ijk64✅ @ijk64@m.futex.au

R.I.P. Peter Higgs (1929-2024)

I was very sad this afternoon to hear of the death of Peter Higgs, on Monday 8th April 2024, at the age of 94. I never met Peter Higgs but I know how greatly liked and respected he was (see, e.g. here) and that he leaves an important legacy as a physicist, particularly the work that led to the award of the…

http://telescoper.blog/2024/04/09/r-i-p-peter-higgs-1929-2024/

Until I got to something that was suitably calamitous:

Then I threw the lines into Photoshop, applied the bucket tool, and ... good enough!

Absolutely the best picture of anything I've every taken in my entire life.
#photography #astrophotography

Measurements from land-based instruments and airplane-mounted radars in Greenland’s far northeast reveal the extent of ice loss experienced by the 79° N-Glacier. The Alfred Wegener Institute’s findings indicate that the glacier’s thickness has reduced by over 160 meters since 1998...
#climatechange #globalwarming #greenland #thawing #glaciers #glaciology #ClimateCrisis #climate #climatescience https://scitechdaily.com/160-meter-thaw-scientists-uncover-enormous-ice-loss-from-greenland-glacier/

NASA chose Jezero Crater as Perseverance's landing site because the entire region was flooded in the ancient past. If the conditions for life were present at any time on Mars, this would be the place. Geologists are extremely excited about the rover's latest find, a rock containing elements made in water. These minerals preserve a history of the habitability of Mars, even trapping its atmosphere. If ancient biosignatures are available, they'll be in a rock like this.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/rock-sampled-by-nasas-perseverance-embodies-why-rover-came-to-mars

Detailed View of a Solar Eclipse Corona

Image Credit & Copyright: Phil Hart

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240402.html #APOD

Evening Light.

When you get a new IT job break the biggest computer you see then all the other computers will leave you alone

Asimov's first Foundation novel has a wonderful scene that I think prefigures the LLM arms race we're going through at the moment. A bunch of characters are using formal mathematical tools to analyse the meaning of verbose and seemingly eloquent political statements:

"That," replied Hardin, "is the interesting thing. The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Hoik, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications - in short, all the goo and dribble - he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out."

Make way!

Wait WHAT?! A user made a mandelbrot viewer using Hoot, Spritely's Scheme->WASM toolkit! https://github.com/nanomonkey/hoot-mandelbrot

It works!

Welcome to #curl up 2024 in Stockholm, May 4-5: https://github.com/curl/curl-up/wiki/2024

contributors, maintainers, fans

LIVE! Select #IETF119 sessions are being streamed live—including sessions with discussions and proposals accessible to a broad range of Internet technologists, starting with a deep dive on BGP at 05:00-06:00 UTC on 17 March. Learn more and watch live: https://www.ietf.org/live/

The 12-month running mean global temperature anomaly continues to tick upward...

Graphic from https://zacklabe.com/climate-change-indicators/

This is your periodic reminder of the single greatest US #licenseplate plate ever.

Shel Silverstein doesn’t get nearly enough credit for predicting ChatGPT.

Every turtle should be provided with a skateboard.