Today I Learned #4: Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

[Gori the Grey]

Shoulda called it "tanko," then. Ha ha. I'm sure it doesn't work in Japanese.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

TIL that all living birds share an ancestor that lived just over 90 million years ago.
But most groups of modern birds emerged about 25 million years later, within a small window of just a few million years after the end of the Cretaceous period around 66 million years ago.

After 10 years of work, landmark study reveals new ‘tree of life’ for all birds living today

The extinction of the dinosaurs sparked an explosion of bird species, according to the largest-ever study of bird genetics.

theconversation.com

 

[Narz]

Never thought about the safety angle before.

The irony is now excess sugar is one of the most poisonous things the general population eats.

Book is glucose revolution btw

 

[Narz]

 

[EgonSpengler]

TIL that an atomic clock on the Moon would 'lose' approx. 1 second every 50 years, compared to an atomic clock on Earth, due to the low gravity.

 

[EgonSpengler]

TIL that "juggernaut" is the English derivation of the Hindi "Jagannath", a Hindu deity whose name translates as 'lord of the universe.' During some Hindu festivals, massive chariots the size of buildings are constructed, mobile temples to carry the deities.

Western impressions of the Jagannath Ratha Yatra in Puri as a display of unstoppable force are the origin of the English word juggernaut.

Three 'temple cars' at a Jagannath Ratha Yatra ("chariot pilgrimage/procession/journey for/of Jagannath") in Puri in 2021. Those buildings in the pictures below with red roofs are chariots. If the Christian missionary who was so awed by one of the Ratha Yatra temple-chariots had arrived in a different city or at a different time of year, the English word for "enormous, powerful machine or force that crushes everything before it" might have derived from 'Balabhadra', 'Krishna', or 'Parvati.'

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

And here's a juggernaut of a different kind bearing down on us!

Roku’s New HDMI Tech Could Show Ads When You Pause Your Game
A new patent recently filed by TV and streaming device manufacturer Roku hints toward a possible future where televisions could display ads when you pause a movie or game.

For Roku, the time in which the TV is on but users aren’t doing anything is valuable. The company has started leasing out ad space in its popular Roku City screensaver—which appears when your TV is idle—to companies like McDonald’s and movies like Barbie. As tech newsletter Lowpass points out, Roku finds this idle time and its screensaver so valuable that it forbids app developers from overriding the screensaver with their own. But, if you plug in an Xbox or DVD player into the HDMI port on a Roku TV, you bypass the company’s screensaver and other ads. And so, Roku has been figuring out a way to not let that happen.

As reported by Lowpass on April 4, Roku recently filed a patent for a technology that would let it inject ads into third-party content—like an Xbox game or Netflix movie—using an HDMI connection. The patent describes a situation where you are playing a video game and hit pause to go check your phone or grab some food. At this point, Roku would identify that you have paused the content and display a relevant ad until you unpaused the game.

How Roku’s HDMI ad tech works, according to the patent
Roku’s tech isn’t designed to randomly inject ads as you are playing a game or watching a movie, it knows that would be going too far and anger people. Instead, the patent suggests several ways that Roku could spot when your TV is paused, like comparing frames, to make sure the user has actually paused the content. Roku might also use the HDMI’s audio feed to search for extended moments of silence. The company also proposes using HDMI CEC—a protocol designed to help devices communicate better—to figure out when you pause and unpause content.

Similarly, Roku’s patent explains that it will use various methods to detect what people are playing or watching and try to display relevant ads. So if it sees you have an Xbox plugged in, it might try to serve you ads that it thinks an Xbox owner would be interested in.

If this all sounds horrible and dystopian—a future where we can’t even pause our offline, old DVD movies without seeing an ad for something—keep in mind that Roku hasn’t moved forward on these plans yet. Your Roku TV isn’t going to start placing ads for Disney+ on your Call of Duty pause screen tonight.

But when you consider that Roku lost over $40 million in 2023 on hardware sales and made $1.6 billion on ads and services that same year, it seems like this HDMI ad injection patent might end up being a thing one day. If someone buys a cheap Roku TV and never uses the apps, just uses it to play Xbox or PS5, then Roku effectively loses money from that sale. This patent would let it squeeze even more dollars out of everyone.

