Depends what field of astronomy you work on. The seasons are a product of the specific orbital dynamics of Earth - and only Earth. They're not generalizable to any other planet, and they only matter to planets in the first place provided the planet has sufficient tilt or the orbital plane is suitably inclined (but not so much as to be non-sensical - i.e. Uranus).
They also only matter really if you're studying planetary atmospheres/surface conditions.
Which requires huge amounts of kinetic energy to bring nucleons close enough together to fuse. Which in turn requires electromagnetism to imbue sufficient energy for them to do so.
That is what I thought of too, but in this case neuroscientists agree with him. If you read the article:
But over time, in fits and starts, Bak’s radical argument has grown into a legitimate scientific discipline. Now, about 150 scientists worldwide investigate so-called “critical” phenomena in the brain, the topic of at least three focused workshops in 2013 alone.
Just goes to show that xkcd is not the answer to everything.
Except notice how the field is gaining complexity? So it's clearly not that simple. It might end up being right, but the final product is not going to end up adding a lot of complexity back in.
More importantly, whether the climate changes doesn't really matter when you have a scattered population in the millions, which is reasonably nomadic with no long term infrastructure.
We have today a population that will be 9 billion or so (the expected stabilization level in 2020), with vast static infrastructure requirements to support it, in highly unmobile cities.
It takes 100+ years of social policy to relocate people away from the coast due to highly predictable natural forces (erosion retreat policies for beachfront areas for example). We absolutely can't afford to move whole cities on that timespan, nor put up adequate retaining walls. And that's just considering the coastal flooding/weather change issue. It's not diving into fisheries damage, marine ecology changes, drought and inland rain changes etc.
For instance, not voting for either of the two main parties, joining protests, getting more involved in local politics, etc. A few people can't do it alone. Once most people realize that the two main parties are full of shit and stop supporting them, then things can start to change.
Ahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
So, to be clear: literally never.
See, when people complain that nothing ever changes, it would help if they then suggested ideas which didn't show that they have a complete inability to understand how or why things are the way they are in the first place.
For one thing, voting third party on the presidential/congressional level is completely worthless if you can't win local or state elections. But of course, if you could do that, then you'd have a largish party which would have internal politics and negotiations of its own, at which point it would be functionally a lot easier to simply run under an existing banner and negotiate for your ideas from within. But all of this would involve actually demonstrating some social and political acumen.
Commercial hardware assembly is hard - not to mention that since you're selling something you take on a bunch of liability as far as product quality goes regardless.
Compressing the H264 most people are pulling down over it? Not going to happen. Unless you mean upping the symbol rate (think that's the right term) for more efficient coding. In which case, well, we're still being pretty damn efficient.
Well that's the idea of working around the hydrogen. You offset the hydrogen cells so they're expendable and under heat release the gas quickly, away from the turbine. The parachute gets enough aerodynamics so when it falls it acts like a drogue and pulls itself above the turbine before deploying.
True. Although in terms of long term hibernation, I suspect getting permits for that type of research would be easy - we already have a euthanasia movement principally concerned with people who are in chronic pain from terminal illnesses, in some cases at a fairly young age.
I suspect any of them would be very happy to take a long shot gamble on long-term hibernation until their condition could be cured. The issue is, scientifically there's little evidence we can yet do that.
These are unmanned. So even if a tiny fraction burn up (due to lightning or whatever), I don't see how that would be much of a problem. Hydrogen burns very quickly, so would be consumed before it hit the ground. Just make sure they are tethered so they don't fall on a populated area.
Just add a parachute pack lashed to the bottom. The balloon burns, the weight causes the parachute to rotate to above the falling structure and an altimeter deploys the parachute before it hits the ground.
You could make this pretty reliable if you separate the hydrogen lifting cells from the turbine/parachute system so an incineration would just involve attaching new balloons and sending the whole thing back up.
Where? Where is the profit from trying to do automated analysis? And why would only Facebook do this, as opposed to say, Google, who have their OS and half the planets smartphones, all of which have cameras pointed multiple directions? Or Apple, or Microsoft for that matter (already have the Kinect)? What about Samsung and others who sell webcam equipped Smart TVs? Literally all those things have far broader markets, looking at a far more useful context, then the Oculus Rift's positional head tracker does.
And how are they going to do it? Computer vision is a hard problem. Are they going to stream video to Facebook servers, or send a constant stream of patches to max out your PCs cores trying to do...what exactly? The internet is full of webcam shots of people - there isn't that much in the background behind them that's of any possible use to a marketer.
Every possible angle of this line of thought is conspiracy-theorist insane.
