Lazy Sunday. On this day in 1987 astronomers noticed a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
It’s tax season. Also scam season.
The Washington Post uses a bad example to highlight the very real problem of locating mobile phones for 911. In the case they cite, the man who died waiting for responders to arrive was using a Chinese cellphone with no name or address associated with it, essentially a burner, and he was calling from a multi-unit apartment building in a high-density area. That’s a difficult challenge for any technology. That said, we can certainly do better with locating callers using GPS, especially by incorporating altitude or z-axis information. In fact the FCC is requiring it. But it will take time.
In an op-ed in the Dorchester Reporter, Andrea Campbell makes an important point: Prosperity is good but runaway prosperity can threaten the civic fabric.
Kids these days! Back in my time making a circle on an Etch a Sketch was an impossible chore. Not any more! What’s this world coming to?
And in case you’ve always wondered, students at the University of Leicester ran the equations to calculate just how long it would take for tribbles to overtake the Starship Enterprise. It’s not long. (Via Ars).