From an academic standpoint, food production outweighs entertainment.
No, from that standpoint having some functioning system of food production outweighs entertainment. And Japan already has a functioning food production system without the whaling (otherwise, why would the excess meat just be piling up unused?). An extraneous source of food production, that people don't want prior to an advertising/propaganda campaign to cram it down their throats, isn't an overwhelming priority.
Can't block users/content transparently? I bet "subversive criminal terrorists" or "copyright violators" or "child pornographers" can be shut up without too much complaint --- so it's just a matter of claiming what you wanted to block was a gross violation of national security or basic public morality. And, once Twitter/Facebook wants to block you "transparently," where are you going to go complain? On Twitter?
Anyway, the corporatocracy doesn't even need to directly ban users. Only make sure that social network data mining is available to employers to help assure people with subversive views can't get things like decent paying jobs. Consider how many employers now check Facebook information already --- just wait as this process becomes ever more automated and centralized to serve corporate needs. You'll be given a nice "social media employee reliability rating" in some database that your next employer can buy into to make sure you'll be a "team player" who's a "good fit for the company" (e.g. unlikely to be connected with any workers' rights groups or other undesirables). And your credit rating and insurance premiums can also be tied to "perfectly fair and nondiscriminatory" social media datamining (so long as they redact the "gender," "race," and "religion" fields, everything else will be up for grabs... including plenty of information to highly reliably infer the prior three).
Twitter is a threat. To repressive government and corporate oppressors everywhere.
That's why, following the introduction of the internet, and later Twitter, we've seen the reversal of upward wealth accumulation and increasing consolidation of corporate power. Oh, wait, that didn't happen: the rich today are richer than ever, and a smaller number of huger than ever global megacorporations control a larger than ever share of everything. Twitter might be helpful in speeding the demise of government oppressors --- but corporate oppressors are their revenue stream and purpose for existence. I wouldn't trust the megacorporate Facebook/Twitter centralized controlled "social media" to be a trustworthy ally against growing corporate oppression --- they want to turn all interpersonal relations/communications into things amenable to profitable megacorporate control.
That's easy when all you have is two or three companies controlling the major news outlets
Note, there are only a tiny handful of corporations controlling the major social media sites, too; with the power to scan/filter/block/report/infiltrate communications as they see fit (including, as will be profitable to them in dealing with other repressive governments). The "social media" network is not currently robust against interference/control from this handful of corporations. Become too successful at undermining their sources of profit and control, and I'm pretty sure you'll find yourself on the wrong side of an account ban (or CIA watch list). Unless a lot of decentralized, non-corporate, peer-to-peer mechanisms replace Facebook/Twitter, you're quite vulnerable to centralized control/manipulation (but don't expect to hear about it on Twitter).
What would suggest they do instead? Go bankrupt? Fire the reporters and have the photographers write the stories?
Fire the short-sighted, moneygrubbing management, and let the professional reporters sink or swim on their own --- at least go down upholding some standard whose demise is lamentable. Unfortunately, this is rarely an option considered by short-sighted, moneygrubbing management.
I agree; losing the photojournalists is part of the same process of ditching all other forms of original, independent, local journalism (and just becoming one of a zillion identical re-printers of the same AP stories).
The stuff people get free on the internet is copies of the international news associations (AP, etc.) feeds. Since "local" news ditched the idea of doing their own real investigative reporting on substantial local issues, city newspapers have just become re-prints of the exact same content that you can find everywhere online (including using stock and AP photos), with the local stuff only a little weak "human interest" warm/fuzzy or crime pornography. They have made themselves redundant to getting the news online.
However, if newspapers actually had *real journalists* (written and photographic) generating original local and regional news, they'd have a chance at being relevant. I get better news coverage/analysis of events in Africa and the Mid-East than I do of what's happening in my own city, because there is very little local/regional reporting left. There's no lack of actual issues to report about --- I know all sorts of activists/advocates for important local causes --- but there is no news media left to cover it.
^^^ This. The Nature Communications article is very clear, right from the abstract, that this sensor is 1000x more sensitive than previous *graphene* sensors. *Nowhere* in the journal article is the performance compared directly against CCD/CMOS sensors, but it's trivial to tell (from the numbers given) that this sensor isn't remotely "competitive" in the visible light region. Fortunately, that's not the interesting use of the sensor --- the journal article does compare and cite advantages against other infrared sensing technologies. The researchers might have meant to say that these graphene sensors could be useful for cheap, low-power (but not high sensitivity) visible light applications --- not what the journalists have twisted this into.
One need only spend time on pro photographer forums to find out just how prevalent the snobbery is. Let's not even get into Nikon vs. Canon.
Been there, do that. The general dynamic that I've observed is that the amateur noobs can be insufferable gear snobs --- immensely arrogant that their new prosumer DSLR is the pinnacle of photographic awesomeness. The working professionals, who carry around $30k of camera gear in their bags, disdain gear/brand-snobbery with a passion, and contribute spectacular photos to the cellphone picture threads.
