Recent content by .Scott

Kyoto University has announce a transistor that will operate at 600 degrees Centigrade. The full article can be downloaded in pdf form in English from this page. I don't think it is quite Venus-ready, but it's close.

An entertaining story works because the story tellers and the audience cooperate. The writers create something that is understandable, interesting, and fit for the target audience. The members of the audience suspend disbelief and allow themselves to become involved with the characters and the...

To be explicit about the order of operations, two's complement is NEG(b) = (NOT b)+1.

Those evasions are short-lived because they are design specifically for the current video surveillance systems. And, of course, there can be software short-coming that are exploitable to that end whether the system is developed with AI or not. But let me address whether there will always be...

Perhaps that is what inspired the introduction of the "Penny Postage Stamp" in the UK - as an alternative to getting a message out.

You must be exagerating!

... how long would you let it ring? I just read about the Oxford Electric Bell which has been ringing away since 1840. It's has been left in a corridor in the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford. It was set up by Reverend Robert Walker, who is not taking calls right now, about 176...

A Physicist, a Mathematician, and a Logician are traveling together by train through Scotland. The Physicist looks out the window, spots a black sheep, and exclaims, "There are black sheep in Scotland". The Mathematician corrects with, we can only claim that there is one black sheep in...

I did several sanity checks. The biggest problem I had with the Google ChatThing was that it would always find a few ways of interpreting my questions and a few ways of answering. Based on how it responded in several cases, I take it that there is an integration that needs to be evaluated to...

I gave this problem to Google: How much dB reflection will I get with 1KHz sound passing through a continuous temperature gradient of 5, 10, and 20 degrees centigrade across 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 centimeters? Gradient Thickness(##\Delta##T = 5##^\circ##C)(##\Delta##T =...

In a recent article from TechCrunch, Security Editor Zack Whittaker describes an interesting software project being tackled by coder Bill Swearingen. It's one that demonstrates a point I have repeated often: In general - when you use AI to create a solution, you often don't know exactly what...

This is related to the Basel Problem. Starting from there, you can separate the odd and even terms, then note that the even terms are 1/4 of the odd terms, and work it from there. Deriving a solution to the Basel Problem is not something that would be assigned to students. It was over 8...

The two keys here are "flat base" and that "step change". Typical human hearing is most sensitive in range of 1000 to 5000Hz. That's a wavelength of 7 to 34cm. The ability of the bottom surface of a cloud to reflect sound relies on how well-defined that surface is. From my experience (with...

No: 1) That "configuration file" is generally an entire directory structure. 2) This type of information resides on most consumer computers world-wide - not just the US. For example, earlier this year Alberta Canada changed its time zone rules. That change went through the process I described...

For the most part, Astronomy finds the time, Physics keeps the time, Politicians decide what to call it, and Software Engineers tell it. On August 4, 2026, President Trump posted this on Truth Social: "For many years, the vast Majority of Americans have asked to make Daylight Saving Time...