Leaderboard

La Voie lactée / The Milky Way Au Lac-de-la-Chaîne. Lac-Bouchette, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, Canada. By Curculion: https://www.flickr.com/photos/curculion/ On Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/curculion/27572901630/

https://www.almanac.com/content/first-day-fall-autumnal-equinox Its starting to look this way and I LOVE it so much

Well it's not impossible of course that this is being caused by a POSReady update, but there's no indication of any problems elsewhere. I'm sure I'm not the only one running this version of 360Chrome on a POSReady updated machine, and I'd be interested to hear from anyone else who is, especially in the UK, so see if they're seeing the same issue with the history. It's not a dealbreaker, the main annoyance is not being able to see the history from previously in the current day, but it is puzzling. It will be interesting to see if there is any change in behaviour when the UK goes back onto GMT on October 30th. If there is, that will prove that it's timezone related I think.

67° Sunny Day 68° • Night 51° I am outside my porch today and its quiet

.............. We're missing love in this world. Kindness is easier than hate. I still have some hope things could change.

Wow ... so nice to see that. Thank you for sharing it.

I love to take virtual trips and ride on roller coasters from around the world. When I was young (18 perhaps) I used to ride on them with my DD Father and fond memories of that. We used to enjoy the ones that we upside-down. Ha!

Welcome back ... been a while since I've updated or keeping up and much for the same reason.

