Tootfinder

NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission.
The $30 million salvage operation gets underway as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver.
NASA hired startup
Katalyst Space Technologies
to boost the Swift Observatory to a higher orbit
where it can continue hunting for some of the universe’s biggest explosions.
A three-armed spacecraft built by Katalyst will chase after Swift once …

NASA races to save the Swift telescope with a $30M robotic rescue mission
NASA is racing to save its Swift telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission. The salvage effort gets underway as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver. NASA has hired Katalyst Space Technologies to boost Swift to a higher orbit where it can continue hunting for some of the universe's biggest explosions. Launched in 2004, Swift has been sinking faster and faster because of recent intense solar activity. It needs to get to a higher orbit as soon a…

Californians: call Gavin Newsom to save Cap & Invest Transit & Housing Funding!
916-445-2841
"Hi, my name is ____ and I'm a resident of ____.  I'm calling to urge you to tell your CARP appointees to vote no on the cap and invest proposal. The proposal gives billions to oil companies and guts funding for public transit, affordable housing, and clean air and clean water programs. This matters speaks to me because [speak from your heart about why you care]. Thank …

There’s always a “bUT FrEe spEEcH” outcry about things like this, and…look, the aforementioned student outcry •is• free speech. Not only that, the •event cancellation• is free speech.
And not only that!! This part even well-meaning, democracy-minded people totally botch: this initial scheduling, the backlash, the argument over whose voice gets amplified and in what space, the ultimate cancellation? All that is the •bedrock• of free speech.
2/

India's monsoon rain depends on where air gets cleaner #India

India's monsoon rain depends on where air gets cleaner
Cleaning up pollution around the world could bring significantly more rainfall to India's monsoon than regional action alone, research from the University of Reading shows and highlights the value of international cooperation on air quality.

Spoke with an #acting #coaching client about artistic satisfaction. One can act for a brief period without any, but sort of like gas in a tank, if it's lacking enough, long enough, it gets very tough to keep doing this. Valid to find it, even outside of formal jobs.

umm what is this weird timeline? Whoever’s incharge of this reality, I’d like to speak to your manager. What are you spoking?
Why would vim need GTK toolkit support? It’s meant to be a TERMINAL based editor!!!
I realise there might’ve been similar functionality with Qt and/or GTK3 but I don’t know man, this feels weird.
https://

Just finished "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge. A fascinating and epic science fiction novel with fascinating ideas about technology and also future societies. As I'm delving into a lot of sci fi looking for social imagination it's a good find in some ways but disappointing in others. The Qeng Ho culture is interesting, but their society is uninspiring; Vinge's rosy view of "trade" is not one I completely share, and their hierarchies and wealth accumulation are less compatible with their freedoms in my imagination than in Vinge's. That said, his perspective on the possibilities of galactic-scale civilization and the idea of the "age of failed dreams" are fascinating, especially right now, and his detailed ideas about programming, AI, automaton, and "Focus" are extremely relevant right now. Ultimately I didn't love some parts of the dénouement, and there's a lot of "great man theory of history" going on, including (only somewhat ameliorated) a focus on men over women. Vinge's damsels in distress have a lot more agency than usual for the role, but with the exception of Victory Sr. and Jr., the damsels are very much in distress, and Victory Sr. gets overshadowed a lot by Underhill.
It definitely helps one expand their imagination of what long-term and large-scale human existence could look like, which is great and no easy feat, and both the technologies that are written in and those written out are extremely convincing. The only thing I didn't find compelling was the transposition of capitalism onto such space and time scales. It's a very standard feature of sci fi from the last few decades, and I'm sure most readers don't question it, but I've become someone who can no longer imagine "capitalism across the stars" without questioning how realistic it is that its self-destructive tendencies could possibly last even a few more centuries, let alone succeed at interstellar travel.
One last extremely fascinating thing: how closely the strengths and weaknesses of Focus track with the strengths and weaknesses of modern generative AI. That, and the way that the "age of failed dreams" idea can help people imagine beyond generative AI in a positive way.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Ice reflects 70% of the sun’s heat back into space, while open ocean reflects just 7%.
The more that melting exposes the sea, the warmer it gets and the more melting there is.
Summer sea ice could be gone as early as the 2030s and scientists worry that the heat boost could push the climate beyond catastrophic and irreversible tipping points.
In January and February, the pumps ran for a total of 1,080 hours,
icing over a square area about 450 metres on a side.
Th…

Internet age verification proposals restrict the fundamental rights of young people to speak to each other and to access information.
They also force all internet users,
not just those under a certain age,
to upload private data
—like a face scan or passport
—in order to access a website or service.
In considering the vast scope of privacy issues pertaining to the collection, storage, and sharing of this personal information,
the problems of age veri…

Internet Age-Gates Are a Growing Global Threat
The internet is an essential resource for young people and adults to access information, explore community, and find themselves—both inside countries and across continents. Yet governments around the world continue to introduce and implement legislation requiring all online users to verify their ages before accessing the digital space.