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    1. SpaceNews goes hard-core paywall

      As of July 1st, all articles are behind a paywall. This includes all historical articles (going back decades, apparently), including any and all InternetArchive copies -- so RIP every Wikipedia...

      As of July 1st, all articles are behind a paywall. This includes all historical articles (going back decades, apparently), including any and all InternetArchive copies -- so RIP every Wikipedia link that has ever referenced them as a source. A free-registration option gets you access to 3 articles per month. A proper subscription is $230/year.

      A freelance journalist who has been published with them in the past had this to say about it, which I thought was enlightening and, well, thoughtful.

      On SpaceNews going paywalled, and the broader disregard for archiving in journalism.

      I reviewed his stuff a bit, and I like his writing, so I added his RSS link to my feed (while simultaneously deleting my SpaceNews link), and on a whim--because he has his email right there on his "About" page, I emailed him to tell him that I liked his article and I just replaced SpaceNews with him.

      Like, an hour later, I received a response from him, reminding me that he focuses primarily on the Moon, and that he loves RSS and is happy to hear people still use it.

      And it was so refreshing to connect--almost directly--with an actual human being writing news.

      Just thought I'd share.

      Oh, I also want to comment on that price ... $230/year is--IMHO--wildly overpriced. But almost immediately, it also occurred to me that they probably lost more readership going from $0/year to $1/year, than going from $1 to $230 so, you know, business-wise, I suppose it's not exactly a horrible decision.

      But I'd like to hear other people's opinions on that price, too.

      19 votes
    2. Is a career change towards cybersecurity viable for someone with an accountancy background?

      Sorry if this isn't the best place to ask. IT and cybersecurity-focused communities over on Reddit aren't exactly the most welcoming places for such questions, and reading the r/ITCareerQuestions...

      Sorry if this isn't the best place to ask. IT and cybersecurity-focused communities over on Reddit aren't exactly the most welcoming places for such questions, and reading the r/ITCareerQuestions wiki has made me seriously question if I'm being sold false promises of working in a sector that actually has a low demand for workers. Then again, that wiki page seems more geared towards the US job market.

      Two weeks ago, I responded to an Instagram ad advertising cybersecurity courses, because the job market is horrible here in the UK right now, and after some setbacks with my ACCA studies, I am seriously considering just giving up on trying to get into chartered accountancy because that path is closing many more doors for me. A course advisor rang me asking about the reasons I showed interest in the ad, then we had a long discussion about any questions I had, what the sector is apparently like, etc.

      Some of the claims seem too good to be true, i.e. that it's an industry where you can afford to be picky, jobs outnumber people by almost 3 to 1, most jobs are remote, the provider boasts a 90%+ employment rate, I don't need programming experience, the most complex thing I'd be doing is running command prompt/powershell commands and scripts.

      The firm itself seems legitimate. They offer CompTIA, Microsoft, Cisco, AWS and EC-Council certifications, have good review scores on Trustpilot, are a registered training provider and limited company in the UK, and are supposedly an assured service provider with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC.) The courses they mentioned to me in their syllabus supposedly come to £4k and would take about six months.

      1. Am I right to be wary about what this training provider are offering?
      2. Do you require extensive programming knowledge or a computer science background to work in cybersecurity in any capacity? A friend with an IT background has told me that Python is useful in his field.
      3. Is the reality of IT and cybersecurity jobs in the UK (or in the West) far different from what has been painted to me?
      24 votes
    3. Piano key dimensions are a math puzzle

      Piano keys are familiar and easy enough to draw if you're not trying to be exact, but if you want label the dimensions with their exact measurements (like in a CAD drawing), it turns into a math...

      Piano keys are familiar and easy enough to draw if you're not trying to be exact, but if you want label the dimensions with their exact measurements (like in a CAD drawing), it turns into a math puzzle. The problem comes from the groups of two and three black keys.

      This article explains it like this:

      If you've ever looked closely at a piano keyboard you may have
      noticed that the widths of the white keys are not all the same
      at the back ends (where they pass between the black keys). Of
      course, if you think about it for a minute, it's clear they
      couldn't possibly all be the same width, assuming the black keys
      are all identical (with non-zero width) and the white keys all
      have equal widths at the front ends, because the only simultaneous
      solution of 3W=3w+2b and 4W=4w+3b is with b=0.

      To unpack that a bit: in that equation, 'W' is the width of each white key at the front (which should all be the same), 'w' is the width of a white key at the back, and 'b' is the width of a black key.) The first equation is for the group of two black keys (separating C, D, and E) and the second equation is for the three black keys separating F through B.

      Since it's mathematically impossible, a constraint needs to be relaxed. The article describes ways to make the white keys have slightly different widths at the back.

      If we set c=e=(W-5B/8) and a=b=d=f=g=(W-3B/4) we have a maximum
      discrepancy of only B/8, and quite a few actual pianos use this
      pattern as well. However, the absolute optimum arrangement is to
      set c=d=e=(W-2B/3) and f=g=a=b=(W-3B/4), which gives a maximum
      discrepancy of just B/12. This pattern is used on many keyboards,
      e.g. the Roland PC-100.

      When actually building a musical instrument (instead of just drawing the keyboard), there is a further constraint, described in this article:

      The black keys on a piano keyboard, instead of always being centered on the dividing line between the two white keys they lie between, are spaced so that the twelve keys which make up an octave are spaced equally as they enter the internal mechanism of the instrument.

      But this means that the "key caps" for the white keys should be slightly off-center compared to whatever rod or lever they're attached to. The author speculates about how to divide this up using various units.

      (They seem quite annoying to 3D print.)

      19 votes
    4. Share the contents of an old file you've got lying around

      Share some digital clutter from one of your hard drives -- something from a LONG time ago. For example: a to-do list, poetry, a script you wrote, a PowerPoint presentation, etc. Give us the date...

      Share some digital clutter from one of your hard drives -- something from a LONG time ago. For example: a to-do list, poetry, a script you wrote, a PowerPoint presentation, etc.

      Give us the date the file was created/modified.

      And, if you so choose, give us context on the file (but if you'd rather let it speak for itself, feel free!).

      41 votes