KnightOfWords

15 ms·

91.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
"Like hair, trust is hard to split. And like hair, trust is easier to lose than to grow." Worth reading just for this quote.
92.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
Trains fail more gracefully than hyperloop - they have enough room to stand up in, toilets and exits.
93.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
I'm afraid that's not really accurate. The most massive neutron star observed is just under 2 solar masses, which is difficult to explain if event horizons do not exist. Quark and strange stars are hypothetical objects intermediat
94.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
Clouds reflect sunlight but they also trap heat, by absorbing infrared radiation and re-emitting it. (In Winter, notice how much colder it is in the morning when it's been clear all night.)
95.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
The flash appeared between two 20 second exposures. Supernova are generally visible for between a few days and a few months.
96.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
There are more details in this piece, the astronomer was taking just 20 second exposures so he really did witness the breakout phase: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/amateur-astron... I once accidently ca
97.
Europol: Criminals Hide Billions in Crypto-Cash(bbc.co.uk)
2 points by KnightOfWords 9y ago|0 comments
98.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
They show a technique which exploits the rolling shutter effect to recover frequencies at up to five times the frame rate. On the other hand, they also mention that artifacts in highly compressed video stop their techniques from working, so
99.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
Have to disagree that climate change, combined with intensive farming, couldn't potentially kill billions. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...
100.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
I imagine it was very convincing, imagine yourself and everyone you know receive the same message. I don't know what the TV and radio coverage was saying at the time, but plenty of people were sceptical. If NK launched a strike at Hawa
101.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
> It is also easy to make this number look very small: >The energy that Bitcoin consumes in a year would only last the U.S. for 19 hours. That doesn't sounds small to me, given the relative utility of 320 million people against t
102.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
Terry Pratchett called us Pan Narrans, "the story-telling ape".
103.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
That's a strawman I'm afraid, the real question is the relative energy per-transaction costs between Bitcoin and traditional currencies. Bitcoin just doesn't scale.
104.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
There is no benefit to this I'm afraid. To take a ride on it you first have to match velocities, so you've already done the work to chase it down. Gravity assist maneuvers are the best option we currently have for launching probes
105.
Trump Pulls US Out of Paris Climate Accords(bbc.co.uk)
2 points by KnightOfWords 9y ago|0 comments
106.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
By the time you mount those panels on a floating structure the lifetime energy yield may well drop to zero or (most probably) negative. Building a ship has a huge energy/emissions cost as the raw materials have to be mined, refined, tr
107.
by KnightOfWords 9y ago
Turns out those deserts may not be so useless after all I'm afraid, for example dust blown from the Sahara fertilizes the Amazon: https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-... Solar has beco
108.
by KnightOfWords 10y ago
Tackling the problem from the top-down (regulation) and bottom-up (personal responsibility) is the most effective path forward. The first step is education, actually understanding what contributes to our carbon footprint and more importantl
109.
by KnightOfWords 10y ago
We'd be very difficult to wipe out, but our technology falls a long short of being able to construct self-sustaining environments. We rely on having a global supply train at our disposal, not something we'd have access to in the e
110.
by KnightOfWords 10y ago
That doesn't hold I'm afraid. The newly discovered galaxies are small and dim, so won't change the numbers very significantly. It's not as radical a discovery as it appear at first glance.
111.
by KnightOfWords 10y ago
Glad you found it useful. If you haven't come across him before, this guy takes some of the best planetary images: http://www.damianpeach.com/index.htm
112.
by KnightOfWords 10y ago
Hardly fictional, it's a pretty accurate representation of what Jupiter actually looks like. The main reason for using this technique is because our turbulent atmosphere blurs any image. Taking a video allows only a small percentage of
113.
by KnightOfWords 10y ago
Glad Juno has made it and appears to be working OK. Not the most amazing image, better ones are routinely taken by amateurs from earth, but the crescent can only be seen by going there as Jupiter lies outside our orbit. We'll see much
114.
by KnightOfWords 11y ago
Good point, power consumption is often overlooked by proponents of AI.
115.
by KnightOfWords 11y ago
Thought this quote is well worth considering - “Things that happen in an instant are mostly bad, it’s this earthquake or that horrible murder..... But once you turn to statistics it gets much harder to have a pessimistic story.”
116.
Feeding Polar Bears from a Tank(rarehistoricalphotos.com)
2 points by KnightOfWords 11y ago|0 comments
117.
by KnightOfWords 11y ago
Sounds like there are plenty of worms in this particular can waiting to come out.
118.
by KnightOfWords 11y ago
Here's his old blog on NPR: http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/ Probably not 1000, but perhaps getting on for it.