While my background is in physics, I joined fosstodon.org because of developing a Java class library and some applications and wanted to share those.
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2026-08-18T16:53:13Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e Trump's threat to bomb the bond market at least provides an explanation for why he was blathering about bombing Oman. It seems his brain works like a LLM --- fancy autocomplete with a preference for what it recently spewed. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e My nickname for Tesla's cybertruck is the cyber dumpster. I once asked an architect about an imposing, highly symmetric, concrete building and he said is was an example of "fascist architecture" - the architect imagined himself look down at the masses standing below. The technical term might be "brutalist". npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e Besides dropping the case, the government should not merely offer an apology, but also compensate their victim for the cost of this nonsense. Meanwhile there should be a complete investigation to determine how the grand jury was tricked - one function of a grand jury is to prevent prosecutors from going after people with insufficient evidence. That is supposed to prevent people from being prosecuted for political reasons. What specifically went wrong? npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e In Canada, it is more like "national health insurance for all means taxes for all and insurance premiums for none." (Actually, Canadians can buy private insurance, which typically covers things like a private room in a hospital, useful for business execs who need to hold meetings while recovering from a coronary). npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e The Trumpistas are now muttering about additional tariffs on Canada because they didn't prevent the fires - something they can't really do given the size of the forests in northern Canada. Meanwhile, the Trumpistas could care less about climate change, which can result in less rain and higher temperatures. Basically, they are saying "if we make a mess, you have to clean it up." npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e There were a handful of cases of election fraud in Arizona. In one (prosecuted), a woman filled out the ballot sent to her mother, who had died a few days before ballots were mailed. Both the plaintiff and her mother were registered Republicans. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…k7ew I was once in a cricket match billed as "Australia versus the world". It was held in Yosemite Valley - after a rest-day/brunch, some Australian climbers suggested cricket, npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e Political interference in scientific research has been tried before: in Germany from roughly 1933 to 1945, with predicable results: a lot of very talented people moved out of Europe (the ones lucky enough to escape). npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e To add to that, days (measured from noon to noon) are shorter at aphelion than at perihelion. At aphelion, the earth's angular velocity around the sun is lower than at perihelion, so the additional rotation to reach noon is less. Clock time uses a mean solar day, which is the average noon-to-noon time. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e To put Voyager in a human-oriented perspective, I replaced my previous car when my mileage was a tad over 1 light second - a bit shorter than the distance between the earth and the moon. So Voyager is outperforming Honda! npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…v2v2 The computer I learned to program on was an IBM 1620 or some similar model: basically a large box with a card reader and printer. My first program - about 10 lines long - compiled and ran correctly on my first try: which unfortunately did not set a trend. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e JD Vance was merely "channeling" Honey Huan, Duke's translator when he was our ambassador to China in Doonesbury. She would fix up whatever Duke was saying to make it less offensive or stupid. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e They also apparently said something about investigating the 8647 someone put on a lawn as a "threat against the president". The perps could go back and add "is prime" to make it technically a statement about numbers. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e I've been thinking about giving Trump some support by inviting him and Melania out for dinner and a night at the theater. Dinner: nachos and tacos. Theater: Lisystrata (it might give Melania ideas - where is Aristophanes now that we really need him?). It won't offend Trump - he'd probably sleep through it. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e I wouldn't worry too much about "space aliens". Even if they figured out a practical method for interstellar travel, the first hints of us where they could tell what we look like would be early TV programs such as "I Love Lucy", and they would quickly decide that there is no intelligent life down here. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e Once, on some on-line discussion, I mentioned systems that pump water to a higher reservoir to provide power at night. An anti-solar guy said it violates energy conservation. I then explained why not, giving an estimated efficiency of 70% (motors/generators are at best 90% efficient, put there's also frictional loses in the pipes). He then said I copied the 70%, not realizing that these estimates are to 1 significant figure, so it is hardly surprising that two estimates agree. