So after reading the email, I would have to say this headline is sensationalist, and overall bad reporting. So much so that im actually making this post, which i have never done on/.
Nowhere are they asking them to install malware, or install it without the consumers consent. Essentially what they are asking is that their application be packaged with with the pi, and the user be asked to install the software. Basically the same thing most "freeware" on the internet does. He you want our app? What about this one and this one and this one to.
Ive dealt with representatives from foreign companies before, and their command of the English language is about as excellent as google translate will allow. You have to use your brain a little when reading them, but its usually fairly easy to understand and don't leap to conclusions to create headlines like this.
That was my thought too -- this appears to be just like the bloatware that comes with every new PC (and phone). Annoying for sure, but it's a stretch to call it Malware unless the software does something more nefarious than installing a desktop shortcut.
Even older APC SmartUPS can give a false reading if they've never been fully cycled. Yes, they do a periodic self-test (you can hear the relay clicking when being performed), but not a full discharge and recharge cycle. With batteries that old, you'll be lucky if you get 2 to 5 minutes of runtime out of them at nominal load. In fact, for SmartUPS, they must be recalibrated with a new battery. Typically this used to involve putting a 25% or 33% load until the battery completely drains in order to learn the new runtime metric. We used to use a few halogen lights to provide the test load:)
We do rundown tests every 6 months where the UPS runs itself on battery for some period of time (15 minutes) and checks the battery state? The UPS's are way oversized for the loads we run on them (2 SU3000's per closet, each closet has between 6 - 12 switches, and we've dramatically cut back on PoE power since most people switched from desk phones to cell phones), and even if we only had 5 minutes of runtime that would be more than enough, the UPS's are mostly there to let the network ride out short power glitches.
A $100 UPS will prevent a $200 visit to replace a $100 part in a TV power supply. How is that a bad idea?
How? $600 worth of replacement UPS batteries over the life of a $500 TV that will actually be more like obsolete in two years anyway?
Never had a UPS on a TV. Have never had a TV fail due to any of our many power flickers, sags, spikes, or outages. Sure, it'll happen eventually. In the meantime, I'm many hundreds of dollars ahead of the game (thousands, probably, looking at the period of time I'm talking about) and also not paying for the extra electricity it takes to keep those UPSes awake and happy.
My $1000 3 year old TV is on a $75 UPS. Even if I have to replace the UPS every 5 years, I still consider it money well spent. If nothing else, it prevents short power glitches from interrupting my TV show.
A UPS can fail catastrophically, particularly if someone is performing some electrical work upstream and didn't disconnect the UPS from main power.
Upstream electrical work shouldn't affect the UPS, worst case it will trip the UPS over to battery power. Unless by "work" you mean connecting a 120VAC circuit to 480V.
Even downstream work shouldn't cause any failure, that's what circuit breakers are for.
For one thing, you have to replace the UPS battery every year.
3 - 5 years. I some network closet UPS's with 7 year old batteries that are still showing around 60% of original reserve capacity so we haven't bothered replacing them since they'll still last longer than our main server room batteries do in a power outage.
UPS battery changes are cheaper than replacing hardware that failed because it's not on a UPS.
Alternatively, they can just predict/dev/random output if it contains sufficiently low entropy. You don't need root access for that.
No you can't, you're mixing things a bit up./dev/random - in most implementation is of the *blocking* variety. I will never let the entropy go low enough. If there isn't enough entropy, the device will simply block until enough entropy has been gathered.
But only if/dev/random's judge of entropy is correct, if the machine is running in a VM, its environment could be manipulated to make it *think* it has sufficient entropy even if it's not "real" entropy.
I myself am wondering why this is even news at all. As far as I know, people are inexplicably denied entry to the US all the time, usually just for having a name "similar" to somebody with known terrorist ties. It's probably easier for that to happen if you happen to be from the middle east and have the same first and last name as somebody else from there who DOES have terrorist ties.
