sam ✅🇬🇪
@sam@chven.us
sam ✅🇬🇪
@sam@chven.us
Need to do some quick research for terminology and naming for a future project (you can probably guess the general topic by my questions).
Part 1: Without doing a web search, do you know what Kessler Syndrome is?
| Yes (I'm 30 or older): | 1217 |
| Yes (I'm under 30): | 116 |
| No (I'm 30 or older): | 1816 |
| No (I'm under 30): | 228 |
Closed
Part 2: Without doing a web search, do you know what the Exxon Valdez is?
| Yes (I'm 30 or older): | 1772 |
| Yes (I'm under 30): | 48 |
| No (I'm 30 or older): | 282 |
| No (I'm under 30): | 145 |
Closed
Part 3: Without doing a web search, do you know what the Montreal Protocol is?
| Yes (I'm 30 or older): | 599 |
| Yes (I'm under 30): | 55 |
| No (I'm 30 or older): | 1214 |
| No (I'm under 30): | 137 |
Closed
@sundogplanets
Nope. But it sounded familiar. And when I look it up, I see I knew of it, but not by name.
5 minutes into this set of polls and the answers are already super interesting. Cool. Thanks for participating!
@sundogplanets now that I looked up the two I didn't know - I know of them in concept, but not the names. I guess that's why you're doing the poll.
@sundogplanets very cool poll - had to look up two of them: still don't really understand one of them, but at least I'll recognize the term 😉
@sundogplanets
The most interesting result for me was that >80% of those who participated are 30 or older.
@sundogplanets I felt especially old because I answered Yes on the only one of the three where age groups gave different results, and No on the other two.
After looking up the other two, I don't feel that bad, because one feels like a specialist topic and the other one, while being a general news topic that I'm definitely aware of, wasn't publicized too much with that name where I'm from.
@sundogplanets the holy trinity of Saskatchewan indy films, they're all about being trapped in a grain elevator over winter, but otherwise have nothing in common.
@sundogplanets an important question is: what is the distribution of ages in your sample? Ex: Maybe few under-30's are even seeing the poll? 🤔
@sundogplanets
Oh my gosh. I just spent the majority of my workday going through tutorials for the CRM we're moving to. I thought I was burned out on learning for the day.
I see your poll, and after I click no on a couple of answers, I'm off to learn some more. TBH, your topics are fun learning. 🛰🌎
Apparently I'm one of the few people under 30 following you. XD
@amin @sundogplanets Yeah, this corner of the fedi is old seems to be one of the takes. :)
"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
@AbramKedge @modulux @amin ... unless you are in Saskatchewan, where the frost line is like 9 feet down in the winter.
I think I've completely lost the point of this thread :)
Here's a different way of summarizing these (very unscientific, very biased, but still super interesting) poll results. Name recognition of selected environment-related terms:
Recognize "Kessler Syndrome"?
40% (over 30)
34% (under 30)
Recognize "Exxon Valdez"?
86% (over 30)
25% (under 30)
Recognize "Montreal Protocol"?
33% (over 30)
29% (under 30)
Exxon Valdez is the "winner" for name recognition (at least among the older demographic). Interesting!!
@sundogplanets Perhaps because Exxon Valdez was a news item twice: The catastrophe itself and then the proceedings against the captain. In the news for months.
@sundogplanets Exxon Valdez was the disaster while Montreal Protocol was the solution. I bet many people have heard of “hole in the ozone”.
@dx @sundogplanets Yeah... I realized after talking about it with my husband that I knew all of them, but I didn't recognize any of the names 😬
@stephanie @dx That is totally fine! The whole point was for me to check the name recognition of these things. "No" is a very useful datapoint, thank you.
@sundogplanets
I'm confused now. How did you get the ages of the participants?
EDIT: Nevermind. For some reason, my app never showed the actual polls, just the questions.
@brunthal it was part of the poll; each of the questions was set up with four answer options, (I've Heard of it / not) * (I'm over 30 / I'm under 30)
@ChateauErin
That's odd. I never saw an actual poll. Just the three questions.
@brunthal maybe some cross-instance sync issues. If you look directly at https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/114388928566747806 do you see the polls?
@ChateauErin
If I use the website, I can see the polls. Also when I use a different app. But with the Fedilab app, I didn't see them.
