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Ben

@benritchie.co.uk

Astronomer, runner & parkrunner, cyclist. Former developer, day job is now engineering director. London & Sussex, UK.

11 Posts189 Follower198 Folgt
Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan@london.gov.uk · last mo.

To every trans Londoner: this city is yours too. Today we celebrate London Trans+ Pride and reaffirm a simple truth: you should be free to live as yourself, without fear or prejudice. You are loved. You are wanted. You belong here.

Timothy Gowers@wtgowers.bsky.social · 3mo ago

OpenAI's claim that this is a central conjecture in discrete geometry is not an exaggeration. This will I think be looked back on as the first time that AI solved a major mathematics problem (defined as a problem that all experts in some subfield had thought about). openai.com/index/model-...

An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

An OpenAI model solved the 80-year-old unit distance problem, disproving a major conjecture in discrete geometry and marking a milestone in AI-driven mathematics.

openai.com

Otto English@ottoenglish.bsky.social · 9mo ago

A reminder that London is far safer than many major cities, that crime is falling and that racists hate both these truths because they undermine their vicious little divisive narrative. Multiculturalism works. London works. And those who hate both things hate themselves most of all.

Otto English@ottoenglish.bsky.social · 9mo ago

There were 93 homicides in London last year: population 9 million In New York - population 8.5 million - there were 391. London's homicide figure is 6 times lower than LA, 9 times lower than Miami, 17 times lower than Chicago. And it's falling year on year despite the population increasing

Graph showing decline since 2005
Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 11mo ago

This is so good from Cory Doctorow on all the tricks Amazon uses to get both consumers to pay more, and how businesses on the platform end up paying it 45-51 cents on every dollar. Plus he rightly calls for regulatory change, not just individual consumer action www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and ...

theguardian.com

nixCraft@cyberciti.biz · 12mo ago

If you're new to the Unix or Linux command line, I just want you to know: Me and all my colleagues with years of experience Still get confused between `ln -s` and `ln` daily.

Dr Shanika Galaudage@astronerdika.bsky.social · last yr.

Heard the latest news from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration? We detected the collision of the most massive pair of black holes so far: #GW231123 weighing in at ~137 + ~103 times the mass of the Sun! So to celebrate, here’s a handy chart ✨ Just how chonky are these black holes? 🤔

An infographic titled "How BIG are the BLACK HOLES we find with GRAVITATIONAL WAVES?" by @astronerdika. The graphic displays a range of black hole masses detected via gravitational waves, categorized by their size in solar masses (mass of the Sun) and represented with playful cat-like black hole illustrations. The categories from left to right are: 1. "<5 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "smol" - Very small black hole illustration represented by a curled up black cat - Arrow pointing left: "THIS WAY TO NEUTRON STARS" - Example: "Big component of GW230529 (~3.6 times the mass of the Sun)" 2. "~10 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "basic" - Slightly larger black hole cat illustration - Caption: "LOTS OF BLACK HOLES" 3. "~35–45 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "hefty" - Bigger black hole cat illustration - Continues the idea of a populated range 4. ">60 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "chonky" - Large black hole cat illustration - Caption: "FORBIDDEN TERRITORY? (can these even be made from the collapse of star cores?!)" - Example: "Components of GW190521 (~85 + ~66 times the mass of the Sun)" 5. ">100 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "oh lawd" - Very large, curled-up black hole cat illustration - Arrow pointing right: "THIS WAY TO INTERMEDIATE MASS BLACK HOLES" - Example: "Components of GW231123 (~137 + ~103 times the mass of the Sun)" Below the categories is a stylized black curve representing the inferred population of black holes detected by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA. It rises sharply in the "basic" range and falls off toward the "hefty" and "chonky" ranges, with a note reading: "this curve is an artistic representation of the black hole population inferred by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA." This infographic draws from the “Chonky Cat” meme.
ESO@eso.org · last yr.

Dive into this spectacular image of the stellar nursery IC 2944! You see those thick clouds of dust? They are being bombarded by the UV radiation from nearby stars, and are likely to be destroyed before they can collapse and form new stars.

A star field set against a glowing red and orange nebula. Bright, bluish-white stars dominate the scene. Scattered throughout the image are dark, irregular-shaped clouds of gas and dust.