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March 7, 2021 Archives
Sunday, March 7, 2021
CONTINUITY: Moons of Pluto in Fiction and Fact
In his 1940 novel “Calling Captain Future", Edmond Hamilton made up three moons of recently-discovered Pluto: Charon, Styx, and Cerberus. Today 3 of Pluto's 5 moons are named Charon, Styx, and Kerberos, discovered 1978, 2012, 2011. https://t.co/uHqaxYsogI
— John Walker (@Fourmilab) March 7, 2021
Posted at
20:02
THE HAPPENING WORLD: Switzerland Bans the Burka, Continues to Mandate Mask-Wearing in Public
Switzerland voters enact “Burka ban” on face coverings in public, popular vote 51.2% and 18/5 cantons for. https://t.co/kMfeLcgRqI Meanwhile, federal mandate for mask wearing in public remains in effect. More evidence for cosmic giggle factor.
— John Walker (@Fourmilab) March 7, 2021
Posted at
19:40
CONTINUITY: The Heron Returns to Fourmilac
The heron returns to Fourmilac! This is why we don't have goldfish (any more). pic.twitter.com/dKEYgN3NUV
— John Walker (@Fourmilab) March 7, 2021
It's easy to see the dinosaur ancestry in these chaps.
Posted at
15:56
TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: Inside a 1 Watt Dubai LED Lamp
Philips make a line of LED lamps, sold only in Dubai, which are much more efficient, cooler-running, and longer-lived that the “Chinese junk” sold elsewhere in the world. An earlier post, on 2021-01-14, examined a 3 W lamp in this series. There is also a 1 W candle (E14) base lamp: can they fit the (literally) brilliant, flicker-free, and efficient current regular circuitry into that tiny little base?
Posted at
14:11
CONTEXT: Solving the Trolley Problem
— jimmy buckets (@kehwho) March 6, 2021
Here is background on the trolley problem, which was originally an intellectual exercise in philosophy and ethics, but turns out to have real-world implications for the design of autonomous vehicles.
Posted at
12:41
THE HAPPENING WORLD: Finally! A Cat Detector
Is That A Cat Or Not?
— hackaday (@hackaday) March 7, 2021
Pandemic induced boredom takes people in many different ways. Some of us go for long walks, others learn to speak a new language, while yet more unleash their inner gaming streamer. [Niklas Fauth] has taken a break from his other p… https://t.co/62WJ6SJUGS
It uses a Raspberry Pi running TensorFlow with the COCO-SSD object identification model.
Day 357 of the pandemic™
— Niklas Fauth (@FauthNiklas) March 3, 2021
I made the cat detector. https://t.co/qLYgkjQRXI pic.twitter.com/fOAKCrN7aw
Posted at
11:37