So literal mind control is a step too far but you think someone could get away with video surveillance of your home? Why exactly do you think Facebook would do this, but Google or Apple aren't with your cellphone, or Logitech with your desktop PC?
Yeah its a big mistake to think that those things didn't take off because people don't want them. They didn't take off because they don't work well. When you're a kid you want new stuff because you have time to play with new stuff. When you're an adult, you have to start shrinking your domain of things you "plan to work on" since you simply don't have the time.
We use RFID chips all over the place to unlock stuff - been to a hotel lately? The problem is putting a decent electric deadbolt on your door at home costs about 3x as much as a regular one, and leaves you with the problem of how to get power in and out of the door frame, and what to do if the power goes out. Voice control is the same - it doesn't work well. And as for credit cards? I have an app on my phone which shows me my balance at a glance. That future happened - just it happens on the general purpose device, not some custom and expensive bit of tech.
Unlike everything else Facebook buys, Oculus sells a physical item and intends to do so in a way that makes a profit. The users are the customers, not the product, and pay them directly - which eliminates all the usual need for monetization tricks which give everything else such a bad taste.
Because doing video image analysis of millions of peoples walls is going to yield *so much data* compared to now, where they upload what they're doing, who they're with, and where they are in near realtime voluntarily.
Are you also worried they'll put transmagnetic stimulation coils into the headset and use it trigger positive feedback when you look at a sponsored product in game? Because that is literally more likely then your scenario.
I'm sorry, but what information do you think Facebook could possibly collect from an Oculus Rift device that they couldn't get from say, your Facebook account, or the wider public internet?
Except that falls down entirely when it comes to patents for aesthetics and user interfaces - in which case, the existence of a prop depicting the interface, or someone describing it in fiction, has exactly as much standing as it's implementation. The idea was clearly out there - but it was not pursued until a later time.
If the argument is "oh but it wasn't technically feasible before now" well, that's still a very different patent defense. But it doesn't accomplish the goals of the usual litigants so no one really bothers with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Early mornings and working on a few things at once :)
Depends what field of astronomy you work on. The seasons are a product of the specific orbital dynamics of Earth - and only Earth. They're not generalizable to any other planet, and they only matter to planets in the first place provided the planet has sufficient tilt or the orbital plane is suitably inclined (but not so much as to be non-sensical - i.e. Uranus).
They also only matter really if you're studying planetary atmospheres/surface conditions.
Which requires huge amounts of kinetic energy to bring nucleons close enough together to fuse. Which in turn requires electromagnetism to imbue sufficient energy for them to do so.
That is what I thought of too, but in this case neuroscientists agree with him. If you read the article:
But over time, in fits and starts, Bak’s radical argument has grown into a legitimate scientific discipline. Now, about 150 scientists worldwide investigate so-called “critical” phenomena in the brain, the topic of at least three focused workshops in 2013 alone.
Just goes to show that xkcd is not the answer to everything.
Except notice how the field is gaining complexity? So it's clearly not that simple. It might end up being right, but the final product is not going to end up adding a lot of complexity back in.
More importantly, whether the climate changes doesn't really matter when you have a scattered population in the millions, which is reasonably nomadic with no long term infrastructure.
We have today a population that will be 9 billion or so (the expected stabilization level in 2020), with vast static infrastructure requirements to support it, in highly unmobile cities.
It takes 100+ years of social policy to relocate people away from the coast due to highly predictable natural forces (erosion retreat policies for beachfront areas for example). We absolutely can't afford to move whole cities on that timespan, nor put up adequate retaining walls. And that's just considering the coastal flooding/weather change issue. It's not diving into fisheries damage, marine ecology changes, drought and inland rain changes etc.
For instance, not voting for either of the two main parties, joining protests, getting more involved in local politics, etc. A few people can't do it alone. Once most people realize that the two main parties are full of shit and stop supporting them, then things can start to change.
Ahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
So, to be clear: literally never.
See, when people complain that nothing ever changes, it would help if they then suggested ideas which didn't show that they have a complete inability to understand how or why things are the way they are in the first place.
For one thing, voting third party on the presidential/congressional level is completely worthless if you can't win local or state elections. But of course, if you could do that, then you'd have a largish party which would have internal politics and negotiations of its own, at which point it would be functionally a lot easier to simply run under an existing banner and negotiate for your ideas from within. But all of this would involve actually demonstrating some social and political acumen.
Pro-tip: to someone else, so are you.
The reality is people are really stupid when they go outside their field of expertise. Some people have a lot fewer of these then others.
Commercial hardware assembly is hard - not to mention that since you're selling something you take on a bunch of liability as far as product quality goes regardless.