@brunthal @ChateauErin Huh, interesting. Sorry about that, I had no idea...
@sundogplanets no reason to be sorry imo, polls are a useful feature and that's the first time I've ever heard of a Fediverse client not supporting them.
@sundogplanets
No need to be sorry about this. Apparently there is a bug in the current version of the app I'm using. 😃
@ChateauErin
@sundogplanets I just searched for Kessler Syndrome, thinking it was a disease I didn't have and now I think it is a future disaster I must worry about 😢
The results track with my expectations...
The Exxon Valdez incident happened back when things were in the mainstream news for more than 24hrs.
Kessler Syndrome is probably well-known only to astronomy and sci-fi buffs.
Montreal Protocol must not have been mentioned by name much -- though everyone from that era would know hair spray and refrigerants had to change to spare the ozone layer.
For me, the over/under spread is the interesting one.
I did a similar poll on "Tank Man" about 15-20 years ago, and the spread was, like, 90/10, between those who watched it live, and those that didn't.
I guess memes have closed that gap nowadays (Bernie sitting in front of a line of cybertrucks, etc).
@sundogplanets I wonder if Deepwater Horizon is more recognizable.
Around the time of the Deepwater Horizon spill I did a “back of the envelope” calculation going back far enough to include the Exxon Valdez, and found that in that 21-year period we spilled about ½ a percent of the amount of oil we burn as intended in a single day.
In 21 years we spilled 0.005 times what we burn in one day.
We’re burning a completely ridiculous amount of oil
@sundogplanets putting it the other way ‘round:
Every day in the U.S. we burn 2000 times as much oil as was spilled by the Deepwater Horizon plus the Exxon Valdez plus all the smaller spills in between.
21 years worth of spills, 2000 times over, is what we burn in 1 day
@sundogplanets Would you mind explaining why you chose 30? Montreal was close to 40 years ago; Exxon Valdez more than 35 — and for a person to have caught those as part of the public consciousness they would have to have been at least primary school age. So, just curious why you picked 30 and not 40.
@xahteiwi It was arbitrary. Like I said, this was totally not scientific and not trying to be :) I picked 30 because I was talking to a grad student and was somewhat shocked that I had to explain the Exxon Valdez to them, and they're closer to 30 than 40, so that's really why I picked it
@sundogplanets I knew about Kessler and Montreal (over 30) but marked "no" because I didn't know the names.
@sundogplanets
Exxon Valdez was the only one I knew by name - the ship's name featured heavily in the news in Germany.
I knew about the purpose and terms of the Montreal Protocol but wasn't familiar with the name. I looked up Kessler syndrome and while I knew space debris was bad I didn't know anything much beyond that.
(30 and older, if that wasn't obvious)
@sundogplanets Hard to forget "44,000,000 quart bottles of oil" as a contemporary car mag writer put it (reminding all of us of our complicity). I see from the WP page that it may actually have been more than that.
I see that Exxon doesn't appear in tanker names any more, their ownership having been buried under dozens of layers of MBA-speak.
@sundogplanets I'm over 30, know about Exxon Valdez because I worked as a journalist about ecology at that time. I know about the Kessler effect but thought that the syndrome would be a for me unknown disease. 😁 For the protocol: We have so many protocols with names of towns. Looking at Wikipedia, I know it but the name was not in my mind. Problem with special names: people remember events/content, not names. A problem journalists often have with writing headlines.
@NatureMC Thanks! And yeah, I realize lots of people know of these without knowing the names - the poll was specifically to figure out how recognizable the names are for Future Projects.
@sundogplanets the Valdez was immortalized in the movie "Water World". Even the themed pinball machine had the tanker on the board. Complete with a clip of Dennis Hopper saying, "they're trying to sink the Deez!"
@sundogplanets How many people know that Condoleezza Rice had a double bottom (and now the Altair Voyager does.)
@sundogplanets
I knew it had to do with environmental protection. But I could not remember which ones or was. To be honest, I would have guessed something related to biodiversity.
@sundogplanets I think the overall general success of the third one is what led me to not know what it was. Although I certainly remember the reasons for it!
@sundogplanets yes it’s going to be messy with the non representative sample you have here. Unless you’re trying to figure out the demographics of who follows you, even then the self selection bias will factor in.
@Bwacton This is obviously not trying to be scientific. I'm just curious about name recognition for these particular things, with a large group of well-educated people.
