You can probably recover aluminum from the waste; but you still have to dispose of it properly
Aluminum is a major component of clays, rocks, and sands. It's not a waste, it's part of nature. According to Wikipedia: In the Earth's crust, aluminium is the most abundant (8.3% by weight) metallic element and the third most abundant of all elements (after oxygen and silicon).
Iran has as much right as the US does to make nuclear weapons.
No nation whose leader has sworn to destroy another nation has the right to have any sort of weapons at all.
And don't start with that "he was mistranslated' bullshit. Diplomatic language was invented exactly to minimize the possibility of misunderstandings that could lead to war.
But, of course, you cannot expect that a nation who cannot understand the most basic principle of diplomacy, that of safe passage, would understand something subtler, like the proper use of language.
A nation that refuses to use diplomacy is a nation that should be left without weapons.
FTA: "Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemies with the information about the codes of the SCADA software and prepared the ground for a cyber attack against us,"
Define 'enemies', please. From the rest of the world's POV, Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemy with equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons.
5 seconds on Google would have pointed you towards Electroactive Polymers
If you had read a little bit more you would have found that "The human opponent was Panna Felsen, a straight-A high school student from the San Diego school district with an interest in robotics. She beat all three robotic contenders easily, one in just three seconds."
It took you five seconds to find out about electroactive polymers, it took a girl three seconds to beat robots built with those...
No, I repeat, up to this date there is NO decent substitute for muscle that is, at the same time, cheap, strong, and compact.
I would think giving people the help to be self-sustaining would be the first step in stabilizing the government
That's correct, but the resource most sorely needed by the poor all over the world is education. The only way to make a democratic regime work is by giving the people enough education to see through demagoguery. Otherwise, votes are too cheap, a new t-shirt or baseball cap is enough to buy a vote in many poor regions.
Welded tubes can be recycled too, only they become slightly shorter at each reuse. All you need to do is cut away the welded joints.
For ultimate low-price, use rebar. It will be heavier than tubes for a given strength, but you can even start with recycled rebar from demolitions. Cheap and environment friendly at the same time.
Your links are typical "green/leftist" propaganda.
For instance, one of the dogmas there says that "70 million Brazilians cannot afford enough to eat".
Propagating that bullshit was one of the reasons Lula was elected president in 2002. One of his campaign promises was his "Zero Hunger" program, to eradicate hunger. Much to his embarrassment after he was elected, the studies he ordered from a federal agency on how to conduct this program was that the poorest in Brazil did NOT suffer from hunger. What they found was that 30% of the Brazilian poorest actually suffered from OBESITY...
Square metal tubing is not expensive if you buy it undrilled. It's incredibly pricey with the holes in it. I've been thinking about how to build an automated rig to drill the tubing
Why drill holes you don't need? If you use steel tubing, you don't need any holes, welding it is quicker and cheaper.
Aluminum is much more expensive than steel, and welding it is more expensive as well, because you need inert gas, so unless you need a very lightweight assembly you should go for welded steel tubing.
Can't we make some sort of substance that contracts when an electrical charge is applied to it, like an actual muscle?
So far, no, we cannot.
That's the biggest hurdle against efficient general purpose robots, IMHO. Such a substance would need to be low cost, efficient in its use of energy, compact in size, and have similar mechanical properties to muscle, which means produce the same force over the same distance.
Electrical actuators are expensive, consume too much power, are too weak. Hydraulic actuators are too bulky, they need pumps, valves, and other complex infrastructure. They are good for large machines, such as excavators, but no one has created efficient hydraulic systems compact enough to be used in small robots.
the reason why SpaceX believe they can get the costs down to a tenth of the competition is precisely because they plan to mass-produce their rocket components (e.g. three first stages with the same basic design and nine of the same engines on each stage).
Which will do them no good if each of those engines cost more than one-ninth of the price of a bigger engine. Have you ever wondered why cars don't have four small engines, one on each wheel?
the only two things that will be scarce will be things like music and waiters and cleaners
Not when you have cleaning robots. In a society where AI has reached human-level intelligence very few things will be truly valuable, some rare metals, perhaps, and prize real estate are two things that come to my mind.