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e My guess is that Xi Jinping will praise Trump in public and grab Trump by the scruff of the neck in private. That's possibly the most effective way of getting him to do what you want. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e For those who need some humor in these trying times, here's a "fly on the wall" view of U.S./Iran negotiations. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e I can coment on the mentality from first hand experience: once while rock climbing in Yosemite, I was about 70 feet off the ground, following a pitch, and standing on small, downward-sloping footholds. Someone yelled "ROCK". I looked up and there were these refrigerator sized blocks coming down. A small chunk hit my belayer. I got lowered to the ground and the others rappelled. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e The only "Christians" who would agree with that message are the ones who think that the Inquisition didn't go far enough: you know, the one where they burned people at the stake for not believing exactly what the authorities were touting. Curiously, I heard a performance of La Gioconda on the radio yesterday, and that opera includes an inquisitor and his spy. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e For those not familiar with this, the next burn will be when Orion's elliptical orbit takes it close to the earth. The reason is that firing the engines for a fixed time will change its velocity by an amount Δv. For an initial velocity v, its kinetic energy will change to (1/2)m(v + Δv)² = (1/2)mv² + mvΔv + (1/2)m(Δv)². To reach the moon, you have to increase Orion's kinetic + potential energy, and the most efficient way to do that is when Orion's velocity is highest. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e Some of Musk's businesses are in, or at least started in, "Silicon Valley", located in Santa Clara County. If you check the demographics from the 2020 census, the major racial/ethnic groups are White (28.7%), Asian (38.9%), npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e Such behavior may be treason figuratively, but it is not legally: according to the U.S Consitution, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court." npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e And even for helium, there's some nuances not mentioned much in the news reports. When used for cooling to very low temperatures, you need both helium-3 and helium 4, and helium-3 is hard to find. While helium-3 is a bit lighter, helium-3 atoms are fermions whereas helium-4 atoms are bosons. This has a significant impact on how these isotopes behave at very low temperatures. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e One bit of good news: Chinese researchers have developed a material that can reach a temperature of 106 mK, & they could at least show it in a demo, & it has no moving parts. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…0r00 If I need to share a password with someone I trust (e.g., for emergency access), I can do it using email. The trick: use GPG to encrypt the password and list multiple recipients when you encrypt it. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…7eg6 "Who did we invade now?" Freedonia. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e Well, it appears there is one legitimate use of those detention centers ICE/whatnot is building: to "house" federal agents at taxpayer's expense after they are convicted. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…4nva Given the article @nprofile…hcp5 provided, it would appear that (a) they argued/talked about something, (b) the "white MAGA man" had consumed 500 ml of wine, but claimed it was not a factor while police could smell alcohol on his breath after the shooting, and (c) he claimed the gun went off by accident. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e Nice op-ed. BTW, I came up with a new acronym to replace ICE, etc. Hitler had the SS (Schutzstaffel). So for Trump, let's shift it by one letter in the alphabet and call his guys the TT (Trump Thugs, but it sounds kind of anemic in English). If enough people do that, maybe "macho" guys would be too embarrassed to sign up: who would want to be part of "the TT"? npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e Before participating in "regime change", IMHO, we should have both congressional and U.N. approval - i.e., the widespread international support that you would only get for really egregious behavior on the part of some other government. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…600e To add a bit more, tidal forces vary as the inverse cube of the distance between two objects. To "stretch" the earth, the moon's or sun's gravity has to pull harder on one side of the earth than the other, so you have to use the derivative of the gravitational force to get the tidal force. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…2whg I was lucky enough to miss nearly all of Trump's rant, which made the opera we watched just after that "speech" (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) look sane by comparison. The opera includes a sex scene that ends with a glissando from a solitary trombone - sort of a drooping sound as if something was deflating. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…2whg George Will shouldn't call this administration a moral slum: it is not fair to real people who have to live in slums. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…2whg Once people realize that under the Trump regime, enlisting in the U.S. military for a few years would mean losing your right to say anything the government doesn't like for the rest of your life, how many of those individuals npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…hpz8 @nprofile…2apq If congress stays in session for the next 10 days (not including Sundays), a pocket veto results in the bill becoming law. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…cgn2 A problem with some bloggers is that they copy stuff without attribution. Some years ago, some non-entity won some sort of contest in San Francisco, and it was reported by quite a few bloggers. All of them named the same wrong winner. So, it is pretty likely that they copied each other. Meanwhile it looked to readers like a number of independent sources were reporting the same thing. A number of days later, the mistakes were silently corrected. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…pwgz @nprofile…4hy7 @nprofile…d2d7 People shouldn't assume we are more civilized in the U.S. than the Romans were: once while rock climbing in the Pinnacles National Park, some tourists showed up just as we were starting a short climb. We waited a bit but they wouldn't go away, so we started the climb. When we finished, I rappelled first and when I was about 10 feet off the ground, one of the tourists said, "Let's go - if he falls now, he'll just break a leg." npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…pwgz @nprofile…4hy7 @nprofile…d2d7 Curiously, we've already had what are basically gladiator shows in the U.S., replacing humans with robots (currently radio controlled). Only machinery gets destroyed. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…2whg It is a bit dated (made just after Trump lost the 2000 election) but a parody npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…2whg The other bit of good news is that Senate Republicans - so far - have been ignoring Trump's threats to make their lives a living hell if they don't vote Trump's way on filibusters. If they continue to hold out and vote the same way en mass, they may find out empirically that, when they work together, Trump's threats are reduced by a factor of about 50 (Republicans account for just over half of the Senate). That might go a long way into turning Trump into a paper tiger. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…r7tk @nprofile…k6tr Try sending an email to a non-existent account as a test. Then look for SPF or DKIM headers that google added to your message. If the domains are wrong or the digital signatures are not valid, you know it did not go through Google. Unfortunately, you'd need some software to see if the signatures are valid. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…2whg If you do a crowd count, you will measure the number of people there at the time(s) the count was made, but people will show up, stay for a while, and then leave. So more will say they attended, particularly if given a yes/no question, than a crowd count would show. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…2whg From the pictures, it looks like they will need a solid and level landing pad. How is that doing to get there (including building a foundation to support the pad)? If they don't think they need anything special a useful test would be to launch "starship" at White Sands and, after going up a thousand feet or so, have it land on the desert and see if it stays upright. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…2whg My prediction is that the Trump administration will also try to undercut the vote on Proposition 50 (redistricting to counter red-state gerrymandering). Polls indicate that Prop 50 is winning, but Trump is asking Republicans in California to vote in person. Why? Early voting ensures that someone won't miss voting due to some emergency on election day. My guess: he/they want to create long lines at polling locations in mostly Republican precincts & then claim the vote was suppressed. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…2whg The Canadian ad was a slight distortion of what Reagan said: while Reagan said that tariffs in general are a bad idea, he was also justifying a short-term tariff for a specific case involving some Japanese goods. The ad also put some of Reagan's sentences out of order. Pretty minor compared to Trump's distortions. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…2whg Looks like a typical stereotyped resident of New York City. The guy who stood in front of a tank in Tien An Men Square was far more polite - he just stood there instead of flipping them off with both middle fingers. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…vqqu I have a program called evdisk that will create a LUKS file system using the npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…3ujw Besides Vance trying to become a "tik-tok star", we have the alleged "hunting stand" set up near where Trump's airplane was parked in Florida. The pictures in today's news articles are kind of fuzzy, but given the resolution, the "hunting stand" looks like a crude tree house built by 11--12 year old boys. I guess "'suspicious' hunting stand" gets the media more clicks than "'suspicious' tree house". npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…keaz Depending on long-term holding doesn't work for me given my age. Also, if people lose interest in bitcoin permanently, the value could drop like a rock and never come back. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…6zuf I may go this Saturday - have two previously scheduled commitments but should be able to go to one No Kings event in our area - we have several to choose from. I did create a "No Kings" image, using a graphics editor I created (and then inkscape to turn an SVG file into a PNG one). It is all open source. BTW, something like 80% of the town I live in voted for Kamala Harris. Trump is about as popular around here as a bedbug. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…keaz A quick look at Bitcoin's volatility convinced me that it is not for me. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…keaz I have some real doubts about #Square due to getting spam from squaremktg.com after buying a cup of coffee + a pastry at a small store. The store did not accept cash, allegedly due to break-ins, and never gave this store, nor square, my email address. I put the store on my sh*t list and now have the same opinion about #Square (which I assume is related to squaremktg.com). My opinion about bitcoin is that bitcoin=tulips (all cryptocurrency, actually). npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…k02x It is even worse - like the musician playing a clarinet that they arrested for "assault", a charge that is not credible. Clarinets can cost thousands of dollars, with levers and springs allowing holes to be opened and closed. You don't want to risk damaging one, so a musician carrying one is not going to start attacking the police, ICE, or anyone else. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…x9mm Oddly, it Trump actually thinks there was a "BIDEN FBI" while Trump was still a president, then we really should "DO SOMETHING": get Trump tested for dementia or some other condition that would result in someone losing touch with reality. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…x9mm Only a fool like Trump would say Chicago is safe: not when some bozos use helicopters to raid an apartment complex easily reached by car. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…x9mm In addition to what Governor Newsom said, and in spite of a few recent showers, the rainy season has not yet started. We may need the people Trump commandeered if there is another large fire. Trump is putting U.S. citizens at risk of losing their homes. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…j8k7 @nprofile…pu30 npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…j8k7 The history is not what some of you think. I've provided a link, mostly about Werner Heisenberg, but it also goes into the German nuclear program. There was an anti-Jewish group that was ignored once the war started - getting results was more important to the government. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…j8k7 The idea that the "Nazis didn't invent the atomic bomb is because they refused to use 'Jewish Physics'" is not true - most German physicists knew better. If necessary, they would call it something else to keep the politicians off their backs. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…s37t I'm using a Launch keyboard. The small size is nice because on a full-sized keyboard, I'd npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…x9mm Of course Trump is going "low". Some recent geological research suggests that there is a lot of gold near the earth's core. He likes gold. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…3nsk @nprofile…ykly I'm not sure the proof was easy for Karl Weierstrass, who proved the validity of an assumption made by Leonhard Euler,. who suggested how to prove that this equation is correct. You might want to throw in Riemann zeta functions as well as npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…x9mm There's a No Kings event in Santa Clara County today with people lined up along a 7 mile stretch of El Camino Real (Spanish for The Royal Road), delimited by two Tesla dealerships. I cracked some people up this morning by suggesting that San Mateo County could protest Trump's underlings by lining up along Alameda de Las Pulgas (Spanish for Avenue of Fleas). There are additional protests in our area as well. My city voted ~80% for Kamala Harris. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…x9mm Could someone explain this tariff thing to me 😉: I'm running a trade deficit with a grocery store - I buy things from them but they don't buy things from me. Should I charge a 50% "tariff" and use that to encourage me to grow the food myself? npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…x9mm While visiting Switzerland for a conference, I was pleasantly surprised by the picture on some Swiss currency at the time: instead of a mugshot of some politician, they used Euler (the mathematician). Somehow I can't imagine them doing something like that here. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…x9mm As an attempt to show that there might be something like "national intelligence", Tulsi Gabbard might tell the Secret Service, which is investigating James Comey for a photo of sea shells he posted, that whoever arranged the shells to show the number 8647 was more likely to be a mathematician than a threat to the prez: 8647 is a prime number, with a few curious (and trivial) properties. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…x9mm When I was in graduate school, a friend described taking a class that Richard Feynman taught. Near the end of a lecture, Feynman went through a QED calculation very quickly, just to show how you go about it. A kid sitting in the front row said, "Excuse me Professor Feynman, but didn't you drop a factor of 2 pi?" Feynman said "F*** the 2 pi", and the whole class laughed loudly except for one very earnest individual! npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…25dv Sorry to hear about the problems. Possibly because of following a small number of people, I was oblivious until a few days ago. I had bailed from Twitter (now X), & fosstodon sounded like a good match due to having written a reasonably large Java class library and some applications that use it. I didn't know about a "no politics" rule - the 'Explore' section shows political comments from other instances and it is not clear if a reply to those is OK or not. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…c3wp Last fall,, we "subsidized" Canada as we bought a couple of foldable electric scooters from a Canadian company, Dynamic Scooter, and there is nothing like this produced in the U.S. When folded, the scooters fit in small backpacks and we can store them in coat check or under our seats in a theater. Trump actually encouraged us to buy them immediately last year because we were worried about what would happen if that fool won the election as he unfortunately did. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…36ju Kicking out students from the "wrong country" is idiotic. Take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: students from either group are not responsible for the mess - they didn't even have a chance to screw it up. But it they can talk to each other so each understands what the other side has been going through, there's more of a chance of them finding a solution than if each demonizes the other. And a solution would save the U.S. a lot of money spent for "military assistance". npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…tggg If one of these won't talk about "Tianmen", try "Tiān'ānmén" instead. Tian = heaven/sky, npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…pp8p Interstellar seemed a bit hokey to me: they needed a multi-stage rocket to get off the earth, and then had an almost infinite fuel supply until the plot required otherwise. There is no way they would have survived going that close to a supermassive black hole: the accretion disks produce enough radiation to fry them to a crisp. The fight in space suits, which had extensible crampons, would have killed them both - while thrashing around, the crampons would have torn the suits. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…dc6s @nprofile…gfyr It is not obvious that Trump can decide to quit NATO because the U.S. ratified a treaty that formed NATO. Treaties, along with the constitution, etc., are "the supreme law of the land". Trump can request that the U.S. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…gfyr If Trump tries to use the U.S. military to invade Greenland, it would be a real mess: Greenland is part of Denmark, which is a NATO member, and Denmark could then ask other NATO countries to help fight off the invader. Since the U.S. is part of NATO that includes us. There's a treaty, the North Atlantic Treaty, that is implemented by NATO, and under the U.S. Constitution, treaties are the "supreme law of the land". Legally we might have to fight ourselves. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…l9sg @nprofile…2ryr Some historians have a different assessment of the UK and Neville Chamberlain in the years before World War II: these historians more or less believe that "peace in our time" was a ploy to buy time while the UK rearmed. Of course, others would disagree but it is probably not as clear cut as many imagine. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @nprofile…e858 Oddly, JavaScript was first developed by Netscape, using more or less a subset of Java's syntax, which itself was based on C syntax (most of Sun Microsystem's software was written in C, so copying parts of its syntax for Java made a lot of sense - it made life easier for programmers using both). Netscape failed and there were a series of business deals, acquisitions, etc., which is why Oracle has any claim to a JavaScript trademark at all. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @npub17hj…7a0r @npub1yzz…qt6q While in graduate school (pre Internet), on the first post-winter weekend of good weather, all the rock climbers in our area called the National Weather Service and asked about the weather for Poughkeepsie NY, close to a major climbing area. Finally, with so many calls, they asked one climber what was going on in Poughkeepsie. After an explanation, you could ask for the rock climbing report! Wow. Personalized service! npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @npub1vvu…pj6u The first System-76 computer I bought is one I can't find on their "previous models" list, it is so old npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @npub1dts…6798 Maybe Americans traveling to other countries can put stickers on their luggage saying, "Don't blame me. I voted for Kamala." Of course when going through customs on the return trip .... npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @npub1hxf…g8qu WIth both the Washington Post and the LA Times deciding to not endorse a candidate for president,, and with both decisions made by the owners, you have to wonder if the owners are afraid that Trump, if elected, will destroy their businesses for not being sufficiently "loyal". npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @npub1ptm…2xku Joe Biden missed a one-liner: Trump criticized Biden for not firing anyone. Biden should have pointed out that a president has to be good at hiring people who don't have to be fired. npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @npub1ptm…2xku The first microprocessor commercially available for general use was the Intel 4004. Why 4004 and not some other number? Well, sometime around 1650, Bishop James Ussher "calculated" how old the world is by using events and genealogy in the Bible, together with other ancient texts, and came up with October 22, 4004 B.C. for the date it was created. So rumor has it that wise guys at Intel picked 4004 because their device was "the start of the world". npub1rytvga0avpphnsj7thglh3auzt2h7hn0q7yd4rh9c5jc8utu396qefxmdj Bill Zaumen @npub1ptm…2xku Perhaps a year ago, I ran into a minor bug in which Super-F would not open a file-manager window. With some advice from System-76's friendly support staff, I tried a few options, finally refreshing the OS. That worked, but not after I reloaded the applications i use. Finally I traced it down to a gimp 'help' package that I didn't really need - you can get the same documentation on a web site.