But now we're getting "oh it's BECAUSE he was a muslim" and furthemore "Donald Trump is responsible for this" (yes, there's already a few big news outlets that, strangely enough, seem to assume that Trump already has enough influence to revoke Visas.)
Isn't the fact that random people are inexplicably denied entry to the US enough to make it news worthy? Why isn't an explanation given along with a procedure to clear your name if you're incorrectly flagged on a watch list?
Are you aware of the danger of a simple mechanical failure? These are raster machines so they scan you by bombarding you with a paper thin plane beam than pans down your body. If that beam stops, even for a few seconds then it would irradiate the cells along that plane with a massive dose. Not "pseudo science".
I thought the TSA retired all of their backscatter X-ray scanners and replaced them with millimeter wave RF scanners?
If he means he is willing to accept full liability for any and all problems that's one thing. But I doubt we will have autonomous cars that can replace drivers in anything but freeway and some limited pre mapped city driving situations any time soon.
if he's willing to sell a car as "self driving" and accept liability for its driving, then that car had better be able to handle all driving conditions, or Tesla won't survive long under all of the liability lawsuits.
It's difficult for computers to solve visual captchas humans solve easily, likewise humans navigate better than computers today with far inferior sensors.
It often takes me several tries to complete a Capcha, while Google says that they've got AI that can solve their own capchas:
I'm honestly glad that they're putting these rules into effect. Just after seeing the recent wildfire fighting efforts impeded by drone owners, and even structural firefighting efforts held up, all because drone owners wanted to get video of the destruction. Really? You're going to get in the way of emergency responders, then complain that something is being put in place to dissuade that? Maybe if all of these idiotic drone owners didn't ruin it for everyone, we wouldn't need these at all. But I'm not only glad to see that these rules are being put in place, I hope that emergency response is authorized to SHOOT DOWN drones that get in the way and fine the hell out of the owners of them.
You realize that unregistered drones will still fly, right? Unlike the responsible owners that will register their aircraft and follow common sense (and legal) rules, the idiots that get in the way of firefighting efforts are not likely to register their craft.
The FCC almost got their way with the the GMRS radios. I suspect almost everyone who has bought a FRS/GMRS radio never bothered to get the GRMS license. I got mine just to say I have it.
Once dual FRS/GMRS radio blister packs started being sold at big box retailers, GMRS licensing was effectively ended for those shared bands. Even if consumers paid attention to the licensing requirements (they don't), no one is going to buy a $90 license for a $30 set of radios.
Fortunately for GMRS license holders, there are still GMRS-only frequencies that aren't polluted with the FRS shared frequencies.
The problem is that the driver is not going to be alert -- drivers are barely alert even with fully manual cars, they surely are not going to be paying attention while stopped at a light, they are going to be playing Angry Birds.
Which simply means that the requirements will require alert drivers and no angry birds. This leads to the concept that California still considers the technology to be "In Development" and not for the average SMSing driver or general consumption. Which also leads to the implication that these requirements will be changed in the future when the technology is no longer in a testing phase.
To forestall responses that "It'll never change", I'll point out that very few open-stretch, long-haul freeways still have a speed limit of 55.
Drivers are "required" to be alert today, yet that doesn't stop them from texting, putting on makeup, reading books (!) and lots of other things that divide their attention - they surely aren't going to pay *more* attention to their driving when the car is doing all of the work.
An example would be the car sitting at a red light in a construction zone with new signals strung up and when an unrelated light turns green, the autonomous car releases the brakes and starts to move forward against a red for its lane. An alert individual can override and re-apply the brakes immediately similar to if they had a lapse of clarity and a moment of confusion and avoid crossing fully into opposing traffic.
The problem is that the driver is not going to be alert -- drivers are barely alert even with fully manual cars, they surely are not going to be paying attention while stopped at a light, they are going to be playing Angry Birds.
