Amusing Items

prpr said:
Perhaps they ought to devise a test to see if the virus has a dose of Piers Morgan.
I'm not sure which is worse.
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PM!
Good Morning Britain is so much better without him. Although the other presenters have started to interrupt guests more often. Not good when there is a delay on the line - as there is for every guest these days.
 
Really, this ain't 1st April you know! Methinks somebody is having their leg pulled (like when the professional electronics press reported a data compression scheme to squeeze 10x the data onto a HDD).

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Black Hole said:
Really, this ain't 1st April you know! Methinks somebody is having their leg pulled (like when the professional electronics press reported a data compression scheme to squeeze 10x the data onto a HDD).
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If it looks too good to be true...
I find it difficult to believe this one.
Not heard about the 10x data compression - I could do with that my disks are getting a bit full.
Black Hole said:
Think carefully before you decide to "ignore" somebody: ignore me and you cut off your access to information/advice/content in (at time of writing) 491 threads and 20,468 posts with 1,986 likes, and I will have to ignore you too: see HERE (click). Currently ignoring (as reciprocal action): Member 7823.
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Not sure that will have the desired effect. After all, the signature text can be switched off so some people won't see it anyway. You never know M7823 might even have some useful information you don't know :rolling:. (I think we do know, but you never can be sure).
 
Black Hole said:
Really, this ain't 1st April you know! Methinks somebody is having their leg pulled
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It sounds plausible to me. Thermocouples work using dissimilar temperatures, so there's no obvious reason why that sort of effect shouldn't be present in other places.
 
MikeSh said:
It sounds plausible to me. Thermocouples work using dissimilar temperatures, so there's no obvious reason why that sort of effect shouldn't be present in other places.
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That's fair enough, but the article seems to imply it's the shadow itself that is being harvested. If you have a lit area to take the difference from, you are generating energy from the bright area not the dark area.
 
EEPhil said:
Not heard about the 10x data compression
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That turned up in something like the Electronics Times back in the 1980's. No, that wasn't April 1 either. Cold Fusion was greeted similarly, and we know what happened to that!
 
Nice. OK, so it might be a real effect (I can't make out whether that paper has been peer-reviewed), but why a chemistry paper rather than an electronics or physics paper?

I have only skimmed it, but I can't find any analysis of whether this effect is more efficient than a normal solar cell. They are not actually using darkness as a sink (in the way that a thermopile does with thermal differences), just that the material properties (this is solid-state physics) drive a current between the illuminated material and the unilluminated material... in much the same way as two parallel solar cells would if one was illuminated and the other wasn't. A better current flows if you simply short out the unilluminated cell.

The effect might have useful application if it has advantageous quantum efficiency in situations such as low-level lighting.
 
Gwent police have been notified by a victim that they had received an unknown message on Facebook from a person purporting to be a female, and when they clicked on the attached link this enabled the offender to access their phone. They then proceeded to send messages to all of her contacts, enter their Snapchat account and finally, access and steal from her online banking app.
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Sorry, yes, maybe I shouldn't but I find that hilarious. Like: what did you expect?
 
I don't find it hilarious. I do find it odd that people don't do the simplest of checks before clicking on links. Most browsers I've tried will put the URL in the status bar if you hover over the link. A simple check, but it picks up some dodgy links.

What is more annoying is the advice not to click on links in email. Then the people giving the advice (gov.uk, *.police.uk, neigbourhood alert scheme etc.) put links in their email, often hidden behind buttons. Ye Gods!
 
Anybody else listening to the old ISIHAC episodes on R4? I had to laugh at the Welsh version of Mornington Crescent and the arguing satnavs. Especially enjoyed the standard satnav trying to pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
 
Dyson seems to have invented something he calls an "air watt". According to the advert, his v11 hoover "provides 185 air watts of suction power" (whatever that might be), and the cyclones "generate 79,000g". Hmm.
 
I'm very sceptical of everything Dyson. My bs detector does off every time I see one of his adverts.
 
Beat me to it - I just found that page by accident and wondered why you hadn't referenced it.
Looking at the wikipedia page, air watts is not a Dyson invention.
 
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