And because companies are addicted to “number go up”, well, I tend to bet on Roku and others eventually doing whatever it takes to make said numbers grow bigger and bigger, damned be the consequences. These companies will keep shoving more and more ads onto your screen, making it harder to enjoy the actual content you want to see, regardless of how it might ruin your experience.

Roku’s New HDMI Tech Could Show Ads When You Pause Your Game

Just what we all wanted, even more ads to deal with in our everyday life

kotaku.com

 

[EgonSpengler]

TIL that Arsenal Football Club were founded in 1886 by a Scot, David Danskin, and were originally called Dial Square Football Club, named for the workshop inside the royal arsenal complex where the founding 16 players all worked. After 1 year, they changed their named to Royal Arsenal FC. When they joined the Football League in 1893, they changed their name again, to Woolwich Arsenal FC. The workers of the royal arsenal formed a new amateur side, Royal Ordnance Factories Football Club (or just 'Royal Ordnance'). The first "Royal Arsenal Derby" was 25 April 1895, Royal Ordnance 1, Woolwich Arsenal 0. Royal Ordnance's first rivalry was with Thames Ironworks Football Club, which later became West Ham United. Royal Ordnance FC was dissolved in 1896. In 1913, Woolwich Arsenal moved to Highbury (it turns out the royal arsenal is not, in fact, in Highbury, it's in Woolwich) and renamed themselves yet again as The Arsenal. Later that same year, they dropped the "The" and became just Arsenal. Tales From an Alternate Universe: There is a disputed story that, in 1912, the new owner of Woolwich Arsenal tried to merge the club with Fulham FC, but the League blocked the deal. A close shave, for fans of both clubs.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

TIL that Arsenal Football Club were founded in 1886 by a Scot, David Danskin, and were originally called Dial Square Football Club, named for the workshop inside the royal arsenal complex where the founding 16 players all worked. After 1 year, they changed their named to Royal Arsenal FC. When they joined the Football League in 1893, they changed their name again, to Woolwich Arsenal FC. The workers of the royal arsenal formed a new amateur side, Royal Ordnance Factories Football Club (or just 'Royal Ordnance'). The first "Royal Arsenal Derby" was 25 April 1895, Royal Ordnance 1, Woolwich Arsenal 0. Royal Ordnance's first rivalry was with Thames Ironworks Football Club, which later became West Ham United. Royal Ordnance FC was dissolved in 1896. In 1913, Woolwich Arsenal moved to Highbury (it turns out the royal arsenal is not, in fact, in Highbury, it's in Woolwich) and renamed themselves yet again as The Arsenal. Later that same year, they dropped the "The" and became just Arsenal. Tales From an Alternate Universe: There is a disputed story that, in 1912, the new owner of Woolwich Arsenal tried to merge the club with Fulham FC, but the League blocked the deal. A close shave, for fans of both clubs.

Since we both seem to be falling down similar wikiholes...

South Sydney Rabbitohs
The South Sydney Rabbitohs are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Sydney suburb of Redfern that competes in the National Rugby League (NRL). They are often referred to as Souths or the Bunnies.

The club mascot is the rabbitoh, a now-disused term that was commonly used in the early 20th century to describe hawkers who captured and skinned rabbits and then sold the meat at markets,[44] so named because they would shout "rabbit-oh!" around the markets and suburbs to attract buyers. The club is also informally referred to as the Rabbits, Bunnies or Souths.

Exactly how South Sydney came to be known as the Rabbitohs is unknown. According to one version of events, dating from pre-schism days at the turn of the 20th century, some of the club's players earned some extra money on Saturday mornings as rabbit-oh men, staining their jerseys with rabbit blood in the process; when they played in those blood stained jumpers that afternoon, opponents from wealthier rugby clubs did not always appreciate the aroma and would mockingly repeat the "Rabbitoh!" cry.

South Sydney Rabbitohs - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Gori the Grey]

If the Christian missionary who was so awed by one of the Ratha Yatra temple-chariots had arrived in a different city or at a different time of year, the English word for "enormous, powerful machine or force that crushes everything before it" might have derived from 'Balabhadra', 'Krishna', or 'Parvati.'

I wonder if this is in fact true. Follow me on some fairly punctilious etymological considerations.

Here is some further information about the word that one can get from the Oxford English dictionary.