Terraforming Mars would be an excellent project. Job number 1 would be recreating a magnetic field around Mars....or least the parts we want to inhabit first.
Why start with the hard part first? Why not create a radiation resistant habitat first?
If the driver really can take a moment to take over, it's likely that whatever catastrophe that made manual control necessary will have already played out.
The paper simply cites that on a per calorie basis many vegtables like lettuce, cucumbers, celery, etc are worse for the enviornment. It's actually obvious because these foods have no nutritional value with respect to calories, yet require water and other resources to bring to the table. The same paper states nutrition rich plant materials are actually better. The "debunking" article is just a knee jerking response and addresses "issues" that were never brought up in the paper. What we need to help fix this planet are people that run off of logic, not emotions.
Maybe if the paper were not behind a $40 paywall, more people could read it and make more reasoned comments.
Let's focus on truly man made emissions, you know shit coming out of cars, coal plants, etc and stop trying to figure out how much a cow farts or how much is generated by eating lettuce. What a waste of time and money. All of the cows and lettuce eating people on the planet pail in comparison to one coal plant.
Those cow farts are pretty much just as man made (and damaging) as your car when you look at a typical cattle (or chicken or hog) farm and the amount of mechanization that goes into turning grain and other feed into the meat in your supermarket.
But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.
From what I understand they want to take over acres of productive farm land to build these solar farms. Ever been out to the country? You might have one house with a roof for every 500 acres of farm land. Rooftop solar panels won't even power that single house, let alone provide power for others.
This solar calculator says that to provide 10,000 KWH/year of power, 750 sq ft of roof area is needed for the panels, so the panels that can fit on a roof could power that home.
Your use of the phrase 'adapters' isn't a good indication of your understanding of evolutionary biology. Individual lifeforms don't adapt, at least not in a useful sense, what you'd want would be candidates who are inherently more viable in the environment. Given the universality of gravity on earth it is very unlikely that there is a considerable difference in viability in low gravity between individuals, unlike for example disease resistance.
Your disdain at the use of the word 'adapters' isn't a good indication of your understanding of English - if you're living in 1G all your life, then you do well in.3G, you've adapted to the new environment. It may be that your body is built better for the environment, maybe you just tough it out despite constant joint pain and digestive difficulties, or maybe you've learned some mental tricks to help you, but regardless of what it is, you've adapted.
Adapt -/dapt/ - verb
become adjusted to new conditions.
If only 20% of the population is allowed to breed then each will need to have 5 children to maintain the 100k starting population level. Since half of them will be male that means each female needs to have an average of 10 children.
I think this is one that is just going to have to sort itself out, in its own time.
I wasn't thinking that the ultimate permanent population would be 100K - just the starting point to make sure they could find enough low-G capable individuals. The rest would be labor to help set up the base and would die off through attrition (some faster than others if they can't handle living in low-G). Sounds harsh, but it's planetary exploration, not Disney Land. I'm sure they'd still get plenty of volunteers even if everyone was told before hand that they may not be allowed to breed, and may even be encouraged (or assisted) to die if they can't handle the environment and get sick, a Mars Colony can't afford to keep someone in a hospital bed for years.
I think it's technically possible to send people to Mars over the next decade or two, but probably not economically feasible for a billionaire or two, the Apollo program reportedly cost $170B in today's dollars
How much of that was the cost of people in administration?
I don't know, but if you dig through NASA's budget, you might be able to come up with a good estimate. Though I'm not sure why it matters -- is it possible to run a $170B project without administrators?
The material cost is probably less than $1 million, the rest is work.
I doubt that's true, but even if it is true, why is that relevant? If I give you a million dollars of Bauxite, you're not going to turn that into a rocket without lots and lots of work (and money).
But yes, if it is done as a government project with the intention of building up know-how in local industry and nurture subcontractors to be able to create advanced rockets then yes, that is what any project will cost.
