By all means, hold MS accountable and then watch what happens to everyone else.
You will be holding open source and free software creators responsible as well, because the law won't be confined to MS. So yes, by all means, hold MS responsible under law, and watch as MS pays a few billion dollars in fines (maybe), and the FOSS software market undergoes critical existence failure.
Yes, botnets are a problem, but they aren't the end of the world. Let's not burn the house down to drive out the mice.
Computer science starts whenever you have the interest and skills to learn it. Most of the early CS shit I learned in college I could have done in junior high school. The rest of it was more dependent upon being able to find resources and a teacher who was able to give me some instruction on theory. That *could* be done in high school. Maybe not my senior classes, but certainly a substantial chunk of it could have been in HS.
I think we should have more CS resources in HS... for the willing. In no way should CS be on some standardized test taught by teachers who have a class full of bored kids. That will just suck money away from use on students who are actually interested in it, and will put that money to good use.
Well they did say it only "preceded the recent smartwatch trend". I don't think they were saying that she invented it or was even a first adopter.
Okay, yeah, she's not an engineer. Still, probably not bad for a kid who previously didn't have any desire to interact with a computer at all.
My only interest in that story is whether she actually likes working with computers now enough to become a programmer. Or is she still going to be a business or art history major when she goes to college because she's not really all that interested in the field except as something she did at "Summer Camp my Mom made me go to".
As someone else said, I have a lot of trouble believing that a YouTube executive could not buy her daughter and son their own computers....
Yes, in my house, I admit, we only had one computer and I used it most of the time.
On the other hand, I was the one who asked for it, convinced my parents to get it and I paid for half of it. And back in the day $700 was no small feat for a fifteen year old making minimum wage when not in school.
However, my sisters could use the computer, I just don't remember them being all that interested in it. They probably thought all it was good for was playing video games, which I admit was a significant use for it. On the other hand, I used it to write all my high school papers and lab reports, and learned how to make use of it as a tool as well.
Whatever it is that is keeping girls out of CS, I think it is something social and something that happens when they are very young. I'm not sure that making it mandatory in a school is going to help with that. There are plenty of classes that people do well with in school and promptly forget about as soon as they are free to not be in school. And in fact, girls are using computers all the time these days, we call them smartphones. Its just that they don't use them for programming.
I enjoy my car and use all the time, but that doesn't make me interested in doing auto repair for a living.
Probably not, especially if there was no consideration for their required services. And even if it was, it would have to be a best effort scenario for a very limited reason. And this would have to be for a limited period of time. They can't give you a buck fifty and then expect you to show up to help them fifty years later.
Executives, due to their special position as an officer of the company, might be different, but they usually get a very nice severance package to begin with, so that's not really a hardship for them. And even then, like the article said, it would probably just be for legal matters.
The fact that it is the strongest in history is not really all that important. It isn't so far off the charts that it was inconceivable.
However, the fact that it's particular intensity is believed to be related to El Nino means that there is something of a climate effect. Of course, I'm not stating El Nino is a result of AGW, in fact I don't have any idea if it is supposed to be or not.
So, being the most powerful in history helps in one respect. Since it has broken an upper observed value, it becomes easier to see a more incremental effect from something like El Nino. If the storm was weaker, then it might simply be explained as a freak, but otherwise normal hurricane. This storm is actually setting a new record, and so it's higher value seems a bit more meaningful.
Nevertheless, while "OMG HUEG HURRICANE = AGW!!!!" is probably not a valid statement, if you look at the specifics of the storm, it may show a climate effect which might then be traced back to AGW.
So, if this is related to El Nino, then we would need to determine if El Nino is an AGW effect. If it is solidly attributed to AGW, then this storm was intensified by AGW.
I'm still on the fence somewhat about the scope and effects of AGW, but this is the sort of thing you expect with more heat, and therefore energy, in the atmosphere. You get storms and erratic weather with wildly varying effects locally. Droughts and super-hurricanes in some places, beautiful tropical weather in others. Unfortunately, the nice weather isn't as good a thing around the icepacks at the Poles.
As someone who does believe in God, I disagree about how they are similar.
Much of what we attribute to God must be taken on faith alone and was revealed, not discovered. It is not scientific at all in the sense that it can be tested.
Dark matter is a hypothesis that has observations where it makes as much, if not more sense than any of the other scenarios. I think everyone knows that Dark Matter isn't a full fledged theory yet, but there's nothing else with predictive value either, so that doesn't disqualify it from investigation. It does, however, explain observations adequately, which is a real test of a useful hypothesis.
Actually only 23% of the universe is Dark Matter. 70+% of the Universe is Dark Energy, which is something believed to not be directly related to Dark Matter except in that we have labeled both of them as "dark".
