motd - 10/##/2023 ----------------- 10/21/2023 Neutrinos and Guarantees: https://4gravitons.com/2023/10/20/neutrinos-and-guarantees/ 10/18/2023 42 really might be the answer ;-): https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/42-answer-fundamental-questions/ 10/18/2023 arkenfox v118: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/releases/tag/118.0 New settings: user_pref("browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir", true); user_pref("browser.shopping.experience2023.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.urlbar.addons.featureGate", false); user_pref("browser.urlbar.mdn.featureGate", false); user_pref("browser.urlbar.pocket.featureGate", false); user_pref("browser.urlbar.trending.featureGate", false); user_pref("browser.urlbar.weather.featureGate", false); New, but inactive, settings: // user_pref("browser.urlbar.clipboard.featureGate", false); // user_pref("network.trr.bootstrapAddr", "10.0.0.1"); // user_pref("privacy.fingerprintingProtection", true); Removed and deprecated settings: // user_pref("accessibility.force_disabled", ""); // user_pref("browser.fixup.alternate.enabled", ""); // user_pref("browser.urlbar.dnsResolveSingleWordsAfterSearch", ""); // user_pref("privacy.partition.always_partition_third_party_non_cookie_storage", ""); // user_pref("privacy.partition.always_partition_third_party_non_cookie_storage.exempt_sessionstorage", ""); // user_pref("privacy.partition.serviceWorkers", ""); // user_pref("layout.css.font-visibility.private", 1); // user_pref("layout.css.font-visibility.standard", 1); // user_pref("layout.css.font-visibility.trackingprotection", 1); // user_pref("permissions.delegation.enabled", false); I've updated my personal user.js accordingly: https://github.com/srirangav/srirangav.github.io/blob/master/pgms/conf/Firefox/user.js 10/18/2023 Pepper X - the new hottest pepper in the world: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/17/1206450553/worlds-hottest-pepper-guinness-record-pepper-x https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-world-has-a-new-hottest-pepper-180983099/ "Spiciness - or pepper heat - is measured using the Scoville scale and recorded in units called Scoville heat units (SHU). The units are based on levels of a chemical compound called capsaicin, the main ingredient that makes chili peppers hot. Pure capsaicin has a measurement of 16 million SHU while bell peppers, which contain no spice, measure at 0 SHU. Pepper X measures in at an average of 2.69 million units[.] ... In comparison, standard pepper spray averages 1 million SHU, while bear spray is advertised around 3 million SHU. The [prior record holder, the] Carolina Reaper measures about 1.64 million SHU." 10/18/2023 CrossOvers 23.6: https://www.codeweavers.com/support/forums/announce/?t=24;mhl=290508;msg=290508#msg290508 10/17/2023 New Initial D Movie: https://www.thedrive.com/news/sung-kang-is-directing-a-live-action-initial-d-movie 10/17/2023 Paris Baguette in Paris: https://www.ncartron.org/paris-baguette-in-paris-france.html 10/17/2023 Shades of Mospeada: https://global.yamaha-motor.com/showroom/event/japan-mobilityshow-2023/motoroid2/ 10/16/2023 Lawsuit might reveal Banksy's true identity: https://hyperallergic.com/849611/sports-betting-websites-wager-on-banksys-real-identity/ "Despite maintaining anonymity for over three decades now, Banksy could finally have his identity exposed in light of a lawsuit against the world-famous street artist and his art management and authentication company Pest Control Ltd." Sometimes the mystery is part of the fun - like with the Stig. 10/16/2023 Average human body temp may be slightly lower than 98.6 F: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2809098 "In this cross-sectional study, machine learning was applied to 618,306 adult outpatient encounters to define the usual or mean "normal" temperature as 36.64 C [97.95 F]. Using individual and temporal characteristics, the range of mean temperatures for the coolest to the warmest individuals was 36.24 C [97.23 F] to 36.89 C [98.4 F]." 10/16/2023 Coin flips are slightly biased: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.04153 "[W]e collected 350,757 coin flips to test the counterintuitive prediction from a physics model of human coin tossing developed by Diaconis, Holmes, and Montgomery ... [which] asserts that when people flip an ordinary coin, it tends to land on the same side it started -- D-H-M estimated the probability of a same-side outcome to be about 51%. Our data lend strong support to this precise prediction[.]" 10/16/2023 Recent search for light dark matter at CERN turns up empty: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.161801 "Thermal dark matter models with particle X masses below the electroweak scale can provide an explanation for the observed relic dark matter density. This would imply the existence of a new feeble interaction between the dark and ordinary matter. We report on a new search for the sub-GeV X production through the interaction mediated by a new vector boson, called the dark photon A', in collisions of 100 GeV electrons with the active target of the NA64 experiment at the CERN SPS. ... No evidence for dark matter production has been found." 10/16/2023 Disable search highlights in Windows 10/11: Windows 10: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/how-to-disable-search-highlights-on-windows-10/ 1. Right-click on Windows 10 task bar 2. Select Search 3. Turn off "Show Search Highlights" Windows 11: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/10/16/how-to-remove-news-and-trending-content-from-windows-11s-search/ 1. Start->Settings->Privacy & Search 2. Click on "Search Permissions" and scroll to "More settings" 3. Turn off "Show Search Highlights" 10/14/2023 Materials harder than diamond: https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/is-anything-harder-than-a-diamond "A prime contender for a material harder than diamond is lonsdaleite. Like diamond, lonsdaleite is made up of carbon atoms, but they are arranged into a hexagonal crystal structure instead of a cubic one. ... Playing with diamond's nanoscale structure can also make a material that's harder than a regular diamond. A material that's made up of many tiny diamond crystals will be harder than a gem-quality diamond that's a single crystal, because the nanoscale grains lock up instead of moving past one another. "Nanotwinned" diamonds, in which the grains form mirror-image patterns of each other, are reportedly double the hardness of regular diamonds." 