What does that mean? Any project that builds local know-how and nurtures subcontractors is going to cost $170B?
The first few generations will have issues, but evolution will adapt to the lower gravity with each new generation.
Really, no, it won't. Not on any time scale that we would ever notice. It would take hundreds of generations for natural selection to work its magic with regard to this.
Depends on whether or not some people can adapt quickly to the low-G environment and how quickly those that can't handle the environment die off (or otherwise not allowed to breed). If 100,000 people are sent up, and only the top 20% of adapters are allowed to breed, then even the 2nd generation could be quite well adapted
Really? And how is the human body going to survive on 38% of Earths gravity??? Idiotic. How are you going to build those "sealed buildings" and "greenhouses"? From material from the Home Depots on Mars?? Science fiction is fun to read, but it is FICTION. We cannot live on Mars. We have evoloved to live on Earth.
The human body can survive in 0% of Earths Gravity (at least for 14 months), so it's not like the body won't adapt to lower gravity. There may be some long term side effects that shorten (or lengthen) lifespan, but hey, living on Mars is risky enough that a shorter lifespan is practically guaranteed.
However long-term life on Mars may preclude ever returning to Earth's gravity, though it's possible that some rehabilitation and slow re-acclimation on the long trip home may make it possible to return.
I think it's technically possible to send people to Mars over the next decade or two, but probably not economically feasible for a billionaire or two, the Apollo program reportedly cost $170B in today's dollars, which is "only" around 30% of one years of the USA's military spending. So redirecting 20% of the military budget toward the project for 10 years should be enough money to pay for it.
Though right now, there's not much reason to do so except for the novelty factor - a life-extinguishing global disaster is pretty unlikely in the next century, and we have more pressing problems to solve on earth. But eventually it probably makes sense to colonize off-planet, just for redundancy.
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So after reading the email, I would have to say this headline is sensationalist, and overall bad reporting. So much so that im actually making this post, which i have never done on /.
Nowhere are they asking them to install malware, or install it without the consumers consent. Essentially what they are asking is that their application be packaged with with the pi, and the user be asked to install the software. Basically the same thing most "freeware" on the internet does. He you want our app? What about this one and this one and this one to.
Ive dealt with representatives from foreign companies before, and their command of the English language is about as excellent as google translate will allow. You have to use your brain a little when reading them, but its usually fairly easy to understand and don't leap to conclusions to create headlines like this.
That was my thought too -- this appears to be just like the bloatware that comes with every new PC (and phone). Annoying for sure, but it's a stretch to call it Malware unless the software does something more nefarious than installing a desktop shortcut.
Even older APC SmartUPS can give a false reading if they've never been fully cycled. Yes, they do a periodic self-test (you can hear the relay clicking when being performed), but not a full discharge and recharge cycle. With batteries that old, you'll be lucky if you get 2 to 5 minutes of runtime out of them at nominal load. In fact, for SmartUPS, they must be recalibrated with a new battery. Typically this used to involve putting a 25% or 33% load until the battery completely drains in order to learn the new runtime metric. We used to use a few halogen lights to provide the test load :)
We do rundown tests every 6 months where the UPS runs itself on battery for some period of time (15 minutes) and checks the battery state? The UPS's are way oversized for the loads we run on them (2 SU3000's per closet, each closet has between 6 - 12 switches, and we've dramatically cut back on PoE power since most people switched from desk phones to cell phones), and even if we only had 5 minutes of runtime that would be more than enough, the UPS's are mostly there to let the network ride out short power glitches.
A $100 UPS will prevent a $200 visit to replace a $100 part in a TV power supply. How is that a bad idea?
How? $600 worth of replacement UPS batteries over the life of a $500 TV that will actually be more like obsolete in two years anyway?
Never had a UPS on a TV. Have never had a TV fail due to any of our many power flickers, sags, spikes, or outages. Sure, it'll happen eventually. In the meantime, I'm many hundreds of dollars ahead of the game (thousands, probably, looking at the period of time I'm talking about) and also not paying for the extra electricity it takes to keep those UPSes awake and happy.
