motd - 02/##/2024 ----------------- 02/29/2024 The longest year in history: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240227-how-julius-caesar-made-the-longest-year-in-history-and-brought-us-leap-years "Caesar added another two never-before-seen months to the year 46BC, one of 33 days and one 34, to bring the calendar in line with the Sun. The additions made the year the longest in history at 445 days long, with 15 months." 02/16/2024 Better Sonoma: https://basicappleguy.com/basicappleblog/better-sonoma "I didn't care for Apple's abstract take on the rolling hills of Sonoma, so I made my own." 02/16/2024 Protons are complicated: https://www.quantamagazine.org/inside-the-proton-the-most-complicated-thing-imaginable-20221019/ "Recently, a team led by Juan Rojo of the National Institute for Subatomic Physics in the Netherlands and VU University Amsterdam analyzed more than 5,000 proton snapshots taken over the last 50 years, using machine learning to infer the motions of quarks and gluons inside the proton in a way that sidesteps theoretical guesswork. The new scrutiny picked up a background blur in the images that had escaped past researchers. In relatively soft collisions just barely breaking the proton open, most of the momentum was locked up in the usual three quarks: two ups and a down. But a small amount of momentum appeared to come from a 'charm' quark and charm antiquark - colossal elementary particles that each outweigh the entire proton by more than one-third." 02/14/2024 Using lasers to build heavy elements: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v17/s17 "Generating neutrons using lasers typically involves two stages: first, a laser pulse ionizes hydrogen atoms in a thin foil and accelerates them to MeV energies; then, these hydrogen nuclei trigger neutron-generating nuclear reactions in a high-atomic-number material. ... [C]alculations indicate[] that a desirable isotope count could be achieved by slowing the neutrons to very low energies (to boost their capture cross sections) and by pulsing the laser at a sustained 100 Hz. While the necessary neutron energies can be achieved using present-day techniques, the laser pulse rates required for this scheme will only be possible using next-generation devices." 02/14/2024 Time zones: https://hackaday.com/2024/02/14/how-many-time-zones-are-there-anyway/ https://www.zainrizvi.io/blog/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time-zones/ 02/13/2024 arkenfox v122: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/releases/tag/122.0 02/13/2024 Debian 12.5 released: https://www.debian.org/News/2024/20240210 02/13/2024 The appendix may not be useless: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/02/1228474984/appendix-function-appendicitis-gut-health "It turns out that the appendix appears to have two related functions. The first function is supporting the immune system. The appendix has a high concentration of immune tissue, so it's acting to help the immune system fight any bad things in the gut. The second function that it serves is what we refer to as the safe house. ... During times of gastrointestinal distress - you know, a diarrhea episode where all of your good gut bacteria is getting kind of flushed out of the system - the appendix is kind of this blind tube with a very narrow diameter and narrow lumen, so the good bacteria doesn't get flushed out of the appendix. The idea is it's safe during this time of gastrointestinal distress and it can then exit the appendix and recolonize this good bacteria throughout the rest of the gut." 02/13/2024 Another lockable bike helmet: https://www.core77.com/posts/128416/A-Smarter-Design-Approach-to-the-Lockable-Bike-Helmet 02/13/2024 Things to never do in C++: https://www.logikalsolutions.com/wordpress/information-technology/never/ I particularly agree with never omitting {} around a single statement condition, never putting { on the same line as code, never butting more than 130 characters on a line (though I normally still try to keep it below 75, except for URLs), and never putting local includes before global includes. 02/13/2024 Stop notifications about updating to Sonoma: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/2/2.html $ defaults write com.apple.SoftwareUpdate MajorOSUserNotificationDate -date "2025-02-07 23:22:47 +0000" Older ----- 01/##/2024 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2024/01/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2024/01/index.html ##/##/2023 https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/motd.txt https://srirangav.github.io/motd/2023/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