Thank you, I will

will be fixed in next build

Gravity: The Story So Far What happens when we try to explain gravity? by George Ellis | Templeton prize-winning cosmologist and co-author of 'The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time' with Stephen Hawking. The basic issue Gravity holds us to the Earth and makes apples drop to the ground when they fall off a tree. It controls how the Moon moves round the Earth and how the Moon causes tides on Earth. It controls how the Earth moves round the Sun and how the Sun moves round the Galaxy. But it’s not a force. That was Einstein’s great discovery. How can we say that? Well because you can, at least for a while, simply make it vanish! How do you do that? Just let go! In other words, jump off a building, and you’ll feel no gravity as you fall down (hitting the Earth does not count as falling down). More gently, join a freely orbiting space station crew, and you’ll find life difficult because there will be no felt gravity to hold you down on your seat or to hold your coffee in a cup. In short, what appears to be a gravitational force actually depends, locally at least, on how you are moving. You can make it go away by allowing yourself to fall freely. The reason why The reason this is true is because the gravitational mass of a body is the same as its inertial mass. This is what Galileo discovered, allegedly, by dropping objects of different weight from the Leaning Tower of Pisa (that experiment has since been done much more accurately by modern physicists - see this video for a feather and a ball falling at the same speed). That means that if you are in lift and the rope breaks, you and everything around you will fall at the same rate as the lift – so you will no longer feel gravity holding you to the floor of the lift. This was Einstein’s “happiest discovery”. What is it then? Gravity is now understood as being an effect of space-time curvature; in a static situation, of spatial curvature. A model is as follows: if you consider two aircraft that start off 1000 miles apart at the same instant from the Earth’s equator and they each fly at the same speed in an unchanging Northerly direction, they will get closer and closer together and will eventually collide at the North Pole. It is as if a force was pulling them together even though there was no attractive force acting between them. It was the curvature of the Earth that was the cause of this apparent force. Spacetime curvature is like that: if, for example, you let a spacecraft fall freely around the Earth at the right speed, with the engine turned off, it will arrive back exactly where it started because of the curvature of space caused by the Earth’s gravitational field. It never fired an engine to change direction but just kept going. ... ___ ... Is General Relativity the right classical theory? We don’t know. It has passed every test we have tried – there is no evidence against it. But to check if a theory is right, you need to compare it with other candidate theories and see which performs better. General Relativity has passed all these tests with flying colours. But some scientists, for example, are claiming you don’t need to have the huge amounts of dark matter in the universe that are suggested by standard studies – because they assume that General Relativity is correct. Maybe a modified gravitational theory, for example one in which the gravitational constant changes with space or time, might remove the need for dark matter. So many alternatives are being proposed and tested. It is difficult to test on Earth because it is a long range force, It is dominant in the Universe on large scales because all gravitational mass is positive, unlike electricity, where there are equal numbers of positive and negatively charged particles. We understand Einstein’s theory pretty well, despite its complexity. But that is not the end of the story. If you want to take part in the search for the ultimate answer, you will have to learn the maths (tensor calculus, maybe spinors) and the physics (variational principles and symmetry groups, for example) and then get going. No one knows what direction may lead to new and unexpected answers. Editor's note - in light of the recent awarding of the Nobel Prize in physics for the detection of gravitational waves, the author has added the below: "Gravitational waves are very difficult to detect because their sources are so far away and, despite appearances, the gravitational force is so weak. The first related Nobel Prize was awarded in 1973 jointly to Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr, for the discovery of the effect of gravitational radiation emission on the orbits of binary pulsars (emission of gravitational waves causes energy loss that changes the orbits of the pulsars). This indirectly proved the existence of gravitational waves as foretold by the theory. Then this year, half the physics award went to Rainer Weiss and the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for the extraordinary feat of constructing detectors that could measure gravitational waves directly - an incredible theoretical and observational tour de force. So Einstein proposed they could exist in 1917. We now have two independent ways of proving not only that they can exist , but that the carry energy with them (some of that energy being deposited in the LIGO/VIRGO gravitational wave detectors) as predicted." Here: https://iai.tv/articles/gravity-the-story-so-far-auid-896 Gravity and the Dark Side of Science Anti-gravity does not exist. Or does it? - by Valia Allori | Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University If anti-gravity existed, the book that explains it would be impossible to put down. Unfortunately, anti-gravity does not exist. Or does it? It is not a settled question, and there is a sense in which it will never be. Nonetheless, that does not matter much. How can that be? Keep reading! There are two ingredients at play in this: theory and evidence. And their connection is more complicated than one may initially think. Let me start with theory. Gravity is responsible for stuff falling on the ground, as well as for planets moving in the sky. Scientific theories have been proposed to account for these phenomena: Newton’s theory of gravity first and Einstein’s general relativity later. Newton’s gravity is a force that acts instantaneously to pull bodies closer in virtue of their mass. In other words two massive bodies, no matter how distant, feel each other’s presence instantly and tend to get together. Here now comes evidence. Newton’s theory has been very successful. The theory predicted, for instance, the Halley comet to be seen again in 1758. One may even think that our best scientific theories are definitely proven by experiments - Newton’s theory successfully predicted the return of the Halley comet, therefore Newton’s theory is true. Right? Well, no. It does not logically follow that Newton’s theory is true even if all experiments come out as predicted. It like someone concluding that it is snowing right now by starting with the consideration that if it's snowing then the streets will be covered with snow, and then observing that the streets are now covered with snow. This is unwarranted: it takes snow a very long time to melt, so snow could have fallen earlier in the day. Similarly, the Halley comet return is a good indication of the past success of Newton’s theory, but does not provide any guarantee of its future success. Indeed, it later turned out that Newton’s theory was false and it was substituted by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Einstein argued that gravity is not a force but rather the effect of the modification of the fabric of space-time due to the presence of material bodies. That is, in empty space a body will go straight, but the presence of another body will bend its trajectory as if it were affected by a pulling force. Even if it is an imprecise analogy, a ball thrown on a bed where a cat is sleeping will not go straight but will rather curve towards the cat. Anyway, we cannot prove beyond any doubt a theory to be true, no matter how successful it is. It is better to say that the theory is confirmed, or more cautiously corroborated, by positive experiments: arguably, we have more reasons to believe a theory with lots of confirmatory instances than one with fewer. Can we at least prove a theory to be false? Newton’s theory would be proven false if the predicted acceleration of falling bodies were different from the measured one, say. Indeed, Newton’s theory was falsified by experiments: the theory predicted Mercury’s orbit around the Sun would not shift forward, which instead does. Such shift was predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. So, can falsification be definite? Again, no: sometimes old theories do not get replaced even if they have contrary evidence. In this case, experimental refutation of Newton’s theory was not the reason why relativity took the place of Newton’s theory in the physics books. Even if the predictions were wrong, scientists were not ready to consider Newton’s theory to be false and kept using it. After all, is it worth throwing away all the successes of such a powerful, explanatory theory just for such a small discrepancy? It could well be some experimental error. Nonetheless, eventually Newton’s theory was replaced because of theoretical, rather than empirical, reasons. Einstein proposed his theory of relativity because he found the ‘spooky action-at-a-distance’ of Newton’s theory of gravity extremely unsatisfactory. Therefore, he looked for another explanation and he found it. The bonus was that his theory could also correctly recover the shift in Mercury’s orbit that Newton’s theory could not account for. __ "Even if the predictions were wrong, scientists were not ready to consider Newton's theory to be false and kept using it. After all, is it worth throwing away all the successes of such a powerful, explanatory theory just for such a small discrepancy?" ___ Also, consider this other example. Gravity keeps the universe together and one of the leading early theories of the origin of the universe is the big bang theory: the universe started expanding after a huge explosion at the beginning of time. One should expect sooner or later the universe to slow down, just like the fragments of a more ‘regular’ explosion. However, recent astronomical data suggest that the fragments are getting away at increasing speed. This is a falsification of the big bang theory, which predicted deceleration. Nonetheless, sometimes, like in the case of Newton’s failure to predict Mercury’s orbital shift, rejecting falsified theories seems just too harsh. If I drop an egg on the floor and it does not break as expected, I will not claim I have refuted the current theory of gravity. Rather, I will check for false assumptions that would explain the mistaken result. Another example is that Newton’s theory predicted a different orbit for Uranus than the one observed. So the theory was, again, falsified. However, instead of rejecting Newton’s theory, astronomers questioned the assumption that there were seven planets: the existence of another planet, Neptune, would explain the observed orbit of Uranus, which they indeed later observed. Back to the case of the accelerating universe, many astronomers decided to do the same thing: they did not refute the theory, even with contrary evidence. In a sense, they proposed that gravity has its own dark side: something, now known as dark energy, which overpowers gravity’s attraction. More precisely, they questioned the assumption that space-time has no energy in itself. One may think of this as a repulsive gravity or anti-gravity, but do not read too much into it. Notice that hidden, unquestioned, assumptions are everywhere. For instance, when using a microscope, we assume light propagates in a straight line, even if it does not. There are some situations in which this is irrelevant, but some others in which it may not. Hence, when facing empirical refutation, scientists always have the option to put the theory into question or to challenge some hidden assumption instead. In this case, astronomers could either deny the existence of dark energy and radically modify general relativity, or assume dark energy exists without modifying general relativity too much. If the former is the case, there is a sense in which there is anti-gravity; if the latter, there is not. The philosophical question therefore is: when is it reasonable for a scientist to hold on to her theory, and when is she just stubbornly in love with it? Even if this is not the case here, I am sure you understand the gravity of the situation (pun intended!) if alternative theories are empirically equivalent. That is, in the case in which no experiment can be performed to tell them apart. This happens, for instance, between some different formulations of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. If we cannot choose which theory is correct based on the empirical results, what can help us? It is unclear: some will say super-empirical, or purely theoretical virtues, should be important. Simpler theories, for instance, should be preferred. However, what is simplicity? Why should we believe that the universe is simple? The bottom line is therefore this: one is never able to prove or rule out a scientific theory beyond any doubt with experiments alone. That means that there will certainly be alternatives and it is unclear how theoretical virtues may help in theory selection. Having said that, I believe that scientific theories are powerful tools that can tell us about the nature of reality. Even if we cannot definitively prove they are true or false, they are either one or the other. There is something about the scientific method that allows science, as opposed to the unscientific alternatives like crystal ball gazing or tarot reading, to track truth, even if we do not know exactly what it is. Not knowing it yet does not imply we will never find out more. And not knowing what it is it does not mean that it does not work: my mum’s ignorance about the way in which a nuclear power plant works does not make the plant stop working. So does anti-gravity exist? Either it does or it does not. We do not know yet and we will never be able to know for sure. However, science can still give fallible knowledge of the world: we sometime get things wrong but we are getting somewhere. Therefore, if you want to investigate the mysteries of gravity, as well as any other, keep studying, become a scientist and keep your philosophical eye open: the path is going to be uphill, but there is no fun without a challenge. Here: https://iai.tv/articles/gravity-and-the-dark-side-of-science-auid-901

