Damn, I was hoping this bridge would stay in its current limbo state where it's open to pedestrians and bikes but closed to vehicles. It's so much nicer not having a five lane stroad that lets cars go 50mph into a park, and instead having a pseudo-community space.
Maybe there were thinking about it in terms of disinhibition?
A --| B --| C
Where `A` inhibits `B` which inhibits `C`. So, while the repressor `A` is present, `C` will be transcribed. I'd imagine that simple repression is probably more common than disinhibition in gene networks, but idk.
But, it's the DM that would provide the heat/glow for the star:
> If the DM particles are their own antiparticles, then their annihilation provides a heat source that stops the collapse of the clouds and in fact produces a different type of star, a Dark Star, in thermal and hydrostatic equilibrium.
> Three key ingredients are required for the formation of DSs:
> 1) sufficient DM density
> 2) DM annihilation products become trapped inside the star
> 3) the DM heating rate beats the cooling rate of the collapsing cloud.
> If the DM particles are their own antiparticles, then their annihilation provides a heat source
How much if this is speculation? Also, do other particles behave like this?
I didn't realise particles could be their own antiparticles, but it transpires that e.g. photons are, because all photons are neutral, not charged somehow.
However, even though a proton is its own antiparticles, two photons do not annihilate, right?
Yes, as you note, photons are their own antiparticles.
The maths doesn't have a preferred time direction, so two photons can annihilate into an electron-positron pair.
I'm not sure if this has actually been observed given how hard it is. That said, my favourite type of supernova is caused by pair creation, though I don't know the proportion of that which comes from 2-photon interactions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair-instability_supernova
There's also Majorna particles, but as I understand it the only known particles that are definitely Majornas are also quasiparticles:
Notably it does bound the energy of gamma rays over long distances (as the higher the energy the more likely it will annihilate with other photons along the way.)
The wikipedia article on the Breit-Wheeler process has some history of the work on experimental observations, although I don't know how accurate or up to date it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breit–Wheeler_process
> The maths doesn't have a preferred time direction, so two photons can annihilate into an electron-positron pair.
But only if their energy is high enough. So by that reckoning, photons below 511 keV don't have antiparticles, and those above it do. That's pretty weird. So maybe it's better to say that photons aren't really their own antiparticle, but they might theoretically destroy each other in some rare circumstances.
Nobody is sure, but some people think that neutrinos are they own antiparticle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino#Majorana_mass I never liked that theory, but some people that know more than me about particle physics liked it.
There were some experiment using atoms that decay ejecting two neutrinos, and hopping that in some case the two neutrinos will annihilate each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrinoless_double_beta_decay . IIRC, none of the experiments found the strange annihilation, so perhaps neutrinos are not their own antiparticle :) .
> I believe moderators on Reddit like to think that they're that important and integral to the site functioning smoothly, but I think the reality is upvoting/downvoting/reporting works perfectly fine in nearly every subreddit.
This seems very naive, since afaik the mods also deal (thru 3rd party apps or extensions) with the large amount of spam that reddit gets. And, of course, who is going to deal with those reports?
I mean, sure, Reddit could close everything but the top 20 or 30 most popular subreddits, hire some offshored mods, and start the content moderation speedrun[1] anew. But, why? And how bad will it get before the IPO? Reddit has spent the past two decades washing their hands of any moderation tasks, as their first party mod tools show. Starting now, with a pissed off power user base, seems suicidal.
> Sad that I had hoped some exec at Nintendo would veto this approach as "Not Nintendo" rather than choosing to tarnish the brand and take the money, like Apple did.
They did, originally. They released a $10, no microtransactions Mario game (Super Mario Run) in 2016. The general consensus is that the game did not live up to Nintendo's commercial expectations[1], and I think that's true. Nintendo entirely switched to the more standard App Store game model for its later mobile titles, and they print money.
As for "tarnishing the brand," Nintendo still hasn't really put a "full title" on mobile, with the maybe possible exception of Mario Kart. It feels like they are still keeping their distance, but who knows what would have happened if the Switch sales were more like the Wii U than the Wii.
Super mario run is very good (teaches you the mechanics well, has ramping difficulty, keeps things fresh with challenges, etc) and well themed, it's hardy a "generic run game".
Don't know about anyone else, but the reason I never bought Super Mario Run was because it required a constant internet connection, AND you had to create an account with Nintendo. (At the time, I had an iPod Touch rather than a phone with a cell connection, and usually kept Wi-Fi turned off to save battery, so I only played games that could run offline. So my situation was probably not common, but Nintendo's choices here still feel a bit invasive.)
