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The world has been gifted the second photograph ever taken of a supermassive black hole — and this time, it’s a black hole that’s relatively close to home. Does this black hole make my galaxy look fat?
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Hey,
I was watching the announcement early this morning. If anyone is looking for something unusual or mysterious there is only one thing that stands out. Shep Doeleman is saying that it's orientation is 'pointing directly at Earth'. I think he is referring to the Kerr metric[^].
Shep Doeleman[^]
Other than that, it's very similar to M87. Which is supposedly also oriented towards the Earth.
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Wouldn't it kind of make sense that the first ones we'd be able to visualize would be "pointing directly" at us? If there were the accretion disc "in the way", we wouldn't be able to see them yet (until our telescopes get better). Maybe?
TTFN - Kent
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Wouldn't it kind of make sense that the first ones we'd be able to visualize would be "pointing directly" at us?
No,
It would be really anomalous for it to be pointing at Earth.
I personally doubt that it's pointing in our direction. I suspect the light is bent[^] making it appear that way. But you shouldn't listen to me, Shep Doeleman has worked with astrophysics for decades, listen to him.
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Do you do any online journalism?
I wanted to add that if you know anyone that works in science journalism... and if they wanted to make a quick buck... the implications of being in the direct line-of-sight of a black hole are periodic mass extinctions.
It's only been a few hours, I don't think anyone has realized this part yet. Haven't seen anyone mention it online. Would make a great story, all you need is an illustration of dinosaurs looking up and burning. 
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attention grabbing title: "first picture"
first line of article: "second photograph"
Did the rest of the world forget that 2019 existed or just clickbait
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That 2019 photo was the first of a black hole. This is the first of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Thus the new hullabaloo. No memory loss required.
TTFN - Kent
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Finding out whether a question is too difficult to ever solve efficiently depends on figuring out just how hard it is. Researchers have now shown how to do that for a major class of problems. There. That was easy, wasn't it?
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In my student days, we had a look at number theory, fundamental axioms and such, and learned how to prove, based on those axioms, that 1 + 1 = 2. The conclusion really came as no surprise to us, but maybe it gave us a deeper understanding of why 1 + 1 = 2.
Similarly, I sort of knew in advance that certain problems are fundamentally hard. (When I was working with databases, a coworker handling distributed databases remarked that 'I learned at an early stage that query optimization is an NP complete problem, but once I got into the work I saw that that is a gross oversimplification'.)
Maybe, if I had continued working with number theory, I would have had a deeper understanding of why some problems are fundamentally hard (similar to the thorough understanding of why 1 + 1 = 2). On the other hand, I am not sure that it would make me a better programmer. Or human.
Among my friends, there is a way of speech when talking about difficult problems: 'It is more difficult to understand than the general theory of relativity, but easier to understand than women'. I think that comes closer to what has any real significance to me personally.
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One big challenge is shoehorning everything into AI
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I suspect Kurt Gödel's [In]Completeness Theorems for logical systems is just a subset of the overall P/NP Complete question. In other words, since computational systems are all "logical systems", the Completeness Theorem's proof that in any logical system you can ask questions that cannot be answered in that system applies to computation as well.
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It does, and it's entirely possible that if P = NP is on the wrong side of the theorem.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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New Pixel hardware, in addition to new advances in machine learning and AI. Or you could just Google for it
I figured I use these kind of posts for Microsoft and Apple presentations, so...
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What are your peers doing to stave off burnout? What else would they be doing?
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That's what occurs when you eat lunch at your desk.
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We are happy to announce that the final C++20 Standard Library features are now stabilized and available in /std:c++20 mode in both Visual Studio 2022 version 17.2 and Visual Studio 2019 version 16.11.14. Eagerly awaited by all the developers that will "get to trying templates one of these days"
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Chat with LaMDA 2 or ask it to teach you things. ELIZA says "Hi"
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I thought this was going to be about cooking...
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Over the past several months, we’ve updated many of these apps to match the new design of Windows 11 while also introducing exciting new features based on your feedback. Still waiting for them to update Gorilla.bas
Now with Dark Mode(tm)!!!! (or light mode in this case, I guess)
Were you waiting for the update to Sound Recorder? You're in luck.
Do people use that outside of mystery TV shows where they try to get the murderer to confess?
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The snipping tool still doesn't have simple highlighting items like ovals and rectangles.
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Well what's wrong with you? Don't you know you're supposed to use Snip & Sketch instead?  
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Attackers are creating PDF files and using search engine optimization techniques to rank these files high on popular search engines like Google and Bing, according to the new report. PDFs could be malware? Isn't that redundant?
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Adobe is the malware king!
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Filed under "stuck on stupid."
Years ago, Microsoft decided to support html and scripting languages in their email client, because "we found that our users wanted a more interactive and dynamic email environment." Up until that time, you could not get a virus from reading email. Anyone remember those days?
Then they added scripting languages to Office apps, and an entire new breed of virus' was born.
And now we're added smarts to PDF files?
We're stuck on stupid.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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