Daily News Stuff 4 October 2026

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East during the spring and west during the fall: You know you're in for a ride when you read an article that includes the sentence Most magnets have two poles: north and south. (Phys.org)

Most?

Most.

They've found a new type of magnetic material that has eight poles.

Tech News

Do you miss the days when you could just switch a computer on and it would instantly come up with the BASIC prompt? Miss them no more. (ThoreauBasic)

It can run as a regular Windows app, but can also boot directly from BIOS.
Is everyone at OpenAI insane? (Tech Crunch)

Another "safety" employee has left the company, saying it needs to be run "like nuclear-power plants or busy airports, with layers of redundancy and careful, time-consuming planning, so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster."

But that's missing the point. If you pour toxic waste into a reservoir of drinking water, you go to jail.
It being spring and all, I made my pilgrimage to the hardware store's gardening section to see what native plants they had on offer. I needed to replace the boronia that died over winter and start finding new plants to substitute those lost to wallaby predation.

Came back with a boronia already in flower, a kangaroo paw likewise, another westringia to complement the one I planted this time last year which is absolutely thriving, and an aca-cia.

Musical Interlude

Disclaimer: Ping.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 w00t

Posted by: m at October 04, 2026 04:21 AM (odBC9)

2 Is everyone at OpenAI insane? (Tech Crunch)

This headline is breaking Betteridge's law of headlines.

(Many such cases.)

Posted by: m at October 04, 2026 04:24 AM (odBC9)

3
You would think a phys.org writer would know about multipolar expansions and such. That's sort of Physics 101 (well, more like Physics 301 really).

The field of even a simple bar magnet is not a pure exact dipole. It has small, but non-zero higher order moments.

What they've found is some interesting crystal structure that has a prime octupole configuration.

Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at October 04, 2026 04:25 AM (w6EFb)

4 Mornin'

Posted by: Puddleglum at work at October 04, 2026 04:29 AM (AdHga)

5 Some magnets have no poles, man.....

(takes deep drag on a joint)

Think about it.....

Posted by: Puddleglum at work at October 04, 2026 04:30 AM (AdHga)

6 from the magnetic poles article:

"researchers are increasingly uncovering more complex forms of magnetism"

Next study topic: animal magnetism

Posted by: m at October 04, 2026 04:42 AM (odBC9)

7 Why the prefix octu- (instead of octo-)?

di-pole
octu-pole

I'm looking for lists of scientific number prefixes online.

Posted by: m at October 04, 2026 04:44 AM (odBC9)

8 >> Why the prefix octu- (instead of octo-)?

It used to be octopole, but they decided it should be octupole to match quadrupole. The 'u' rather than 'a' or 'i' comes from the Latin rules.

Multipole moments go by powers of 2. Monopole, dipole, quadrupole, octupole, and then 16-pole, or a hexadecapole. Past that, you use just N-pole.

32- and 64- would technically be triacontadipole and tetrahexacontapole. Or two other words that mean the same thing depending on how you want to put together that Latin.

Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at October 04, 2026 04:53 AM (w6EFb)

9 G'Day everyone
Guess its time to get up

Posted by: Skip at October 04, 2026 04:56 AM (Ia/+0)

10 8 >> Why the prefix octu- (instead of octo-)?

It used to be octopole, but they decided it should be octupole to match quadrupole. The 'u' rather than 'a' or 'i' comes from the Latin rules.

Multipole moments go by powers of 2. Monopole, dipole, quadrupole, octupole, and then 16-pole, or a hexadecapole. Past that, you use just N-pole.

32- and 64- would technically be triacontadipole and tetrahexacontapole. Or two other words that mean the same thing depending on how you want to put together that Latin.
Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at October 04, 2026 04:53 AM (w6EFb)

Thanks, publius!

Posted by: m at October 04, 2026 04:57 AM (odBC9)

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