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Comment Re: Bruh (Score 2) 51

by coaxial (#65386265) Attached to: Is the Altruistic OpenAI Gone?

The whole âoeitâ(TM)s super dangerousâ thing served two purposes. First, it hyped the product. It must be earth shattering if itâ(TM)s super dangerous. Second, it was a naked play for government regulation to protect them from competition.

The irony of course is that they played up Skynet, the real societal danger was never going be stopped through regulation. The danger I speak of is that of generated content being taken as truth, whether itâ(TM)s propaganda or just lazy danger like putting glue on pizzas or misidentifying mushrooms.

But of course theyâ(TM)re not concerned with that. That makes money, and anyway, it will get better⦠eventually.

Submission + - Another large Black hole in "our" Galaxy (arxiv.org)

Submitted by RockDoctor
RockDoctor writes: A recent paper on ArXiv reports a novel idea about the central regions of "our" galaxy.

Remember the hoopla a few years ago about radio-astronomical observations producing an "image" of our central black hole — or rather, an image of the accretion disc around the black hole — long designated by astronomers as "Sagittarius A*" (or SGR-A*)? If you remember the image published then, one thing should be striking — it's not very symmetrical. If you think about viewing a spinning object, then you'd expect to see something with a "mirror" symmetry plane where we would see the rotation axis (if someone had marked it). If anything, that published image has three bright spots on a fainter ring. And the spots are not even approximately the same brightness.

This paper suggests that the image we see is the result of the light (radio waves) from SGR-A* being "lensed" by another black hole, near (but not quite on) the line of sight between SGR-A* and us. By various modelling approaches, they then refine this idea to a "best-fit" of a black hole with mass around 1000 times the Sun, orbiting between the distance of the closest-observed star to SGR-A* ("S2" — most imaginative name, ever!), and around 10 times that distance. That's far enough to make a strong interaction with "S2" unlikely within the lifetime of S2 before it's accretion onto SGR-A*.)

The region around SGR-A* is crowded. Within 25 parsecs (~80 light years, the distance to Regulus [in the constellation Leo] or Merak [in the Great Bear]) there is around 4 times more mass in several millions of "normal" stars than in the SGR-A* black hole. Finding a large (not "super massive") black hole in such a concentration of matter shouldn't surprise anyone.

This proposed black hole is larger than anything which has been detected by gravitational waves (yet) ; but not immensely larger — only a factor of 15 or so. (The authors also anticipate the "what about these big black holes spiralling together?" question : quote "and the amplitude of gravitational waves generated by the binary black holes is negligible.")

Being so close to SGR-A*, the proposed black hole is likely to be moving rapidly across our line of sight. At the distance of "S2" it's orbital period would be around 26 years (but the "new" black hole is probably further out than than that). Which might be an explanation for some of the variability and "flickering" reported for SGR-A* ever since it's discovery.

As always, more observations are needed. Which, for SGR-A* are frequently being taken, so improving (or ruling out) this explanation should happen fairly quickly. But it's a very interesting, and fun, idea.

Submission + - Surado, formerly Slashdot Japan, is closing at the end of the month. (srad.jp) 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Slashdot Japan was launched on May 28, 2001. On 2025/03/31, it will finally close. Since starting the site separated from the main Slashdot one, and eventually rebranded as "Surado", which was it's Japanese nickname.

Last year the site stopped posting new stories, and was subsequently unable to find a buyer. In a final story announcing the end, many users expressed their sadness and gratitude for all the years of service.

Comment Disaster for the little guy (Score -1, Troll) 54

by coaxial (#65160201) Attached to: Thomson Reuters Wins First Major AI Copyright Case In the US

Undoubtedly there are many in the antigenai and antioligarch crowd are going to be cheering this ruling, but I canâ(TM)t help but think this is going to absolutely gut fair use and just make rent seeking by megacorps become even more pervasive.

Information wants to be free, and we scraping is not a crime.

Comment Ironic given previous Verizon-Frontier dealings (Score 2) 45

by coaxial (#64766246) Attached to: Verizon To Buy Frontier For $9.6 Billion, Says It Will Expand Fiber Network

Years ago, my parents that live in rural Illinois had Verizon landline service. Verizon wanted to get out of the rural landline business and sold it to Frontier. Frontier at the time boasted about their rural service. Now Verizon has bought Frontier.

This doesnâ(TM)t exactly bode well for rural landlines.

Comment Part of the early 2000s XML solves everything (Score 4, Interesting) 32

by Electrawn (#64137248) Attached to: Jabber Was Announced on Slashdot 25 Years Ago This Week

Jabber was part of the wave of technologies and early dev 2000s that thought XML/XSLT could solve waves of interoperability and middleware issues. Instead it was just bloat in an era where bandwidth still mattered and Apache Cocoon died fast. JSON replaced XML because you didn't need to sort your backslash closing object tax of annoyance. CSS became more important than XHTML, SOAP, REST and everything superceded it.

XMPP failed because there was no incentive for Google and Facebook to let their users outside the gardens. The same issues plague the decentralized platforms of today like Mastodon.

Been around long to see history repeat is fun.
Education

University of Michigan Study Advocates Ban of Facial Recognition in Schools (venturebeat.com) 18

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
University of Michigan researchers recently published a study showing facial recognition technology in schools has limited efficacy and presents a number of serious problems. From a report: The research was led by Shobita Parthasarathy, director of the university's Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) program, and finds the technology isn't just ill-suited to security purposes, it can actively promote racial discrimination, normalize surveillance, and erode privacy while marginalizing gender nonconforming students. The study follows the New York legislature's passage of a moratorium on the use of facial recognition and other forms of biometric identification in schools until 2022. The bill, a response to the Lockport City School District launching a facial recognition system, was among the first in the nation to explicitly regulate or ban use of the technology in schools. That development came after companies including Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft halted or ended the sale of facial recognition products in response to the first wave of Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S.

Submission + - Woz Turns 70th Birthday into Charity Event (wozbday.com)

Submitted by NoMoreACs
NoMoreACs writes: Join Apple Computer inventor and co-Founder Steve Wozniak for "11 Days of Wozdom", a social media "Scavenger Hunt" featuring creative challenges that speak to the things he values most: Happiness, creativity, ingenuity and fun.

The challenges will officially begin on August 11th, but you can get a head start by going to WOZBDAY.COM for details.

The first challenge will be to help Woz spread the word about his birthday party and fundraiser on August 11th. All challenges will be due on August 21st at 11:59pm PDT. Challenge winners get special prizes!

Woz also stated:

"Iâ(TM)m lucky to be able to do this for a foundation oriented towards helping children, especially ones in need of finding themselves."

A livestream featuring a star-studded list of performers (see list at the birthday site) and other guests will begin on August 11, 2020 at 5 pm, PDT.

Come celebrate the life of one of the true pioneers in the Personal Computer Revolution. Listen to some music, hear some great stories, and maybe even help some kids in need!

Comment Re:50 000 tests? That is per day (Score 1) 88

It's a molecular test. It detects virus RNA by taking swabs from the nose or back of throat and sticking them in the reagent part of the machine with rapid amplification.

An antibody test would be serological and by definition require a blood draw. The id now system doesn't handle blood.

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