There have been flying cars and vertical takeoff aircraft for decades now. The issues have always been engineering practicality. Carrying capacity, efficiency, range etc. The question is whether they have found a way to fix the technical issues that lead to these problems.
All electric may wind up cheaper, but the energy storage is even lower than for gasoline, so the weight problem becomes worse.
Vertical takeoff helps in some ways, but tends to lead to less efficient aerodynamics in cruise, and requires even more energy storage.
Very large single props are the most efficient (to reduce then number of tip vorticies), but lead to a helicopter like design. That leads to perhaps the most serious question - how is this better at flying than a helicopter? Helicopters are already very energy inefficient .
A poor quality cell recording of a concert is nothing like the experience of actually being there. I'm not at all convinced that such recordings hurt sales, they might actually help them by acting like advertising. If a friend shows you a bouncy video of an awesome concert isn't it more likely to make you want to go to the next one?
There are some people who can't afford to go to concerts and will watch the videos instead - but the artist was never going to get money from those people anyway because they didn't have it in the first place.
Anyone who wants to fund the experiment is of course free to do so. I'd advise against it though,. The EM drive claims to violate conservation of momenum (4-momentum if you are being picky), under conditions that are not in any way outside the range of typical experiments. The theory, at least as presented in the AIP advances doesn't make any sense at all. The experiments are tricky and easy to get wrong. (the thrust is tiny so forces on cables etc could easily distort the measurement).
I know the argument about long shots and Pascal's wager, but there are an infinite number of possible experiments, so trying random ones doesn't make sense.
An earth based measurement with a superconducting cavity (which would allow large fields with very small RF power), would probably be a better / cheaper test.
two factor authentication is great when done correctly, worse than useless when done poorly.
"security questions" are not 2 factor authentication. They are just low entropy passwords.
If 2 factor includes a device, then there needs to be some way to authenticate if that device is stolen when you are in a remote location. That of course also breaks the concept - but what is the alternative?
Bio-metrics can work if they can be made sufficiently reliable,
If we see neutrinos generated by technology on another star system, its time to worry - a lot. It takes some effort to see neutrinos from a nearby SUPERNOVA
I don't think its possible to predict what a more advanced civilization might want. Are we squirrels? Are we rats to be exterminated? Are we dogs to be bred for cuteness? Is the relationship something we are not capable of comprehending?
The world of next generation high energy physics machines is highly political. There are plans for LHC luminosity and energy upgrades. The long delayed ILC (international linear collider) project, proposed for Japan. Competing designs for a lower energy circular lepton collider (maybe China) to be upgraded to a very high energy hadron collider. Laser and beam driven plasma accelerators - neither anywhere near practical yet. CLIC, Muon collider, VLHC, etc.
There really are two issues: Is it worth ~10B$ to build the next generation high energy physics machine, and if it is, which of the many machines should be built. With machine development likely to take a generation, people on any project know that success of another will doom their machine.
Neither question is easy to answer. There is no clear way to measure the value of fundamental physics measurements. The likely technological value is zero, though spin-offs can be valuable.
To me personally, learning about the most basic structure of the universe from high energy physics, or astrophysics is valuable, even if it has no imaginable application. I view learning about the universe as one of the goals of civilization, not a means.
I really don't see why windows can't ask before installing ANYTHING from usb. Clicking "OK' is not that big a deal relative to the effort of plugging in a usb device.
Scientists spend lots of time trying to find ways in which our current understanding of physics is wrong. This is generally done by doing measurements that are in some way fundamentally new: new conditions, higher accuracy experiments, measuring new things. LHC looks at interactions at very high energy. Low temperature experiments look for unexpected effects at extremely low energies. Astrophysical measurements look at effects in very strong gravity, or very large distances.