Depends a lot on the task. An iPhone won't be much good for the sports page, but not all news stories are about dim, fast-moving, and distant subjects. For daylight and decently-lit interior shots, an iPhone is perfectly sufficient for web-sized and terrible-quality-print (newspaper) images. Double-page glossy color magazine spreads won't look so great. When not working at the margins of technical capability, a professional who knows how to frame an image to "tell a story" will consistently produce *far* better (not in sharpness/color, but in composition/content) images even with crippled technology. Anyway, my point is not to say iPhones should replace "real" cameras --- a far more capable camera isn't particularly expensive, and people should be using "the right tools for the job." But, for a wide variety of common photojournalism situations, an iPhone is already "good enough" (and there are even some highly respectable, prizewinning professional photojournalists who have used cellphone cameras for their own work).
The actual Nature Photonics article does talk about the noise floor, which is on order of 1 nanowatt of illumination. That corresponds to ~10^9 visible light photons per second --- easily 10^6 times worse than what your ordinary camera pixels are capable of. Oh, and you need cryogenic cooling to do that well. This graphene sensor is not great for visible light sensing --- what it can do (potentially) better than alternate technologies is sense light all the way from visible to 10um mid-infrared.
The move is part of a growing trend towards publications using the iPhone as a replacement for fancy, expensive DSLRs.
No, the move is a trend towards replacing trained skilled professionals (in this case, photojournalists) with cheap, unskilled labor (reporters who might be fine reporters, but don't know shit about photography and photojournalism; or even "user submissions" from Joe Random's cellphone). The cost of a DSLR is nothing compared to wages for a professional. Unfortunately, the *results* from dumping the photojournalists are also nothing compared to using the professional --- and it's not a matter of camera quality. A professional photojournalist with an iPhone would produce better photojournalism than non-experts with a DSLR. The Chicago Sun Times isn't throwing away "pixel quality" so much as "journalism quality" --- no wonder newspapers are dying.
No, this is not 1000x better than CMOS/CCD; it's 1000x better than previous graphene detectors --- which are far worse in the visible range than CMOS/CCD, but can sense out to the 10um mid-infrared band, which other sensors can't.
Despite the poorly written article, this sensor tech is very *insensitive* compared to what you currently have for visible light technology. It's a 1000x improvement compared to previous wide-band graphene detectors, which can sense light from the visible out to 10um mid infrared (your camera can't do that). So no, this won't help your camera photograph at higher ISOs. And current camera sensors are within spitting distance of the theoretical physical limits on low light performance: while they've improved tremendously over the past couple decades, the noisiness of low-light pictures with the best current generation sensors is close to what you'll always be stuck with --- its the result of there being a finite number of photons, with sqrt(N) counting statistics fluctuations, available for even a "perfect" camera to see.
All the reporting framing this as a sensor for "1000x better" low-visible-light photography is simply crap by lazy tech journalists who can't bother to read the actual journal article. This sensor is fairly lousy in the visible light region --- claimed sensitivity down to the nanowatt level, which is more light than usually falling on your camera pixels (unless you're pointing the lens directly at the sun). The 1000x improvement is relative to previous *graphene* detectors, and is a 1000x increase in the amplitude of the signal produced in response to light. Graphene sensors are interesting because of their very broad band response: from visible light to ~10um mid infrared. This technology can improve infrared optoelectronics, in bands useful for a variety of purposes (telecommunications, satellite remote sensing, higher temperature thermal imaging, etc.); however, "enhance low light photography" was just something pulled out of an ignorant tech writer's ass to make a headline (with no relation to the actual research).
I'm much more excited by the vastly expanded color gamut of Rec. 2020 UHDTV standard that (should) come along with 4k displays. The extra pixels are nice, but having the Rec. 2020 color primaries will be a huge step forward.
They want the Iranians to see that not everyone lives in a medieval theocracy.
Guess what? They *already fucking know that* --- and they know the *reason* they are living in a medieval theocracy is American interference blowing away their secular democracy and installing a brutal right-wing dictatorship that made theocracy look like a good choice in comparison. You're an ignorant condescending prick if you think Iran isn't already a modern, technologically savvy country filled with people who know what's going on in the world (probably much better than Fox-News-watching Americans). The Iranian people are just smart enough to know that welcoming Western megacorporate colonial oppression isn't the best solution to their "we have a sucky government" problem --- they've seen what partnering with America does to all the other countries we fuck over in the name of "economic liberalization".
The democratic system where the majority rules 100% of the time guarantees that there will be individuals who are on the losing side 100% of the time and whose voices are never listened to.
Why are you specifically down on democracy in this case? Do you have some other system that's shown a better historical track record of inclusively uplifting 100% of participants? Democracies have sometimes shown abilities for voting majorities to use their power to uplift, protect, and include minority voices --- just as they've been used to crush minorities. Other systems historically haven't been any better at this difficult problem, though they do sometimes allow tiny minorities to brutally oppress majorities instead of the other way around.
