You can get up to about 0.25c with a solar sail, using laser boosting. Your payload would not have to be big. Just enough to bootstrap a new civilization. DNA based beings could send plenty of genetic diversity encoded on a computer, and just splice a base sequence. Machine/AI based beings would not even need that.
How are you going to travel "a few thousands light years"?
Using vessels that can survive a ten thousand year journey. They would be self-repairing, and error correcting, to prevent systems from failing or wearing out. A civilization thousands or millions of years more advanced than us should be able to figure out how to do that.
That is biology based thinking. A civilization this advanced has likely made a full transition to machine based AI. There are no "generations", only periodic upgrades.
Or...now follow me on this...maybe there are *two* Kardashev-II civilizations out there?
Or it could be two settlements of the same civilization. They are only a few thousand LYs apart, which is a blink on cosmic timescales, so if they are both at about the same stage of development, it is unlikely to be coincidence. It is more likely that they have the same origin.
that now Yellon Mask is going the reverse, doing "space travel" without the safety.
Space travel with current technology is inherently unsafe. If you try to do it with the same safety standards as commercial aviation, then you will never launch.
Worries about safety, and actual danger are not the same thing.
"Worries about safety" is not the real issue. The real issue is control and money. Doctors see informed patients as a big threat, and are trying hard to position themselves as gatekeepers to treatment, so they can collect tolls. I was listening to an NPR program discussing direct-to-consumer DNA sequencing services like 23andMe. They had a spokesperson from the AMA, who argued vociferously that these services should be banned, and only doctors should have access to this information, so they could "interpret" the results for their patients, who were obviously incapable of thinking for themselves.
Actually, trolling can take the form of an attempt to prevent free speech. If people go and dox someone...
If you want to prevent doxing, then ban threatening and stalking. But there is no reason to censor speech just because it may lead to something the government doesn't like.
First they came for the trolls, and I am speaking out because I am a troll...
While in the military and while working as a contractor, I was informed that mishandling of classified information can lead to long terms of incarceration.
I also served in the military, and afterwards, worked for a defense contractor. The S2 would occasionally conduct sweeps looking for classified info, in files, offices, desks, drawers, etc. They always found violations. The result was usually a verbal or written reprimand. I never saw anyone go to prison, or even lose their job.
Disclaimer: I am planning to vote for Gary Johnson.
You can argue whether or not they should have ditched the name in the first place, but having done so, it was an absolutely stupid idea to bring it back.
This sort of flip-flopping makes no sense when viewed from the outside, but if you look at the internal politics, it does. Most likely the original decision was opposed by some VP or faction, but was pushed through anyway. Now the power has shifted, and the re-namers are out of power, so bringing back the "old-name" is a way for their opponents to emphasize their dominance, sort of the way that an alpha monkey will shake his pee-pee at the other monkeys.
Anyone that expects a corporation to behave logically and consistently over a period of years has never sat in a boardroom and seen the petty politics and childish score-setting that goes on.
And the law didn't change a thing, just made nominal activity illegal.
Do you have a citation for that? Since the drinking age was raised drunk driving deaths have declined dramatically. There are, of course, other factors than drinking age, but the correlation is certainly in the right direction. I cannot find any figures for binge drinking, but you haven't cited any either. I think your assertion that "the law didn't change a thing" is unsupported by evidence.
So do I, if it is a book I want to read from cover to cover. But I am much more likely to buy it used, and when I am done reading it, instead of putting it on my bookshelf, I sell it back to Amazon for someone else to buy. I never buy reference books anymore, since it is much easier to look up information online. A decade ago, an entire wall in my office was covered with bookshelves full of books. Today, 90% of them have gone to Amazon, eBay, or Goodwill.
She moved to California for this job. There's a certain amount of sunk costs involved in moving that makes the calculus a little trickier than just move back to Texas over a missed paycheck.
Yeah, too bad there are no other tech companies in California.
That's the real question, how the fuck did a small startup get a bunch of work visas?
By applying for them. I worked for a 10 person startup a decade ago, and 3 of the employees were H1Bs. They were highly educated, experienced, and already worked for us from overseas, but we wanted to all be in one place. There was a bit of paperwork, and some delay, but the process was straightforward.
I can't control the charging other than plugging in a cable.
Tesla's control panel lets you control the timing and the level of charging. I have mine programmed to start charging at 2:30am, when electricity prices are low, and to charge to 80% (a range of ~200 miles). If I am going on a longish trip, I will boost it to 100% about an hour before I leave. But I rarely do that. If you have a regular need to go on long trips, you shouldn't buy an electric car.
The delayed charging doesn't make sense for cellphones, but a default of charging to 80% would be a good feature. On a typical day, I only use about 10-20% of my phone's battery capacity, so 80% would be plenty.
The phones should be setup to charge to 80% and stop there.