@sundogplanets sorry didn’t mean to sound snarky. Hope you get what you need from it.
@sundogplanets I wasn't sure about this one (Montreal Protocol). Answered No (over 30). But I did have a guess. Searched after answering and my guess was right. 🤷♂️
I know about this since it's included in the syllabus for my Chemistry A-level, if that's a useful point
And whats interesting is that Conservative governments strongly supporting it!
Back before pollution was a partisan issue. ie Before #FossilFuels felt threatened.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/conservatives-ozone-montreal-protocol-1.4409482
@sundogplanets This is embarrassing; I’ve been mentioning it to my students for years and never thought to look up its proper name. 😅
@sundogplanets I'm glad I googled to be sure, because I confused it with the Milwaukee Protocol.
@RamenCatholic WOW I had never heard of the Milwaukee Protocol and I'm very glad I looked it up! Very different!!
@sundogplanets When I voted "no", I knew about the "thing" itself but not the name. If you had asked "the thing about xy", I would have said yes.
@sundogplanets I was going to guess this was the treatment for rabies that worked exactly once but was probably a fluke
@sundogplanets I’ve _heard_ of the Montreal Protocol, but can’t say I know what it is, and there wasn’t a “kinda/maybe” so I had to go with a no
I was sure I knew what the Montréal Protocol is, but I looked it up anyway.
I was right, but I had pegged it as being from around 1975, but it's actually much later than that: established 1987, came into effect 1989.
@sundogplanets there's a satisfyingly disturbing loop between the Montreal Protocol and several hundred kilograms of aluminium oxide burning up every day as starlink satellites de-orbit
@AbramKedge More like several thousand kg of aluminum per day, but yeah. Ugh.
@sundogplanets ye gods, I had no idea it was that high. They KNEW they were setting it up this way, didn't care. They have no shame.
@sundogplanets The Exxon Valdez is defined as that point in history after which oil companies stopped naming oil tankers after the company.
@sundogplanets
I was young and into comedy music at the time it happened, so to this day when I see "Exxon" I hear in my head these lyrics:
♬ they spilled 10 billion gallons ♬
♬ from a one quart whiskey bottle ♬
@sundogplanets I voted yes, but I am also a huge nerd and feel that most people in my age group have NO IDEA what this is. (no one I know personally would know this)
@NosirrahSec I realize this is a rather biased population to survey and will take that into account :) Thanks for answering!
@sundogplanets "Selection bias" was my very first thought here, and I didn't mean to imply you didn't understand that lol (if it came across as me implying that, sorry!)
@sundogplanets
I do know Kessler Syndrome, but I'm arguably a domain expert. I would explain it if I were presenting to a public audience.
@sundogplanets Kessler Syndrome is the phenomenon where popular science and popular culture get basic science concepts wrong, e.g., "did the Kessler Run in less than 12 parsecs."
Oh, wait, that's *Kessel* Syndrome. Sorry about that.
@sundogplanets
I being a bit distracted and never heard it refereed to as a "syndrome" answered incorrectly, had you said Kessler Effect I would have answered yes correctly.
Syndrome? How odd.
@sundogplanets Call me paranoid, but I avoid putting anything personal into digital records. Even my approximately age. Who knows when it will become a sorting mechanism.
I knew about the existence of the treaty re the ozone layer and also had heard about something called Montreal Protocol before, but hadn't realized so far (or completely forgotten) that they are the same.
@sundogplanets I'll qualify my response to the question about Kessler Syndrome. I have been aware of it for years, but I had to look it up to jog my memory because I couldn't associate the name with the phenomenon.
... um .. itz not Tesla's long lost cousin, by any chance is it 🤫 . . who was so sophisticated he reinstated one of the s's coz.. well .. coz he could .. & said hello to some additional characters coz he was so .. um .. inclusive ... ⁉️ 👌 .. 🤔
#tesla #Tessler #science #history #surplus #pun #marxwasright #liberalssuck #nooffence
@sundogplanets When it started surfacing in media reports recently my response was, "We can't be there yet, surely?"
It seemed hundreds of years away rather than decades. But here we are.