'It means my arms are like wires and my hands are like alligator clips [so] when I touch my phone, my computer, my door, I'm authenticated,'
So, whenever you hold a metal hand rail walking down stairs, someone just needs to hook up a sensor to it to grab your authentication signal and relay it to your "secure" devices? This doesn't seem like a particularly more secure biometric than the "old fashioned" iris or fingerprint scans; anyone else can intercept your authentication signal any time you touch any object which they can insert sensors into.
Do you honestly think that the great masses of homo sapiens are even interested in the kind of evolution you are talking about?
What, interested in living in a world where they and their children aren't starving to death, dying of preventable diseases, being killed by drone strikes, living in slums, sewing garments in miserable factories likely to collapse on their heads, seeing opportunities for education and advancement fly beyond their reach? Yes, I do think a very large portion of humanity is highly interested in "evolving" (societally, rather than genetically) to a better future world.
I see absolutely no evidence of the kinds of changes you are talking about on a large enough scale to be relevant.
Well, then, we need to strive harder to make them come about --- they certainly won't happen if we start absolutely defeatist. Yes, it's easy to become cynical and see civilization in an irreversible slide towards a super-unequal dystopian corporatist oligarchy. But, if that's the case, then there is no good reason to support the survival of humanity: do you really want Plutocrats In Space, spreading enslavement and exploitation and misery to the galaxy? Unless/until humankind can work out how to responsibly use *one* planet, I don't want us getting our filthy claws on any more.
You're quite an optimist to consider this a "zero sum" game --- I'm opposed because it comes out "large negative sum" in balance. Issues: - Resource use: the one thing that makes all space work *incredibly expensive* is that launching into space is *extremely resource intensive*: specifically, a gigantic portion of the budget for projects like these is used to *burn a shitload of fossil fuels*. The per-person-lifted energy/pollution costs are enormous. - Science: the "colonization" push is being used as a "privatization" push; in other words, the base focus is *profit* rather than *science*. Such projects are very "light on science" relative to the resources spent: NASA's Mars rovers / orbiters do a whole lot of scientifically-valuable work for a tiny fraction of the cost of sending people. Privatization means science takes a back seat to whoever buys the most lobbyists and flashiest propaganda for making profitable reality TV shows or luxury space tourism. - Political/philosophical: knowing we can "get off this rock" (even if "we" means a tiny tiny fraction of the population, with the vast majority living under the deluded hope that they'll be part of the lucky few) removes incentives for fixing fixable problems *here on Earth*.
So, what's the *benefit* that we trade for these losses? For the overwhelming majority of humankind, the only *benefit* is a warm, fuzzy feeling that in some vague sense the species is safe in the heavens. It's a lot like the "benefits" offered by various religions to justify all sorts of terrible allocations of humankind's resources (to the benefit of a few wealthy high priests on top).
Take New York, for instance. Millions of people, living in a very dense urban environment
Yes, dense urban areas would likely be goners. Fortunately, the whole world isn't in dense urban areas. A lot of it is (compounding the tragedy of breakdowns in resource supply chains). However, there's still a lot (not a majority, but still a heck of a lot) of people living in areas that *supply* the urban centers with food/water/industrial goods --- in calamitous collapse, they'll no longer be able to feed themselves and everyone else living in cities; but they'll have the know-how and the resources, diminished but still enough to sustain themselves.
Humanity *barely* survived the iceage, when we numbered well under 1 billion globally. (Closer to a few million.) This time we would have 7bn, on top of the adverse conditions, all competing to be the survivors.
Survival during the ice age was typically less a case of "competition against other humans" as "competition against forces of nature" --- do you have any evidence that human-on-human violence was the primary cause of population decline, rather than *everyone* in large areas being starving (in which case, fighting your neighbors isn't a helpful move; cooperating with them for locating resources is). In overpopulated areas (concentrated urban centers), inter-human competition will be more destructive with growing population. However, at some point you switch to *increased* species survival probability the more people you have, sparsely populated, competing "against nature" more than "against each other".
The unburied dead would promote serious issues with plagues, the basic resource shortages would ensure that healthcare would be a far lower priority
"Knowledge is power" --- since the past ice age, humankind has advanced tremendously in knowledge of basic sanitary and medical procedures that tremendously increase human survival rates. Horrendous casualty rates in past historical plagues and wars (before humans figured out the basic functioning of infectious disease) were, in retrospect, in large part *preventable* by very simple, low-tech processes that we understand now. Even without fancy pharmaceuticals, judicious use of penicillin (bread mold), boiling water, soap (saponified oils using lye from wood fire ashes), appropriate burial and human waste management procedures, etc., makes the majority of things that were once a near certain community death sentence into manageable annoyances.