Electromagnetism has been measured over an enormous range of scales. We see it a sub-atomic scales and extreme field strengths in particle collisions. We see it in very slowly changing, very low density fields like galactic magnetic fields. At SLAC we looked at high intensity fields at modest energies when we scattered gamma rays from high intensity lasers to look for (and found) nonlinear effects predicted by EM theory.
The problem with the EM drive is that there is nothing unusual about it. Its just a microwave cavity with modest fields at modest frequencies. These sorts of fields (and much stronger and weaker ones) are regularly used in a wide variety of experiments. If they use Maxwell's equations there can be no effect because the equations locally conserve momentum. There is no coupling to dark matter at this level, much more sensitive experiments have been done. There is no reason to think it will work. The measured thrust is very small, easily explained by a wide range of other normal effects including tilting of the apparatus as experimenters walked around the room.
Doing the experiment in space will not help. There are a lot of other forces at play - solar wind, light pressure, out-gassing. They would have to demonstrate a substantial velocity change (probably 100s of m/sec). which would required a lot of power for a long time .
Even if I trusted the FBI to only use the information for the public good and in accordance with the law, I don't trust their ability to secure the information. Whatever mechanism is provided to the FBI to access secured data risks being transferred to some non-trusted party.
One the most important lessons from Snowdon was that even the NSA cannot protect its own secrets. How can I possibly be convinced that the FBI will be able to do so? Will Llooyds insure them for say $1T against a data breech? Or how about in the event of a breech, the directory and the top 1000 managers are executed (regardless of their personal guilt)? Are they *that* sure? If they aren't that sure, then I'm not sure enough to trust them. Imagine the damage that could be done by a person or government with access to virtually all information in the US .
I think the Bechdel test is interesting and fairly useful unless / until writers start putting scenes in specifically to satisfy the test. Its only one of many possible tests of course and doesn't by itself provide full information.
That is certainly true, but a different problem. Too many people will create resumes targeted at specific jobs in the hopes of getting an interview, even though they don't have even the basic skills required. I don't know if there is any statistical difference in how often women do this.
I know a number of women in tech careers and they quite enjoy them. Its true that some people like to pick on nerds, true nerds couldn't care less what "normasl" think of them. Some fields like physics and math seem to have done better than others at attracting women and it would be interesting to know why.
It would be very interesting to find a way to quantify bias in media. I don't know if its possible, but it sounds hard. OTOH, self-driving cars sounded hard as well and they seem to be becoming a reality.
Last time I posted a req for a high level RF engineer, I got ~100 applications from men and 2 from women. If only for selfish reasons I'd like more women learning the skills that I need.
I've been working in a high tech field for a quarter century now and I do see a problem the way women are treated in many places. The problems are not universal, and there is a lot of variety, but it exists. It difficult to separate cause and effect but more information would be helpful.
Agreed! The minor changes I would make (and do for my own few TB of files).
Have a script the runs the backup. I use rsync on linux. Make two copies, one that mirrors, one that just adds files. Use two backup disks, always have one at a remote location (your work) so you don't lose data in a house fire.
If it is a single command (my is "backup") then its easy to remember to do every week.
I actually have 3 backups. One at home. Two at different work sites that I cycle through. I do my backups from a linux machine that doesn't provide write access to my main windows machines. That makes me a little more resistant to hacks (since they would have to hack two different OSs.
To run with your analogy. If one house burns down, you don't flood the entire city. Inside the US, the damage due to foreign terrorism is very small relative to other risks that we accept. We do not need extreme measures.
This approach is also likely to result in a lot of false positives. These mistakes can actually increase the terrorism risk. Stories of Muslims denied entry to the US can increase the hatred and cultural divide that is feeding terrorism in the first place.
The really interesting question is who made the substitution and why. There is a lot of pressure to use COTS (commercial off the shelf) products to save money. Was this a case where the commercial products had the same or very similar names but were completely different? Was this someone trying to save money but not doing a proper review? Was it simply a blunder: accidentally ordering the wrong product?