Animal Welfare (Sentience) in the UK legal code Animals to be formally recognised as sentient beings in domestic law Introduction of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill as part of the Government's Action Plan for Animal Welfare From: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and The Rt Hon Lord Goldsmith Published 13 May 2021 Government introduces Bill to formally recognise animals as sentient beings Animal Sentience Committee will put animal sentience at heart of government policy Bill introduced as part of government’s first of a kind Action Plan for Animal Welfare Vertebrate animals will be recognised as sentient beings for the first time in UK law thanks to the introduction of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, introduced in Parliament today. The legislation will also ensure that animal sentience is taken into account when developing policy across Government through the creation of a Animal Sentience Committee which will be made up of animal experts from within the field. By enshrining sentience in domestic law in this way, any new legislation will have to take into account the fact that animals can experience feelings such as pain or joy. The Bill will underpin the Government’s Action Plan for Animal Welfare, which launched yesterday and sets out the government’s plans to improve standards and eradicate cruel practices for animals both domestically and internationally. The Bill’s introduction, fulfilling a key Manifesto commitment, will further the UK’s position as a world-leader on animal welfare. Now that we have left the EU we have the opportunity to remake laws and go further to promote animal welfare by making sure that all Government departments properly consider animal sentience when designing policy, covering all vertebrate animals from farm to forest. The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill will: formally recognise animals as sentient beings in domestic law establish an Animal Sentience Committee made up of experts to ensure cross departmental government policy considers animal sentience ensure Government Ministers update parliament on recommendations made by the Animal Sentience Committee ... Here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/animals-to-be-formally-recognised-as-sentient-beings-in-domestic-law

