Links

Double the fun: Appearance of the 22° halo during a total solar eclipse – Halo Phenomena

Cool: A simulation of what a 22 degree halo *during* a total solar eclipse would look like. It turns out it’s not just the brightness that would differ, because the corona’s a ring, not a disc!

Double the fun: Appearance of the 22° halo during a total solar eclipse – Halo Phenomena

At the Arbeitskreis Meteore (AKM) spring meeting in March 2018, we discussed an observation made by Jörg Strunk during the “US eclipse” from August 21st, 2017: A 22° halo was visible in cirrus clouds around the sun up to around half a minute before the onset of totality. Similar observations…

On Wandering.shop

This is promising: SmugMug has bought Flickr & plans to “maintain Flickr as a standalone community…”

This is promising: SmugMug has bought Flickr & plans to “maintain Flickr as a standalone community of amateur and professional photographers and give the long neglected service the focus and resources it deserves.” (quote from article)

Now I don’t have to worry about Verizon shutting it down!

Exclusive: Flickr bought by SmugMug, which vows to revitalize the photo service

On Photog.Social

And the Flickr Q&A

On Photog.Social

When algorithms surprise us

Exploiting floating point errors for free energy is a good one. And lots of cases where the problem wasn’t defined precisely enough, and the simulation solved it in a completely different way than was expected.

“Sometimes I think the surest sign that we’re not living in a computer simulation is that if we were, some microbe would have learned to exploit its flaws.”

When algorithms surprise us

Machine learning algorithms are not like other computer programs. In the usual sort of programming, a human programmer tells the computer exactly what to do. In machine learning, the human programmer merely gives the algorithm the problem to be solved, and through trial-and-error the algorithm has t…

Facebook Container Extension: Take control of how you’re being tracked – The Firefox Frontier

This is pretty cool: Firefox has a new extension that isolates your Facebook session from the rest of your browsing. That way Facebook isn’t able to track you as you visit every website that happens to have a Like button or embedded FB comments.

Facebook still knows what you do *on* FB, but this cuts down on their ability to track you elsewhere.

Facebook Container Extension: Take control of how you’re being tracked – The Firefox Frontier

The Facebook container extension helps you control more of your web activity from Facebook by isolating your identity into a separate container. This makes it harder for Facebook to track your activity on other websites via third-party cookies.

How Los Angeles Could Source its Water Locally

Interesting article on ways Los Angeles can source more of its water locally in the future.

Stormwater capture is a big one. In the early 20th century, the area built a flood control system to deal with the massive deluges that hit every decade or so, but during off years (and especially during drought years) it only serves to flush water out to sea that we’d be better off using to replenish reservoirs or ground water.

How Los Angeles Could Source its Water Locally

A new report challenges the city to think bigger about its plans to source more water locally.

note: combine with third 1000-year-storm when importing.

A binary star system passed within one light year of our solar system only 70,000 years ago. It may have jostled a bunch of comets out of their orbits at the time.

A binary star system passed within one light year of our solar system only 70,000 years ago. It may have jostled a bunch of comets out of their orbits at the time.

Did a close pass by an alien star system millennia ago rain down comets on the solar system?

Facebook is pushing its data-tracking Onavo VPN within its main mobile app

Facebook is plugging a VPN app they own. It lets you hide your non-FB activity from your ISP and let Facebook collect that data instead.

Facebook is pushing its data-tracking Onavo VPN within its main mobile app

Onavo Protect, the VPN client from the data-security app maker acquired by Facebook back in 2013, has now popped up in the Facebook iOS app itself, under the..

An example of how confused movie ratings have gotten: Logan’s director went for the R rating not so they could show the violence, but so they could do serious drama that adults would appreciate but 11-year-olds would find boring. @ComicBook

An example of how confused movie ratings have gotten:

Logan’s director went for the R rating not so they could show the violence, but so they could do serious drama that adults would appreciate but 11-year-olds would find boring.

https://comicbook.com/marvel/2018/02/09/logan-director-reveals-why-movie-had-to-be-r-rated/ @ComicBook

Interesting story about the history of the Los Angeles River (and paving it).

Interesting story about the history of the Los Angeles River (and paving it).

Paving the Los Angeles River wasn’t an egalitarian idea. The plan for revitalizing it should be

As we remake the Los Angeles River once again, we ought to allow the river to re-make us, too — into a more equitable city.

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