The (likely) reasons we don't detect it on Earth are:
1. It is believed to clump in specific areas of galaxies. The density of dark matter in "our" part of the galaxy is extremely low. This is borne out by observations of other galaxies. 2. It is supposed to be very difficult to detect to begin with. We've only actually detected it because it causes gravitational effects on large scales. While that sounds "too convenient" if you don't believe it exists, this doesn't eliminate it. As someone pointed out previously, neutrinos are extremely difficult to detect even though we're showered with them constantly because they are just so weakly interacting with other matter.
Realistically, wormholes or not, even a civilization limited to light speed travel should have been able to colonize or visit most of the galaxy in just a few million years with robotic exploration. So, it is looking like there is either no one else out there, or just as likely, there is some sort of barrier to intelligent civilizations being able to launch such an effort like colonization or robotic exploration.
Obviously, this all assumes that someone would have done all of this first. We might be either the first civilization at this point, or at the very least, a member of the "first wave" of civilizations where the other civilizations do exist, but their evidence has not yet arrived here. That scenario is just as likely as any other solution, but it is less useful because then we have nothing yet to look for in order to confirm our theory, so we tend to assume that we're not a member of "the First Ones".
There is also the idea that there may be a "Great Filter", which is some sort of event or situation that all intelligent species run into before they can do interstellar exploration. It could be something like nuclear holocaust or self-destruction being inevitable, or as simple as running out of available energy to be able to maintain high technology before they could start the program. Or some combination.
Nuclear war, unfortunately, is probably inevitable. It is a more distant threat than it used to be, but the weapons are all still there, and even pariah states like North Korea have working weapons. While those states remain somewhat rational, we're probably fine, but the stakes are pretty high.
Another possibility is simple overheating. Here I'm not exactly talking about Global Warming as caused by carbon emissions, but actual generation of heat by releasing it through energy production as waste heat. Solar energy doesn't help us with this because increased capture of solar radiation will increase waste heat on Earth. Eventually, carbon dioxide or not, we might simply add more waste heat to the planet than the Earth can actually radiate out into space. In that sense, I am very much a believer in AGW, although that scenario is probably more remote in time than a CO2 based greenhouse effect. Eventually, the Earth will need a giant heat sink if we want modern civilization for ever increasing numbers of people.
You mean traversable wormholes. Wormholes can certainly still exist without aliens being here if they convert any aliens to random energy when the aliens attempt to access them.
This is true. No matter how many times I see spooky action at a distance explained to not be FTL communication method, someone still thinks it can be a FTL communication method.
That said, FTL is not only movement of information at FTL speeds, it is movement of information at speeds which are FTL relative to other points. So yes, if there was a way to warp space-time so that a normal light speed EM wave simply had a shorter distance to go, that's still FTL communication.
Of course, since no one has demonstrated that warping space time is possible in that manner, and wormholes (while still not ruled out) appear to require a sort of exotic matter that is unlikely to exist, FTL is very much a goal with fiction wrapped around it, rather than science.
That's just uranium, which is admittedly what we use right now, but there is approximately 3 to 4 times as much thorium. If we went with thorium reactors, and reserved uranium stocks for startup operations related to their operation, we'd be better off.
The real advantage of nuclear isn't how long we'll have it as much as it is carbon neutral, can provide base load, and we're able to build those plants right now, if we set aside the money and remove NIMBY roadblocks. This would give us about a century or so, at the higher consumption rate, to get solar and other generation more mature. And possibly even fusion (finally).
I agree, however, our current consumption of fossil fuels or anything other than direct solar or fusion is probably doomed to run out or hit maximum capacity sooner or later. The problem is that we're nowhere near being able to replace 90% of our fuel consumption with solar yet. We have at least a shot at it with nuclear.
Dropping energy consumption by 90% is not insane, per se. It's just not going to happen.
Now what would be insane would be some sort of government action that seeks to try to force that consumption drop no matter what.
We need to find another way, or accept that we're going to have some flooded coastal cities. A sudden drop of 90% consumption would probably end all pretense of modern civilization unless it was offset by extremely significant technological advancement. And means not just first world problems like no iPhones, but also third world problems like starvation and economic collapse.
Yeah... I realize that not every country has the same free speech protections that the US does, but that sounds pretty extreme. Is that really the law? I have trouble believing that, and I hope that this is just hyperbole about a much less objectionable law.
Sure, you disagree with people who oppose homosexuality, and certainly religion should not be making the law, but you're pretty much telling someone that they will get arrested for believing something that they believe in good faith. That sort of precedent is the start of really bad things. You're just happy because it is working out the way you like right now. It can and will backfire.
Social acceptance of homosexuals in society is at an all time high because it is perceived that they just want the freedom to live their lives without persecution. That can easily change if the legal persecution starts coming from supporters of that viewpoint.
I'm not really trying to jump on the "women shouldn't be in combat" thing, but there have been men with small hands in the Army since it was formed. Why is this suddenly an issue? In the Continental Army, they used very heavy and very cumbersome flintlock pistols and muskets, and I bet you that, on average, men in the 18th Century had smaller hands than today's soldier.
