StringJunky

On 12/13/2025 at 10:06 PM, Moontanman said:

Penny was slow to drop on that one.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/power-outage-boulder-atomic-clock-nist/

“As a result of that lapse, NIST UTC drifted by about 4 microseconds”

Usually their error with respect to the BIPM is measured in nanoseconds. If GPS had this error, positioning uncertainty would be more than a kilometer.

Before I retired, there was a meeting with NIST folks about them looking at USNO’s power backup systems, because they wanted to upgrade. Looks like that didn’t happen, but the problem is finding the money. Beancounters don’t always appreciate the importance, and everybody is making their case, so someone else (probably without technical expertise) decides what the priorities are.

This would be a very unsatisfying “We told you so.” The blame game might get ugly.

Is USNO-calibrated time just for GPS and military stuff? I presume NIST-calibrated time is what world commerce and everything else runs on? Are the two systems usually in unison i.e. within nanoseconds/microseconds of each other?

31 minutes ago, swansont said:

As Phi’s example showed, sometimes the “efficiency” is cutting preventative maintenance or similar necessary tasks, which initially shows up as savings but always ends up costing more. Services are cut, costs go up.

Yes, neglected stuff is always going to cost more later on to remedy. DOGE just proved that its planners are fiscally incompetent. I find it interesting that hyped individuals, like Musk, inevitably fall off a credibility-cliff. They just don't know how far to push their luck and yet still maintain their public 'aura'.

Privatization of what should be public utilities is a major bugbear of mine. It just makes no sense. How can making a profit from them make it better for the domestic consumer? Since water/sewage, for example, was privatized in the UK, the infrastructure has become dilapidated and now needs BILLIONS spending on it to repair it. They are claiming poverty. Why haven't they put some of the profit aside for maintenance and upgrades over the last decades since privatization? Is privatisation just a gravy train, where they sap from it and, when it runs dry, expect the consumer to 'top it up' through continuously higher pricing?

The future is even more ominous for the domestic consumer, with the massive data companies cutting shifty backdoor deals with utilities to reduce their ongoing energy, water and land use costs for their data centres. This can only mean that the consumer will bear the brunt of that increase in the form of reduced resources and higher bills.

The main issue with faceless, investor-owned utilities is that there can be no personal accountability when big issues arise from bad or unethical decisions. They just get a new board of directors and pretend they've "learnt their lesson".

Privatisation is a sibling of 'trickle down' economics. Privatisation was supposed to improve economic efficiency, but guess who gets the benefits of that efficiency?

3 minutes ago, swansont said:

There are also stories about the person who eventually thwarted the shooter. The reports are that the fake stories cropped up, fueled by AI/bots and spread on dodgy news sites and places that amplify such disinformation via their algorithms (X/Twitter and Facebook, to name two). Such bots do appear on Bluesky, but there’s no algorithm to amplify the slop.

One of the effects here is to make all information untrustworthy. Stick with sources that actually do fact-checking and take the other stuff with a huge grain of salt.

I was mindful that AI might be involved. Time will tell. I suppose this is the first time I've had to hesitate, hence my asking. Thanks.

On Bluesky someone posted a picture purporting to show that the Bondi shooter is actually a Jewish person from Israel. I found a Daily Mail image of the shooter on the bridge, named as Naveed Akram and they seem to be the same person. What are your thoughts? The social media page of David Cohen has apparently vanished. I putthe two images together for comparison.

Courage is acting in the face of some adversity, contrary to ones usual behaviour because it may overcome a personal problem or aid another that is in distress.

On 11/24/2025 at 11:02 PM, Phi for All said:

Too binary, and nebulous at the same time. Am I interfering with your freedom when I ask you to immunize yourself and your family so the rest of us don't catch a disease? Absolutely, but is it negative? Is this a burden I'm placing on you to protect society?

Actually able to do... something? What is it you want the freedom to do that you don't have now that would be positive? Is it positive for most, or mostly you?

I've seen this come up recently. You own a home next to other homes like it, in a neighborhood. You have a tree that you want to cut down on your property, and you want to save a ton of money by watching DIY videos and doing it yourself, but the neighbors interfere, claiming you need to hire professionals who know what they're doing and have insurance in case the tree falls badly. Between you and your neighbors, who is being positive and who is negative?