I am a utilitarian.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Your idea of "greatest good for the greatest number of people" is "let nine billion on this planet plunge into species-ending starvation warfare; so long as a handful of colonists have their happy hippie gardens"? You viewpoints seem the *opposite* of utilitarian: centered on high-minded ideology of "species survival somewhere" regardless of untold suffering for the overwhelming majority of humanity. Not even aiming for last-ditch global climate engineering like blasting massive dust clouds into the air to reduce solar input?
In all reality, a 1%er wouldn't be able to HANDLE living on mars anyway.
Really? You don't think the people setting up the show would just set up the same social arrangements that benefit them on Earth --- they'd get a nice comfy desk job as a "wealth creator visionary" while others do all the "endless hard work and suffering"? You were talking about all the advanced psychological profiling they're doing for Mars crew --- you don't think they'd be able to select nice, obedient, productive peons willing to happily defend unequal social orders as absolutely necessary for society? Screen out anyone likely to question authority? I think you're pretty naive if you think the ultra-rich backers of for-profit space exploitation are planning on setting up some egalitarian Marxist commune rather than a high-wealth-disparity exploitative oligarchy (like every designed-by-the-rich, staffed-by-the-poor venture on Earth).
All 7 (or 9, with continued population growth) billion people in the world aren't "unable to care for themselves." Catastrophic environmental change would be a humanitarian disaster because so many billions are indeed already living precariously, and would be pushed "over the edge" by widespread crop failures (leading to war, looting, fights over remaining resources). I'm by no means trying to indicate that everything will be hunky-dory with civilization should our present path towards environmental catastrophe continue.
However, despite all the billions who will die from disruptive changes, there are also billions of people living close enough to current (or future, as habitable zones shifts) sources for food, water, shelter --- all the necessities for the continuance of life. All the technologies that you consider feasible *right now* for sustaining advanced civilization on Mars --- plus all the things that are already trivial to do on Earth --- are also available to humans here. Not everyone will be wiped out by roving marauders --- in every case, either the marauders will die off (unable to succeed against better-fed and better-equipped residents defending successful post-apocalyptic colonies), or the marauders will win --- and settle down to create societies of their own around new centers of available resources. Humankind will carry on. Resource wars are terrible, and to be avoided at any cost --- but they do not erase all of humankind from the face of continents, because eventually populations reach equilibrium with available resources and farming is more attractive than fighting. A few extra colonists on Mars --- even tens of millions --- will still be a drop in the bucket of human civilization; they will not be responsible for saving humankind from extinction.
The costs of sending people to mars will be outrageous, but that is being privately funded by private enterprise, and is already budgeted.
One reason I am not so hot on Mars colonization. That "funding from private enterprise" is taking advantage of the immense wealth disparities that drive the worst of human self-destructiveness in the first place: rich fuckers burning vast amounts of resources (that properly belong to humankind) to stroke their own egos, while polluting this planet into oblivion. When rich fuckers know they have a ticket off this planet, they'll care even less about sowing the seeds of environmental catastrophe and killing billions in wars. Rooting for "private enterprise" (a.k.a. the tiny fraction of people who own the overwhelming majority of wealth) to save itself while the rest of the planet burns is, in my opinion, outrageously immoral. If you want to "save humanity," building gallows to summarily hang every billionaire would be a much more direct path than building rocketships. If humankind's "private enterprise" (the bastards driving destruction of this planet in the first place) are the ideological leaders of our leap to space, then I definitely *do not want* humanity spreading that horror beyond this planet.
What about your Mars colonists make them so much more perfect people than any small enclave on post-apocalyptic Earth? Why would they, in the wake of collapse of any accountability towards the standards of Earth trading partners, not fall into enslaving, shooting, and raping each other --- yet, of the billions remaining on Earth, spread all over the globe, there wouldn't manage to be any enclaves of civility? Earlier, you accused me of being unrealistic about the nature of humankind. Yet here, you are assuming that becoming isolated Mars colonists will transform such people into high-minded peaceful hippies in a utopian garden of cooperation. Against many historical examples of isolated struggling colonies (in far more favorable conditions than Mars) degrading into self-destructive dysfunctional authoritarianism, slavery, cannibalism, and every type of brutality?
In worst case collapse (perhaps not as inevitable as you suggest --- since you're so interested in adventurous fighting of odds for Mars colonization, why so defeatist about Earth's climate?), the death and misery and destruction will be terrible --- but, at least when humans have killed each other off enough to equilibrate with drastically reduced resources, humankind will still be surviving on the planet; and with a whole lot more survivors (with access to far more material for re-building society) than we can move to Mars in the next two centuries. Even "armed robbers demanding food" eventually have to rebuild society once they kill off all the poor defenseless food-providers (or, more likely, be killed off the second their bullets run out and they are on equal footing with angry stick-wielding peasant families).
If humans, faced by adversity in acquiring resources, are so certainly doomed to resorting to short-sighted violence instead of pulling together to struggle to survive, then any Mars colony project is doomed from the start. If not, then Mars colonies are unnecessary to assure the continuance of humanity in the face of extreme adverse environmental conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
From an academic standpoint, food production outweighs entertainment.