The "Christian missionary" that this sentence is referencing is one Friar Odoric, b/c OED's etymology section indicates:

The first European account of the Juggernaut festival, and its attendant immolations, is that by Friar Odoric, c1321.

BUT

the earliest witness for the word in English dates from the seventeenth century, 1638:

Unto this Pagod..doe belong 9000. Brammines or Priests, which doe dayly offer Sacrifices vnto their great God Iagarnat... And when it [the chariot] is going along the City, there are many that will offer themselves a Sacrifice to this Idoll.

W. Bruton, Newes from East-Indies

From that I conclude that Odoric described the event without using the word, and it was only as later individuals described the ceremony that a word (that will eventually become our juggernaut) entered the language.

Here's the next thing to know. The figurative sense of the word only dates from 1854. Prior to that, the word was only used to describe this specific actual ceremony (and especially the curiosity that zealots would throw themselves under such cars and be crushed).

So when the sentence I'm considering speaks of

the English word for "enormous, powerful machine or force that crushes everything before it"

that word--the generalized, extended meaning--only surfaced after 200 years of English being able to use the proper noun, Jagernat, to describe these temple-cars specifically.

There's something very interesting that marks the first figurative use. And that is that it is spelled with -naut as its ending.

The earlier uses in English have a wide range of spelling (this is the period before spelling was standardized): Jagarnat, jagernot, Jagarynat, Jaganath, Jagannath. There are a few jagarnauts also, but they don't predominate. One can only do so much with such information: OED's witnesses are not meant to be exhaustive, just illustrative. But one can establish that there was no consistent way of spelling the word.

Starting just after the 1854 use, it is consistently spelled juggernaut.

I suspect that -naut may have come in because -naut had become (through this same stretch of time that we are considering 16th-19th c.) a compounding unit for "voyager in," from the word Argonaut. (we use it for astronaut and cosmonaut). The juggernaut is not the voyager, it's the vessel. But I think that, at the moment this word came to mean any vehicle that crushes, that connection with a particular kind of vehicle (a ship) may have been crucial.

What I'm proposing is that, if Bahabadra had been the name for the car, a generalized term for "vessel that crushes everything in its way" might never have emerged: that it took both Jagernat and the availability of -naut, for that idea to pop into the head of the first person to use it in the generalized sense.

In any case, the claim in the quote is (Gori asserts pedantically) incorrect simply in that it wouldn't have mattered where Odoric saw these temple cars because it wasn't his description of them that established the word Jagernat in English.

 

[Birdjaguar]

JetZero: Groundbreaking ‘blended-wing’ demonstrator plane cleared to fly​

Blended wing aircraft could slash carbon emissions. This rendering shows a design by California-based JetZero, which aims to have a plane in service by 2030. Scroll through the gallery to see more.

Spoiler :

JetZero

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The next generation of greener planes​

1 of 15

CNN —
The basic design of commercial airplanes hasn’t changed much in the past 60 years. Modern airliners like the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 have the same general shape as the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8, which were built in the late 1950s and solidified the “tube and wing” form factor that is still in use today.
This is because commercial aviation prioritizes safety, favoring tried-and-tested solutions, and because other developments — in materials and engines, for example — mean the traditional design is still relevant.

However, a seismic shake-up is about to take place. An entirely new aircraft shape has been cleared to take off into California skies. At the end of last month, Long Beach-based JetZero announced that Pathfinder, its 1:8 scale “blended wing body” demonstrator plane, has been granted an FAA Airworthiness certificate and test flights are imminent.

Much more at link.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/jetzero-pathfinder-subscale-demonstrator/index.html

 

[Gori the Grey]

Oh, I want to say one more thing about the word juggernaut.

When it took up its general meaning, it really shifted in meaning. What made people talk about the Jagernot car was the cultural curiosity that people would throw themselves in front of it to be crushed. But when it took on a general meaning, the focus shifted to the vessel itself and how it can crush you regardless of whether you allow yourself to be crushed.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

JetZero: Groundbreaking ‘blended-wing’ demonstrator plane cleared to fly​

Blended wing aircraft could slash carbon emissions. This rendering shows a design by California-based JetZero, which aims to have a plane in service by 2030. Scroll through the gallery to see more.