This is the way that Teslas work. By default, they charge to 80%. You can boost it to 100%, but they recommend you only do that just before you leave for a long trip. It is especially bad to fully charge the battery and then park it in the hot sun. Heat+overcharge=Battery abuse.
No. Tesla collects location information from its cars. It then takes that information, throws out any outliers, and averages it to get the center point for the lane. With that information, it can navigate using GPS only, with no lane markings.
Does your crystal ball mention if anyone will be able to afford one of these vehicles in their driveway?
Tesla cars already come with all the hardware needed for full self-driving. They just need a software upgrade. Some people can afford them.
The cameras are very cheap, as are the ultra-sound sensors. Automative radar is affordable and dropping in price. LIDAR is more expensive, but many cars, including Tesla, don't use LIDAR. The full package of sensors and computer should only add a few hundred to the cost of a car, and you are likely to quickly recoupe that with lower insurance premiums.
And some are even too dumb to know that in a normal distribution, they are.
IQ is normalized (by definition), but we are talking about stupidity, with is the reciprocal of intelligence. The inverse of a normalized function is not another normalized function. You can see this in practice: There are a lot more really stupid people than really intelligent people. The distribution is skewed.
Tokyo has many skyscrapers, and in 2011 was hit by the 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake, one of the biggest quakes in recorded history. Number of Tokyo skyscrapers that collapsed: 0.
Can't wait to see these things navigate black ice.
During snowstorms last winter, Tesla recommended that drivers engage Autopilot because it could handle the icy roads more safely than most humans.
It is amusing that when people want to point out a limitation of SDCs, they often pick something that SDCs do particularly well. SDCs handle low traction situations better than humans do.
The laws governing something are completed before we've even managed to invent it.
Except that self-driving cars have been around for several years. They certainly aren't perfect, but they already have a track record better than human drivers (which is not a difficult criteria). They are ready to replace human drivers on public roads for many tasks, including routine driving on known routes.
Will SDCs be in accidents and even kill some people? Very likely. Would even more people die if the same cars had human drivers? Even more likely.
Slashdot Mirror
What evidence do you have that you can travel faster than the speed of light?
Interstellar travel does not require FTL velocities.
You can't travel near the speed of light.
You can get up to about 0.25c with a solar sail, using laser boosting. Your payload would not have to be big. Just enough to bootstrap a new civilization. DNA based beings could send plenty of genetic diversity encoded on a computer, and just splice a base sequence. Machine/AI based beings would not even need that.
How are you going to travel "a few thousands light years"?
Using vessels that can survive a ten thousand year journey. They would be self-repairing, and error correcting, to prevent systems from failing or wearing out. A civilization thousands or millions of years more advanced than us should be able to figure out how to do that.
Generational ships ...
That is biology based thinking. A civilization this advanced has likely made a full transition to machine based AI. There are no "generations", only periodic upgrades.
Or...now follow me on this...maybe there are *two* Kardashev-II civilizations out there?
Or it could be two settlements of the same civilization. They are only a few thousand LYs apart, which is a blink on cosmic timescales, so if they are both at about the same stage of development, it is unlikely to be coincidence. It is more likely that they have the same origin.
that now Yellon Mask is going the reverse, doing "space travel" without the safety.
Space travel with current technology is inherently unsafe. If you try to do it with the same safety standards as commercial aviation, then you will never launch.
People sneaking into Home Depot to treppan themselves has gotten to be a real problem so they had to lock up all the drills.
That is a silly overreaction. Instead of locking up the drills, they could have just locked up the forstner bits.
Worries about safety, and actual danger are not the same thing.
"Worries about safety" is not the real issue. The real issue is control and money. Doctors see informed patients as a big threat, and are trying hard to position themselves as gatekeepers to treatment, so they can collect tolls. I was listening to an NPR program discussing direct-to-consumer DNA sequencing services like 23andMe. They had a spokesperson from the AMA, who argued vociferously that these services should be banned, and only doctors should have access to this information, so they could "interpret" the results for their patients, who were obviously incapable of thinking for themselves.
Actually, trolling can take the form of an attempt to prevent free speech. If people go and dox someone ...
If you want to prevent doxing, then ban threatening and stalking. But there is no reason to censor speech just because it may lead to something the government doesn't like.
First they came for the trolls, and I am speaking out because I am a troll ...
I suspect the 1%, once they finish strip mining this country, will flee leaving us to rot.
I thought the 1% were already trying to close the strip mines, and leave the coal miners to rot.
While in the military and while working as a contractor, I was informed that mishandling of classified information can lead to long terms of incarceration.
I also served in the military, and afterwards, worked for a defense contractor. The S2 would occasionally conduct sweeps looking for classified info, in files, offices, desks, drawers, etc. They always found violations. The result was usually a verbal or written reprimand. I never saw anyone go to prison, or even lose their job.
Disclaimer: I am planning to vote for Gary Johnson.