Yep, and it refused to run if your phone was rooted. A game refusing to run. And of course with no internet connection it wouldn't work so you couldn't play while you were camping even though the entire gameplay was offline. And the moment a new version was released you had to download/install it otherhwise the game would refuse to run, even if you were on wifi 5 minutes earlier and now on mobile data which is super expensive.
They let their extreme love for DRM and proprietariness completely overwhelm the user experience. But instead of asking themselves if that's why it didn't sell well, they of course conclude that they weren't making money because they weren't being scummy enough.
I bought Mario Run and even with the absurd restrictions I enjoyed it and probably would have bought more of their games if they'd continued. Quite the disapointment.
It's not directly Nintendo, but Pokemon Go is adjacent and is still an absolute cash cow loaded with mobile cancer. Pushing back against that kind of moneymaking potential is quixotic in any corporation.
People have no idea how strong Nintendo Marketing(aka brainwashing) is. Pokemon is such a solid brand because we used to watch a 30 minute commercial every Saturday for it.
At what point is Nintendo's ability to manipulate us with their corporate mascots/IP a type of mental illness or cause for public concern?
Yes, I think Nintendo believed they really needed to compete in the mobile space but also didn't want to cannibalize game purchases on their console platforms. Software is their profit center but exclusivity to their hardware gives them much greater control. It also let's them act as a toll collector for anyone else who wants to publish on their platform.
None of this is new information, but a precursor to this point: Nintendo, strategically, couldn't afford (or at least wasn't willing to risk) to develop mobile content on par with the quality of their proprietary hw platforms. Super Mario Run had to be a sub-par experience compared to what was obtainable on their own platform to avoid this risk. Yet they still released a sub-par experience at what, for mobile, was a high premium price of $10. It was doomed to fail from the outset.
They might have maximized the popularity of Mario Run by coming out with a $2-$3 price tag and marketing campaign that essentially gave the message of "Hey this is just a fun little thing we made, hope you enjoy" but that price tag would risk anchoring consumer expectations of the cost of actual premium Nintendo content to a lower benchmark: "Why is Nintendo charging me $40 for New Super Mario Bros. 2 when a similar game (in visual aesthetics only, but still) only costs $3? Ripoff!"
Or at least that might have been their fear at the time. Mario Run appear a in the year prior to the Switch and after the mediocre reception of the Wii U.
The confusing thing to me is that, even after the Switch's success demonstrated the mobile App Store platforms didn't need to be an existential threat, they still went ahead with a freemium lootbox game, or really any freemium game. It's like their still fighting the previous war. Now the emerging mobile war surrounds gaming services that can provide a full console or PC experience on just about any mobile device. I'll lump the Steam Deck in there as part of that war since Steam has demonstrated that really avid gamers are willing to pay to 1) have access to their existing deep library of games and 2) not have to deal with the downsides of streaming. A more casual gamer can get a decent experience streaming w/ Game Pass for $15/month on their phone and/or tablet, a more dedicated gamer might still do that for convenience but can also go for the Deck (or potential competitors) at a price near that of traditional consoles, etc.
There's lots of dust still in the air here that has yet to settle, but Nintendo has yet to show their strategy for this next era of gaming while their current hardware is aging and their gaming service is not only restricted to that hardware but also limited mostly to older games from previous gen consoles.
Well, the complaint in the article is that the idiomatic way is kind of inscrutable. I'm more than willing to let pragmatism win in those cases, since so many languages make this pattern a nuisance instead of providing a simple "enumerate this array with index" out-of-the-box as part of the standard library. IIRC you have to roll your own in Java, C#, and Powershell.
> However, an additional control was undertaken where colour contrast thresholds were measured in the morning and then re-measured 3 h later without exposure to 670 nm. This comprised of ten subjects (six Females and four males). To determine if there were significant shifts in colour contrast sensitivities across the day that were independent of 670 nm and might undermine outcome measures for their exposure, six subjects were repeatedly tested at 0, + 3, + 6 and + 9 h (four Females and two Males).
Figure 2 shows the (lack of) effect in the no-light control group at T0 and T+3hrs. Interestingly, they don't compare to baseline like in figure 1 with the AM light group. However, Figure 4 does show a lack of training effect when repeating the same test 4 times throughout the day within the same subject.
(Also, interesting that your first response to a paper in Nature is that they don't have a control group...)
Edit: And presumably they took the design of their study into account when calculating their statistics (https://www.stat.cmu.edu/~hseltman/309/Book/chapter14.pdf). Their methods seem to imply that, but I'm not familiar with it so I'll pray the reviewers checked for that lol.
As another not-physicist who is interested in physics, I've found the articles/explainers at Of Particular Significance very helpful. There are a few on particle decay, and I think that these two provide a longer answer to your questions:
