iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:
iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:
Gisterenmiddag was er kerstlunch bij mijn ouders, beiden achter in de tachtig en nog goed van geest. De kleinkinderen praten druk over hun sportschoolactiviteiten, oftewel de…
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Plus: Lazarus Group has a brand new BeaverTail
Even Amazon isn't immune to North Korean scammers who try to score remote jobs at tech companies so they can funnel their wages to Kim Jong Un's coffers.…
Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） has added a photo to the pool:
Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
handwritten on back of photograph, "here Sheely decided to play peek a boo with the photographer, our neighbor, she coudl get off and on alone before her 1st birthday. 2 little girls are in my nursery class, Sept, 1968, Monica Prace"
BertvB posted a photo:
Cattle egrets like to stay near large animals for a very practical reason: food.
Here’s why:
Insect hunting: Large grazers such as buffalo, zebras, and elephants disturb the grass and soil while walking and grazing. This causes insects, larvae, and small animals to come out.
Easier food: The egret doesn’t have to actively search; it benefits from what the big animals flush out.
Safety: Staying close to large animals reduces the risk of predators, as those usually target the big prey.
Symbiosis: Sometimes cattle egrets even pick parasites off the skin of these animals, which benefits both parties.
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
Ever wondered how planetary systems like our own Solar System form? Thanks to the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, we're getting a unique peek behind the cosmic curtain into these dusty environments.
In this collage, we see the images of 31 baby star systems. Click on the white dots next to each system to find out more about them. The bar on the top right shows the scale of the image in Astronomical Units (AU).
The collage also shows our own Solar System for reference on the bottom right, as it is predicted to have looked at an age of 1 million years, with the Sun at its centre (not visible).
All of the systems are centred around very young stars that have recently collapsed from vast clouds of gas and dust.
After the clouds collapsed under their own gravity, they spun faster and flattened into discs with hot, dense centres. These centres became the stars, sometimes multiple stars were formed. The discs around them are called protoplanetary discs.
The 31 baby systems are shown here in orange-purple, as seen by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) ground-based telescope.
Astronomers expect the remaining material in protoplanetary discs to clump together to form planets, but until now it’s been very difficult to spot them because of all the dust and gas present in discs. To date, very few planets have been detected around forming stars.
Enter Gaia.
In 31 out of 98 young star systems, Gaia has detected subtle motions that suggest the presence of unseen companions. For seven of these systems, the observed motions are consistent with objects of planetary mass. In eight systems, the data best match the presence of brown dwarfs – objects larger than planets but smaller than stars. The remaining sixteen systems likely have additional stars around.
Gaia’s predicted locations of these companions in the systems are shown in cyan. In the reference image of our baby Solar System, Jupiter’s orbit is also shown in cyan.
Gaia discovered the companions in the baby star systems thanks to its unique ability to sense the gravitational tug or ‘wobble’ a planet or companion induces on a star. This technique had already been used to find companions around older stars. But now, for the first time, a team of astronomers led by Miguel Vioque of the European Southern Observatory, Germany, has used this Gaia technique to find planets and companions around stars that are still forming.
The all-sky, large-scale nature of the Gaia survey enabled the team to study hundreds of forming stars and identify companions across large samples for the first time. This in contrast to costly ground-based searches that can only target a few stars at a time.
This ability of Gaia is revolutionising the field of star and planet formation. The companions that the telescope has already found, can now be followed up by telescopes like the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space telescope that can study the inner discs of the baby systems in more detail.
With Gaia’s upcoming fourth data release, many more hidden planets are expected to be uncovered.
This new finding has been described in ‘Astrometric view of companions in the inner dust cavities of protoplanetary disks’ by M. Vioque et al., accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Learn more
[Image description: A collage of 32 glowing discs on a black background. Each disc shows concentric rings in vivid colours: purple, orange, and yellow, with bright cyan centres. The discs vary in size and orientation, creating a striking pattern of circular and elliptical shapes.]
Credits: ESO, ESA/Gaia/DPAC, M. Vioque et al.; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
This composite NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the debris ring and dust clouds cs1 and cs2 around the star Fomalhaut. For comparison, dust cloud cs1, imaged in 2012, is pictured with dust cloud cs2, imaged in 2023. The dashed circles mark the location of these clouds. When dust cloud cs2 suddenly appeared, astronomers quickly noticed they had witnessed the violent collision of two massive objects. Previously thought to be a planet, cs1 is now classified as a similar debris cloud. In this image, Fomalhaut itself is masked out to allow the fainter features to be seen.
This image was created from Hubble data from proposal #17139 (P. Kalas).
Read more
Credits: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
This artist’s concept shows the sequence of events leading up to the creation of dust cloud cs2 around the star Fomalhaut.
[Image description: This four-panel image labelled 1 to 4 shows the sequence of events leading up to, during, and following the collision of two objects in orbit around a star.]