However there's one thing that's very valuable today and will certainly lose once we have better than human-level AI.
Leadership will be worthless.
What is this quality called "leadership"? It's what let some people get other people to do things. We need it today because there are tasks that cannot be done by one person alone and needs coordination between many people. Leadership is the ability to get a bunch of people to work together.
When we have machines capable of performing any task a human can do, the equivalent to leadership will be software development. Just as leadership is important today, getting computers to do what needs to be done will be the most important and valuable quality in the future.
When the planet was warmer there was more diversity of life, large swaths of land that are currently too cold for much bio-diversity were more useable by nature and man. When it got colder it was hell. Things change. Given my druthers I would take warmer, please.
Are you aware that the warmest parts of the globe are deserts?
Ice ages might be bad for biodiversity in the Northern latitudes, but our main problem today is desertification and global warming only makes it worse.
The graph shows temperature rise takes between thousands and tens of thousands of years, and you have disingenuously declared that to be "very quickly"
Very quickly compared to the time it takes for temperature to fall back again. The graph clearly shows we are already long past the post-glacial warming period and should be in the cooling phase right now.
With so many people posting their own version of facts, it helps knowing the past history of such people, so that you can disregard their claims. What made me google for this Anthony Watts was the claims he made that the UN had predicted 50 million refugees coming from Bahamas (population 330000), St. Lucia (population 173765), and Seychelles (population 84000).
With numbers like these, something looks wrong. So I googled for the original study to find out what it said. it was no surprise that neither Bahamas, Seychelles, or St. Lucia were mentioned there.
What it says is that there are million of refugees coming from regions affected by desertification and that number is increasing.
And you know what's the funny thing about all this? If you take the trouble to actually read the paper Dr. Norman Myers wrote, you will notice that he does not mention global warming at all. What he calls "environmental refugees" are, in his own words, "people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty. In their desperation, these people feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt."
In their haste to deny global warming, people like Anthony Watts do not even try to find out who they should write against...
I would like to know why the UN said this in the first place
Is there any evidence that the UN made this prediction at all?
From TFA to the original paper there is a huge difference. For instance, TFA cites population growth in islands like Bahamas, St. Lucia, and Seychelles, which were never mentioned in the paper.
What Dr. Myers actually said is that there were 25 million refugees in 1995 fleeing disasters caused by desertification and global warming and that number could double in ten years. This seems a perfectly reasonable claim, if one wants to discuss it the best way would be to get hold of Dr. Myers method for counting refugees and defining which ones are "environmental" and see if that prediction became true.
Now, instead of doing this, TFA says the UN has "removed" a page that they, so much smarter than the UN that they are, recovered from Google cache. Then they invent a lot of false data, but they never realized that the actual paper is readily found by googling so their lies are easily debunked.
If you take a look at the map in your link, you'll find it signed "Emanuelle Bournay - Oktober 2007".
The allegation is that UN predicted in 2005 that there would be 50 million climate refugees. Nowhere in that map one sees mention of how many refugees there would be, it just shows the regions more likely to be affected by global warming.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a quantum type of problem. The answer to the first story was Promotion, the answer to this one is Job Change
You can probably recover aluminum from the waste; but you still have to dispose of it properly
Aluminum is a major component of clays, rocks, and sands. It's not a waste, it's part of nature. According to Wikipedia: In the Earth's crust, aluminium is the most abundant (8.3% by weight) metallic element and the third most abundant of all elements (after oxygen and silicon).
it's easy to damage the microwave if you keep it running for too long, since the CD doesn't contain a whole lot of water
That's why I put the CD over a half-full glass of water when I do it.
There are already plenty of reviews parents can read before buying games for their children. And even videos for those who can't read.
People who can't read shouldn't have children.
Mentally, illiterate people are at the pre-school level, equivalent to about 5 years old. Sex at that age is harmful, ask the ESRB.