Should certified "nuclear clean up absorbent powder" rather than kitty litter have been used in the first place (at spectacularly higher cost).
There is a LOT of review of purchasing in these organizations, and here it failed. Its very important to know why.
Different isn't probable cause, but could be a cause for more (legal) surveillance. If a crime is committed, it will quickly be possible to rule out the great majority of on-the-grid people because law enforcement will know their location and activities at the time of the crime. That could then lead law enforcement to look very carefully at off-the-grid people because they don't have an electronic alibi.
Depending on the surveillance laws in place at the time, this could be completely legal.
I hope they are right, I really do. Its just that I'm old enough to have seen dozens of these ideas appear, get hyped, the disappear. Anyone remember NASP? So far though, the only things that works to get to orbit are conventional rockets. SpaceX is making a lot of progress there.
If it was a professional hit, I would have expected them to have taken something. Of course maybe they are too clever and that's what they want me to think....
There really is no way to know. A single incident isn't enough for statistics. With multiple incidents, (which are claimed) you have to be very careful about statistics to see if it was likely chance. I don't see an easy way to do those statistics.
What would really help is predictions. Find lists of people that hypothetically the Clintons might want to have killed, then see if they die at a statistically significantly higher rate than an average selection of people.
There are often ways to de-anonymize information. Does it send device serial numbers? Are those recorded from online purchases? Does it send any location data (cell etc). Unless great care was taken to ensure that the data doesn't contain anything identifiable, it safer to assume that it does.
Once you have the personal data, the risks from knowing what the person was watching when using the toy are significant. It is not by itself damning, but it can be one of a set of data that can paint a picture of someone's activities. Sometimes that picture is just embarassing. Sometimes it could be used in divorce cases. Some poor people may match to potential criminal behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been flying cars and vertical takeoff aircraft for decades now. The issues have always been engineering practicality. Carrying capacity, efficiency, range etc. The question is whether they have found a way to fix the technical issues that lead to these problems.
All electric may wind up cheaper, but the energy storage is even lower than for gasoline, so the weight problem becomes worse.
Vertical takeoff helps in some ways, but tends to lead to less efficient aerodynamics in cruise, and requires even more energy storage.
Very large single props are the most efficient (to reduce then number of tip vorticies), but lead to a helicopter like design. That leads to perhaps the most serious question - how is this better at flying than a helicopter? Helicopters are already very energy inefficient .
A poor quality cell recording of a concert is nothing like the experience of actually being there. I'm not at all convinced that such recordings hurt sales, they might actually help them by acting like advertising. If a friend shows you a bouncy video of an awesome concert isn't it more likely to make you want to go to the next one?
There are some people who can't afford to go to concerts and will watch the videos instead - but the artist was never going to get money from those people anyway because they didn't have it in the first place.
Anyone who wants to fund the experiment is of course free to do so. I'd advise against it though,. The EM drive claims to violate conservation of momenum (4-momentum if you are being picky), under conditions that are not in any way outside the range of typical experiments. The theory, at least as presented in the AIP advances doesn't make any sense at all. The experiments are tricky and easy to get wrong. (the thrust is tiny so forces on cables etc could easily distort the measurement).
I know the argument about long shots and Pascal's wager, but there are an infinite number of possible experiments, so trying random ones doesn't make sense.
An earth based measurement with a superconducting cavity (which would allow large fields with very small RF power), would probably be a better / cheaper test.
two factor authentication is great when done correctly, worse than useless when done poorly.
"security questions" are not 2 factor authentication. They are just low entropy passwords.
If 2 factor includes a device, then there needs to be some way to authenticate if that device is stolen when you are in a remote location. That of course also breaks the concept - but what is the alternative?
Bio-metrics can work if they can be made sufficiently reliable,
If we see neutrinos generated by technology on another star system, its time to worry - a lot. It takes some effort to see neutrinos from a nearby SUPERNOVA
Probably true. OTOH, we have no idea of their motives. Why would the humans care if ants eat some of the spilled sugar in the cabinets?
