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Google's sister firm Sidewalk Labs has scrapped a plan to build a smart city in Canada, citing complications caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. I'd make a joke about "smart" and "Toronto" here, but no one would get it (plus it would be unfair. to Ottawa)
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A hacker claims to have stolen over 500GB of data from Microsoft's private GitHub repositories, BleepingComputer has learned. 500GB? So they downloaded half of a PowerPoint presentation?
Seeing as how that org is used for open source projects (as opposed to Windows or docs), I'm not expecting bad stuff, but you never know.
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500GB of new icons! Don't diminish the seriousness of this.
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Oh no! I hadn't considered. You're right, this good be bad. And Fluid! 
TTFN - Kent
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Someone wanted to see 'Windows 11, Open Source Edition' before it launched...
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Oh irony...[^]  
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Physicists Criticize Stephen Wolfram’s ‘Theory of Everything’ [^]Quote: “says Daniel Harlow, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So far I see no indication that this could be done using the simple kinds of [computational rules] advocated by Wolfram. The successes he claims are, at best, qualitative.” Further, even that qualitative success is limited: There are crucial features of modern physics missing from the model. And the parts of physics that it can qualitatively reproduce are mostly there because Wolfram and his colleagues put them in to begin with. This arrangement is akin to announcing, “‘If we suppose that a rabbit was coming out of the hat, then remarkably, this rabbit would be coming out of the hat,’” Aaronson says. “And then [going] on and on about how remarkable it is.”
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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I can't say I'm overly surprised. It did strike me as one of those, "I'm Smart, so I'll stomp into a field and fix all their problems[1]" scenarios. He's definitely got an uphill battle to convince researchers that he's on to something. Assuming there is something there.
[1] Granted, this is something that physicists often suffer from.
TTFN - Kent
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xkcd: Physicists[^]
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Exactly! As always, Randall is ahead of the schedule.
TTFN - Kent
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I am more intersected in your tag line (quote). Reality is what we make it; actually it is what the majority unconscionably agree is reality. Basically, the majority of us (world wide) just wants to live our life and be left alone. I do not know of any religion that is not an illusion created to get everyone on the same page.
There is only one requirement in life; and that's to be the best person you can be.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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Engineers have built and successfully tested what is known as a rotating detonation engine, which generates thrust via a self-sustaining wave of detonations that travel around a circular channel. "Boom boom boom boom I wanna go boom boom"
I have half a memory that this was the propulsion system used by a ship in some SF. Can anyone remind me?
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You're thinking of the Orion drive, probably. Nukes set off beneath a concave disk to create the thrust.
Heinlein was the first to use it in a story (according to WikiP), but many have used it over the years, for instance Troy used it to move around in John Ringo's Troy Rising series.
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Technically, the Orion drive is a "detonation engine", but AIUI, this new drive doesn't work in that way.
I was thinking of Star Trek's I.M. Pulse (==internally metered pulse) engine.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I've seen aircraft with airbreathing detonation engines of one sort or another in several near future SF/technothriller books. They're popular with people fiddling around with designs for Aviation Leek's favorite mythical aircraft, the Aurora[^].
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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That was it, thank you. I used to love me some Heinlein back in the day.
TTFN - Kent
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The 31st annual five-day event allows developers early access to future iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, tvOS, and WatchOS updates. iDon't need, but othOS might
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There is very little difference between an engineering manager and traditional business manager. If you code there will be trouble. If you don't, it will be double.
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Several of my best direct managers weren't coders. Two weren't engineers at all. All but one understood the market for our product extremely well. Except for the non-engineers, they all quickly figured out the technical gist of the problems presented to them--all, including the non-engineers, had a knack for converting nerd-speak into management-speak.
(On the flip side, my [few] worse direct managers showed no curiosity in what the team and I were doing. One would panic if you presented any real issue to him, or there was any conflict! They all seemed to spend more energy avoiding decisions as making them.)
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Astronomers have accidentally discovered the closest known black hole to Earth, and it beats the old record by quite a bit: This one is only about 1,000 light years away (the previous record holder is probably about 3,000 light years away). "Black hole sun, won't you come?"
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So how long have we got before the solar system gets sucked into it? 
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I suggest that you calculate the escape velocity at a distance of 1,000 light years.
ve = (2*G*M/R)0.5
Where:
G = 6.67 * 10-11 m3/(kg * sec2)
M = 5 * Msun = 1031 kg
R = 1,000 ly = 9.5 * 1018 m
Ve = 8.4 m/sec
IOW, if the relative velocity between us and the black hole is greater than the speed of a high-school 100m sprinter, there is no chance that we'll be caught by the black hole. I leave the calculation of the time it would take the sun to be swallowed by the black hole as an exercise to the Student. 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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..I read in the article that there may be a lot more black holes that we simply don't see.
Sounds like a more viable explanation for all that unexpected gravity than "dark energy".
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Kent Sharkey wrote: "Black hole sun, won't you come?"
I was able to hear that sound all the way out in the garden. 
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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1,000 light years away? Did they even turn their telescopes towards Washington D.C.? Taxes get sucked out of my paycheck every 2 weeks, and I have no idea where they go...well thats not true, I know where they go, but not sure what happens after that.
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