Speaking as a home-distiller, I have found that no matter how stringently I control the ingredients and process, every batch of whiskey comes out different. Indeed, this is why commercial whisky producers employ blend masters who combine the variations from each cask into a consistent blend that matches their signature flavor palette. Also, commercial distillers age their whisky for years, with the changes in temperature and barometric pressure causing the casks to 'breathe' and thus alter the flavor. The 'aging' process attempted in space could not even begin to approximate the commercial aging process. So it is no surprise that the space batch tasted different. It would have been a much greater surprise if it hadn't.
Nowadays we wring our hands and tsk-tsk the loss of old film reels, books, and magazines, fearing the loss of part of our culture. In the future, people will yearn for the golden days of yore, when an inappropriate remark might elicit a titter of embarrassed laughter before vanishing into the fog of entropy.
If Aether actually worked it sounds as though it could be an excellent alternative. Too bad it doesn't work and only appears to have one developer working on it who, I gather, is more of a GUI developer than a net/crypto/distributed data guru.
Of course, if your house gets SWATted and the cops shoot your dog and a round happens to hit your battery pack, there is likely to be a sub-optimal discharge from them as well. I imagine pretty much any energy storage mechanism will have a similar problem. If you're storing enough energy to power a house, you're storing enough energy to be dangerously inconvenient if it's all released at once.
Think of the energy and building material that would give. All we'd need is for the molten magma stream to boil some water on the way out, and while still molten, be transported to the site of whatever massive construction project we choose. Maybe tie the two together, using some fancy Leidenfrost effect to keep the hot lava flowing on a cushion of steam. Once the lava gets to its destination, huge bots with chilled trowels would form it into walls or sculptures. With enough magma to fill the grand canyon, we could build an urban area big enough to cover most of Wyoming. Make the buildings free to homesteaders who agree to bring the buildings up to code. Name it 'Magma, Wyoming' or something. Also do a monument like Rushmore, but featuring all the presidents. Make each head the size of a mountain and call the new range The Presidentials. See? Lemons into lemonade.
Curiously, I use MetroPCS, another MVNO that uses T-Mobile towers. MetroPCS only charges $5 for the first 2.5GB and $5/GB after that for tethered data. Since they're using the same towers as Google, you'd think the big G could at least be competitive with existing MVNOs using the same equipment. Also, it is interesting to note that at the 35 mbps LTE speed I get, I can suck down 1 GB in under 4 minutes. At $10 per four minutes of data, Google is asking more than some phone sex operators.
Cryonics Institute charges $28K for whole-body suspension. A fancy casket, funeral, flowers, burial plot, etc. can easily cost more than that. By spending that cash on cryonic suspension, there's a long shot of coming back in some form or other. Being turned into air pollution or worm poison is pretty much guaranteed to leave your body unrecoverable. Not much of a wager.
Actually, cryonics attempts vitrification, not freezing. Patients are prepped with cryoprotectants that draw water out of cells and also replaces some of the water in cells to prevent freezing. Wikipedia has a good introduction to cryonics.
If we'd taken the $1 trillion dollars wasted in the war on drugs and had instead invested that into research to find safe and effective recreational drugs that also have positive side-effects on cognition and motivation, where might we be today?
Not just question yourself, but be aggressively suspicious of your code. "What?!? It compiled and ran? Oh, you piece of crap. You're gonna make me hunt for the bugs, aren't you. Damn it!"
Neural nets are already a kind of black box. If a NN-backed expert system declines a mortgage, I doubt any customer service agent could explain its thinking.
All the doom-n-gloomers miss what's really going on. AI isn't taking over - we're redesigning ourselves. Once viable non-biological emulation of our existing mind becomes possible, people will choose to migrate themselves onto that. Humans will upgrade. The end of biology will be a matter of consumer preference.
It's anecdotal. It argues a need for someone to take a good statistical look at the situation, but I wouldn't read much more than that into it. She's not the only practitioner in that field, and I would imagine an effect as dramatic as she paints it to have gathered a bit more notice. Probably grandstanding for professional recognition on her part.
Slashdot Mirror
They might have been able to find actual space-related differences if they had an identical control batch left on Earth to compare it with.
Speaking as a home-distiller, I have found that no matter how stringently I control the ingredients and process, every batch of whiskey comes out different. Indeed, this is why commercial whisky producers employ blend masters who combine the variations from each cask into a consistent blend that matches their signature flavor palette. Also, commercial distillers age their whisky for years, with the changes in temperature and barometric pressure causing the casks to 'breathe' and thus alter the flavor. The 'aging' process attempted in space could not even begin to approximate the commercial aging process. So it is no surprise that the space batch tasted different. It would have been a much greater surprise if it hadn't.
