Weird & Interesting science, take 2

[Bob Schroeck]

Ball lightning caught on video in Canada:

[Bob Schroeck]

"Mega-lightning bolt" in 2017 storm traveled 515 miles in seconds.

[classicdrogn]

click here

What to Know About Saturday's Black Moon

[robkelk]

click here

What to Know About Saturday's Black Moon

Spoiler alert: Apparently, there's no risk of having a pink-haired pre-teen from the future fall on your head.

[Bob Schroeck]

[robkelk]

One long sentence is all it takes to make LLMs misbehave

Chatbots ignore their guardrails when your grammar sucks, researchers find

[classicdrogn]

True Facts about Bats with Ze Frank


click here

[robkelk]

NASA finds best evidence of life on Mars so far

Fossil life, not current life.

[classicdrogn]

Detected results of a black hole collision confirm predictions

(probably AI) narrated version over an annoying slideshow of the same image seitching between various tilings:

link

CBC report
arxiv listing for the scientific paper

[robkelk]

Engineer turned a vape into a web server

The case highlights what can be done with so-called disposable kit. A 2023 UK study by the University of Oxford and the Faraday Foundation found that 1.3 million of the devices were thrown away each week, and reusing them in any format can't be a bad idea, not least since the batteries are perfectly capable of handling processing long after the addictive drug has been smoked.

The server itself

[Bob Schroeck]

MIT is developing concrete-based "supercapacitors" which could turn sidewalks and building walls into massive power storage facilities.

[classicdrogn]

I foresee a small problem with that, before even clicking the link - what happens when there's a earthquake, or some other damage accidental or intentional? "massive power storage" suddenly discharging tends to make for a much more exciting day than most anyone wants to have, and the ones who do are not likely to have the good of society im mind with it.

[robkelk]

That's addressed in the article: The power output actually drops momentarily when the concrete is stressed.

[Dartz]

Computer power has grown so much that it doesn't take much electrical power to make a basic device which *should* be dumb be able to do some pretty disturbing things.

90% of you laptop's compute cycles are probably being used to track you and sell you advertising these days anyway.

[classicdrogn]

I saw that, but while it is an interesting and potentially useful effect it still doesn't address what happens if some joyrider in a suburban assault vehicle Kool*Aid Man-s the garage wall that's got the power bank for recharging your EV in it.

[robkelk]

Ah. Now I see where you're coming from... and it's pure Hollywood.

Electrical batteries are not bombs. I can take apart, and have taken apart, properly-functioning charged batteries with no ill effects. You need capacitors for sudden discharges in real life, not batteries. And this is specifically described as a battery replacement, not a capacitor replacement.

[classicdrogn]

Hm, perhaps I misread it, but I thought it was more capacitor-adjacent. I still wouldn't be enthusiastic about the prospect, but chemically stored energy should be more stable than a straight up electrical charge, yes, given the materials they're working with.

[Bob Schroeck]

On October 1, a (tiny) asteroid passed by less than 270 miles from earth.