My $1000 3 year old TV is on a $75 UPS. Even if I have to replace the UPS every 5 years, I still consider it money well spent. If nothing else, it prevents short power glitches from interrupting my TV show.
A UPS can fail catastrophically, particularly if someone is performing some electrical work upstream and didn't disconnect the UPS from main power.
Upstream electrical work shouldn't affect the UPS, worst case it will trip the UPS over to battery power. Unless by "work" you mean connecting a 120VAC circuit to 480V.
Even downstream work shouldn't cause any failure, that's what circuit breakers are for.
For one thing, you have to replace the UPS battery every year.
3 - 5 years. I some network closet UPS's with 7 year old batteries that are still showing around 60% of original reserve capacity so we haven't bothered replacing them since they'll still last longer than our main server room batteries do in a power outage.
UPS battery changes are cheaper than replacing hardware that failed because it's not on a UPS.
Alternatively, they can just predict /dev/random output if it contains sufficiently low entropy. You don't need root access for that.
No you can't, you're mixing things a bit up. /dev/random - in most implementation is of the *blocking* variety. I will never let the entropy go low enough. If there isn't enough entropy, the device will simply block until enough entropy has been gathered.
But only if /dev/random's judge of entropy is correct, if the machine is running in a VM, its environment could be manipulated to make it *think* it has sufficient entropy even if it's not "real" entropy.
Does this open the hacked lottery to class action lawsuits by people who played the rigged lottery but had no chance of winning?
I myself am wondering why this is even news at all. As far as I know, people are inexplicably denied entry to the US all the time, usually just for having a name "similar" to somebody with known terrorist ties. It's probably easier for that to happen if you happen to be from the middle east and have the same first and last name as somebody else from there who DOES have terrorist ties.
But now we're getting "oh it's BECAUSE he was a muslim" and furthemore "Donald Trump is responsible for this" (yes, there's already a few big news outlets that, strangely enough, seem to assume that Trump already has enough influence to revoke Visas.)
Isn't the fact that random people are inexplicably denied entry to the US enough to make it news worthy? Why isn't an explanation given along with a procedure to clear your name if you're incorrectly flagged on a watch list?
Are you aware of the danger of a simple mechanical failure? These are raster machines so they scan you by bombarding you with a paper thin plane beam than pans down your body. If that beam stops, even for a few seconds then it would irradiate the cells along that plane with a massive dose. Not "pseudo science".
I thought the TSA retired all of their backscatter X-ray scanners and replaced them with millimeter wave RF scanners?
If he means he is willing to accept full liability for any and all problems that's one thing. But I doubt we will have autonomous cars that can replace drivers in anything but freeway and some limited pre mapped city driving situations any time soon.
if he's willing to sell a car as "self driving" and accept liability for its driving, then that car had better be able to handle all driving conditions, or Tesla won't survive long under all of the liability lawsuits.
It's difficult for computers to solve visual captchas humans solve easily, likewise humans navigate better than computers today with far inferior sensors.
It often takes me several tries to complete a Capcha, while Google says that they've got AI that can solve their own capchas:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/4...
I'm honestly glad that they're putting these rules into effect. Just after seeing the recent wildfire fighting efforts impeded by drone owners, and even structural firefighting efforts held up, all because drone owners wanted to get video of the destruction. Really? You're going to get in the way of emergency responders, then complain that something is being put in place to dissuade that? Maybe if all of these idiotic drone owners didn't ruin it for everyone, we wouldn't need these at all. But I'm not only glad to see that these rules are being put in place, I hope that emergency response is authorized to SHOOT DOWN drones that get in the way and fine the hell out of the owners of them.
