The Leeds case sounds a bit disturbing: they used real human fat and "simulated" clothing for an experiment. Seems odd that it was easy to find real human fat, but they had to resort to simulating clothing. I guess in 1963 fast fashion wasn't a thing.
Readit Newsmartinclayton commented on Matt Trout has died shadowcat.co.uk/2025/07/0... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
I use Catalyst quite a lot - have been working on a new thing this morning.
Thanks, Matt, the ripples will go on for a good while.
In a thread elsewhere I saw "Interstellar Objects in the Solar System:
1. Isotropic Kinematics from the Gaia Early Data Release 3" (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.03289) mentioned.
In there, one estimate of the number of these objects is
Nisc <~ 7.2 × 10−5 AU−3
martinclayton commented on First American pope elected and will be known as Pope Leo XIV cnn.com/world/live-news/n... · Posted by u/saikatsg
What happens if Charlie Stross meets the Pope?
martinclayton commented on 2024 YR4 and other dangerous asteroids starwalk.space/en/news/sh... · Posted by u/hermitcrab
Information-rich but is sadly very click-baity.
The head/title of the page is: "Asteroid to Hit Earth 2025 | Most Dangerous Asteroid 2025".
Heading is "Next Asteroid Predicted to Hit Earth: All About 2024 YR4 and Other Dangerous Asteroids". Then big picture of bad things happening: "Are We Doomed?"
Body text kicks off with: "Every now and then, the media produces dozens of scary headlines about rocks from space headed toward our planet." ...like this one, you mean?
There's a section headed "Famous asteroids predicted to hit Earth". Why use this misleading style? The body text below this heading can be summarised as: "there are no famous asteroids predicted to hit Earth".
At least it says "At this time, there is no evidence that any of these asteroids will collide with Earth". Sounds like "so you're saying there is a chance!"
martinclayton commented on Nothing-up-my-sleeve number en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not... · Posted by u/avinassh
When a magician does this, you know it's likely a distraction, and somewhere else there is trickery going on.
As a cryptography layman this would make me more suspicious...
martinclayton commented on COBOL has been “dead” for so long, my grandpa wrote about it wumpus-cave.net/post/2024... · Posted by u/hardburn
iOS development has been around for quite some time now. Most senior iOS and Cocoa developers probably started with Objective-C before slowly migrating codebases over to Swift.
I think this must be it, or at least this is one story that fits.
Seems a shame that people report Objective-C experience as Swift experience to such a great extent. These surveys are not resumes...
Perhaps it just "proves" that all data in these charts is questionable.
martinclayton commented on COBOL has been “dead” for so long, my grandpa wrote about it wumpus-cave.net/post/2024... · Posted by u/hardburn
In case anyone is interested...
The SO Developer Surveys give some info on the job market for COBOL as it appears on the average salary versus years-of-experience graphs, which I like as there's as many stories or reasons as you can think of to explain them.
In 2023 there were 222 respondents who averaged 19 years of experience, and an average salary of $75,500. In 2024 the exact number of respondents is not shown, but likely similar based on the color code of the point, but the average experience had dropped to 17 years.
Elsewhere in the graph my favourite open question is: how come the over 2000 respondents mentioning Swift average over 11 years experience in a language that's only been public for 10 years?
2024 https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/work#salary-comp-total-...
2023 https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/?utm_source=so-owned&ut...
martinclayton commented on The quest to build a telescope on the moon newyorker.com/science/ele... · Posted by u/pseudolus
There was an interesting Fraser Cain YT vid a couple of weeks back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcR6gs0Up6k
Interview with Gerard van Belle, director or the Lowell Observatory.
The topic was space/lunar optical interferometers. It's easier to do this on the Moon than in space, as there's no formation flying. He's got a "menu" of projects from a few/small unit telescopes right up to lunar manufacturing like this.
Try these shapes: 100x113, then 100x114, then 100x115, the "patterns" swing from slant down, to vertical, to slant up.
I'd love this (even more) with some animation and colo(u)r options.