John Martellaro

On 31 July 2018, the planet Mars will be closer to Earth than it has been in 15 years. Technically, it’s called opposition, and the distance will be 35.7 million miles (57.6 million kilometers.) Look south in the late evening, west of the constellation Sagittarius, to see the dazzling red planet. Even a small telescope will bring out some detail, polar cap, etc. And check with your local planetarium for a special observing event. This NASA doc has the details.

This article at Digital Trends has details from Star Trek: Discovery season 2 debut. CBS released two photos at Comic-Con San Diego. Anson Mount (Hell on Wheels) joins the cast.

It’s called The Diderot Effect, and it explains modern consumerism, why you buy things you don’t need. It all started when we were told as kids that we just had to have the awesome decoder ring found in that special cereal box. Today, unless we’ve seen the latest superhero movie or have the latest iPhone, we are somehow less of a person. Our goods define our identity. This linked article provides some perspective on manipulated consumerism.

Page 2 of Particle Debris takes us to an exploration of the 8th generation Core CPUs used in the new MacBook Pros. Plus, the re-emergence of Spectre—and the continuing work on how to defend. Also, honoring Python’s Guido van Rossum.

We take a lot of photos. We upload them. But a study from UC Santa Cruz shows that photographs don’t actually present the truth of the moment: they actually distort it. The effect is called “cognitive offloading.” The linked article explains. “It turns out that photographing gives the photographer significantly less need to encode (i.e. we tend to put more mental stock, if you will, into the photograph that we just took rather than actually encoding the memory ourselves).” Sounds like vacationers need to spend more time gazing and less time photographing.

Lots have been written, both seriously and in jest, about whether our AIs spy on us. But why not just ask Siri? Will she lie? This light-hearted experiment has been tried, in the provided link, and the nature of the responses is interesting. Some day, Siri will be a lot smarter, but will the answer be just as blunt? Or more helpful? Right now, ::cough:: it seems more like the game of Eliza.

An iPhone 8 Plus, in the U.S., with 256 GB of storage goes for US$949. But the that’s the lowest price you’ll pay. Here’s an interesting chart that show how much it’ll cost in many other countries, in equivalent U.S. dollar.s. For example, those in Brazil will pay the equivalent of $1377.  Why? Import taxes.

In the northern hemisphere, at least. Yes, the Earth is farthest from the Sun, in its slightly elliptical orbit, in the northern hemisphere summer. And so it’s natural to ask why summer gets so warm. That’s a classic astronomy 101 question, and it’s nicely explained in this link at Gizmodo. (Image credit: NASA.) For more, see: “Aphelion Day 2018: Earth Is Farthest from the Sun Today.”

It’s summer. We’re outdoors at night more than other seasons. Then, when people think about becoming more familiar with the night sky, the various stars and constellations, they often think that a telescope is required. And while it’s true that good views of planets, nebulae and galaxies do require a telescope, there’s a lot one can learn by an organized effort with the naked-eye. In fact, one can argue that a good familiarity with the constellations is an important starting point for all things astronomical. This linked article has great information on exactly how to become a good naked-eye stargazer

Page 2 of Particle Debris points to a nifty article by Dan Moren about how the Apple TV 4K could be improved. These are fairly obvious enhancements, but remain unimplemented. John continues the discussion with a theory about why that’s so.

The Apple TV 4K has been shipping since September, 2017. Now there’s a new competitor, Amazon’s Fire TV Cube. One might think that a later design might be seriously better than the Apple TV 4K, but as this review demonstrates, the Fire TV Cube is a long way from achieving that. Apple’s mighty little black brick packs some real punch while “the Fire TV Cube is simply last year’s Fire TV combined with an Echo Dot.” This is a good review.