You realize that unregistered drones will still fly, right? Unlike the responsible owners that will register their aircraft and follow common sense (and legal) rules, the idiots that get in the way of firefighting efforts are not likely to register their craft.
The FCC almost got their way with the the GMRS radios. I suspect almost everyone who has bought a FRS/GMRS radio never bothered to get the GRMS license. I got mine just to say I have it.
Once dual FRS/GMRS radio blister packs started being sold at big box retailers, GMRS licensing was effectively ended for those shared bands. Even if consumers paid attention to the licensing requirements (they don't), no one is going to buy a $90 license for a $30 set of radios.
Fortunately for GMRS license holders, there are still GMRS-only frequencies that aren't polluted with the FRS shared frequencies.
The problem is that the driver is not going to be alert -- drivers are barely alert even with fully manual cars, they surely are not going to be paying attention while stopped at a light, they are going to be playing Angry Birds.
Which simply means that the requirements will require alert drivers and no angry birds. This leads to the concept that California still considers the technology to be "In Development" and not for the average SMSing driver or general consumption. Which also leads to the implication that these requirements will be changed in the future when the technology is no longer in a testing phase.
To forestall responses that "It'll never change", I'll point out that very few open-stretch, long-haul freeways still have a speed limit of 55.
Drivers are "required" to be alert today, yet that doesn't stop them from texting, putting on makeup, reading books (!) and lots of other things that divide their attention - they surely aren't going to pay *more* attention to their driving when the car is doing all of the work.
An example would be the car sitting at a red light in a construction zone with new signals strung up and when an unrelated light turns green, the autonomous car releases the brakes and starts to move forward against a red for its lane. An alert individual can override and re-apply the brakes immediately similar to if they had a lapse of clarity and a moment of confusion and avoid crossing fully into opposing traffic.
The problem is that the driver is not going to be alert -- drivers are barely alert even with fully manual cars, they surely are not going to be paying attention while stopped at a light, they are going to be playing Angry Birds.
Terraforming Mars would be an excellent project. Job number 1 would be recreating a magnetic field around Mars....or least the parts we want to inhabit first.
Why start with the hard part first? Why not create a radiation resistant habitat first?
ready to take over on a moments notice
If the driver really can take a moment to take over, it's likely that whatever catastrophe that made manual control necessary will have already played out.
Is there a way to capture said cow fart methane and burn it for energy?
Not economically, though prototypes do exist. There is some effort to capture methane emissions from cow manure.
The paper simply cites that on a per calorie basis many vegtables like lettuce, cucumbers, celery, etc are worse for the enviornment. It's actually obvious because these foods have no nutritional value with respect to calories, yet require water and other resources to bring to the table. The same paper states nutrition rich plant materials are actually better. The "debunking" article is just a knee jerking response and addresses "issues" that were never brought up in the paper. What we need to help fix this planet are people that run off of logic, not emotions.
Maybe if the paper were not behind a $40 paywall, more people could read it and make more reasoned comments.
Let's focus on truly man made emissions, you know shit coming out of cars, coal plants, etc and stop trying to figure out how much a cow farts or how much is generated by eating lettuce. What a waste of time and money. All of the cows and lettuce eating people on the planet pail in comparison to one coal plant.
Those cow farts are pretty much just as man made (and damaging) as your car when you look at a typical cattle (or chicken or hog) farm and the amount of mechanization that goes into turning grain and other feed into the meat in your supermarket.
http://www.independent.co.uk/e...
But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.
From what I understand they want to take over acres of productive farm land to build these solar farms. Ever been out to the country? You might have one house with a roof for every 500 acres of farm land. Rooftop solar panels won't even power that single house, let alone provide power for others.
This solar calculator says that to provide 10,000 KWH/year of power, 750 sq ft of roof area is needed for the panels, so the panels that can fit on a roof could power that home.
