Non-IT News Thread
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Soon, hundreds of tourists will go to space. What should we call them?
Astronauts or astro-nots?
In the last three months, Virgin Galactic has completed two crewed test flights above 80km. And with its flight-tested New Shepard launch system, Blue Origin remains on track to blast its own people into space later this year. Both spacecraft can carry up to six passengers. Neither company has begun commercial operations, but these flights appear imminent. Later this year, suborbital space tourism should finally transition from long-promised to something you can do if you're rich enough. Next year, we will likely see dozens of commercial flights.
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There’s fresh evidence for what happened to people who survived Vesuvius
Archaeologist studied tomb inscriptions and matched names to historical records.
Modern visitors to the ruins of the two main cities destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD are usually enthralled when they see the site of plaster casts of those who were killed, frozen in the midst of action. The catastrophic eruption wiped out several nearby towns and killed thousands of people. But some survived, and Miami University archaeologist and historian Steven Tuck thinks he knows where they ended up. He created a database of Roman names and matched them with records from other cities in Italy, describing his findings in a forthcoming paper in the journal Analecta Romana.
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The perils of upgrading a particle detector buried in Antarctic ice
We talk to the operations manager of IceCube, Antarctica's biggest physics experiment.
The IceCube neutrino detector was an audacious design. The Super Kamiokande detector had shown that a huge mass of water could act as an effective particle detector. But that involved a giant tank built in a deep mine. IceCube would rely on a massive volume of water, but one that was put in place by nature: the Antarctic ice cap. Its location poses a large collection of challenges, from how to find hardware that can hold up to being buried in the ice, to how to get the data back out and someplace useful.
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Luke Perry just passed away according to TMZ. He had a massive stroke last week.
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
Luke Perry just passed away according to TMZ. He had a massive stroke last week.
I heard about his stroke, and from what the news said he was in stable condition, apparently not if it's true that he passed away. . .
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
Luke Perry just passed away according to TMZ. He had a massive stroke last week.
Three different news are all reporting it
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EELV isn’t what it used to be: Air Force changes launch program name
SpaceX's success with reusable rockets has driven the name change.
Even before the space shuttle Challenger accident in 1986, the US military wanted access to space independent of the civilian space agency. But that accident spurred the Reagan administration to devise a National Space Launch Strategy that directed the military to develop a “mixed fleet” policy and ensure access to space by way of multiple vehicles.
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Steven Spielberg will campaign to bar streaming movies from the Oscars
Spielberg feels that films like Roma should be classified as TV movies instead.
A spokesperson for Amblin, the production company run by Director Steven Spielberg, has told IndieWire that Spielberg plans to support an effort to change the rules of the Oscars to bar some films primarily distributed via streaming platforms like Netflix from nomination for Academy Awards.
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@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:
Steven Spielberg will campaign to bar streaming movies from the Oscars
Spielberg feels that films like Roma should be classified as TV movies instead.
A spokesperson for Amblin, the production company run by Director Steven Spielberg, has told IndieWire that Spielberg plans to support an effort to change the rules of the Oscars to bar some films primarily distributed via streaming platforms like Netflix from nomination for Academy Awards.
Because he's own films can't stand on merit and so needs to ban the good movies from competing against him. This is what a sore loser looks like.
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We should start a campaign to bar films that don't primarily stream from the Oscars because they are a sad legacy format that isn't able to compete on merit.
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How about we just ban Spielberg? Or all awards shows?
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Sony begins refunding Anthem purchases in light of “full power down” reports
Reddit users, journalists have gotten refunds after asking Sony customer service.
The story begins with a scary "full" system crash mid-game, which doesn't just hard-lock the game or dump users into an error message and system menu. Instead, the crash completely powers down PS4 consoles, as if the power cord had been yanked out. That means a tap of the controller's "PS" button won't power the console back on. Once users press the system's power button, the PS4 reboots in a black, 480p-resolution screen to check for possible issues with corrupted memory. After that disk check, the console's menus remind users not to power down their systems in such an unsafe way.
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@mlnews wow
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@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:
Steven Spielberg will campaign to bar streaming movies from the Oscars
Spielberg feels that films like Roma should be classified as TV movies instead.
A spokesperson for Amblin, the production company run by Director Steven Spielberg, has told IndieWire that Spielberg plans to support an effort to change the rules of the Oscars to bar some films primarily distributed via streaming platforms like Netflix from nomination for Academy Awards.
Well he can just kick rocks.
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Juan Guaidó flies back to Venezuela despite arrest risk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-47447438 -
How a missing letter helped create a tech billionaire
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47301446 -
Ocean heat waves remake Pacific and Caribbean habitats
Short, extreme events may have a bigger impact than a slow warming.
Climate change tends to deal in averages. We measure its progress using the global mean temperature, and we use climate models to project what that value will be in the future. But those average changes don't always capture what future climate change will be like. While you can raise an average by increasing every day's temperature by a tiny amount, but it's also possible to raise an average by throwing in an occasional extreme event. to do so by throwing in an occasional extreme event. Heat waves and extreme storms have indicated that nature seems to be going for the latter option.
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Fists of fury: Warrior channels fierce fighting spirit of Bruce Lee
The series is based on an idea Lee pitched in 1971, but studio heads took a pass.
In 1971, Hollywood lore has it that the legendary Bruce Lee pitched an idea for a TV series about a martial artist in the Old West. Skittish studio heads passed on the project (and on Lee as its star), opting to make Kung Fu with David Carradine instead. Now Lee's vision is getting a second life, as Cinemax prepares to debut its new period drama, Warrior, based on the martial arts master's own writings.
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Mercedes-Benz debuts EQV electric van at the Geneva auto show
It seats between six and eight, and will have up to 249 miles of range.
The Geneva International Motor Show just got underway in Europe. If, like me, you're sitting at home, that means waking up to a flood of new car reveals. Audi showed off a smaller e-tron sedan and some plug-in hybrids; I'm still waiting to find out which—if any—are coming to the US. There were a bunch of hand-built hypercars, some from companies you've heard of, and some you haven't. Volkswagen had the new I.D. Buggy we showed you yesterday. And then there was the Mercedes-Benz Concept EQV.
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@mlnews nice, now that I could use.