@sundogplanets anyone else learn this idea from Earth Star Voyager? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Star_Voyager
Not sure if they used the name. It’s also where I learned the phrase “right as rain”
@sundogplanets Job opportunities for people from the United States.
contract me telegram username
👉@roxytm24211
All three: yes and I'm over 30. This is like the old game show "what's my line" (yes, I'm way over 30) where we get three clues to guess what your new project is.
@sundogplanets I've read a bunch of science/space nerd stuff over the years, but I'm not sure I heard of it by name until the film "Gravity". (I'm in my late 50's)
@sundogplanets geesh, it didn't have a fancy name like this when I worked at mit/Lincoln lab and this was the hot topic.
@sundogplanets I know, but I think it's because I read you. This creates a serious bias in the answers!
Didn't you ask us if we knew what Kessler Syndrome is about a year ago? If not you, then someone else...
@bobjonkman Yep, I did! The answer is about the same fraction as a year ago. All the space junk falling on us hasn't increased the name recognition of Kessler Syndrome. Interesting!
The Kessler Syndrome is what happens when you hire Whiskey Pete to run the Pentagon, and his aides collide into oblivion, hoping to fill the power vacuum he carries with him like Pig-Pen's dust cloud.
@sundogplanets I'd heard of the Montreal Protocol but didn't recall its contents; I was 12 at the time and not terribly politically savvy.
I'd encountered Kessler Syndrome in a number of places but most memorably in the show, "Planetes".
The other, I watched on TV in a classroom.
@sundogplanets the Kessler syndrome is the attitude for finding shortcuts, in particular those ones under 12 parsec.
@sundogplanets
Sh...
“Syndrome” put me on the “it's a disease” track. After that: Oh yes, of course. Actually, I knew that!
@sundogplanets My first thought was about the german Kessler twins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_Twins
1. Well, I watched Gravity and read Seveneves. So I knew about the concept but not about its name.
2. I was a teenager back then and though I didn't remember the specifics of the catastrophe, to this day whenever I see the name "Exxon" written somewhere my associations are "Valdez", "oil", "death".
3. I remember being worried about the ozone hole over Antarctica even before man-made climate change had entered public discourse.
However, ironically, I couldn't remember what the Montreal protocol was although it led to actually effective measures while I do remember the Kyoto protocol which didn't have any perceivable effect whatsoever.
@sundogplanets I had no idea, but now that I looked it up, I'm feeling pretty dumb that I didn't guess!
@sundogplanets Was only around for the 1st poll but i knew all of them (30+)
Interesting questions though.
Alt...
(Old painting of a smiling woman holding a fan) I just learned the professional way to say "I told you so": "This was identified early on as a likely outcome."
Snac2 is a simple database-less/javascript-free alternative to Mastodon:
https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2
It looks very nice to run your own #fediverse server
There are some screenshots here:
https://codeberg.org/voron/snac-style
Is anybody using it?
@ParadeGrotesque : I’ve probably heard about it through @stefano ’s blog. Very nice blog, I like it !
@ploum I haven’t migrated my personal instance yet I run it on https://n4no.org . It’s also perfect when you just want to setup an independent bot on its own domain.
https://www.europesays.com/1929041/ Ignored by Trump and menaced by Putin, the UK turns to the EU for defensive ties | Defence policy #europe
The weather outside is beautiful, but I am feeling sicker and sicker.
Slight fever, joint aches, etc.
Thank Cthulhu for work from home days.
OH yeah love ending my workday with a surprise National Geographic interview about the Saturn moons that I helped discover by accidentally pointing the CFHT telescope at Saturn. Definitely my most scientifically productive whoopsie ever.
128!!!! New!!! MOONS!!
Happy Moon Day!
@sundogplanets
What defines a moon?
Is there a minimum size limit or some other property?
Obviously, the small fragments that make up Saturn's rings don't count as moons.
Do we have orbital parameters for these new moons?
Names?
@AkaSci Paper here with some of them (I'm not a co-author, just an observer, whoopsie) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.07081
There's another paper coming soon, possibly tomorrow.
All led by Edward Ashton, a very talented postdoc at ASIAA!
@AkaSci And yeah, this is definitely going to push to some kind of Pluto situation where the IAU is going to have to define a moon!
@sundogplanets @AkaSci I vaguely recall that the reporting on Sputnik back in the late 50s said things like "Earth has a second moon now". But assuming we don't want to say that Saturn has billions of moons (in the rings) I guess there has to be a limit.
