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Comment Re:How much is 800,000 tons? (Score 1) 112

800,000 tons * 2,000 lbm/ton = 1,600,000,000 lbm of rock.

1 ft^3 of rock weights about 200lbm so:
1,600,000,000 / 200 = 8,000,000 ft^3 of rock removed.

But, many nerds don't know how much a ft^3 is so here's something you can understand:

"The displacement of the Japanese battleship Yamato, which was approximately 72,000 long tons (73,000 t) at full load."

72,000 Ltons * 1.12LTon/Ton = 80,640tons
=>
1 Yamato = 80,640T
Rock removed = 800,000T
=>
800,000 / 80,640 = 9.920 Yamatos

The Space Ship Yamato was made from the original WW2 Yamato battleship so we can assume that the mass is about the same.

They removed 10 Space Ship Yamatos worth of rock.

Comment Re:Hmmm (Score 1) 59

Yes... The smaller the black hole, the quicker it evaporates.

"A black hole of one solar mass (M = 2.0×1030 kg) takes more than 10^67 years to evaporate—much longer than the current age of the universe at 1.4×10^10 years. But for a black hole of 10^11 kg, the evaporation time is 2.6×10^9 years."

THE PART YOU CARE ABOUT: "This is why some astronomers are searching for signs of exploding primordial black holes. "

Comment Re:but why? (Score 1) 79

"why does anyone think that moving the power regulation..."

Because it is better.
400W @ 12v = 33.3333A
400W @ 5V = 80A

It's a HELL OF A LOT better to pump 33A through those long wires and tiny pin contacts than it is 80A.

Also, dirty connections affect 12V alot less than 5V.

You want as high of a voltage as you can for distribution and you want to step it down as close to the load as possible.

This is why power lines run in the thousands of volts when your house only uses 240V.

Comment USENET was doomed by design... (Score 1) 130

Average Joes can't connect to USENET and download the groups they want. It's a private club where you have to be granted access to connect.

Therefore the companies that can connect to it charge for access. Quite expensive access for the garbage that's on it.

With all of the other sources of 'free' information on the internet, no one wants to pay for access to sift through mostly garbage.

Comment I keep see "when are we going to get rid of..." (Score 1) 154

I keep see "when are we going to get rid of systemd and bring back _x_".

First, I F-ING HATE systemd.

Second, YOU can 'bring back" whatever you want at any time. Stop using it. There's non-systemd distros that you could use.

Systemd is never going to die as long as everyone uses it. Griping about it and then still using it does no good.

Comment Re:I absolutely do not get why this is an issue... (Score 2) 103

Having read all of the comments posted above as of this moment, let me respond.

Ignore celestial time: That's just retarded because the most important thing to everyone is: When is day time (to get stuff done)? If daytime was constantly creeping out of sync with what we would consider 'normal daytime' it would be a mess. Yes, it would be a slow creep but, why? Humans care about that, machines [generally] don't. Let the machine have the creep.

Metric time: That's retarded too and was already tried. Even the metric fan-bois gave up on that one.

Grandfather clocks, microwave ovens, etc: So what if we have to manually change them? We have to do it now for DST and it's really just an annoyance. Mechanical clocks have to be manually updated even without DST because they change time on their own with temp, humidity, and spring pressure.

UNIX time: Not a horrible idea but not the greatest either. Right idea, wrong execution. Machines can happily count seconds away. Let them do it. Pick a start point Jan 1,1970 or Jan 1, 0001 or anything you want, it doesn't matter just pick one.
"But how will they know when leap seconds are added?" Easy keep a log of it. Everyone LOVES block-chains now, right? We already keep a log of previous time/date changes.

And yes, DST is stupid. Artificially changing a natural standard all because changing working hours one hour ahead sounds too early is dumb. Switching to DST has the exact same effect you you physically as going into work an hour early, it just doesn't sound as bad.
All the world would have to do is make work hours from 7-4 and you'll get the same effect as year round DST. If you want to keep the changing time, go back to the old concept of summer vs winter hours. Both will give you that extra evening sun and NOT mess up a standard.

Comment I bet most of the issue is.... (Score 1) 34

I bet most of the issue is caused by low-paid off-shored workers creating crap and most of those 2000 to be laid off are probably higher-paid domestic workers.

One company I was at hired out-sourced labor and the output they sent back was pure garbage. But, hey, the company saved thousands of dollars up-front (and lost their asses on the rear).

Comment I absolutely do not get why this is an issue... (Score 1) 103

I absolutely do not get why this is an issue... Humans don't really care until it messes with the sunset.
Machines just count time. We already create machines to deal with the shit-show that is DST. Create the machines to give the 23rd hour of the day 61 seconds instead of 60.

"oh but we don't know when that's going to occur"
You can't create a protocol for dealing with interrupts for machines?

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