Tuesday, March 22
Daily News Stuff 22 March 2022
The One Million Dollar Cake Edition
The One Million Dollar Cake Edition
Top Story
- My internet is back.
Which is good because both my wireless backup connections crapped out this morning.
- Speaking of which Australia's NBN is spending $750 million to upgrade fixed wireless connections. (ZDNet)
As part of the upgrade, all users will be able to get up to 100Mbps speeds with 85% of the network capable of 250Mbps, have busy hours at minimum speeds of 50Mbps, 120,000 homes will shift from satellite to fixed wireless coverage, and those left on satellite will see off-peak quota-free window expanded from midnight to 4pm each day by mid-year.
I've rejected some very nice houses over the past couple of weeks because they were on fixed wireless rather than fiber, but if this upgrade is going to be completed in the next couple of years then that's not going to change one bit because I don't believe anything they say.
I've seen ping times as high as 120 seconds.
Tech News
- Innovative experiments looking for dark matter have discovered absolutely nothing. (Quanta)
We know that there's something going on, because galaxies (including our own) don't move the way they should based on what we can see. But the stuff we can't see is really good at hiding.
- Apple's new monitor has an A13 CPU and 64GB of flash storage. (9to5Mac)
It's basically an oversized iPhone 11.
- Why you should buy an iPad Air 5 and not an iPad Pro. (WCCFTech(
- Why you should buy an iPad Pro and not an iPad Air 5. (9to5Mac)
Many years ago I bought the original Nexus 7. It wasn't really a great tablet, but I didn't have a tablet, and there's a big difference between no tablet and tablet.
I loved it.
Convinced that tablets were great, I spent a lot more money on the brand new Retina iPad.
Hated it. It turned out to be a very expensive paperweight. It worked fine, it just didn't work the way I wanted it to. I tried again with an iMac which at least I still use because it just keeps working, but I'm really not interested in Apple products anymore.
Disclaimer: No, not milliseconds. Yes, I'm serious.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:21 PM
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1
Is there somewhere on the internet that explains, in simple terms, why the answer is dark matter/energy and not that we're just wrong in some fundamental way about gravity?
Posted by: Karl at Tuesday, March 22 2022 08:04 PM (S0kTz)
2
Karl, try this: https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/five-reasons-we-think-dark-matter-exists-a122bd606ba8 but I think the short answer to your question is that dark matter explains observed behavior better: "o far, ["modified gravity" theories] have had successes in describing one of these peculiarities: galactic rotation curves, but have not yet provided an explanation for the complete set of observations like dark matter does."
Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 22 2022 11:22 PM (Z0GF0)
3
Oops, forgot about the formatting. ignore the strikeout.
Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 22 2022 11:45 PM (Z0GF0)
4
Physics is one of the few fields where if you're bad at math, and it finally comes to light, you're allowed to just claim that you've discovered something unobservable, and everybody will happily jump on your party wagon and throw batteries at anybody who disagrees.
Posted by: normal at Wednesday, March 23 2022 02:21 AM (LADmw)
5
Basically, we can make as much mathematical models for physics as we want, and none of them are perfect.
There are types of math that you can fiddle with a long time, matching them up to whatever. These days one of the ones we have ready access to is the fourier series. Back in the day, a similar thing was proposing epicycles as basically 'noise' so that planetary objects could be described in terms of circles.
Physics the discipline is a bunch of mathematical models, and all the really tedious stuff is modeling fine details, explaining imperfections, and justifying stuff that doesn't entirely work. If you've invested in physics by studying one of a dozen theories in your subfield, you will maybe stay invested, and come up with extra details to rejustify it later on in your career when it isn't entirely perfect in its predictions.
The engineering disciplines instead focus on much cruder models, and using simplified versions to make design decisions.
There are people who assert that current physics is a bunch of fooling around with approximations and measurement error. There are people who assert that dark matter is basically an error. I've not personally gone deep enough into physics to have an opinion that I can prove.
Other areas of scholarship are deeply riddled by opinions based on fundamentally misunderstanding validity of core assumptions. Physics requires the assumption that matter in one place can be estimated based on information from matter in other places. Can we estimate the quality of physics scholarship based on the quality of scholarship in other areas?
There are types of math that you can fiddle with a long time, matching them up to whatever. These days one of the ones we have ready access to is the fourier series. Back in the day, a similar thing was proposing epicycles as basically 'noise' so that planetary objects could be described in terms of circles.
Physics the discipline is a bunch of mathematical models, and all the really tedious stuff is modeling fine details, explaining imperfections, and justifying stuff that doesn't entirely work. If you've invested in physics by studying one of a dozen theories in your subfield, you will maybe stay invested, and come up with extra details to rejustify it later on in your career when it isn't entirely perfect in its predictions.
The engineering disciplines instead focus on much cruder models, and using simplified versions to make design decisions.
There are people who assert that current physics is a bunch of fooling around with approximations and measurement error. There are people who assert that dark matter is basically an error. I've not personally gone deep enough into physics to have an opinion that I can prove.
Other areas of scholarship are deeply riddled by opinions based on fundamentally misunderstanding validity of core assumptions. Physics requires the assumption that matter in one place can be estimated based on information from matter in other places. Can we estimate the quality of physics scholarship based on the quality of scholarship in other areas?
Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, March 23 2022 09:18 AM (r9O5h)
6
I bought a $40 tablet once for messing around with. It was fine for a bit until the battery kacked it a few months later. It shows 100% charge until you unplug the USB, then it dies instantly. Wasn't sure it it was worth tracking down a battery to replace it.
Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, March 23 2022 05:17 PM (gVjvf)
7
Can we estimate the quality of physics scholarship based on the quality of scholarship in other areas?The thing about physics is that it has demonstrated that it can (a) level an entire city in one go and also (b) inscribe an encyclopedia on a postage stamp. It may have some quaint notions like a dotty old aunt but it's a dotty old aunt with no direct descendants and a hundred million in Apple shares, so we humour its minor foibles.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, March 23 2022 10:31 PM (PiXy!)
8
What physics has helped humans to do, it has done in partnership with engineering.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, March 24 2022 03:26 AM (r9O5h)
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