Humans haven't existed for 20 million years.
Compressing the H264 most people are pulling down over it? Not going to happen. Unless you mean upping the symbol rate (think that's the right term) for more efficient coding. In which case, well, we're still being pretty damn efficient.
Well that's the idea of working around the hydrogen. You offset the hydrogen cells so they're expendable and under heat release the gas quickly, away from the turbine. The parachute gets enough aerodynamics so when it falls it acts like a drogue and pulls itself above the turbine before deploying.
True. Although in terms of long term hibernation, I suspect getting permits for that type of research would be easy - we already have a euthanasia movement principally concerned with people who are in chronic pain from terminal illnesses, in some cases at a fairly young age.
I suspect any of them would be very happy to take a long shot gamble on long-term hibernation until their condition could be cured. The issue is, scientifically there's little evidence we can yet do that.
Up high in the atmosphere you could easily harvest enough water from the air to keep the thing self-sufficient.
While Hydrogen is significantly more dangerous ...
These are unmanned. So even if a tiny fraction burn up (due to lightning or whatever), I don't see how that would be much of a problem. Hydrogen burns very quickly, so would be consumed before it hit the ground. Just make sure they are tethered so they don't fall on a populated area.
Just add a parachute pack lashed to the bottom. The balloon burns, the weight causes the parachute to rotate to above the falling structure and an altimeter deploys the parachute before it hits the ground.
You could make this pretty reliable if you separate the hydrogen lifting cells from the turbine/parachute system so an incineration would just involve attaching new balloons and sending the whole thing back up.
It's not "frozen" - it's cold. The whole point of the technique is to minimize ice-crystal formation, which is what does a lot of the damage.
Facebook sells you because you use their product for free.
If you've paid for it directly, then you actually are the customer.
Where? Where is the profit from trying to do automated analysis? And why would only Facebook do this, as opposed to say, Google, who have their OS and half the planets smartphones, all of which have cameras pointed multiple directions? Or Apple, or Microsoft for that matter (already have the Kinect)? What about Samsung and others who sell webcam equipped Smart TVs? Literally all those things have far broader markets, looking at a far more useful context, then the Oculus Rift's positional head tracker does.
And how are they going to do it? Computer vision is a hard problem. Are they going to stream video to Facebook servers, or send a constant stream of patches to max out your PCs cores trying to do...what exactly? The internet is full of webcam shots of people - there isn't that much in the background behind them that's of any possible use to a marketer.
Every possible angle of this line of thought is conspiracy-theorist insane.
So literal mind control is a step too far but you think someone could get away with video surveillance of your home? Why exactly do you think Facebook would do this, but Google or Apple aren't with your cellphone, or Logitech with your desktop PC?
Sure hope you've never said anything like that that could be unearthed years later out of context.
Yeah its a big mistake to think that those things didn't take off because people don't want them. They didn't take off because they don't work well. When you're a kid you want new stuff because you have time to play with new stuff. When you're an adult, you have to start shrinking your domain of things you "plan to work on" since you simply don't have the time.
We use RFID chips all over the place to unlock stuff - been to a hotel lately? The problem is putting a decent electric deadbolt on your door at home costs about 3x as much as a regular one, and leaves you with the problem of how to get power in and out of the door frame, and what to do if the power goes out. Voice control is the same - it doesn't work well. And as for credit cards? I have an app on my phone which shows me my balance at a glance. That future happened - just it happens on the general purpose device, not some custom and expensive bit of tech.
Would mod this up if I had the points.
Unlike everything else Facebook buys, Oculus sells a physical item and intends to do so in a way that makes a profit. The users are the customers, not the product, and pay them directly - which eliminates all the usual need for monetization tricks which give everything else such a bad taste.
Yeah because better gaming is such a more noble use.
Because doing video image analysis of millions of peoples walls is going to yield *so much data* compared to now, where they upload what they're doing, who they're with, and where they are in near realtime voluntarily.
Are you also worried they'll put transmagnetic stimulation coils into the headset and use it trigger positive feedback when you look at a sponsored product in game? Because that is literally more likely then your scenario.
I'm sorry, but what information do you think Facebook could possibly collect from an Oculus Rift device that they couldn't get from say, your Facebook account, or the wider public internet?
Except that falls down entirely when it comes to patents for aesthetics and user interfaces - in which case, the existence of a prop depicting the interface, or someone describing it in fiction, has exactly as much standing as it's implementation. The idea was clearly out there - but it was not pursued until a later time.
If the argument is "oh but it wasn't technically feasible before now" well, that's still a very different patent defense. But it doesn't accomplish the goals of the usual litigants so no one really bothers with it.