I may have exaugurated the error for this particular star, but between 1997 and 2005 we did refine it’s position from 110 ly to 111 ly. But some other kinds of measurement for this star give estimates that are 5% different than that. And some other stars have much larger error bars. Betelgeuse has estimates ranging…

This is a tired technicality. Yes, it happened some time ago, but the distances involved usually have so much potential error that it might be anywhere from 90 years ago to 120 years ago. It is way more practical to say when we detected an event than to assign a specific year in the distant past.

Most things that are turned off and unplugged should be fine. It’s the hundred mile long power lines that will be most impacted, as the long wire acts as an antenna. Even most data transmission will be fine, since long distance runs are optical. But even there, some of the optical lines, especially undersea lines,…

Sounds like the real loophole is where they could just assign an arbitrary value to the company before selling it.

My guess is they will never relinquish the domain as long as the voice assistant exists. Even if it’s only a redirect to the amazon.com page for voice products.

For one thing, they did not block or control oncoming traffic.

That would be very odd if related. I would think Google used their own servers, not AWS.

Maybe you’re looking for something like KeePass. It lives entirely on your computer. You can sync the encrypted file using any tool you want, such as Dropbox, S3, or rsync. And even if your sync system gets broken, you still have the file itself.

I use KeePass, but rolled my own sync process using Amazon S3, FolderSync for Android, and Allway Sync for Windows. So I can keep it synced between two phones (including my wife) and the desktop, and don’t worry about any artificial limits. The sync programs are not free, (though they have free trials) but are…

mRNA helped in bringing the new vaccines in quickly, as well as rapid scale-up. But the reason they were approved so fast was because the random clinical trials could be shorter due to the extent the disease was spreading in the general population. Most trials must be much longer because it takes that much more time…

Speaking of likes, are we ever going to get back the notifications when somebody likes our message on Kinja? Seems like you keep putting more and more obstacles to using the social features of this site.

Maybe Bunny should get a call button.

Difference was, DVD and Bluray had copy protections built in to the format. Of course, now they resist the Bluray release because it’s one time and they won’t get the sweet monthly subscription.

If it reached a point of cascading collisions, there’s nothing to say it wouldn’t reach up that far. But they would not be the first to be impacted.

You still have to assume that at least a few sites you visit will be hacked, and their hashed (and hopefully salted) passwords leaked. In that case, hackers can attempt many passwords per second without any restriction, even though they can’t read it directly. And if it’s not salted, then they just apply a rainbow…

Doesn’t work for all sites, but Google and some others do allows you to register several hardware keys at the same time. So you put one of them in a safe place.

Only Netflix outside the US.

Ready to swing it down if you get a flat?

The thing about orbital debris clouds is that they spread out, and eventually cover the entire orbital plane. And every orbit that has a different inclination must pass through that plane twice every orbit. Anything that affects the ISS will also affect Tiangong, and anything else at that altitude. (Though the ISS is…

No. Some specialized equipment may be protected from EMP, probably on both sides. But general field equipment, no. And most satellites don’t have the mass budget for complete EMP protection.