No, from that standpoint having some functioning system of food production outweighs entertainment. And Japan already has a functioning food production system without the whaling (otherwise, why would the excess meat just be piling up unused?). An extraneous source of food production, that people don't want prior to an advertising/propaganda campaign to cram it down their throats, isn't an overwhelming priority.
Can't block users/content transparently? I bet "subversive criminal terrorists" or "copyright violators" or "child pornographers" can be shut up without too much complaint --- so it's just a matter of claiming what you wanted to block was a gross violation of national security or basic public morality. And, once Twitter/Facebook wants to block you "transparently," where are you going to go complain? On Twitter?
Anyway, the corporatocracy doesn't even need to directly ban users. Only make sure that social network data mining is available to employers to help assure people with subversive views can't get things like decent paying jobs. Consider how many employers now check Facebook information already --- just wait as this process becomes ever more automated and centralized to serve corporate needs. You'll be given a nice "social media employee reliability rating" in some database that your next employer can buy into to make sure you'll be a "team player" who's a "good fit for the company" (e.g. unlikely to be connected with any workers' rights groups or other undesirables). And your credit rating and insurance premiums can also be tied to "perfectly fair and nondiscriminatory" social media datamining (so long as they redact the "gender," "race," and "religion" fields, everything else will be up for grabs... including plenty of information to highly reliably infer the prior three).
Twitter is a threat. To repressive government and corporate oppressors everywhere.
That's why, following the introduction of the internet, and later Twitter, we've seen the reversal of upward wealth accumulation and increasing consolidation of corporate power. Oh, wait, that didn't happen: the rich today are richer than ever, and a smaller number of huger than ever global megacorporations control a larger than ever share of everything. Twitter might be helpful in speeding the demise of government oppressors --- but corporate oppressors are their revenue stream and purpose for existence. I wouldn't trust the megacorporate Facebook/Twitter centralized controlled "social media" to be a trustworthy ally against growing corporate oppression --- they want to turn all interpersonal relations/communications into things amenable to profitable megacorporate control.
That's easy when all you have is two or three companies controlling the major news outlets
Note, there are only a tiny handful of corporations controlling the major social media sites, too; with the power to scan/filter/block/report/infiltrate communications as they see fit (including, as will be profitable to them in dealing with other repressive governments). The "social media" network is not currently robust against interference/control from this handful of corporations. Become too successful at undermining their sources of profit and control, and I'm pretty sure you'll find yourself on the wrong side of an account ban (or CIA watch list). Unless a lot of decentralized, non-corporate, peer-to-peer mechanisms replace Facebook/Twitter, you're quite vulnerable to centralized control/manipulation (but don't expect to hear about it on Twitter).
What would suggest they do instead? Go bankrupt? Fire the reporters and have the photographers write the stories?
Fire the short-sighted, moneygrubbing management, and let the professional reporters sink or swim on their own --- at least go down upholding some standard whose demise is lamentable. Unfortunately, this is rarely an option considered by short-sighted, moneygrubbing management.
I agree; losing the photojournalists is part of the same process of ditching all other forms of original, independent, local journalism (and just becoming one of a zillion identical re-printers of the same AP stories).
The stuff people get free on the internet is copies of the international news associations (AP, etc.) feeds. Since "local" news ditched the idea of doing their own real investigative reporting on substantial local issues, city newspapers have just become re-prints of the exact same content that you can find everywhere online (including using stock and AP photos), with the local stuff only a little weak "human interest" warm/fuzzy or crime pornography. They have made themselves redundant to getting the news online.
However, if newspapers actually had *real journalists* (written and photographic) generating original local and regional news, they'd have a chance at being relevant. I get better news coverage/analysis of events in Africa and the Mid-East than I do of what's happening in my own city, because there is very little local/regional reporting left. There's no lack of actual issues to report about --- I know all sorts of activists/advocates for important local causes --- but there is no news media left to cover it.
^^^ This. The Nature Communications article is very clear, right from the abstract, that this sensor is 1000x more sensitive than previous *graphene* sensors. *Nowhere* in the journal article is the performance compared directly against CCD/CMOS sensors, but it's trivial to tell (from the numbers given) that this sensor isn't remotely "competitive" in the visible light region. Fortunately, that's not the interesting use of the sensor --- the journal article does compare and cite advantages against other infrared sensing technologies. The researchers might have meant to say that these graphene sensors could be useful for cheap, low-power (but not high sensitivity) visible light applications --- not what the journalists have twisted this into.
One need only spend time on pro photographer forums to find out just how prevalent the snobbery is. Let's not even get into Nikon vs. Canon.
Been there, do that. The general dynamic that I've observed is that the amateur noobs can be insufferable gear snobs --- immensely arrogant that their new prosumer DSLR is the pinnacle of photographic awesomeness. The working professionals, who carry around $30k of camera gear in their bags, disdain gear/brand-snobbery with a passion, and contribute spectacular photos to the cellphone picture threads.
