Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
Q. Can you see a rainbow on a black-and-white photograph? A. Yes, but the colors will appear as shades of gray, same as with any other object photographed in black-and-white. There’s nothing special about rainbow colors — often listed as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Those colors react with black and white film…
I’m again experimenting with voice-to-text transcription. I keep hoping for that Star Trek experience — you know, where the characters whap their comm badge, speak with normal speed and diction, and have the computer fully understand them. But for me, that’s truly fiction. In real life, with free-form text, voice to-text accuracy is likely to…
Q: How do I fix the “an operating system wasn’t found” screen, with all the words are mixed up and the screen is white and twitching? (via Quora) A: An “Operating System Not Found” or “Missing Operating System” or similar message will occur when you boot/start/restart a PC, but something prevents the hardware from seeing…
Q: When did we first understand that time differences existed between different parts of the world? (via Quora) A. Even the ancient Greeks knew of this, 2000 years ago. (Relatedly, Eratosthenes used variances in the apparent height of the sun in different cities at local solar noon — mid-day, as determined by sundial — to…
Q. Why don’t the Great Lakes have tides? (via Quora) A. They do! All bodies of water have tides — even your bathtub! Even your coffee cup! But here’s the catch: You need an ocean-sized amount of water for the cumulative effect of tides to be easily visible. In fact, the very largest tides on…
Q: If gravity affects time, do radioactive materials get shorter half-lives on large planets and stars? (via Quora) A: No. As far as the radioactive material itself is concerned, its half-life is the same as always. All objects within the same frame of reference experience the same time effects. The half-life would only appear to…
Q: I spilled yogurt on my keyboard. Now some keys are stuck. How do I fix it? (via Quora) A: Wash it! Yes, you can wash almost any electronic device, provided the device is unpowered and you only use distilled water, which is almost totally nonconductive. There’s no guarantee it’ll work, of course, but this…
http://www.jesusandmo.net/comic/clever/
Q: How many keyboard keys are pressed at the same second in the world? (via Quora) A: A very rough guess: humans currently generate 416 million keystrokes per second. Here’s the (admittedly shaky) logic — feel free to adjust up or down as you wish: Assuming you mean physical keyboards — the kind used on…
Farewell, Disk Cleanup! Microsoft has announced that Windows’ classic Disk Cleanup tool — which can strip gigabytes of junk and obsolete files from your system — is being discontinued. Here’s what’s going away: Here’s what’s replacing it: Win10’s new Free up space now setting. Access it via: Settings/System/Storage/Storage Sense (on); then click Free up space…