I wanted to buy a book from the bookstore of the Italian Alpine Club but I could not do it using Linux and Firefox. I made a complaint and they wrote me that they do not support Linux, so I had to use my Windows 10 PC. I ordered the book, but I wrote them that Amazon, with a much bigger store to manage is accepting my Linux orders and payments via credit card. So Microsoft is dominating even here.
Tullio

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E' morto Riccardo Giacconi, premio Nobel per la fisica nel 2002. Nel 1970 partecipo' al lancio del satellite "Uhuru" che significa Liberta' in Swahili dalla piattaforma San Marco, al largo di Malindi in Kenia. Il satellite scopri' la sorgente celeste in raggi X Scorpius X1 e altre 339 sorgenti tra cui Cygnus-X1. Tradusse in inglese il libro di Paolo Maffei "I mostri del cielo" per la MIT Press, uno dei pochi libri scientifici tradotti dall'italiano in inglese. Un precedente libro di Maffei, "Al di la' della Luna" era stato tradotto dal padre gesuita O'Connell, direttore della Specola Vaticana di Castel Gandolfo. Ma quando lesse le bozze in colonna del libro voleva ritirare la firma, in quanto gli editors americani avevano tradotto il suo perfetto inglese in americano. Facemmo fatica a convincerlo a firmare.
Tullio

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Parallel slaom ladies at St.Moritz
1 Mikaela Shriffin again
2 Petra Vlhova Slovakia
3 Wendy Holdener Switzerland
All races in Val d'Isere blocked by high winds
At Beitostolen all cross country relays, men and ladies, won by Norway, as usual.

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SuperG ladies at St Moritz
1 Mikaela Shriffin USA again
2 Lara Gut-Behrami Switzerland
3 Tina Weirather Liechtenstein
4 Ragnhild Mowinckel Norway

Again Therese Johaug wins the 15 km cross country at Beitostolen, Norway, her fourth victory this year. A cross country Shriffin. Sjur Roethe wins again the 30 km men.

Giantg Slalom men Val d'Isere
1 Marcel Hirscher Austria
2 Henrik Kristoffersen Norway
3 Matts Olsson Sweden

8 Riccardo Tonetti

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Today is San Nicolo' , the day Trieste kids expect their gifts. Now San Nicolo' is Sankt Niklaus in German, who became Santa Claus in English, called Babbo Natale in Italy. Merry Christmas to all!
Tullio

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Races in Val d'Isere have been canceled because of lack of snow. Maybe Sankt Moritz is in a better condition.

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Beaver Creek Giant Slalom men
1 Stefan Luitz Germany
2 Marcel Hirscher Austria
3 Thomas Tumler Switzerland
Tumler had start number 48 and was 21th after the first run

Lake Louise Canada SuperG ladies
1 Mikaela Shriffin USA
2 Ragnhild Mowinckel Norway
3 Viktoria Rebensburg Germany
46th victory in World Cup for Mikaela 23 years old

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Cross country skiing. Norway, Norway as always...
Watched Biathlon mixed relay instead. Sweden and the USA fell in the first slope after about 4 minutes...
France the winner.

LilleHammer, Norway
Therese Johaug, Norway, and Didrik Tonseth,Norway win again on 10 km and 15 km cross country races classic style.

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SuperG at Beaver Creek,USA
1 Max Franz Austria
2 Mauro Caviezel Switzerland
3 Alexander Aamodt Kilde, Norway, Aksel Lund Svindal, Norway, Dominik Paris, Italia

Downhill on Friday at Beaver Creek
1 Beat Feuz Switzerland
2 Mauro Caviezel Switzerland
3 Aksel Lund Svindal Norway

Downhill women at Lake Louise, Canada
1 Nicole Schmidhofer Austria
2 Michelle Gisin Switzerland
3 Kira Weidle, Germany
Mikaela Shriffin is good ninth, gaining points in downhill
No broadcast on Italian RAI TV

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I am crunching Fermi data from Einstein@home but, as usual, they don't tell us if our crunching has brought any result.

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English version that also mention 4x10^84 photons. (Swedish SVT does that as well).
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/11/scientists-calculate-how-much-starlight
“The first billion years of our universe’s history are a very interesting epoch that has not yet been probed by current satellites. Our measurement allows us to peek inside it. Perhaps one day we will find a way to look all the way back to the Big Bang. This is our ultimate goal,” Ajello concluded in the statement
And all them was created about 10^-35 seconds after the Bing Bang.
Will they exist forever? Perhaps not if they do have a rest mess as some scientists says.
10^–18 eV is apparently the upper limit and if so a photon's life length should be a billion billion years.

Since the memory upgrade Atlas@home is running on eight cores of the Ryzen 5 1400,using 4.64 GB RAM.

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At Lillehammer, Norway, Sjur Roethe and Therese Johaug, all Norwegians, win respectively the 15 km and 10 km cross country freestyle. Fourth is Dario Coiogna, Switzerland.

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I've read of a measure made by an Italian scientist and published in "Science" magazine. The number of photons in the Universe should be a 4 followed by 84 zeroes. This through the Large Area Telescope on the Fermi gamma ray satellite. I am waiting for a confirmation, since the news appeared on La Repubblica paper.
Tullio

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Speaking of Insight and wordgames.
Insight was guided by the Italian 'bussolà’, a space tracker built by Italian company Leonardo (formerly Finmeccanica.)
Now I always think 'bussolà’ is a pizza, not a compass.
No, here we even think 'bussolà’ is a bus company called "Buss Ola" owned by Ola.
Here is a pic of his buss:)

Speaking of NASA Insight probe’s successful landing.
Un ammartaggio perfetto:)

https://www.thelocal.it/20181128/italian-word-of-the-day-ammartaggio

I have installed 8 GB more on my new HP PC. It came with only 8 GB RAM and i bought a 8 GB RAM module from Ballistix. Alas, when I tried to install it the PC started whining and I had to stop. Then I figured it had a 2400 MHz frequency, while the module installed by HP had 2133 frequency. So I surfed the Web until I found an offer by TIMETEC of two 4 GB modules at 2133 MHz. Today they arrived and I installed them, so the PC is now running two Atlas@home tasks each using 4 cores of the Ryzen 5 1400 CPU.
Tullio

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Slalom Ladies at Killington, Vermont, USA
1 Mikaela Shriffin USA
2 Petra Vlhova Slovakia
3 Frida Hansdotter Sweden

SuperG men at Lake Louise
1 Kjetil Jansrud Norway
2 Vincent Kriechmayr Austria
3 Mauro Caviezel Switzerland
4 Hannes Reichelt Austria
5 Aksel Lund Svindal Norway
6 Mathias Mayer Austria
7 Adrien Theaux France
8 A.S. Seiersted Norway

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GP Yas Marina, Abu Dhabi
1 Lewsi Hamilton Mercedes
2 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari
3 Max Verstappen Red Bull
Season ends

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