Spoiler :

JetZero

[/URL]

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[/URL]

[/URL]

[/URL]

[/URL]

[/URL]

[/URL]

[/URL]

[/URL]

[/URL]

[/URL]

[/URL]

The next generation of greener planes​

1 of 15

CNN —
The basic design of commercial airplanes hasn’t changed much in the past 60 years. Modern airliners like the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 have the same general shape as the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8, which were built in the late 1950s and solidified the “tube and wing” form factor that is still in use today.
This is because commercial aviation prioritizes safety, favoring tried-and-tested solutions, and because other developments — in materials and engines, for example — mean the traditional design is still relevant.

However, a seismic shake-up is about to take place. An entirely new aircraft shape has been cleared to take off into California skies. At the end of last month, Long Beach-based JetZero announced that Pathfinder, its 1:8 scale “blended wing body” demonstrator plane, has been granted an FAA Airworthiness certificate and test flights are imminent.

Much more at link.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/jetzero-pathfinder-subscale-demonstrator/index.html

It has a better chance of being built than the Oblique Flying Wing which was being touted by Boeing about 20 years ago as the only viable supersonic passenger aircraft to replace Concorde.
The reason for the oblique setting is to reduce the effect of the shock wave which would normally cut across a conventional sweptback wing and reduce lift. In the oblique case the shock wave misses the leading edge.

One of the engineers visited the Applied Maths Department in Adelaide while I was there. He admitted that convincing the public that asymmetry was safe would be very difficult.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Flying wings of various sorts have been touted about since I was a kid many decades ago. Change is often hard when the cost of entry is high and access limited to only a few companies. Billions in venture capital nowadays makes it easier.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Flying wings of various sorts have been touted about since I was a kid many decades ago. Change is often hard when the cost of entry is high and access limited to only a few companies. Billions in venture capital nowadays makes it easier.

To be economically viable at supersonic speeds would require very large aircraft capable of seating many passengers. The venture capital is probably available, but it will require a long time before any returns, if any.

There are probably many other ventures e.g. genetics, biotech, new materials etc. with a shorter horizon and
better chances of success. The Saudi government has been recruiting a lot of overseas academics, and the number of papers coming out of their main university is increasing significantly. I'm not sure if the deal is for any patents to be the property of the government, but I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[r16]

you don't get permits from FAA or whatever that agency is called and you won't fly in the US and hence the world commercially . Musk has a space company because the US needs bulk launching capacity and much storied ASAT capability is now taken to be true . After repeated North Korean launches (which kinda sorta predate Musk and justifies the bulk launch of sensors and "mines" and so on) . Meaning no "angel investor" can ever replace Boeing or whatever .

 

[Akka]

TIL that an atomic clock on the Moon would 'lose' approx. 1 second every 50 years, compared to an atomic clock on Earth, due to the low gravity.

That's not just a theorical point, actually, we need to regularly recalibrate the clocks on satellites due to this or it would mess up with GPS.

 

[EgonSpengler]

That's not just a theorical point, actually, we need to regularly recalibrate the clocks on satellites due to this or it would mess up with GPS.

"[Goshdarn] atomic clocks!"

Spoiler :

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

That the founder of the Caliphate of Cordoba, Abd ar-Rahman III, was so conscious of his European features due to Umayyad intermarrying with Iberian princesses and concubines that he dyed his hair black to look more Arab.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

TIL that some viruses are extraordinarily complicated beasties!

Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life
New research has uncovered a social world of viruses full of cheating, cooperation and other intrigues,
suggesting that viruses make sense only as members of a community.
...
In fact, cheating can produce adaptations that look like cooperation.
One of Leeks’ favorite examples of this hidden conflict is the nanovirus, which infects plants such as parsley and fava beans. Nanoviruses replicate in an astonishing way. They have eight genes in total, but each viral particle has just one of the eight genes. Only when all nanovirus particles, each carrying one of the eight different genes, are infecting the same plant at once can they replicate. The plant cells make proteins from all eight genes, along with new copies of their genes, which then get packaged into new shells.

Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life | Quanta Magazine

New research has uncovered a social world of viruses full of cheating, cooperation and other intrigues, suggesting that viruses make sense only as members of a community.

www.quantamagazine.org

That's just bloody diabolical!