→ String theory explained – what is the true nature of reality? #

A user-friendly explanation of string theory.

The site has been rebranded to “Dynamically Static”. This will be the final change in domain name.

→ Scientists used atomic clock to measure the height of a mountain #

Ultimately, as the accuracy of the portable clock continues to get better, time could be used to resolve height differences of just 1 centimeter, the study authors said.

This is a great start. Looking forward for the applications in navigation and engineering.

I’ve been fiddling around with Hugo and decided to migrate the site from Jekyll. I also transferred the site to Netlify from GitLab and so far, the experience has been great. I’m still familiarizing with Hugo and making some customizations. This should be fun.

→ Fresh evidence for new physics in the universe #

Astronomers have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to make the most precise measurements of the expansion rate of the universe since it was first calculated nearly a century ago. Intriguingly, the results are forcing astronomers to consider that they may be seeing evidence of something unexpected at work in the universe.

→ Roger Pink: an open letter to an engineering student #

“Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.” - Isaac Asimov

→ Is ASCII art dead? #

ASCII art has been entertaining as always. It will always find it’s way attracting people.

→ Scientists link photons, creating new form of light #

But how do the photons get together? The physicists’ theoretical model suggests that as a single photon moves through the cloud of rubidium, it hops from one atom to another, “like a bee flitting between flowers,” the press release explains. One photon can briefly bind to an atom, forming a hybrid photon-atom or polariton. If two of these polaritons meet in the cloud, they interact. When they reach the edge of the cloud, the atoms stay behind and the photons sail forward, still bound together. Add more photons and same phenomenon gives rise to triplets.

→ Blogging like a hacker #

Tom Preston-Werner:

I love writing. I get a kick out of sharing my thoughts with others. The act of transforming ideas into words is an amazingly efficient way to solidify and refine your thoughts about a given topic. But as much as I enjoy blogging, I seem to be stuck in a cycle of quitting and starting over. Before starting the current iteration, I resolved to do some introspection to determine the factors that were leading to this destructive pattern.

I just stumbled from this post from 2008 which sparks the creation of Jekyll. Approching blogging from a software development perspective turned out a very great idea.

The article is a good read.

→ GitLab Pages security issue in custom domains #

When a user adds a custom domain to their Pages site, no validation was being performed to ensure the domain was owned by that user. This issue allows an attacker to discover DNS records already pointing to the GitLab Page IP address which haven’t been claimed and potentially hijack them. This issue impacts all users who have created and then deleted custom domains using GitLab Pages, but still have the DNS records active.

As of now, adding custom domains is disabled. Implementing the validation mechanism for this is really great for security and assures the owner of the domain.