10/14/2023 Cold blooded goat: https://phys.org/news/2009-11-extinct-goat-cold-blooded.html "Paleontologists studying fossilized Myotragus bones compared them to bones of reptiles living in the same region at the same time, and found surprising similarities. The bones of warm-blooded animals show uninterrupted fast growth, while the bones of cold-blooded animals have parallel growth lines showing interrupted growth corresponding to growth cycles[.] ... Growth and metabolism rates are adjusted to suit the amount of food available, whereas warm-blooded animals require food to be available continuously. The Myotragus bones showed the same interrupted growth as reptiles." 10/14/2023 How long to the next town? It depends ;-) https://forestfolkcomic.tumblr.com/post/731156157901766656/forest-folk-372-101423 10/14/2023 What are AKAuthorizationRemoteView and akd: https://osxdaily.com/2023/10/14/what-is-akauthorizationremoteview-and-akd-process-on-mac/ 10/14/2023 Disabling lock screen ads on Win11: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/10/14/how-to-disable-lock-screen-ads-on-windows-11/ 1. Goto Start->Settings->Personalization->Lock Screen 2. Uncheck "Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen" 10/11/2023 The Elgin Marble's original colors discovered: www.livescience.com/archaeology/hidden-colors-and-intricate-patterns-discovered-on-the-2500-year-old-parthenon-marbles-from-ancient-greece "To investigate the statues' past, archaeologists used luminescent imaging, a technique that causes trace chemical elements from hidden paint on the sculptures' surfaces to glow. The team quickly discovered hidden patterns emerging on the statues' surfaces, revealing floral designs and smudged figurative depictions. Four pigments were primarily found: [1] a blue that was first created by the Egyptians and was the main color used by ancient Greeks and Romans, [2] a purple tint made according to an unknown recipe (most purple was made with shellfish from the ancient Mediterranean, but this one wasn't), [3] two whites likely derived from the mineral gypsum and [4] bone white, a pigment made from bone ash." 10/11/2023 Simpson's Paradox: https://robertheaton.com/2019/02/24/making-peace-with-simpsons-paradox/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox a1 / A1 < b1 / B1 a2 / A2 < b2 / B2 (a1 + a2) / (A1 + A2) > (b1 + b2) / (B1 + B2) 10/06/2023 Requiem for DEC: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/long-gone-dec-is-still-powering-the-world-of-computing/ 10/06/2023 Solar panels would work at Proxima Centauri, but not as well: https://phys.org/news/2023-10-solar-panels-proxima-centauri.html "The team found that while a wider band gap works well for sunlight, the light of Proxima Centauri would require a narrow band gap. For example, a simulated wide band gap solar cell has a theoretical efficiency of 18.9% for sunlight, but only 0.9% for Proxima Centauri. In contrast, a narrow band gap model has a theoretical efficiency of 12.6% for Proxima Centauri. So solar panels could generate electricity from red dwarf stars [e.g. Proxima Centauri]. But one major disadvantage remains. Since red dwarfs produce much less light than the sun, even with a good efficiency individual solar cells wouldn't produce nearly the amount of energy we can gather from the sun. Interstellar solar panels would need to be significantly larger, which would greatly increase their weight and cost." 10/06/2023 All objects in the Universe: https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/article/91/10/819/2911822/All-objects-and-some-questions "In Fig. 2, we plot all the composite objects in the Universe: protons, atoms, life forms, asteroids, moons, planets, stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, giant voids, and the Universe itself. Humans are represented by a mass of 70 kg and a radius of 50 cm (we assume sphericity), while whales are represented by a mass of 105 kg and a radius of 7 m." 10/04/2023 FreeBSD wallpapers: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2023/10/04/freebsd-unix-wallpapers/ https://github.com/vermaden/scripts/blob/master/distfiles/wallpapers-freebsd.tar.gz Old school computer wallpapers: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/wallpapers-from-tech-pron/ https://github.com/vermaden/scripts/blob/master/distfiles/wallpapers-oldschool-machines.tar.gz https://github.com/vermaden/scripts/blob/master/distfiles/wallpapers-oldschool-machines-other.tar.gz I like the two "Use BSD" wallpapers, the "Run BSD" (in the style of Run DMC), the two Unix 50 wallpapers, and most of the old school computer wallpapers (especially the HP 9000, which I used). I'd like to find some wallpapers like this with Sun's (SS2, SS10, Ultra 1, etc.) and SGI's (Indigo 2 and O2). 10/03/2023 History of the First Monday in October: https://stevevladeck.substack.com/p/47-the-first-monday-in-october 10/01/2023 Open Source Game Clones: https://osgameclones.com/ Older ----- 09/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/09/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/09/index.html 08/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/08/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/08/index.html 07/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/07/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/07/index.html 06/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/06/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/06/index.html 05/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/05/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/05/index.html 04/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/04/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/04/index.html 03/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/03/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/03/index.html 02/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/02/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/02/index.html 01/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/01/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/01/index.html ##/##/2022 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2022/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2022/index.html Links ----- Text: https://srirangav.github.io/motd/motd.txt HTML: https://srirangav.github.io/motd/index.html RSS (all entries): https://srirangav.github.io/motd/rss.xml RSS (current month's entries only): https://srirangav.github.io/motd/rss-cur.xml RSS (current year's entries only): https://srirangav.github.io/motd/rss-ytd.xml