Nowadays we wring our hands and tsk-tsk the loss of old film reels, books, and magazines, fearing the loss of part of our culture. In the future, people will yearn for the golden days of yore, when an inappropriate remark might elicit a titter of embarrassed laughter before vanishing into the fog of entropy.
But TOXINS! In your blood!
If Aether actually worked it sounds as though it could be an excellent alternative. Too bad it doesn't work and only appears to have one developer working on it who, I gather, is more of a GUI developer than a net/crypto/distributed data guru.
Homebrewing is still illegal in Alabama, too.
Hydrogen? Hell, one-up that and use vacuum. Ubiquitous, non-flammable and has the greatest possible lift per volume.
I'd advise you to paddle your canoe over to Python, Django and AngularJS or similar.
While you're considering post-mortem hosting, you should also get your shit together.
Of course, if your house gets SWATted and the cops shoot your dog and a round happens to hit your battery pack, there is likely to be a sub-optimal discharge from them as well. I imagine pretty much any energy storage mechanism will have a similar problem. If you're storing enough energy to power a house, you're storing enough energy to be dangerously inconvenient if it's all released at once.
Or just kick Jupiter into the Sun, like tossing another log on the fire.
Think of the energy and building material that would give. All we'd need is for the molten magma stream to boil some water on the way out, and while still molten, be transported to the site of whatever massive construction project we choose. Maybe tie the two together, using some fancy Leidenfrost effect to keep the hot lava flowing on a cushion of steam. Once the lava gets to its destination, huge bots with chilled trowels would form it into walls or sculptures. With enough magma to fill the grand canyon, we could build an urban area big enough to cover most of Wyoming. Make the buildings free to homesteaders who agree to bring the buildings up to code. Name it 'Magma, Wyoming' or something. Also do a monument like Rushmore, but featuring all the presidents. Make each head the size of a mountain and call the new range The Presidentials. See? Lemons into lemonade.
Curiously, I use MetroPCS, another MVNO that uses T-Mobile towers. MetroPCS only charges $5 for the first 2.5GB and $5/GB after that for tethered data. Since they're using the same towers as Google, you'd think the big G could at least be competitive with existing MVNOs using the same equipment. Also, it is interesting to note that at the 35 mbps LTE speed I get, I can suck down 1 GB in under 4 minutes. At $10 per four minutes of data, Google is asking more than some phone sex operators.
Plus, on the final credit page it reads "FROSTBITE GAME ENGINE FOOTAGE REPRESENTATIVE OF PLAYSTATION 4. NOT ACTUAL GAMEPLAY."
Cryonics Institute charges $28K for whole-body suspension. A fancy casket, funeral, flowers, burial plot, etc. can easily cost more than that. By spending that cash on cryonic suspension, there's a long shot of coming back in some form or other. Being turned into air pollution or worm poison is pretty much guaranteed to leave your body unrecoverable. Not much of a wager.
Here's a letter signed by 61 scientists, some of whom you've undoubtedly heard of, who assert that cryonics is legit.
There are hundreds of thousands humans alive today who spent months or years in cryosuspension as embryos.
Actually, cryonics attempts vitrification, not freezing. Patients are prepped with cryoprotectants that draw water out of cells and also replaces some of the water in cells to prevent freezing. Wikipedia has a good introduction to cryonics.
If we'd taken the $1 trillion dollars wasted in the war on drugs and had instead invested that into research to find safe and effective recreational drugs that also have positive side-effects on cognition and motivation, where might we be today?
Of all the many languages programmers use, the one we're all fluent in is profanity.
Not just question yourself, but be aggressively suspicious of your code. "What?!? It compiled and ran? Oh, you piece of crap. You're gonna make me hunt for the bugs, aren't you. Damn it!"
Neural nets are already a kind of black box. If a NN-backed expert system declines a mortgage, I doubt any customer service agent could explain its thinking.
Lojban would be a good place to start.
All the doom-n-gloomers miss what's really going on. AI isn't taking over - we're redesigning ourselves. Once viable non-biological emulation of our existing mind becomes possible, people will choose to migrate themselves onto that. Humans will upgrade. The end of biology will be a matter of consumer preference.
It's anecdotal. It argues a need for someone to take a good statistical look at the situation, but I wouldn't read much more than that into it. She's not the only practitioner in that field, and I would imagine an effect as dramatic as she paints it to have gathered a bit more notice. Probably grandstanding for professional recognition on her part.