter among the crowd.

Trump / Right / Jan6

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

World

  • Equality Act 2010

    The UK’s Orwellian sounding Equality Act 2010 is strikingly Marxist. It demands equal pay for work of equal value ... In short, supply and demand have been replaced by judges and labor boards with the authority to deem which jobs are “equal” and therefore should be paid equally. And the labor boards do so based on vague and subjective considerations that do not change with changing circumstances. Imagine replacing “jobs” with “condiments” and having judges decide whether ketchup and mustard should be priced equally because they are similar, broadly comparable, or rated equivalent in terms of the effort, skill, and decision-making that went into their production.

  • UK elevates datacenters to critical national infrastructure status

  • Luton-based knife wholesaler surrenders 35,000 'zombie' blades

    A knife wholesaler whose weapons have been used in several killings has surrendered more than 35,000 "zombie" blades. Police said the knives and machetes were designed to "kill and maim". Under a government surrender scheme Luton-based Sporting Wholesale will receive £10 compensation for each knife.

    Zombie knives were first banned in 2016 but a new, broader definition designed to outlaw more blades will take effect in England and Wales on 24 September. From then it will be illegal to own a knife with a sharpened blade longer than 8in (20cm), if it also has other features, including:

    • A serrated cutting edge
    • More than one hole in the blade
    • Spikes
    • More than two sharp points in the blade

Iran / Houthi

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

China

Health / Medicine

  • Europeans Used Cocaine Much Earlier Than Previously Thought, Study Finds (Archive)

    After analyzing the skulls and brain tissue of nine people who were buried there in the mid-1600s, Ms. Giordano and her collaborators found that two had most likely been using cocaine. The findings, reported in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, offer the earliest evidence of cocaine use in premodern Europe — some 200 years before a German chemist isolated the drug from the coca plant. “We have evidence of coca leaves being used thousands of years ago,” said Christine VanPool, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri. No one knows exactly how or when coca reached Europeans. But Dr. VanPool believes that Spanish colonizers in South America may have been attracted to cocaine’s analgesic properties.

    • "No one knows exactly how or when coca reached Europeans" ... It gets found in mummies and grave goods all over the Old World, tho.

  • Breast milk's benefits are not limited to babies (Archive)

    not only the molecules in breast milk that could have health benefits. Until about 15 years ago, says Dr Azad, it was assumed that breast milk was largely sterile. But genetic-sequencing tools have revealed it contains a wide variety of bacteria. Some, such as Bifidobacterium, a particularly beneficial bacterium that feeds exclusively on HMOs, can survive the trip into the baby’s gut, where it strengthens the gut barrier; regulates immune responses and inflammation; and prevents pathogenic bacteria from adhering to the lining of the gut. That makes it an ideal candidate for use in probiotics, live bacterial supplements used to remedy the gut’s ecosystem.

  • Viagra and other unlikely candidates lead hunt for new longevity drugs

  • Gilead's twiceyearly shot cut HIV infections by 96% in trial

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

<< 2024-09-12 (-1 day)
<< 2024-09-06 (-1 week)
<< 2024-08-16 (-1 month)
<< 2023-09-14 (-1 year) 		Archive (+1 day) 2024-09-14 >>