@sundogplanets Nice! Now do you get to name any of them? :)
@Chigaze I think the lead author is going to be hard-pressed to come up with names for all of them. So hopefully?
To be very clear, I am really truly only involved in this discovery by accidentally pointing the telescope at Saturn when I was trying to look for TNOs. Edward Ashton, Brett Gladman, Mike Alexandersen, and Jean-Marc Petit did all the work!
@sundogplanets Better than causing people to think there are aliens in specific galaxies because you were heating up your lunch in the microwave?
Someone already updated Wikipedia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Saturn
I love wikipedians.
@sundogplanets You made Dr Kirsten Banks very happy. :) :)https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHE95vNhrBf/
I've had like 3 co-workers text or email me about this interview this morning, so I guess I should share it. This is the one that I thought was for radio so I didn't even brush my hair. New rule for myself: always assume it's a video interview!
Came out pretty good though, overall I'm happy with it
Brilliant! This is an excellent piece 👏👍
What's so good about your way of talking to people is that you come across as so approachable, so human, and that you ABSOLUTELY KNOW what you're talking about because you have researched and researched and researched!
Your words are worth listening to/reading 👍
Amazingly talented fediverse astrophotographers: gorgeous, perfectly exposed and processed telescope images
Me, a professional astronomer: accidentally points a 4 meter telescope at Saturn for a series of 5 minute exposures
Alt...
A really messy black and white image with an extremely bright, overexposed thing in the centre and bright vertical smudges bleeding up and down because all the pixels have filled with electrons and spilled over. This is a tiny part of a Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Megacam full camera field.
@sundogplanets sincerely curious: how long did it take to figure out that it was Saturn that was in the way? A few minutes?
@ChateauErin I figured it out as soon as I saw the image the night after it was taken, and I felt REALLY STUPID for not thinking of checking for Saturn crossing through my Kuiper Belt field.
@ChateauErin These are all taken in queue mode, so I'm not at the telescope. I just tell them exactly what kind of observations I want and where, and trained observers at the telescope do it for me whenever the conditions are right and it fits into the schedule. It works great, unless you do something dumb like forget to check for Saturn.
@sundogplanets at least your doing "something dumb" gets you a neat story and a bunch of moons. I have done dumb things with planes and I can't recommend it! usually. Throwing test equipment out of a plane into a bay was pretty fun. But we did that on purpose.
During my first own observing run (ESO Danish 1.5m telescope on La Silla), which I meticulously prepared, I only learned mid 1st night that I was expected to focus the telescope.
@sundogplanets Take the credit. Many scientific discoveries were accidents. The *male* scientists did not hesitate to claim the credit.
@anne_twain I mean, I'm listed on the official discovery statements from the Minor Planet Center. So yeah, I already did take credit :)
@sundogplanets
"Accidentally" : -) If I was a telescope-managing astronomer, the telescope would "accidentally" be pointing at Saturn regularly. I'm kinda partial to Saturn and it's rings.
@sundogplanets Irregular moons are the most interesting giant planet satellites and that is a hill I will die on
@sundogplanets The value of accidents and toying for science and society in general is greatly underestimated.
The largest camera ever built for astrophysics (3200-megapixels, >3000 kg) was installed this week at the Rubin Observatory at Cerro Pachón in Chile.
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera, the final major component of the Rubin Observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope, was transported to the summit in May 2024.
After a few more months of testing, first light is expected around 4 Jul 2025.
https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2511/
https://www.lsst.org/about/project-status
#Science #Astronomy #Space
1/n
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The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory team installing the LSST Camera on the Simonyi Survey Telescope in March 2025.
Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/B. Quint
Source: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noirlab2511m/
Here is a fascinating time-lapse video of the LSST Camera being installed on the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
"The team on the summit used Rubin’s vertical platform lift to move the LSST Camera up to the telescope floor onto a transport cart. Following a carefully planned procedure, the team then used a custom lifting device to carefully position and secure the LSST Camera on the telescope."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmRwhZ3k8-g
Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA
2/n
The objectives of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory include -
• Probing dark energy and dark matter
• Taking an inventory of the solar system
• Exploring the transient optical sky
• Mapping the Milky Way
The LSST will image the entire visible sky every 3-4 nights, allowing it to detect objects that change in brightness or position and to discover billions of new stars and galaxies.