You can argue whether or not they should have ditched the name in the first place, but having done so, it was an absolutely stupid idea to bring it back.
This sort of flip-flopping makes no sense when viewed from the outside, but if you look at the internal politics, it does. Most likely the original decision was opposed by some VP or faction, but was pushed through anyway. Now the power has shifted, and the re-namers are out of power, so bringing back the "old-name" is a way for their opponents to emphasize their dominance, sort of the way that an alpha monkey will shake his pee-pee at the other monkeys.
Anyone that expects a corporation to behave logically and consistently over a period of years has never sat in a boardroom and seen the petty politics and childish score-setting that goes on.
And the law didn't change a thing, just made nominal activity illegal.
Do you have a citation for that? Since the drinking age was raised drunk driving deaths have declined dramatically. There are, of course, other factors than drinking age, but the correlation is certainly in the right direction. I cannot find any figures for binge drinking, but you haven't cited any either. I think your assertion that "the law didn't change a thing" is unsupported by evidence.
I always order hard copies.
So do I, if it is a book I want to read from cover to cover. But I am much more likely to buy it used, and when I am done reading it, instead of putting it on my bookshelf, I sell it back to Amazon for someone else to buy. I never buy reference books anymore, since it is much easier to look up information online. A decade ago, an entire wall in my office was covered with bookshelves full of books. Today, 90% of them have gone to Amazon, eBay, or Goodwill.
She moved to California for this job. There's a certain amount of sunk costs involved in moving that makes the calculus a little trickier than just move back to Texas over a missed paycheck.
Yeah, too bad there are no other tech companies in California.
That's the real question, how the fuck did a small startup get a bunch of work visas?
By applying for them. I worked for a 10 person startup a decade ago, and 3 of the employees were H1Bs. They were highly educated, experienced, and already worked for us from overseas, but we wanted to all be in one place. There was a bit of paperwork, and some delay, but the process was straightforward.
I can't control the charging other than plugging in a cable.
Tesla's control panel lets you control the timing and the level of charging. I have mine programmed to start charging at 2:30am, when electricity prices are low, and to charge to 80% (a range of ~200 miles). If I am going on a longish trip, I will boost it to 100% about an hour before I leave. But I rarely do that. If you have a regular need to go on long trips, you shouldn't buy an electric car.
The delayed charging doesn't make sense for cellphones, but a default of charging to 80% would be a good feature. On a typical day, I only use about 10-20% of my phone's battery capacity, so 80% would be plenty.
The phones should be setup to charge to 80% and stop there.
This is the way that Teslas work. By default, they charge to 80%. You can boost it to 100%, but they recommend you only do that just before you leave for a long trip. It is especially bad to fully charge the battery and then park it in the hot sun. Heat+overcharge=Battery abuse.
Still awaiting Chinese Government approval.
Unlikely. Baidu's research lab is in California.
Doesn't Autopilot need to see lane markings?
No. Tesla collects location information from its cars. It then takes that information, throws out any outliers, and averages it to get the center point for the lane. With that information, it can navigate using GPS only, with no lane markings.
Does your crystal ball mention if anyone will be able to afford one of these vehicles in their driveway?
Tesla cars already come with all the hardware needed for full self-driving. They just need a software upgrade. Some people can afford them.
The cameras are very cheap, as are the ultra-sound sensors. Automative radar is affordable and dropping in price. LIDAR is more expensive, but many cars, including Tesla, don't use LIDAR. The full package of sensors and computer should only add a few hundred to the cost of a car, and you are likely to quickly recoupe that with lower insurance premiums.
And some are even too dumb to know that in a normal distribution, they are.
IQ is normalized (by definition), but we are talking about stupidity, with is the reciprocal of intelligence. The inverse of a normalized function is not another normalized function. You can see this in practice: There are a lot more really stupid people than really intelligent people. The distribution is skewed.
Imagine the stupidity of the average person -- then realize that half of them are dumber than that.
Some of them are even dumb enough to think that "average" and "median" are the same thing.
Brilliant idea. Until there's an earthquake.
Tokyo has many skyscrapers, and in 2011 was hit by the 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake, one of the biggest quakes in recorded history. Number of Tokyo skyscrapers that collapsed: 0.
Can't wait to see these things navigate black ice.
During snowstorms last winter, Tesla recommended that drivers engage Autopilot because it could handle the icy roads more safely than most humans.
It is amusing that when people want to point out a limitation of SDCs, they often pick something that SDCs do particularly well. SDCs handle low traction situations better than humans do.
The laws governing something are completed before we've even managed to invent it.
Except that self-driving cars have been around for several years. They certainly aren't perfect, but they already have a track record better than human drivers (which is not a difficult criteria). They are ready to replace human drivers on public roads for many tasks, including routine driving on known routes.
Will SDCs be in accidents and even kill some people? Very likely. Would even more people die if the same cars had human drivers? Even more likely.