Depends a lot on the task. An iPhone won't be much good for the sports page, but not all news stories are about dim, fast-moving, and distant subjects. For daylight and decently-lit interior shots, an iPhone is perfectly sufficient for web-sized and terrible-quality-print (newspaper) images. Double-page glossy color magazine spreads won't look so great. When not working at the margins of technical capability, a professional who knows how to frame an image to "tell a story" will consistently produce *far* better (not in sharpness/color, but in composition/content) images even with crippled technology.
Anyway, my point is not to say iPhones should replace "real" cameras --- a far more capable camera isn't particularly expensive, and people should be using "the right tools for the job." But, for a wide variety of common photojournalism situations, an iPhone is already "good enough" (and there are even some highly respectable, prizewinning professional photojournalists who have used cellphone cameras for their own work).
The actual Nature Photonics article does talk about the noise floor, which is on order of 1 nanowatt of illumination. That corresponds to ~10^9 visible light photons per second --- easily 10^6 times worse than what your ordinary camera pixels are capable of. Oh, and you need cryogenic cooling to do that well. This graphene sensor is not great for visible light sensing --- what it can do (potentially) better than alternate technologies is sense light all the way from visible to 10um mid-infrared.
The move is part of a growing trend towards publications using the iPhone as a replacement for fancy, expensive DSLRs.
No, the move is a trend towards replacing trained skilled professionals (in this case, photojournalists) with cheap, unskilled labor (reporters who might be fine reporters, but don't know shit about photography and photojournalism; or even "user submissions" from Joe Random's cellphone). The cost of a DSLR is nothing compared to wages for a professional. Unfortunately, the *results* from dumping the photojournalists are also nothing compared to using the professional --- and it's not a matter of camera quality. A professional photojournalist with an iPhone would produce better photojournalism than non-experts with a DSLR. The Chicago Sun Times isn't throwing away "pixel quality" so much as "journalism quality" --- no wonder newspapers are dying.
Here's the actual Nature Communications article, not a mangling by some incompetent tech journalist.
No, this is not 1000x better than CMOS/CCD; it's 1000x better than previous graphene detectors --- which are far worse in the visible range than CMOS/CCD, but can sense out to the 10um mid-infrared band, which other sensors can't.
Despite the poorly written article, this sensor tech is very *insensitive* compared to what you currently have for visible light technology. It's a 1000x improvement compared to previous wide-band graphene detectors, which can sense light from the visible out to 10um mid infrared (your camera can't do that). So no, this won't help your camera photograph at higher ISOs. And current camera sensors are within spitting distance of the theoretical physical limits on low light performance: while they've improved tremendously over the past couple decades, the noisiness of low-light pictures with the best current generation sensors is close to what you'll always be stuck with --- its the result of there being a finite number of photons, with sqrt(N) counting statistics fluctuations, available for even a "perfect" camera to see.
All the reporting framing this as a sensor for "1000x better" low-visible-light photography is simply crap by lazy tech journalists who can't bother to read the actual journal article. This sensor is fairly lousy in the visible light region --- claimed sensitivity down to the nanowatt level, which is more light than usually falling on your camera pixels (unless you're pointing the lens directly at the sun).
The 1000x improvement is relative to previous *graphene* detectors, and is a 1000x increase in the amplitude of the signal produced in response to light. Graphene sensors are interesting because of their very broad band response: from visible light to ~10um mid infrared. This technology can improve infrared optoelectronics, in bands useful for a variety of purposes (telecommunications, satellite remote sensing, higher temperature thermal imaging, etc.); however, "enhance low light photography" was just something pulled out of an ignorant tech writer's ass to make a headline (with no relation to the actual research).
I'm much more excited by the vastly expanded color gamut of Rec. 2020 UHDTV standard that (should) come along with 4k displays. The extra pixels are nice, but having the Rec. 2020 color primaries will be a huge step forward.
They want the Iranians to see that not everyone lives in a medieval theocracy.
Guess what? They *already fucking know that* --- and they know the *reason* they are living in a medieval theocracy is American interference blowing away their secular democracy and installing a brutal right-wing dictatorship that made theocracy look like a good choice in comparison. You're an ignorant condescending prick if you think Iran isn't already a modern, technologically savvy country filled with people who know what's going on in the world (probably much better than Fox-News-watching Americans). The Iranian people are just smart enough to know that welcoming Western megacorporate colonial oppression isn't the best solution to their "we have a sucky government" problem --- they've seen what partnering with America does to all the other countries we fuck over in the name of "economic liberalization".
The democratic system where the majority rules 100% of the time guarantees that there will be individuals who are on the losing side 100% of the time and whose voices are never listened to.
Why are you specifically down on democracy in this case? Do you have some other system that's shown a better historical track record of inclusively uplifting 100% of participants? Democracies have sometimes shown abilities for voting majorities to use their power to uplift, protect, and include minority voices --- just as they've been used to crush minorities. Other systems historically haven't been any better at this difficult problem, though they do sometimes allow tiny minorities to brutally oppress majorities instead of the other way around.