Let's see my daily life:
moderate-to-high amounts of violence
I watch the news. Check.
sexual themes
Fuck? YEAH!
use of profanity
Fuck, YEAH!
drug use
Do coffee and beer count?
gambling
I cross the street, drive a car... does that count?
bodily functions
Who doesn't?
Yeah, I'd totally evaluate my dongle with that "Persian Princess".
Me too. I would take her to a weekend in the King Solomon Hotel in Israel.
Meanwhile, you seriously think that devout fundamentalist Muslims would really drop a nuclear weapon on their own holy land?
Yes, I do, I'm sure they would!
A nation that refuses to use diplomacy is a nation that should be left without weapons.
Will you obliterate the IDF? or shall I?
What do you mean?
Iran has as much right as the US does to make nuclear weapons.
No nation whose leader has sworn to destroy another nation has the right to have any sort of weapons at all.
And don't start with that "he was mistranslated' bullshit. Diplomatic language was invented exactly to minimize the possibility of misunderstandings that could lead to war.
But, of course, you cannot expect that a nation who cannot understand the most basic principle of diplomacy, that of safe passage, would understand something subtler, like the proper use of language.
A nation that refuses to use diplomacy is a nation that should be left without weapons.
FTA: "Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemies with the information about the codes of the SCADA software and prepared the ground for a cyber attack against us,"
Define 'enemies', please. From the rest of the world's POV, Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemy with equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons.
5 seconds on Google would have pointed you towards Electroactive Polymers
If you had read a little bit more you would have found that "The human opponent was Panna Felsen, a straight-A high school student from the San Diego school district with an interest in robotics. She beat all three robotic contenders easily, one in just three seconds."
It took you five seconds to find out about electroactive polymers, it took a girl three seconds to beat robots built with those...
No, I repeat, up to this date there is NO decent substitute for muscle that is, at the same time, cheap, strong, and compact.
I would think giving people the help to be self-sustaining would be the first step in stabilizing the government
That's correct, but the resource most sorely needed by the poor all over the world is education. The only way to make a democratic regime work is by giving the people enough education to see through demagoguery. Otherwise, votes are too cheap, a new t-shirt or baseball cap is enough to buy a vote in many poor regions.
Welded tubes can be recycled too, only they become slightly shorter at each reuse. All you need to do is cut away the welded joints.
For ultimate low-price, use rebar. It will be heavier than tubes for a given strength, but you can even start with recycled rebar from demolitions. Cheap and environment friendly at the same time.
Your links are typical "green/leftist" propaganda.
For instance, one of the dogmas there says that "70 million Brazilians cannot afford enough to eat".
Propagating that bullshit was one of the reasons Lula was elected president in 2002. One of his campaign promises was his "Zero Hunger" program, to eradicate hunger. Much to his embarrassment after he was elected, the studies he ordered from a federal agency on how to conduct this program was that the poorest in Brazil did NOT suffer from hunger. What they found was that 30% of the Brazilian poorest actually suffered from OBESITY...
the tools are 'geared to work together to sustain a village of people anywhere in the world, using locally attainable resources and tools.'
Since several of those tools are computer-controlled, I'd like to know where are the plans for a locally attainable chip fabrication facility.
Square metal tubing is not expensive if you buy it undrilled. It's incredibly pricey with the holes in it. I've been thinking about how to build an automated rig to drill the tubing
Why drill holes you don't need? If you use steel tubing, you don't need any holes, welding it is quicker and cheaper.
Aluminum is much more expensive than steel, and welding it is more expensive as well, because you need inert gas, so unless you need a very lightweight assembly you should go for welded steel tubing.
Can't we make some sort of substance that contracts when an electrical charge is applied to it, like an actual muscle?
So far, no, we cannot.
That's the biggest hurdle against efficient general purpose robots, IMHO. Such a substance would need to be low cost, efficient in its use of energy, compact in size, and have similar mechanical properties to muscle, which means produce the same force over the same distance.