Read more
Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, R. Crawford (STScI); CC BY 4.0
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
This composite NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the debris ring and dust clouds cs1 and cs2 around the star Fomalhaut. For comparison, dust cloud cs1, imaged in 2012, is pictured with dust cloud cs2, imaged in 2023. The dashed circles mark the location of these clouds. When dust cloud cs2 suddenly appeared, astronomers quickly noticed they had witnessed the violent collision of two massive objects. Previously thought to be a planet, cs1 is now classified as a similar debris cloud. In this image, Fomalhaut itself is masked out to allow the fainter features to be seen. Its location is marked by the white star.
This image was created from Hubble data from proposal #17139 (P. Kalas).
[Image description: Image labeled Fomalhaut system, Hubble Space Telescope. A grainy orange oval ring tilts slightly from upper right to lower left. At two o’clock, a white box outlines the ring’s edge and white lines extend to a larger pullout at lower right. Two spots are labeled cs1 2013 and cs2 2023. Inside the ring is a black circle with a white star symbol in the middle.]
Read more
Credits: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0
Formula 1's 2026 technical regulations bring not only smaller and lighter cars but an entirely new vocabulary that fans and commentators will need to learn before the season opens in Australia in March. The drag reduction system that has been part of F1 racing since 2011 is gone, replaced by a suite of modes governing how the new active front and rear wings behave and how the hybrid powertrain delivers power. Straight Mode lowers both the front and rear wings to cut drag on designated straights, and unlike the outgoing DRS system any driver can activate it regardless of their proximity to other cars. The story adds: And there's corner mode, where the wings are in their raised position, generating downforce and making the cars corner faster. Those names are better than X-mode and Z-mode, which is what they were being called last year.
[...] Instead of using DRS as an overtaking aid, the hybrid power units will now fulfill that role. Overtake mode, which can be used if a driver is within a second of a car ahead, gives them an extra 0.5 MJ of energy and up to 350 kW from the electric motor up to 337 km/h -- without the Overtake mode, the MGU-K tapers off above 290 km/h. There's also a second Boost mode, which drivers can use to attack or defend a position, that gives a short burst of maximum power.
[...] Instead of using DRS as an overtaking aid, the hybrid power units will now fulfill that role. Overtake mode, which can be used if a driver is within a second of a car ahead, gives them an extra 0.5 MJ of energy and up to 350 kW from the electric motor up to 337 km/h -- without the Overtake mode, the MGU-K tapers off above 290 km/h. There's also a second Boost mode, which drivers can use to attack or defend a position, that gives a short burst of maximum power.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A California judge signaled support for forcing Vizio to provide the full source code for its SmartCast TV software after finding a contractual obligation under the GPL. If upheld, the case could strengthen users' rights to modify GPL-licensed software embedded in consumer electronics. The Register reports: The legal complaint from the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) seeks access to the SmartCast source code so that Vizio customers can make changes and improvements to the platform, something that ought to be possible for code distributed under the GPL. On Thursday, California Superior Court Judge Sandy Leal issued a tentative ruling in advance of a hearing, indicating support for part of SFC's legal challenge. The tentative ruling is not a final decision, but it signals the judge's inclination to grant the SFC's motion for summary adjudication, at least in part.
"The tentative ruling [PDF] grants SFC's motion on the issue that a direct contract was made between SFC and Vizio when SFC's systems administrator, Paul Visscher, requested the source code to a TV that SFC has purchased," the SFC said in a blog post. "This contract obligated Vizio to provide SFC the complete and corresponding source code." [...]
Karen Sandler, executive director of the SFC, told The Register in an email that the hearing went well, though Vizio's legal counsel "stridently disagreed" with the legal analysis in the tentative ruling. "Judge Leal said she would take the matter 'under submission' which means she will think about it further," Sandler said. "After the Court went off the record, Leal's clerk specifically verified the Court reporter could provide an expedited transcript, so Leal will likely review the hearing transcript soon." Sandler expects Leal will examine the filings again before issuing her opinion, which is likely to be issued in the next few weeks.
"The tentative ruling [PDF] grants SFC's motion on the issue that a direct contract was made between SFC and Vizio when SFC's systems administrator, Paul Visscher, requested the source code to a TV that SFC has purchased," the SFC said in a blog post. "This contract obligated Vizio to provide SFC the complete and corresponding source code." [...]
Karen Sandler, executive director of the SFC, told The Register in an email that the hearing went well, though Vizio's legal counsel "stridently disagreed" with the legal analysis in the tentative ruling. "Judge Leal said she would take the matter 'under submission' which means she will think about it further," Sandler said. "After the Court went off the record, Leal's clerk specifically verified the Court reporter could provide an expedited transcript, so Leal will likely review the hearing transcript soon." Sandler expects Leal will examine the filings again before issuing her opinion, which is likely to be issued in the next few weeks.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
