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Friday, August 14, 2020

Betelgeuse Supernova Hype is Cooled Down

Betelgeuse won't explode into a supernova as previously speculated. NASA:
Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are showing that the unexpected dimming of the supergiant star Betelgeuse was most likely caused by an immense amount of hot material ejected into space, forming a dust cloud that blocked starlight coming from Betelgeuse's surface.

Hubble researchers suggest that the dust cloud formed when superhot plasma unleashed from an upwelling of a large convection cell on the star's surface passed through the hot atmosphere to the colder outer layers, where it cooled and formed dust grains. The resulting dust cloud blocked light from about a quarter of the star's surface, beginning in late 2019. By April 2020, the star returned to normal brightness.
It would have been interesting to see a supernova. Betelgeuse will eventually explode as a supernova, due that it is an old expanding red star. When its dimming became visible to the naked eye, all the supernova speculation rose. It now, unfortunately dims.

The paper on Betelgeuse's dust cloud and dimming can be found at The Astrophysical Journal .

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Reverse Engineering Google News Links for RSS Feeds

I was about to add an RSS feed for Reuters, but they decided to stop supporting it. Either way, I stumbled upon a procedure and some tools to scrap RSS feeds from Google News. Artem Bugara:
Base URL: https://news.google.com/rss/search
Add up the following to the url.
Query Parameter: q=when:24h+allinurl:reuters.com
That’s how you let Google know what you need.

when parameter is responsible of fetching the last X hours articles

allinurl parameter restricts search results to documents that contain all of the query words in the document URL


Country and language: ceid=US:en

If you need a Reuters feed from another country then just change the URL to one with a subdomain, and the country & language parameter.
Now, lets dive into some examples.

https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=when:24h+allinurl:reuters.com&ceid=US:en&hl=en-US&gl=US

https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=when:24h+allinurl:ru.reuters.com&hl=ru&gl=RU&ceid=RU:ru

https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=when:24h+allinurl:nacion.com&hl=es-419&gl=US&ceid=US:es-419

Perhaps the previous examples give a better notion on the given construction.

This procedure is pretty useful since many popular platforms that once supported RSS have stopped supporting it by mere conceit. RSS gives vast possibilities for delivering information, but it seems these publishers (like Reuters) have gotten greedy enough to delete their feeds in order to feed income by advertising or tracking. Now they publish their 'feeds' on their social media channels, in detriment of privacy and online safety.


By using RSS, you protect your privacy on the web, and optimize the information you obtain from the internet in a mailbox fashion.

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Trump Imposes Tariffs Yet Again a Month After Signing T-MEC

Kevin Breuniger and Christina Wilkie, CNBC:
President Donald Trump said he signed a proclamation Thursday to reimpose 10% tariffs on aluminum imports from Canada that had been suspended more than a year earlier.

"Canada was taking advantage of us, as usual," Trump said during a lengthy, campaign-style speech at a Whirlpool manufacturing plant in Ohio.
What is most shocking is that just a month ago, T-MEC was signed. Yet, he decides to resume tariffs.