By comparison, SPHEREx will take 6 months for a survey of the full sky, with spectra.
Alt...
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory telescope mount in November 2023
Credit: Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/A. Alexov
Source: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/rubin-TMA-1-CC/
The Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time LSST Camera is the largest camera ever constructed for astronomy. It is a large-aperture, wide-field optical camera, capable of viewing light from the near UV to near infrared wavelengths.
Length: 4.5 m
Height: 1.65 m
Weight: 2,800 kg
Pixels: 3.2 billion
Wavelength: 0.32–1.06 μm
Filters: 6 (u-g-r-i-z-y)
Field of view = 3.5° (moon = 0.5°)
Operating temperature: -100°C
https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/lsst
https://www.lsst.org/about/camera/features
4/n
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A schematic of the LSST camera, with size comparison with a human being.
The focal plane of the Vera C. Rubin telescope consists of 189 4kx4k charge-coupled device (CCD) sensors, arranged in a total of 21 3-by-3 square arrays. The system is cooled to about -100 °C to minimize noise.
The 3.5° field of view of the 64 cm wide array is 40 times the area of the full moon in the sky.
Camera Data Rates: ~3.2 GBytes/sec peak raw data 😲
1 pixel = 16 bits (raw)
Pixels: 3.2 billion
Detector read-out time: 2 sec
https://www.flickr.com/photos/slaclab/with/50212773953
https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/lsst
#Rubin
5/n
Alt...
1. Pic othe LSST camera focal plane and detectors during assembly and testing
Credit: Jacqueline Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/slaclab/50212763208/
2. Schematic of LSST focal plane and detectors
Source: https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/lsst
@AkaSci I was once at a gathering where one of the builders of this camera was present (but I did not know it at the time.)
I was talking-up my new 4K video camera and he said "you should see my camera". I lost all my bragging rights.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Simonyi Survey Telescope consists of 3 aspheric mirrors: an 8.4-m primary mirror M1, a 3.5-m convex secondary mirror M2, and a 5.0-m tertiary mirror M3.
The primary and tertiary mirrors are fabricated from a single piece of glass.The secondary mirror (M2) is the largest convex mirror ever made.
Note the location of the 3 ton LSST camera perched below the high secondary mirror.
https://www.lsst.org/about/tel-site/optical_design
#Rubin #astronomy
6/n
Alt...
1. Schematic of the mirror assembly and optical path of the Rubin Observatory.
The hole in the tertiary mirror is used to mount equipment for maintaining precise control of Rubin Observatory's optical alignment.
2. Graphic of the assembled telescope.
Here is a fascinating video of the journey of the 3-ton LSST Camera from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California to Rubin Observatory on the summit of Cerro Pachón in Chile. The camera arrived on the summit on May 16, 2024.
The video also shows the rugged and beautiful site of the observatory and pays homage to the engineers and technicians involved in the move.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbhl1bysCAY
Credit: RubinObs/NSF/AURA/S. Deppe/O. Bonin, T. Lange, M. Lopez, J. Orrell (SLAC National Lab)
7/n
@AkaSci I've chatted with people about the data output from the Vera Rubin observatory. It's a giant firehose of data - so much data that will take AI-related software to digest to timely notice fresh events.
@AkaSci And one more thing ... I've heard (but do not know) that the data stream from the observatory is time-embargoed or obfuscated because the US fears that the data could be used to identify and track spy satellites in near real-time.
Again, this is just something I heard, I have nothing concrete.
Asteroid name: 2010 RF12
Probability: 10.24%
Impact date: 2095-09-05.99
Asteroid name: 2017 WT28
Probability: 1.10%
Impact date: 2104-11-24.69
Source: NASA/JPL Sentry Data API
Page is under construction: A love letter to the personal website
Link: https://localghost.dev/blog/this-page-is-under-construction/
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43139211
Astronomie foto van de dag: Light Pillar over Erupting Etna. Fotoinfo: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250224.html Foto Credits:
Davide Caliò
#astronomie #sterrenkunde #sterrenkijken #apod #heelal
Your weird picture of Paris for the day... The smurfette as Mona Lisa, done as a mosaic.
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A mosaic of colored squares, representing a dark haired smurfette as Mona Lisa, complete with the classic pose of the original and the background representing nature.
