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'Oumuamua could be a shard from a dead planet
- corysama 7y agoI realize an iPhone 6+ is an old phone. But, this is a simple page with some simple text and simple images that is working so hard to track me that it is completely unreadable even though they really want me to read it.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoBut it needs 100mb worth of javascript!
- indecisive_user 7y agoCached version https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Oku7kQ42wFAJ:https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/perplexing-interstellar-object-starts-revealing-its-secrets/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Oku7kQ...
- ErikAugust 7y agoHere you go, 4 MB to 25 KB: https://beta.trimread.com/articles/11029 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/11029
- bottled_poe 7y agoI love it! But it must be breaching copyright/terms etc...
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoIt does, technically speaking, and if it's the whole article I don't think fair use applies, BUT the website is protected by the DMCA so the onus is on Nat Geo to issue a takedown request. Second, legality aside, it's morally unjustifiable to have so much cruft and trackers on a webpage. I mean it's loading 1 MB of Javascript for what looks like a fairly straightforward, static website. Even if it's loaded async / after the main content, it's still an unreasonable amount for a website like this; if anything they should use a proper bundler so it only loads what is necessary. (I've had great results for a site like this using Gatsby + Netlify)
- zaroth 7y agoWhat if it doesn’t cache the page on the server, and the service is essentially a cloud-based user agent? It can’t be legal to run a user-agent in your computer, and illegal to run a user agent in the cloud. The question becomes, what is the defining property of a user agent?
- capableweb 7y ago> morally unjustifiable to have so much cruft and trackers on a webpage I think the way to think about this is to compare it to magazines. While you can say that it's morally unjustifiable that magazines has ads and filler pages because it'll use more paper and we need to use less paper, the argument on the other side is that the business has to survive too so ads and trackers makes that more likely (from their perspective, I don't necessarily agree with that)
- fnord123 7y agoMaybe it fits under fair use as critique. It's a critique showing the bloatedness of the original article. And it's only using 0.6% (0.006) of the original to make its point.
- crispyporkbites 7y ago> it's only using 0.6% (0.006) of the original When you think about it this way it’s clearly fair use.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoUsually copyright laws refer to a substantial part of a work, it maybe be 0.6% of the delivered web page, but it's 100% (presumably) of the article. The article counts separately as a work (and each image within an article could count as a separate work, there are conditions on that). But, in any case if all the textual context was copied that's still substantial. Interpreting things in a purely numerical way like that would be clearly ridiculous. Such gotchas don't work in law in general (in my very limited experience).
- fnord123 7y agoGotchas absolutely do work in this way in law. You just need to be willing to fight it in court.
- nightcracker 7y agoThat's genius. I doubt a judge would accept this reasoning, but I love it.
- capableweb 7y agoIndeed, as intent matters a lot. If the page didn't show the full article but rather just a snippet and then said "This page could have been X while it's actually X", then the intent is just to show the size difference. But in this case, the intent is to show the full article without anything else, so most likely copyright infringement.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoI don't know why you're downvoted, you're right. AIUI USA's Fair Use is usually negated by selling the result of that use when it amounts to a derivative work (but some commercial use can be Fair Use). I think that the mention of DMCA [down thread] doesn't really work here, that's for sites with primarily legitimate use; if the site in question has a route for acquiring permissions, and has a system to check with users before they (the website service's commuters) download content - to check they have a license - then safe harbor provisions could apply. Even torrent sites, I gather, tell you not to put up copyright content before giving the opportunity to do so. All that aside, such sites are definitely copyright infringement in the UK (but I don't now how jurisdiction applies over the internet; I've yet to find good sources on that).
- INTPenis 7y agoAmazing service! Also loading the page with noscript as I do gives me a quick loading single white page with a narrow column of text. No fancy stuff or funny business. Just the article.
- capableweb 7y agoHeh, just to test it, I submitted this comment page, the space savings are pretty amazing: (original size of 14.3 kB to 23.3 kB) [-63%]. Also, something seems weird in the calculation, my browser shows "24KB transfers, 36.5KB of resources" https://beta.trimread.com/articles/11158 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/11158
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoIt happens... you can't measure dependencies loaded by third party scripts since the server doesn't run any JS.
- capableweb 7y agoWhy not? All the dependencies are hosted by trimread.com so by doing the measurements once (and when they change) gzipped then adding that for their calculation would do the trick.
- the_pwner224 7y agoThe difference is from compression. For example the big stylesheet goes from 12kb side to 3.5 over the network.
- everdrive 7y agoThanks for sharing this -- I especially appreciate the statistics.
- lgats 7y agoAlternatively, a Google Web Lite shortlink https://lite.website/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/perplexing-interstellar-object-starts-revealing-its-secrets/ https://lite.website/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie...
- totetsu 7y agoI've noticed many Japanese news site needlessly paginate their articles, so you have to click through 2-4 pages to read them. I would like a site like this that also could collapse articles onto one page.
- dustingetz 7y agothey don’t actually care if you read it. they want the ads to paint
- adequateness 7y agoDid you try reader mode?