Electrical actuators are expensive, consume too much power, are too weak. Hydraulic actuators are too bulky, they need pumps, valves, and other complex infrastructure. They are good for large machines, such as excavators, but no one has created efficient hydraulic systems compact enough to be used in small robots.
I ended up ordering one that had the basics, as well as a remote control
If you need remote control in a toilet you are doing something wrong.
the reason why SpaceX believe they can get the costs down to a tenth of the competition is precisely because they plan to mass-produce their rocket components (e.g. three first stages with the same basic design and nine of the same engines on each stage).
Which will do them no good if each of those engines cost more than one-ninth of the price of a bigger engine. Have you ever wondered why cars don't have four small engines, one on each wheel?
the only two things that will be scarce will be things like music and waiters and cleaners
Not when you have cleaning robots. In a society where AI has reached human-level intelligence very few things will be truly valuable, some rare metals, perhaps, and prize real estate are two things that come to my mind.
However there's one thing that's very valuable today and will certainly lose once we have better than human-level AI.
Leadership will be worthless.
What is this quality called "leadership"? It's what let some people get other people to do things. We need it today because there are tasks that cannot be done by one person alone and needs coordination between many people. Leadership is the ability to get a bunch of people to work together.
When we have machines capable of performing any task a human can do, the equivalent to leadership will be software development. Just as leadership is important today, getting computers to do what needs to be done will be the most important and valuable quality in the future.
When the planet was warmer there was more diversity of life, large swaths of land that are currently too cold for much bio-diversity were more useable by nature and man. When it got colder it was hell. Things change. Given my druthers I would take warmer, please.
Are you aware that the warmest parts of the globe are deserts?
Ice ages might be bad for biodiversity in the Northern latitudes, but our main problem today is desertification and global warming only makes it worse.
The graph shows temperature rise takes between thousands and tens of thousands of years, and you have disingenuously declared that to be "very quickly"
Very quickly compared to the time it takes for temperature to fall back again. The graph clearly shows we are already long past the post-glacial warming period and should be in the cooling phase right now.
With so many people posting their own version of facts, it helps knowing the past history of such people, so that you can disregard their claims. What made me google for this Anthony Watts was the claims he made that the UN had predicted 50 million refugees coming from Bahamas (population 330000), St. Lucia (population 173765), and Seychelles (population 84000).
With numbers like these, something looks wrong. So I googled for the original study to find out what it said. it was no surprise that neither Bahamas, Seychelles, or St. Lucia were mentioned there.
What it says is that there are million of refugees coming from regions affected by desertification and that number is increasing.
And you know what's the funny thing about all this? If you take the trouble to actually read the paper Dr. Norman Myers wrote, you will notice that he does not mention global warming at all. What he calls "environmental refugees" are, in his own words, "people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty. In their desperation, these people feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt."
In their haste to deny global warming, people like Anthony Watts do not even try to find out who they should write against...
I would like to know why the UN said this in the first place
Is there any evidence that the UN made this prediction at all?
From TFA to the original paper there is a huge difference. For instance, TFA cites population growth in islands like Bahamas, St. Lucia, and Seychelles, which were never mentioned in the paper.
What Dr. Myers actually said is that there were 25 million refugees in 1995 fleeing disasters caused by desertification and global warming and that number could double in ten years. This seems a perfectly reasonable claim, if one wants to discuss it the best way would be to get hold of Dr. Myers method for counting refugees and defining which ones are "environmental" and see if that prediction became true.
Now, instead of doing this, TFA says the UN has "removed" a page that they, so much smarter than the UN that they are, recovered from Google cache. Then they invent a lot of false data, but they never realized that the actual paper is readily found by googling so their lies are easily debunked.
If you take a look at the map in your link, you'll find it signed "Emanuelle Bournay - Oktober 2007".
The allegation is that UN predicted in 2005 that there would be 50 million climate refugees. Nowhere in that map one sees mention of how many refugees there would be, it just shows the regions more likely to be affected by global warming.