Your use of the phrase 'adapters' isn't a good indication of your understanding of evolutionary biology. Individual lifeforms don't adapt, at least not in a useful sense, what you'd want would be candidates who are inherently more viable in the environment. Given the universality of gravity on earth it is very unlikely that there is a considerable difference in viability in low gravity between individuals, unlike for example disease resistance.
Your disdain at the use of the word 'adapters' isn't a good indication of your understanding of English - if you're living in 1G all your life, then you do well in .3G, you've adapted to the new environment. It may be that your body is built better for the environment, maybe you just tough it out despite constant joint pain and digestive difficulties, or maybe you've learned some mental tricks to help you, but regardless of what it is, you've adapted.
Adapt - /dapt/ - verb
become adjusted to new conditions.
If only 20% of the population is allowed to breed then each will need to have 5 children to maintain the 100k starting population level. Since half of them will be male that means each female needs to have an average of 10 children.
I think this is one that is just going to have to sort itself out, in its own time.
I wasn't thinking that the ultimate permanent population would be 100K - just the starting point to make sure they could find enough low-G capable individuals. The rest would be labor to help set up the base and would die off through attrition (some faster than others if they can't handle living in low-G). Sounds harsh, but it's planetary exploration, not Disney Land. I'm sure they'd still get plenty of volunteers even if everyone was told before hand that they may not be allowed to breed, and may even be encouraged (or assisted) to die if they can't handle the environment and get sick, a Mars Colony can't afford to keep someone in a hospital bed for years.
I think it's technically possible to send people to Mars over the next decade or two, but probably not economically feasible for a billionaire or two, the Apollo program reportedly cost $170B in today's dollars
How much of that was the cost of people in administration?
I don't know, but if you dig through NASA's budget, you might be able to come up with a good estimate. Though I'm not sure why it matters -- is it possible to run a $170B project without administrators?
The material cost is probably less than $1 million, the rest is work.
I doubt that's true, but even if it is true, why is that relevant? If I give you a million dollars of Bauxite, you're not going to turn that into a rocket without lots and lots of work (and money).
But yes, if it is done as a government project with the intention of building up know-how in local industry and nurture subcontractors to be able to create advanced rockets then yes, that is what any project will cost.
What does that mean? Any project that builds local know-how and nurtures subcontractors is going to cost $170B?
The first few generations will have issues, but evolution will adapt to the lower gravity with each new generation.
Really, no, it won't. Not on any time scale that we would ever notice. It would take hundreds of generations for natural selection to work its magic with regard to this.
Depends on whether or not some people can adapt quickly to the low-G environment and how quickly those that can't handle the environment die off (or otherwise not allowed to breed). If 100,000 people are sent up, and only the top 20% of adapters are allowed to breed, then even the 2nd generation could be quite well adapted
Really? And how is the human body going to survive on 38% of Earths gravity??? Idiotic. How are you going to build those "sealed buildings" and "greenhouses"? From material from the Home Depots on Mars?? Science fiction is fun to read, but it is FICTION. We cannot live on Mars. We have evoloved to live on Earth.
The human body can survive in 0% of Earths Gravity (at least for 14 months), so it's not like the body won't adapt to lower gravity. There may be some long term side effects that shorten (or lengthen) lifespan, but hey, living on Mars is risky enough that a shorter lifespan is practically guaranteed.
However long-term life on Mars may preclude ever returning to Earth's gravity, though it's possible that some rehabilitation and slow re-acclimation on the long trip home may make it possible to return.
I think it's technically possible to send people to Mars over the next decade or two, but probably not economically feasible for a billionaire or two, the Apollo program reportedly cost $170B in today's dollars, which is "only" around 30% of one years of the USA's military spending. So redirecting 20% of the military budget toward the project for 10 years should be enough money to pay for it.
Though right now, there's not much reason to do so except for the novelty factor - a life-extinguishing global disaster is pretty unlikely in the next century, and we have more pressing problems to solve on earth. But eventually it probably makes sense to colonize off-planet, just for redundancy.