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Comment Re:No longer a search engine (Score 1) 66

While most people think of AOL as a walled garden (and understandably so), it had its roots in the Quantum Link (QLink) days of the Commodore era and in fact a lot of the AOL communication protocol was derived from that (FDO tokens and so forth). Once you got past the "Welcome" screen there was a lot you could do, and it enabled a lot of small-time software developers to host their shareware programs for others to try out. I remember getting a lot of early Macintosh games that way (TaskMaker, for example).

Comment Re:This is a good idea (Score 4, Interesting) 228

As you say, Modern C++ allows for one to adopt the primary selling point of Rust: memory safety. Furthermore, because C++ has been around for ages, developers have access to a much higher breadth and depth of libraries and frameworks (e.g., Eigen for linear algebra). So, there does not really seem to be any particular advantage to using Rust.

Comment Re:Interesting dude. (Score 4, Informative) 100

The MRI itself is likely perfectly fine, but there have been discussions concerning the contrast agents, in particular Gadolinium retention, as it is essentially a heavy metal that can remain deposited in the organs: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fp...

And here:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvcresearch.berkeley.ed...

Comment Re:Fad (Score 4, Interesting) 74

I tried it for the first time a week ago. I asked it three times, how to compute the absolute magnitude of an asteroid. And it gave a different formula each time, all of them incorrect. Out of curiosity, I tried now again, a fourth time... And still an incorrect response:
To compute the absolute magnitude of an asteroid, you will need to follow these steps:

        1. Determine the apparent magnitude of the asteroid: The apparent magnitude is the brightness of the asteroid as it appears from Earth. You can obtain this value from observations or measurements of the asteroid's brightness.

        2. Determine the distance between the asteroid and the observer: The distance between the asteroid and the observer (in astronomical units or AU) can be obtained from observations or from orbital data.

        3. Calculate the distance between the asteroid and the Sun: You will also need to determine the distance between the asteroid and the Sun (in AU). This value can be obtained from orbital data.

        4. Use the formula:

        Absolute Magnitude = Apparent Magnitude - 5 * log(distance to the asteroid in AU) - 5

        This formula takes into account the distance between the asteroid and the observer, as well as the distance between the asteroid and the Sun, to determine the absolute magnitude of the asteroid.

Wikipedia actually has the correct formula, which uses not just "distance to the asteroid" but also the asteroid distance to the Sun as well as its phase angle. When I use the formulas given by ChatGPT on actual data, they yield results that are off by a minimum of 1.5 magnitudes to as much as 7.5 magnitudes (this fourth attempt is off by 2.5 magnitudes). For comparison, using the correct formula on this data returns a result that is within 0.1 magnitude to the reference value:

ChatGPT attempt #1: 13.6
ChatGPT attempt #2: 19.7
ChatGPT attempt #3: 15.4
ChatGPT attempt #4: 9.69
Using correct formula: 12.3
Reference value: 12.2

Submission + - American Phone-Tracking Firm Demo'd Surveillance Powers by Spying on CIA and NSA (arstechnica.com) 2

BeerFartMoron writes: Anomaly Six, a secretive government contractor, claims to monitor the movements of billions of phones around the world and unmask spies with the press of a button.

In the months leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two obscure American startups met to discuss a potential surveillance partnership that would merge the ability to track the movements of billions of people via their phones with a constant stream of data purchased directly from Twitter. According to Brendon Clark of Anomaly Six — or “A6” — the combination of its cellphone location-tracking technology with the social media surveillance provided by Zignal Labs would permit the U.S. government to effortlessly spy on Russian forces as they amassed along the Ukrainian border, or similarly track Chinese nuclear submarines. To prove that the technology worked, Clark pointed A6’s powers inward, spying on the National Security Agency and CIA, using their own cellphones against them.

Virginia-based Anomaly Six was founded in 2018 by two ex-military intelligence officers and maintains a public presence that is scant to the point of mysterious, its website disclosing nothing about what the firm actually does. But there’s a good chance that A6 knows an immense amount about you. The company is one of many that purchases vast reams of location data, tracking hundreds of millions of people around the world by exploiting a poorly understood fact: Countless common smartphone apps are constantly harvesting your location and relaying it to advertisers, typically without your knowledge or informed consent, relying on disclosures buried in the legalese of the sprawling terms of service that the companies involved count on you never reading. Once your location is beamed to an advertiser, there is currently no law in the United States prohibiting the further sale and resale of that information to firms like Anomaly Six, which are free to sell it to their private sector and governmental clientele. For anyone interested in tracking the daily lives of others, the digital advertising industry is taking care of the grunt work day in and day out — all a third party need do is buy access.

Comment Re:That's not a tunnel, *this* is a tunnel (Score 1) 140

According to your link:
"As of December 2015, the final cost is projected as CHF 9.560 billion.[17] Nine people died during construction.[18]"

CHF are "swiss francs" and the current exchange rate is about 100 CHF = 103 USD. Therefore that's roughly $9.85 billion USD for the 150 km, or $65.7 million USD per km.

In contrast, Boring have spent $52.5 million USD for two 1-mile tunnels (total of 3.22km), translating to $16.3 million USD per km.

So, it seems that the cost per km is cheaper by a factor of four, and so far, no deaths have occurred.

Comment 100^18 possible action sequences (Score 2) 61

I'm pretty sure they must mean 18^100 possible sequences.

That is, if there are 18 possibilities for each step, then 100 steps would yield 18^100 possibilities.

Similar to how if there are two choices to make (go left or go right) and you make 100 of them, then there would be 2^100 possibilities.

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