I occasionally cut/prune trees down. Most people grossly underestimate the forces in a tree, its mass and gravity. Once a tree starts falling down, you have no recourse at all if it goes down in the wrong direction. Even an architect I did a job for thoughtit would be straightforward to topple his 40-50ft tree on to his garden.... right next to a main road! It's got to come down in sections, and that needs a tree surgeon with insurance and the gear.

It might be a consequence of morphological changes due to things like hormonal changes, and the rest of the face getting smaller around it. It could be a non-functional byproduct of other processes. That's one hypothesis I've read about.

15 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Very much not my field, but I'm guessing that the gut biota produce short chain fatty acids from it that we use? My understanding is that it gives the gut downstream of the small intestine a bit of work to do that highly processed foods generally don't.

Yes, colonic cells feed off them.

Speed cameras are 1/1000sec or better. Some new photo cameras can do 1/32000sec. The cameras calculate exposure parameters based on vehicle speed and lighting conditions. I think radar data is integrated into the exposure formula.

2 hours ago, geordief said:

Not a dog trained for Crufts then.

Had no idea

Two different dogs in that vid. Probably AI BS.

1 hour ago, geordief said:

Is the "frightened" dog part of the illusion?

It can't see the "hole" can it?(especially from its direction)

If you look at it turned upside down and screen placed horizontally, it looks like a raised pyramid, blocking the dog's way.

To add: Eating cooled potatoes, which forms some resistant starch, reduced digestible calories by up to10%. I think that's a useful reduction.

@sethoflagos AFAIK resistant starch is food for the gut biota. We can't use it directly.

When you buy pc components, they often come in gaseously-impervious, metallized plastic bags. That's what you need for archival storage.

1 hour ago, aranbadan said:

what acid type used in this material mentioned? and vapor generates?

Formic, acetic, sulphuric, sulphurous, nitric, and others. The only paper material I now that is finished acid-free are museum-quality art papers, boards, and probably boxes,

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Entanglement is a quantum connection between particles. When atoms are entangled, their random quantum behavior becomes linked—even if they’re not touching. In this experiment, the researchers used entanglement to make the atoms behave more like a team, reducing the noise in their collective signal.

Cool stuff! Clever solution.

34 minutes ago, swansont said:

It’s practical considerations, but the Heisenberg uncertainty principle would be a limit even if experimental precision were improved.

Cheers. What sort of duration range might that come into effect? Is it hypothesized? Would Planck time be a limit?

15 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Psyllium seed is also a big help as a prebiotic and stabilizing fluid balance.

Are you starting with a culture, some juice from other fermented vegs? Seems to me it goes better with a starter brine, as the good bacilli more easily outcompete the spoilage bacteria. Also, eye of newt, but that's just a personal preference.

Cheers. Will have a look.

We measure time in discrete steps, but it's actually continuous i.e undivided/smoothly progressive.

17 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Apparently the kefir organisms are quite sensitive to both ambient temperature and humidity. As I'm currently living in Abuja (central Nigeria) and looking at six solid months of mid-thirties Celsius and 25% RH, perhaps we're going to be a little too hot and dry here.

But you've whetted my appetite, so I think I'll have a bash at making dahi, an Indian version that should be a better match for our climate. And I am very partial to mint raita. Though I think I'll steer clear of the bhang lassi.

Yes, I've read this too, but I'm just leaving it at ambient 16-20c and experiencing the slightly different tastes each day. I started the culture pretty warm - 28-30c - with a beer warming mat to get the population up quickly, so that the undesirable micros didn't get a chance to dominate.

I had an issue that put me bordering on diarrhoea and I surmised it might be down to an incomplete gut biota, such that my gut lining was somewhat inflamed. The body thinks it's being attacked, so, as a result of the inflammation, which is protective, the fluid absorption was compromised, leading to watery stools. Everything seems to be normal now. The underlying reason, I guessed, was I don't eat enough fresh food to keep the biota maintained and this seems to have fixed it, I think. I still have to address my overall diet though. I've come to realize that veg variety is not just about vitamins, fibre and minerals, but also inoculating the gut lining regularly with diverse microbiota. Being in my mid-sixties now, my body complains much more about not eating properly. I'm trying to halve my consumption as well because I don't need it... the evidence is in my expanding belly!

25-30g in 750ml gin. Some go to 50g/750ml. Slightly crush to rupture the skins. I imagine the flavour improves when laid down in the bottle after straining it.

DNA can't replicate perfectly for all time in an organism. Even without external agents, it will degrade eventually, to lethal effect.