The mosaic is framed like a painting on a white wall, with bits and pieces of other street art and tags around it.
Did you know that SDF offers access to 23 vintage computers through our Remote Systems program? We're looking for your help in continuing to offer this access as well as expand it. What systems would you like to have access to?
To support SDF Vintage Systems, please visit https://icm.museum/join.html
#vintage #vintagecomputing #retrogaming #retrocomputing
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The SDF Remote Vintage Systems menu
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The SDF Remote Vintage Systems menu
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archive boxes at SDF Vintage Systems and an assortment of our remote systems.
US Gov website purge underway. CDC right now. NIH Office of Women's Health is already gone. Happening quick.
https://github.com/end-of-term/eot2024
End of Term archive backed up everything. ~260TB. If you can seed/ share, please do so
#GCompris 25.0 Open-Source Educational Suite Released with Five New Activities, Now Ported to Qt 6 https://9to5linux.com/gcompris-25-0-open-source-educational-suite-released-with-five-new-activities
@gcompris #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #education #Linux
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Screenshot of GCompris showing the main window with the activities and application menu.
CC: @Andromxda@infosec.exchange @rufposten@social.tchncs.de @accrescent@infosec.exchange
I've had a lot of people ask how BlueSky compares to Mastodon and the Fediverse. I've tried to make the answer as simple and easy to understand as possible:
🦋 BlueSky is designed to give corporations and wealthy people full control of the network. All of its traffic has to flow through expensive-to-run corporate relays.
The Fediverse is designed to give ordinary people control of the network. All of its traffic flows directly from one cheap-to-run server to another.
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Diagrams of how BlueSky and its AT Protocol functions, compared to how The Fediverse and its ActivityPub protocol functions.
BlueSky's traffic flows from servers to corporate-owned relays, and these relays communicate with each other before allowing traffic to flow to servers. The servers cannot communicate with each other at all.
The Fediverse's traffic flows directly between cheap-to-run servers, with no need for any corporate involvement.
While technically these are both forms of decentralisation, the BlueSky interpretation puts corporations, rich people and wealthy organisations in full control of the network. The Fediverse interpretation puts ordinary people in full control of the betwork.
The fedi experience
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Girl walking down a road with her hands over her ears with the words "mentioning any minor software issue" next to her. Following her down the road is a boy obnoxiously playing a trumpet at her, the words overlayed "The problem here is that you're using proprietary software and just giving your data away to corporations, what you need to do is adopt free open source..."
Wow what a view captured by Perseverance just 8 hours ago. This is probably her new science site: Witch Hazel Hill.
#Mars Dec. 16, 2024 (Sol 1359)
📷 https://areo.info/mars20/ecams/1359
#Perseverance #rover #Sol1359 #WitchHazelHill #PerseveranceRover #NorthernRimCampaign #space #science #research #news #STEM #Mars2020 #geology #planetaryscience #Martian #landscape #photography #news #Astrodon
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A photography of a Martian landscape, captured by the Perseverance rover on the west side of the rim of Jezero Crater.
The long-running Fedi server mstdn.social (not to be confused with mastodon.social 🙂 ) has just received a takedown request from the Russian government for hosting @Bellingcat, a news site which has long been critical of Putin:
https://mstdn.social/@stux/113652461647125214
Thankfully mstdn.social isn't in Russia so Putin has no power over it.
If anyone wants to turn this into a Streisand Effect kind of thing, you might want to follow @Bellingcat and slip a donation to @stux at https://mstdn.social/@stux/113623791580168625
“The Earth is not dying,
it is being killed.
And the people
who are killing it
have names
and addresses.”
- #UtahPhillips
#ClimateCrisis #Ecocide #WaterIsLife #WorldOceansDay #Wildfires #AirPollution #Corporations #Capitalism
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“The Earth is not dying,
it is being killed.
And the people
who are killing it
have names
and addresses.” - Utah Phillips
The fourteenth evening of anti-government protests has begun in Georgia.
Mastodon isn't perfect.
But the fact a social network exists that is completely free to use
has no venture capital investors
has no shareholders to answer to
has no growth targets
with a web interface with zero tracking cookies
and mobile apps with zero trackers at all
with ten thousand server administrators who donate their time for user safety
is - in my opinion - mindbogglingly cool, given the state of the world we live in. Not everything has to be shit. People make things better.
he/him