Medicine's bad philosophy threatens your health Medicine has a mind-body problem by Diane O'Leary In recent years medicine has increasingly recognized a connection between mind and body and how the interaction between the two can affect our health. But in its effort to avoid a problematic separation between mind and body, medicine has been led astray. Due to misunderstanding what in philosophy is called mind-body dualism, trained medical doctors end up over-diagnosing conditions as psychosomatic, automatically construing medically unexplained symptoms as psychiatric problems. This is a philosophical error that ends up putting the health of patients at risk, argues Diane O’Leary. Medicine and philosophy have an uneasy relationship. Medicine is a practical endeavor, aiming for concrete results. Philosophy, on the other hand, has been construed as a head-in-the-clouds kind of thing since antiquity. Today, outside of medical ethics (which has taken a rightful place within the profession), it’s hard to see how philosophy’s abstractions could make a real difference to the nuts and bolts of diagnosis and treatment. If medicine were just an applied science of the body, all of this would make good sense. But in the late twentieth century, western medicine reconsidered its exclusive focus on the body and emphatically rejected it. Patients, it turns out, are not just bodies, we’re people. And persons have minds, as well as bodies. This shift raised one modern philosophy’s most intractable issues: the mind-body problem: How do our subjective, mental experiences relate to our objective, physical bodies?... More here: https://iai.tv/articles/medicines-bad-philosophy-threatens-your-health-auid-2225

25/07/2022 The Chinese superhero: caught a two-year-old baby girl who fell from the fifth floor A Chinese man was declared a "national hero" after he miraculously caught a two-year-old girl who fell from a fifth-floor window. Shen Dong, 31, was parking his car in front of an apartment building in Tongxiang, Zhejiang Province, when he heard a loud noise. It was a baby girl who fell from the window from the fifth floor and landed on a metal roof. The two-year-old slipped off the roof and was about to hit the sidewalk, when she was saved at the last moment by a tooth that caught her. The girl was rushed to the hospital with injuries to her legs and lungs, and her condition is stable, the "South China Morning Post" reported. A video of the incident was shared by the local police on Weibo - China's equivalent of Twitter - and went viral. On social networks, Shen was nicknamed "superhero". Shen, who works at the bank opposite, saw what was happening and was in the middle of a phone call to the emergency services, but then he noticed that the girl was about to fall from the roof, threw his phone and managed to catch her before she hit the concrete. According to him, at first he did not know it was a baby. "The truth is, I don't remember all the details," he told the "Chiangyang Evening News." "I don't remember if my arms hurt. It was an instinct to grab her. I was lucky I was able to grab her in time. Otherwise I would have felt terrible." Here: https://newsrnd.com/news/2022-07-25-the-chinese-superhero--caught-a-two-year-old-baby-girl-who-fell-from-the-fifth-floor---voila!-news.S1WXyuln2c.html

that's horrible, awful! But you wrote in this same time: - voilà, exactly...so keep in touch with the others, please! cool, hold it like this. I'm Ok., generally speaking.

Enough about me, I'm getting better. How is everyone doing?

Spiritually speaking, of course, meaning we are not just skin an bones.

Same here. Now I use your modified version, in which I also replaced './assets/assets.json' with the current one from uBO 1.44.5b0. There have been some significant changes over time. The last one being in regard to the very slow download of EasyList and EasyPrivacy. uBlock0_1.16.4.30.firefox-legacy-mod-by-@AstroSkipper&nicolaasjan.zip

Since you have a Windows 10 available, use the fsutil to check the sector size that the disk exposes. If it exposes 512 bytes/sector, you won't be able to access more than 2.2 TB (a special formatting is possible to access up to around 4.4 TB, but it won't work in XP only in 7 and possibly later) If it exposes 4096 bytes sector (aka 4K native), then it should be possible to access the whole 5 TB from XP (but the disk won't be bootable, for other reasons). The fact that all tools you tried set a limit to 2-2.2 TB should mean that the disk exposes a 512 bytes/sector, and as such you cannot go past the 2^32-1 sector llimit. The 1 MB in front of the partition you created is rather "normal", it is the "new" alignment to 1MB (2048 512 bytes/sector) introduced since Vista as opposed to the traditional 63 sector (cylinder/head alignment) used up to XP (but XP has no issues with 1 MB alignment UNLESS you use logical volumes inside extended). The thread you referenced is about a very peculiar external case with two connection interfaces, eSATA and USB) that provided a "pass through" on one interface and a "translated" one on the other, your disk has only one interface (USB) so it is unrelated, it can only be useful if you need to (tangentially) learn more about the implications of 512/512AF vs. 4K disks. Check the disk with gdisk: https://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/ not the most friendly tool around, but the only one that will provide you with the exact data in either the MBR partition table or GPT. jaclaz