'It means my arms are like wires and my hands are like alligator clips [so] when I touch my phone, my computer, my door, I'm authenticated,'
So, whenever you hold a metal hand rail walking down stairs, someone just needs to hook up a sensor to it to grab your authentication signal and relay it to your "secure" devices? This doesn't seem like a particularly more secure biometric than the "old fashioned" iris or fingerprint scans; anyone else can intercept your authentication signal any time you touch any object which they can insert sensors into.
Do you honestly think that the great masses of homo sapiens are even interested in the kind of evolution you are talking about?
What, interested in living in a world where they and their children aren't starving to death, dying of preventable diseases, being killed by drone strikes, living in slums, sewing garments in miserable factories likely to collapse on their heads, seeing opportunities for education and advancement fly beyond their reach? Yes, I do think a very large portion of humanity is highly interested in "evolving" (societally, rather than genetically) to a better future world.
I see absolutely no evidence of the kinds of changes you are talking about on a large enough scale to be relevant.
Well, then, we need to strive harder to make them come about --- they certainly won't happen if we start absolutely defeatist. Yes, it's easy to become cynical and see civilization in an irreversible slide towards a super-unequal dystopian corporatist oligarchy. But, if that's the case, then there is no good reason to support the survival of humanity: do you really want Plutocrats In Space, spreading enslavement and exploitation and misery to the galaxy? Unless/until humankind can work out how to responsibly use *one* planet, I don't want us getting our filthy claws on any more.
You're quite an optimist to consider this a "zero sum" game --- I'm opposed because it comes out "large negative sum" in balance. Issues:
- Resource use: the one thing that makes all space work *incredibly expensive* is that launching into space is *extremely resource intensive*: specifically, a gigantic portion of the budget for projects like these is used to *burn a shitload of fossil fuels*. The per-person-lifted energy/pollution costs are enormous.
- Science: the "colonization" push is being used as a "privatization" push; in other words, the base focus is *profit* rather than *science*. Such projects are very "light on science" relative to the resources spent: NASA's Mars rovers / orbiters do a whole lot of scientifically-valuable work for a tiny fraction of the cost of sending people. Privatization means science takes a back seat to whoever buys the most lobbyists and flashiest propaganda for making profitable reality TV shows or luxury space tourism.
- Political/philosophical: knowing we can "get off this rock" (even if "we" means a tiny tiny fraction of the population, with the vast majority living under the deluded hope that they'll be part of the lucky few) removes incentives for fixing fixable problems *here on Earth*.
So, what's the *benefit* that we trade for these losses? For the overwhelming majority of humankind, the only *benefit* is a warm, fuzzy feeling that in some vague sense the species is safe in the heavens. It's a lot like the "benefits" offered by various religions to justify all sorts of terrible allocations of humankind's resources (to the benefit of a few wealthy high priests on top).
Take New York, for instance. Millions of people, living in a very dense urban environment
Yes, dense urban areas would likely be goners. Fortunately, the whole world isn't in dense urban areas. A lot of it is (compounding the tragedy of breakdowns in resource supply chains). However, there's still a lot (not a majority, but still a heck of a lot) of people living in areas that *supply* the urban centers with food/water/industrial goods --- in calamitous collapse, they'll no longer be able to feed themselves and everyone else living in cities; but they'll have the know-how and the resources, diminished but still enough to sustain themselves.
Humanity *barely* survived the iceage, when we numbered well under 1 billion globally. (Closer to a few million.) This time we would have 7bn, on top of the adverse conditions, all competing to be the survivors.
Survival during the ice age was typically less a case of "competition against other humans" as "competition against forces of nature" --- do you have any evidence that human-on-human violence was the primary cause of population decline, rather than *everyone* in large areas being starving (in which case, fighting your neighbors isn't a helpful move; cooperating with them for locating resources is). In overpopulated areas (concentrated urban centers), inter-human competition will be more destructive with growing population. However, at some point you switch to *increased* species survival probability the more people you have, sparsely populated, competing "against nature" more than "against each other".
The unburied dead would promote serious issues with plagues, the basic resource shortages would ensure that healthcare would be a far lower priority
"Knowledge is power" --- since the past ice age, humankind has advanced tremendously in knowledge of basic sanitary and medical procedures that tremendously increase human survival rates. Horrendous casualty rates in past historical plagues and wars (before humans figured out the basic functioning of infectious disease) were, in retrospect, in large part *preventable* by very simple, low-tech processes that we understand now. Even without fancy pharmaceuticals, judicious use of penicillin (bread mold), boiling water, soap (saponified oils using lye from wood fire ashes), appropriate burial and human waste management procedures, etc., makes the majority of things that were once a near certain community death sentence into manageable annoyances.
