+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 @bonifartius@qoto.org

If our civilization collapses, extraterrestrial archeologists can look at this and be impressed. Three satellites following the Earth in an equilateral triangle, each 25 million kilometers from the other two. Each contains two gold cubes in free-fall. The satellites accelerate just enough so they don't get blown off course by the solar wind. The gold cubes feel nothing but gravity.

Lasers bounce between each cube and its partner in another satellite, measuring the distance between them to an accuracy of 20 picometers: less than the diameter of a helium atom! This lets the satellites detect gravitational waves - ripples in the curvature of spacetime - with very long wavelengths, and correspondingly low frequencies.

It should see so many binary white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes in the Milky Way that these will be nothing but foreground noise. More excitingly, it should be able to see mergers of supermassive black holes as far as... the dawn of time, or whenever such black holes were first formed. (The farther you look, the older things you see.)

It may even be able to see the "gravitational background radiation", the thrumming vibrations in the fabric of spacetime left over from the Big Bang. This radiation was created before the hot gas in the Universe cooled down enough to become transparent to light. So it's older than the microwave background radiation, which is the oldest thing we see now.

It's called LISA - the Laser Interferometric Satellite Antenna. And we're in luck: ESA has just decided to launch it in 2034.

The presidential election back stage photos.

@bonifartius @eliasr NATO is Lululemon for the Wallstreet thugs. It exists to bind scared people to American jet salesmen.

https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1598004879345848327

the problem here is you guys have a 100%-or-nothing litmus test. if you want software that never changes then expend the effort to learn the libre tool and accept the limitations, rather than the proprietary tool that needs to change every year so a company can sell it again. if you refuse to learn anything and just want instant gratification, that's fine but then you don't get sympathy when the company changes the software or jacks the price up. it isn't just foss people with a bad attitude. for 24 years i hear people complaining about microsoft windows changing everything around. i've been using the same linux desktop since 1999 because i took a day to customize blackbox/openbox to exactly what i like.

"US approves $23bn sale of F-16 war planes to Turkey"

"The sale follows Turkey’s decision to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/27/us-approves-23bn-sale-of-f-16-war-planes-to-turkey

"Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan initially objected to Sweden’s Nato bid over Stockholm’s perceived acceptance of Kurdish groups that Ankara views as “terrorist” organisations. Sweden responded by tightening its anti-terrorism legislation and taking other security steps demanded by Erdogan."

This is all deeply flawed.

1/2

i cant believe the fucking reddit clone lemmy is fingering my user for every install thats so fucking funny

>inb4 you're schizo prove it idiot: github.com/LemmyNet/activitypub-federation-rust/blob/f907b6efa78481237dde6d8d76133bfa7fe3d371/src/fetch/webfinger.rs#L263

this is so, so fucking funny

WW3 is well underway. It began around 2021 or even 2020 depending on how you account it.

In Open Source, anyone who gets "big" enough to matter either gets onboard with corporate policy, or gets cancelled.

Look at RMS, ESR, the grandfathers of FOSS. All the ones who didn't take the corporate job got a hit put on them at some point.

Brendan Eich is a great example. He becomes CEO of Mozilla and popular-at-the-time dating website okcupid BLOCKS ALL FIREFOX USERS until he's ousted.

Think that was because he gave $1000 to anti gay marriage a million years ago? Yeah right. It's because he's not owned.

Now look at Mozilla, their browser market share has fallen deep into the single-digit zone. The company is entirely rudderless & their biggest source of revenue is donations from Big G.

If their objective was to get everyone on Chrome, they've definitely succeeded at that.

Meanwhile Eich went on to start his own browser from scratch, and it's still not on the charts - but its userbase has doubled for 5 years in a row, tapping 50mn.

Firefox could have beaten chrome, but it was killed.