- fizixer 7y agoI don't see how this is a new discovery. That line of thinking was pretty much the implicit null hypothesis. The question at that time was, is it something more than that? and that's what made it interesting.
- goodcanadian 7y agoWe didn't know how to make shards in the presumed shape of `Oumuamua, naturally. There is now a plausible model of planets being ripped apart by tidal forces which can result in such shapes.
- robocat 7y agoHas National Geographic gone downhill since the media part became https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geographic_Partners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geographic_Partners This reads like “Disney” science: take some facts and spin them to be entertainment. I thought the same of this article where I thought the reporting was twisting facts to make a headline: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/lost-your-sense-of-smell-it-may-not-be-coronavirus/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/lost-your...
- astro123 7y agoI read a lot of astronomy journalism that I think is absolutely awful (one of the main reasons I made this account was to point out garbage articles/comments). I actually think that this is pretty good. It mostly follows the paper (here's what looks like an earlier version of this paper that is easily available [1]), doesn't engage in too much hyperbole, isn't publicizing something widely outside of the consensus. Disclaimer that I don't work on planetary formation/dynamics so am not an expert on this, but still, pretty impressed. [1] https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/apophis2020/pdf/2018.pdf https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/apophis2020/pdf/2018.pdf
- robocat 7y agoHere’s a 2019 preprint that concludes “We show that cigar-shaped models suffer from a fine-tuning problem and have only 16 per cent probability to produce light curve minima as deep as the ones present in `Oumuamua's light curve. Disc-shaped models, on the other hand, are very likely (at 91 per cent) to produce minima of the required depth.” https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.03696 https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.03696 So it seems like there is still a lot of conjecture involved... Yet the National Geographic article misleads by showing an artists impression (pictures are truthy) while treating the elongated shape as fact on every line (the alternate disc model was also mentioned in original paper trying to deduct the shape, although the paper concluded it was less likely). Poor reporting IMHO. I am not an astrophysicist, but this is the second Nat Geo article that I’ve read recently that has really failed my good reporting sniff test. Edit: failed to meet the high standards I expect from Nat Geo.
- aaron695 7y agoI'd still like a good take down of why this couldn't be from our solar system. Seems highly unlikely these crazy 'from outside the solar system' ideas are likely. This meme spreads well, but that to me means there is far more chance it is not true. The fact no one questions it also seems suspicious.
- astro123 7y agoThe argument is actually really really simple. If it started from within the solar system, it would not (barring some three body interaction) have enough energy to escape. But, we know from observations that it does have enough kinetic energy to escape. There are two options, 1. It may have stolen some energy from another object (an accidental gravity assist), but we know that it didn't come close enough to anything big on its way though. 2. It came from outside the solar system and so entered with some velocity, and therefore will leave with roughly the same velocity it came in with. We have well known mechanisms to eject objects from star systems so it isn't crazy to have things passing through. No-one questions it because high school level physics is enough to show why it is the only reasonable explanation.
- aaron695 7y ago> We have well known mechanisms to eject objects from star systems so it isn't crazy to have things passing through. We know it's 'possible' for a tennis ball to go through a wall. But it's not actually within the realms of the possible. So I guess I still question the 'crazy' part. What are the mathematics here. If a planet breaks into 5000000000000000 (Earth / Oumuamua) pieces how many hit another solar system? I'd expect zero, but have no idea. I think it's more likely 1. We missed the fact it went close to another body or it's in a complicated gravity assist eons in the making.
- btilly 7y agoSee https://www.space.com/43015-interstellar-visitor-oumuamua-not-that-special.html https://www.space.com/43015-interstellar-visitor-oumuamua-no... for the math. But you're still focusing on the wrong thing. The idea of "a complicated gravity assist" getting something going this fast in the Solar System is laughable. The only thing in the Solar System heavy enough to do a gravity assist on the necessary scale is the Sun itself, and it started nowhere near the Sun.
- DonHopkins 7y agoHow is Oumuamua even pronounced? It's the funniest sound I ever heard! I can't understand a single word. Is he serious or is he playing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHvhRenwbb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHvhRenwbb0
- TLightful 7y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwUM4t4GOcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwUM4t4GOcY Not difficult at all.
- nathell 7y agoNitpick: it's ʻOumuamua, not 'Oumuamua. The initial letter is the ʻokina (U+02BB), representing a glottal stop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOkina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOkina
- lordgrenville 7y agoThere was a discussion the other day about whether it's bad when HN gets derailed from TFA by incredibly minor details. I'm in favour of the tangents, which can often be more interesting than the primary topic - as is the case (for me) with your comment. Thanks for sharing :)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bustadjustme 7y ago> The ʻokina has historically been represented in computer publications by the grave accent (`), the left single quotation mark (‘), or the apostrophe ('), especially when the correct typographical mark (ʻ) is not available.
- viklove 7y agosquints Yes, indeed
- mihcsab 7y agowhy is this upvoted?
- LatteLazy 7y agoCould be, could be something else, let's speculate widely!
- bufferoverflow 7y agoIt "could be" almost anything. Billions of years, hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone.
- Papirola 7y agoMetal Hurlant...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]