ReHacked #72: Automatic Watches And Their Winding Weights, Why some of the smartest people can be so very stupid, Why does it take so long to get to Mercury and more
Earth is on average ten times closer to Mercury than Jupiter, but missions to both planets can take a similar amount of time to reach their science orbits. ESA
Don’t forget to share if you like what you read here, subscribe (if not yet) and leave a comment - any form of your feedback is very important to me. Thanks!
Very fast rocket Timespace simulation up to 0.95c #science
Why CAPTCHA Pictures Are So Unbearably Depressing | by Clive Thompson | Aug, 2021 | Medium #AI #internet
The images are deeply, overwhelmingly depressing.
CAPTCHA images are never joyful vistas of human activity, full of Whitmanesque vigor. No, they’re blurry, anonymous landscapes that possess a positively Soviet anomie.
Why some of the smartest people can be so very stupid | Psyche Ideas #psychology #health #society
Stupidity has two features that make it particularly dangerous when compared with other vices. First, unlike character flaws, stupidity is primarily a property of groups or traditions, not individuals: after all, we get most of our concepts, our mental tools, from the society we are raised in. Suppose the problem with Haig had been laziness: there was no shortage of energetic generals to replace him. But if Haig worked himself to the bone within the intellectual prison of the 19th-century military tradition, then solving the difficulty becomes harder: you will need to introduce a new conceptual framework and establish a sense of identity and military pride for it. Once stupidity has taken hold of a group or society, it is thus particularly hard to eradicate – inventing, distributing and normalising new concepts is tough work.
How Watches Work: Automatic Watches And Their Winding Weights #engineering
To get our first question out of the way, an automatic watch is a mechanical watch that winds itself through the user’s movement. Being a mechanical watch, an automatic watch does not use a battery. Instead, the mechanism inside, known as the movement, keeps time through an elaborate system of springs, gears, and levers. Whereas a traditional mechanical movement requires manual winding periodically, if worn regularly, a properly maintained automatic movement will conveniently keep time without any further user involvement.
Researchers investigating the submerged metropolis of Thônis-Heracleion, in the Egyptian bay of Abū Qīr, have discovered wicker fruit baskets dated to the fourth century B.C.E.
Incredibly, the vessels still contain doum nuts—the fruit of an African palm tree considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians—and grape seeds.
“Nothing was disturbed,” marine archaeologist Franck Goddio tells Dalya Alberge of the Guardian. “It was very striking to see baskets of fruits.”
ESA - Why does it take so long to get to Mercury? #space #engineering
Earth is on average ten times closer to Mercury than Jupiter, but missions to both planets can take a similar amount of time to reach their science orbits. Why is that?
In the 1970s, NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft took just 147 days to reach the innermost planet of the Solar System. But more recent missions, NASA’s MESSENGER in the 2000s and the European-Japanese BepiColombo, launched in 2018, need years to arrive at Mercury.
The reason is that they are not making the same journey. While Mariner 10 made three flybys of Mercury while in orbit around the Sun, providing our first up close view of its surface, MESSENGER and BepiColombo were designed to enter orbit around the planet and conduct more detailed scientific investigations over a longer period of time. To enter orbit around Mercury, the spacecraft need to reach the planet travelling slowly enough relative to its velocity to be captured by its gravity. They need to slow down from their original speed, and slowing down in the vacuum of space is actually quite complicated.
Animals Can Count and Use Zero. How Far Does Their Number Sense Go? | Quanta Magazine #nature #psychology
The intelligence of corvids like ravens and crows is well known. Recently, crows were even shown to have a numerical ability seen in few other species so far: a grasp of the concept of the empty set — the numerosity zero.
The World's Biggest Tire Graveyard in Kuwait is On Fire - Scoop Empire #disasters
It comes to the surprise of many that the world’s biggest tire graveyard can be found in Kuwait in the Sulaibiya area. The six-acre area holds an estimated seven million tires. Seen from space, the giant holes dug in the sand are filled to the brim with executed car tires. The tires are now ablaze.
Australia is becoming a surveillance state | Information Age | ACS #privacy #politics
The government’s approach to technological surveillance is leading us down a dark path, experts warn, as it prepares to give law enforcement agencies new hacking powers.
Currently before parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020 is the government’s latest attempt to gain a watchful eye over cyber space.
Once the bill passes, it will dish out extra power to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), giving the agencies access to new warrants that will let them modify and delete data, collect intelligence from online communities, and even take over the online accounts of supposed criminals.
Messaging and Chat Control – Patrick Breyer #privacy
The End of the Privacy of Digital Correspondence
The EU decided to let providers search all private chats, messages, and emails automatically for suspicious content – generally and indiscriminately. The stated aim: To prosecute child pornography. The result: Mass surveillance by means of fully automated real-time messaging and chat control and the end of secrecy of digital correspondence. A majority of the Members of the European Parliament adopted the chatcontrol regulation on 6 July 2021.
British Library puts 1 million newspaper pages online for free #copyrights #history
At the moment, access to the service requires a subscription, as that helps fund the cost of scanning and recording each newspaper added to the online archive. To open up more of the archive for researchers though, one million pages have been released for free, with a commitment to release a million more each year for the next four years.
So that’s five million pages of old newspaper articles in total.
The ancient Persian way to keep cool - BBC Future #nature #history #science
Among Yazd's ancient technologies is the wind catcher, or bâdgir in Persian. These remarkable structures are a common sight soaring above the rooftops of Yazd. They are often rectangular towers, but they also appear in circular, square, octagonal and other ornate shapes.
Yazd is said to have the most wind catchers in the world, though they may have originated in ancient Egypt. In Yazd, the wind catcher soon proved indispensable, making this part of the hot and arid Iranian Plateau livable.
Netflix Intensifies ‘VPN Ban’ and Targets Residential IP-addresses Too (Updated) * TorrentFreak #copyrights
Netflix has stepped up its efforts to ban VPN and proxy users from bypassing geographical restrictions. The streaming service is now blocking residential IP addresses too, since some unblocking tools use these to bypass restrictions. This isn't without collateral damage as many regular Internet users without a VPN now report "missing content" on Netflix.
Netflix logoSix years ago, Netflix started blocking customers who tried to access its service over a commercial VPN or proxy service.
If you would like to propose any interesting article for the next ReHacked issue, just hit reply or push this sexy “Leave a comment” button below. It’s a nice way to start a conversation.
Thanks for reading this digest and remember: we can make it better together, just leave your opinion or suggestions after pressing this button above or simply hit the reply in your e-mail and don’t forget - sharing is caring ;) Have a great week!
Dainius