I just think that its better to be the guys on the ships rather than the guys on the shore.
I agree that FTL is as impossible as anything else we know of. But that just delays the issue, it doesn't remove it.
I don't think its possible to predict what a more advanced civilization might want. Are we squirrels? Are we rats to be exterminated? Are we dogs to be bred for cuteness? Is the relationship something we are not capable of comprehending?
Why go into space? It is vastly expensive in time and resources. There is nothing out there - except for everything.
The world of next generation high energy physics machines is highly political. There are plans for LHC luminosity and energy upgrades. The long delayed ILC (international linear collider) project, proposed for Japan. Competing designs for a lower energy circular lepton collider (maybe China) to be upgraded to a very high energy hadron collider. Laser and beam driven plasma accelerators - neither anywhere near practical yet. CLIC, Muon collider, VLHC, etc.
There really are two issues: Is it worth ~10B$ to build the next generation high energy physics machine, and if it is, which of the many machines should be built. With machine development likely to take a generation, people on any project know that success of another will doom their machine.
Neither question is easy to answer. There is no clear way to measure the value of fundamental physics measurements. The likely technological value is zero, though spin-offs can be valuable.
To me personally, learning about the most basic structure of the universe from high energy physics, or astrophysics is valuable, even if it has no imaginable application. I view learning about the universe as one of the goals of civilization, not a means.
I really don't see why windows can't ask before installing ANYTHING from usb. Clicking "OK' is not that big a deal relative to the effort of plugging in a usb device.
Scientists spend lots of time trying to find ways in which our current understanding of physics is wrong. This is generally done by doing measurements that are in some way fundamentally new: new conditions, higher accuracy experiments, measuring new things. LHC looks at interactions at very high energy. Low temperature experiments look for unexpected effects at extremely low energies. Astrophysical measurements look at effects in very strong gravity, or very large distances.
Electromagnetism has been measured over an enormous range of scales. We see it a sub-atomic scales and extreme field strengths in particle collisions. We see it in very slowly changing, very low density fields like galactic magnetic fields. At SLAC we looked at high intensity fields at modest energies when we scattered gamma rays from high intensity lasers to look for (and found) nonlinear effects predicted by EM theory.
The problem with the EM drive is that there is nothing unusual about it. Its just a microwave cavity with modest fields at modest frequencies. These sorts of fields (and much stronger and weaker ones) are regularly used in a wide variety of experiments. If they use Maxwell's equations there can be no effect because the equations locally conserve momentum. There is no coupling to dark matter at this level, much more sensitive experiments have been done. There is no reason to think it will work. The measured thrust is very small, easily explained by a wide range of other normal effects including tilting of the apparatus as experimenters walked around the room.
Doing the experiment in space will not help. There are a lot of other forces at play - solar wind, light pressure, out-gassing. They would have to demonstrate a substantial velocity change (probably 100s of m/sec). which would required a lot of power for a long time .
Even if I trusted the FBI to only use the information for the public good and in accordance with the law, I don't trust their ability to secure the information. Whatever mechanism is provided to the FBI to access secured data risks being transferred to some non-trusted party.
One the most important lessons from Snowdon was that even the NSA cannot protect its own secrets. How can I possibly be convinced that the FBI will be able to do so? Will Llooyds insure them for say $1T against a data breech? Or how about in the event of a breech, the directory and the top 1000 managers are executed (regardless of their personal guilt)? Are they *that* sure? If they aren't that sure, then I'm not sure enough to trust them. Imagine the damage that could be done by a person or government with access to virtually all information in the US .
I think the Bechdel test is interesting and fairly useful unless / until writers start putting scenes in specifically to satisfy the test. Its only one of many possible tests of course and doesn't by itself provide full information.
