Asymmetry in galaxy distributions

 Hmm..., news, science  No Responses »
Dec 062022
 

This is weird. And if this is confirmed, it’ll mean… something.

 

Asymmetry Detected in the Distribution of Galaxies

As if playing a cosmic game of Connect the Dots, the researchers drew lines between sets of four galaxies, constructing four-cornered shapes called tetrahedra. When they had built every possible tetrahedron from a catalog of 1 million galaxies, they found that tetrahedra oriented one way outnumber their mirror images.

Huh.

 

Might be related to why the universe has more matter than antimatter. Or maybe it’s just that Azathtoth is right handed. Who knows.

 Posted by at 7:16 am

Detected 3.5 hours before impact

 Hmm..., news, science  No Responses »
Nov 242022
 

Not enough time to do anything about it, but then it was only a meter or so wide. At that side it was probable to be harmless. Ten times bigger, though, it starts to get worrisome. A hundred time the diameter, you need to stand up, take notice and consider launching the nukes.

 

This was not the first impactor to be detected prior to impact. In March, a 2-meter asteroid was detected 2 hours prior to impact.

 

NASA program predicted impact of small asteroid over Ontario, Canada

 Posted by at 10:31 am

Code Review

 Hmm..., news, photography, politics, science  No Responses »
Nov 202022
 

So Elon Musk posted some photos of a recent “code review” at Twitter. One photo in particular has some people upset… because the people who are there doing actual work seem to be… well, take a look:

 

 

 

 

If you read the Twitter comments, you’ll see that some people are upset that there aren’t enough women coders or black coders. Well… I don’t know how many were there before Musk took over, but the people who were fired were generally fired en masse; those who quit did so on their own; those who remained did so for reasons of their own. So it *appears* that “diverse” coders either weren’t there to begin with, or didn’t want to stay and work extra hard. Granted, some number of those remaining are foreigners on work visas… if they quit, they get sent back across the seas. So they are, arguably, stuck. Stuck in a country that all the harpies keep screaming is racist and horrible. So a chance for a free flight back to the homeland is something that they *should* be clamoring for, yes?

 Posted by at 8:23 am

AI art: here we go…

 art, Hmm..., news, science  No Responses »
Nov 182022
 

AI Drew This Gorgeous Comic Series. You’d Never Know It

 

There are two points that I think should be noted:

 

First: “AI image generation is advancing so rapidly, he adds, that The Lesson, out Nov. 1, marks a clear visual step up from the first comic in the trilogy, Summer Island, a folk-horror story in the spirit of Midsommar that came out in August. During those three months, Midjourney went through two upgrades.”

 

Second: it’s free to download.

 

I have not downloaded or read it, but the writer of the article seemed to like it, and noted that it was a substantial improvement over the issue published a few months before. That should worry comic artists, who can take many years to go from “adequate” to “good” to “great.” And the fact that it’s *free* should worry *everyone* in the comic industry. Because while I doubt “free” will be the way this sort of thing will remain, it’s a safe bet that its far cheaper to produce AI-art-comic books than human-art. Soon enough the market will be flooded with AI-art books.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 10:11 am

Augmented reality contact lens

 Hmm..., science, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 032022
 

Still a little clunky, but they’re getting close to a practical unit. The graphics it can place over reality remain monochromatic and low-rez, basically text (looks like circa 1980 home computer stuff), but the fact that they can get *anything* is impressive. I doubt something like this would be a good idea for fighter pilots; G-forces would doubtless suck the things out of place. But for commercial pilot or astronauts? Maybe. Though it’d probably be easier and all-around better for this sort of thing to be integrated into the faceplate of a space helmet. The Hollywood use for this would be communications with secret agents and assassins; an advanced version of this would look invisible and would automatically use facial recognition to spot targets in a crowded room. It would be handy for electricians, bomb techs, surgeons and the like, overlaying schematics and 3D models atop the thing/patient being worked on. For the civilian market, an obvious use would again be facial recognition: you get on a subway, look around, and you’re informed just which of the creepy weirdoes surrounding you have criminal records and for what. Some people might be dismayed to find that random people around them are suddenly maintaining a safe distance, out of pocket-picking and rail-pushing range.

 Posted by at 6:19 pm

The most useless machine in the universe. So far.

 art, Hmm..., science, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 022022
 

A gearbox with a gear ratio of ten to the power of 169. The last gear will *never* turn once; it’s unlikely to turn even a detectable amount. Not just because there are probably no plans to hook the *first* gear up to a perpetual motion machine, but the fact that mo matter how fast it’s spun, that last gear will succumb to proton decay before it could turn the least bit. never mind the fact that it’s made of plastic and will crumble to dust in less than geological timescales.

Someone will doubtless improve upon this.

 Posted by at 1:13 am

Offensive humor

 AARRRGH, blather, dumbassery, Forward!, humor, politics, science, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 012022
 

This guy tells a joke, the short from of which is that learning about science in school is useless, because he didn’t become a scientist. Now it could well be that he doesn’t actually believe that; perhaps a longer video with more context has him redeem himself later. But the basic notion expressed here grates on me more than a lame joke by an unknown standup comic really aught to. It would be better by far for kids to learn about science and math and then have them not go into STEM fields, than to replace science and math with the latest trendy identity politics subjects. Because even if the kids *do* go into the fields of gender studies or LGBTQ studies or racial grievance activism… society is *worse* off. Learning math helps a kid order their mind. Learning science helps a kid learn skepticism. Learning critical race theory helps a kid become a racist monster. Learning about the latest innovation in pronoun-invention helps a kid become schizophrenic and sterile.

 Posted by at 8:20 am

Art DOOOOOOOOOOM

 art, blather, Hmm..., politics, science, War With The Deep Ones, youtube  No Responses »
Oct 262022
 

It’s a long video, but it’s interesting to listen to an artist rail against AI text-to-image art generators. The guy knows that his field is as endangered as a factory workers; even if AI never get *quite* as good as human artists (doubtful), the sheer volume of art – images, music, videos, whole movies – will simply overwhelm the pitiful output that a finite number of humans can produce. Hell, my “War With The Deep Ones” stories, currently something like 400 pages, could be overwhelmed by ten thousand pages of adequate AI-generated content on the same subject in a matter of seconds. Once AI “writers” are there, I stand no chance of making a dime off fiction. I suspect it won’t be too long before “US Supersonic Bomber Projects” could be written and fully illustrated by an AI, with a thousand-page tome full of readable, factually accurate descriptions and beautiful general arrangements and inboard profiles and full-color 3D renderings. Humans like myself have some current advantages due to the fact that most of the archives are not scanned and available online… but *that* probably won’t last long. On the other hand… as AI start taking history-writing jobs away from humans, these humans will have neither the incentive nor the funds to go to archives or pay archives to scan stuff. So it may be that a number of archives end up closing the doors and turning off the lights due to lack of interest. And thus history that *could* be written won’t be.

Hmmm.

 Posted by at 7:25 pm
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