I am a utilitarian.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Your idea of "greatest good for the greatest number of people" is "let nine billion on this planet plunge into species-ending starvation warfare; so long as a handful of colonists have their happy hippie gardens"? You viewpoints seem the *opposite* of utilitarian: centered on high-minded ideology of "species survival somewhere" regardless of untold suffering for the overwhelming majority of humanity. Not even aiming for last-ditch global climate engineering like blasting massive dust clouds into the air to reduce solar input?
In all reality, a 1%er wouldn't be able to HANDLE living on mars anyway.
Really? You don't think the people setting up the show would just set up the same social arrangements that benefit them on Earth --- they'd get a nice comfy desk job as a "wealth creator visionary" while others do all the "endless hard work and suffering"? You were talking about all the advanced psychological profiling they're doing for Mars crew --- you don't think they'd be able to select nice, obedient, productive peons willing to happily defend unequal social orders as absolutely necessary for society? Screen out anyone likely to question authority? I think you're pretty naive if you think the ultra-rich backers of for-profit space exploitation are planning on setting up some egalitarian Marxist commune rather than a high-wealth-disparity exploitative oligarchy (like every designed-by-the-rich, staffed-by-the-poor venture on Earth).
All 7 (or 9, with continued population growth) billion people in the world aren't "unable to care for themselves." Catastrophic environmental change would be a humanitarian disaster because so many billions are indeed already living precariously, and would be pushed "over the edge" by widespread crop failures (leading to war, looting, fights over remaining resources). I'm by no means trying to indicate that everything will be hunky-dory with civilization should our present path towards environmental catastrophe continue.
However, despite all the billions who will die from disruptive changes, there are also billions of people living close enough to current (or future, as habitable zones shifts) sources for food, water, shelter --- all the necessities for the continuance of life. All the technologies that you consider feasible *right now* for sustaining advanced civilization on Mars --- plus all the things that are already trivial to do on Earth --- are also available to humans here. Not everyone will be wiped out by roving marauders --- in every case, either the marauders will die off (unable to succeed against better-fed and better-equipped residents defending successful post-apocalyptic colonies), or the marauders will win --- and settle down to create societies of their own around new centers of available resources. Humankind will carry on. Resource wars are terrible, and to be avoided at any cost --- but they do not erase all of humankind from the face of continents, because eventually populations reach equilibrium with available resources and farming is more attractive than fighting. A few extra colonists on Mars --- even tens of millions --- will still be a drop in the bucket of human civilization; they will not be responsible for saving humankind from extinction.
The costs of sending people to mars will be outrageous, but that is being privately funded by private enterprise, and is already budgeted.
One reason I am not so hot on Mars colonization. That "funding from private enterprise" is taking advantage of the immense wealth disparities that drive the worst of human self-destructiveness in the first place: rich fuckers burning vast amounts of resources (that properly belong to humankind) to stroke their own egos, while polluting this planet into oblivion. When rich fuckers know they have a ticket off this planet, they'll care even less about sowing the seeds of environmental catastrophe and killing billions in wars. Rooting for "private enterprise" (a.k.a. the tiny fraction of people who own the overwhelming majority of wealth) to save itself while the rest of the planet burns is, in my opinion, outrageously immoral. If you want to "save humanity," building gallows to summarily hang every billionaire would be a much more direct path than building rocketships. If humankind's "private enterprise" (the bastards driving destruction of this planet in the first place) are the ideological leaders of our leap to space, then I definitely *do not want* humanity spreading that horror beyond this planet.
What about your Mars colonists make them so much more perfect people than any small enclave on post-apocalyptic Earth? Why would they, in the wake of collapse of any accountability towards the standards of Earth trading partners, not fall into enslaving, shooting, and raping each other --- yet, of the billions remaining on Earth, spread all over the globe, there wouldn't manage to be any enclaves of civility? Earlier, you accused me of being unrealistic about the nature of humankind. Yet here, you are assuming that becoming isolated Mars colonists will transform such people into high-minded peaceful hippies in a utopian garden of cooperation. Against many historical examples of isolated struggling colonies (in far more favorable conditions than Mars) degrading into self-destructive dysfunctional authoritarianism, slavery, cannibalism, and every type of brutality?
In worst case collapse (perhaps not as inevitable as you suggest --- since you're so interested in adventurous fighting of odds for Mars colonization, why so defeatist about Earth's climate?), the death and misery and destruction will be terrible --- but, at least when humans have killed each other off enough to equilibrate with drastically reduced resources, humankind will still be surviving on the planet; and with a whole lot more survivors (with access to far more material for re-building society) than we can move to Mars in the next two centuries. Even "armed robbers demanding food" eventually have to rebuild society once they kill off all the poor defenseless food-providers (or, more likely, be killed off the second their bullets run out and they are on equal footing with angry stick-wielding peasant families).
If humans, faced by adversity in acquiring resources, are so certainly doomed to resorting to short-sighted violence instead of pulling together to struggle to survive, then any Mars colony project is doomed from the start. If not, then Mars colonies are unnecessary to assure the continuance of humanity in the face of extreme adverse environmental conditions.