That is certainly true, but a different problem. Too many people will create resumes targeted at specific jobs in the hopes of getting an interview, even though they don't have even the basic skills required. I don't know if there is any statistical difference in how often women do this.
I know a number of women in tech careers and they quite enjoy them. Its true that some people like to pick on nerds, true nerds couldn't care less what "normasl" think of them. Some fields like physics and math seem to have done better than others at attracting women and it would be interesting to know why.
It would be very interesting to find a way to quantify bias in media. I don't know if its possible, but it sounds hard. OTOH, self-driving cars sounded hard as well and they seem to be becoming a reality.
Last time I posted a req for a high level RF engineer, I got ~100 applications from men and 2 from women. If only for selfish reasons I'd like more women learning the skills that I need.
I've been working in a high tech field for a quarter century now and I do see a problem the way women are treated in many places. The problems are not universal, and there is a lot of variety, but it exists. It difficult to separate cause and effect but more information would be helpful.
Agreed! The minor changes I would make (and do for my own few TB of files).
Have a script the runs the backup. I use rsync on linux.
Make two copies, one that mirrors, one that just adds files.
Use two backup disks, always have one at a remote location (your work) so you don't lose data in a house fire.
If it is a single command (my is "backup") then its easy to remember to do every week.
I actually have 3 backups. One at home. Two at different work sites that I cycle through. I do my backups from a linux machine that doesn't provide write access to my main windows machines. That makes me a little more resistant to hacks (since they would have to hack two different OSs.
To run with your analogy. If one house burns down, you don't flood the entire city. Inside the US, the damage due to foreign terrorism is very small relative to other risks that we accept. We do not need extreme measures.
This approach is also likely to result in a lot of false positives. These mistakes can actually increase the terrorism risk. Stories of Muslims denied entry to the US can increase the hatred and cultural divide that is feeding terrorism in the first place.
The really interesting question is who made the substitution and why. There is a lot of pressure to use COTS (commercial off the shelf) products to save money. Was this a case where the commercial products had the same or very similar names but were completely different? Was this someone trying to save money but not doing a proper review? Was it simply a blunder: accidentally ordering the wrong product?
Should certified "nuclear clean up absorbent powder" rather than kitty litter have been used in the first place (at spectacularly higher cost).
There is a LOT of review of purchasing in these organizations, and here it failed. Its very important to know why.
Yup, and it will fail for exactly the same reasons. Noise, cost, risk, efficiency.
Different isn't probable cause, but could be a cause for more (legal) surveillance. If a crime is committed, it will quickly be possible to rule out the great majority of on-the-grid people because law enforcement will know their location and activities at the time of the crime. That could then lead law enforcement to look very carefully at off-the-grid people because they don't have an electronic alibi.
Depending on the surveillance laws in place at the time, this could be completely legal.
I hope they are right, I really do. Its just that I'm old enough to have seen dozens of these ideas appear, get hyped, the disappear. Anyone remember NASP? So far though, the only things that works to get to orbit are conventional rockets. SpaceX is making a lot of progress there.
If it was a professional hit, I would have expected them to have taken something. Of course maybe they are too clever and that's what they want me to think....
There really is no way to know. A single incident isn't enough for statistics. With multiple incidents, (which are claimed) you have to be very careful about statistics to see if it was likely chance. I don't see an easy way to do those statistics.
What would really help is predictions. Find lists of people that hypothetically the Clintons might want to have killed, then see if they die at a statistically significantly higher rate than an average selection of people.
There are often ways to de-anonymize information. Does it send device serial numbers? Are those recorded from online purchases? Does it send any location data (cell etc). Unless great care was taken to ensure that the data doesn't contain anything identifiable, it safer to assume that it does.
Once you have the personal data, the risks from knowing what the person was watching when using the toy are significant. It is not by itself damning, but it can be one of a set of data that can paint a picture of someone's activities. Sometimes that picture is just embarassing. Sometimes it could be used in divorce cases. Some poor people may match to potential criminal behavior.