And let's be honest with ourselves, on average, soldiers now have smaller hands than in the last century because we've added an increasing number of females.
And that's fine, but if smaller hands means that they cannot operate a weapon of the appropriate power to stop an opponent, then that's an issue.
Presumably, with greater technology, we will overcome the disadvantages of smaller hands by putting advanced and equally effective sidearms in the hands of combat troops. However, if we instead decrease the effectiveness of all sidearms to meet the requirements of a smaller hand or frame, we're less effective in combat.
In that event, while I understand the need for uniformity for logistics and training, we need to have different options available and/or set minimum requirements for those who are in the combat arms. I have no doubt that suitably trained and conditioned females could make that minimum as long as it was reasonable. I think a soldier should be able to effectively fire a.45 sidearm to be in a combat arm because I feel that we should have a.45 or.40 caliber sidearm for stopping power. I don't doubt that a woman could fire a.45 so I hope that the "smaller hands" argument isn't used for 9mm, which is more accurate, but in CQC, you're aiming at pretty short range for center of mass to put your opponent down, so accuracy isn't as important as it would be for your rifle.
This does not permit actual communication. Communication would require that information be transmitted from one end to the other.
Knowing that the state that you observe is also appearing inverted on another particle somewhere else doesn't help you because the state of the particle is random until you observe it. Therefore, while both sides understand that they are viewing the inverse of the other particle,
1. Since, the value observed is random you can't choose what it will be ahead of time. That prevents you from having a protocol to send information. 2. Also, as a consequence, there is no way of knowing if the particle was previously observed by the other side, or for the first time by your side 3. Therefore, you not only don't know what the content of the message is, you don't even know that the person on the other side has even tried to send a message. 4. All you can be sure of is that, if and when the other side looks at their particle, it will have the expected value.
That does have uses, it just does not have uses for communication.
Someone else mentioned "perfect" encryption as one use, since you don't have to worry about sending a one-time key insecurely to your correspondent, you just observe your particle and the other side instantly knows what the sending key was without the possibility of it being intercepted in transit.
However, the information about what particle you chose and the message itself still have to arrive via light speed or slower means.
Yes, but why do you think a "real" universe wouldn't be quantized? Having only seen one universe, our own, what evidence do we have of this scenario being somehow not basic?
The fact that it resembles what we do in computer simulations does not imply anything about the reality of the universe. It may be the other way around: simulations work the way they do because the real universe is naturally quantized.
It is an interesting and possibly even correct assertion that someone is running us as a simulation. But then what would the world of the "people" who are running the simulation look like? Are they in a simulation too? Are we all inferior projections from the original world of perfect forms? All possible, of course, but that's kind of like it being turtles all the way down.
What is really interesting to me is whether, being aware of the underlying nature of the universe, we're able to affect that outer domain from within. If not directly, than perhaps indirectly by means of a cosmic buffer overflow.
Of course, that assertion is just a metaphor. We may be "running" on top of a different layer of the universe, but that layer does not have to be separate from the universe. We would just define the universe as "a two dimensional information layer extruded into a three dimensional quantized space".
They have economies of scale, but battery tech and battery production are things they don't have. They would need to seriously ramp up their production of batteries or source them from someplace that has production in order to compete in the EV market.
You know who is working on a lot of battery production capacity? Tesla.
I assume that a back-up plan for Tesla is precisely what you consider to be their doomsday scenario. Yes, Tesla may not ever make a splash as a car manufacturer in that scenario, but they could be the world's largest battery producer and let the car companies worry about designing cars while they worry about battery tech and battery production. Instead of competing with Toyota, they could simply set up a lucrative supplier deal with them and any other automaker who wants EVs.
That works for the used cars, but not for the new ones.
I think CR did the right thing. They made a recommendation based on the best information they could get at the time, and then when faced with conflicting experience which only time would have exposed, they changed their recommendation to fit new data.
The fact is that despite the potential for mistakes, following someone's advice who has done the investigation is always a better strategy than the alternative.
Now if their investigations are slanted or have crappy methodology, then by all means trash them, but don't do that for simply trying to provide good advice for an important purchase (ie. a new car) where they can't have the benefit of time, because once you have tried out a new car over time, it's no longer a new car.
However, you could build a very well designed car that is $100,000 which is only that expensive because it was built with the best possible parts and careful engineering. There's a lot of plastic shit in cars today where it might be better off with some good metal. Or even better, with a durable, lightweight, but absurdly expensive alloy.
Not that I am saying that this describes a Tesla, of course.
Because nuclear weapons tend to require carefully timed simultaneous detonations of explosives in a controlled manner in order to compress the fission core to a supercritical mass, it is unlikely that simply dropping the bomb (unarmed) or even having some of the explosives used for core compression go off will create an actual nuclear scale detonation.
However, the explosives for the explosive lens can go off and distribute radioactive material over a relatively wide area. This was more of a threat in the past, when explosives used in the bombs were somewhat more sensitive. Additionally, some explosives become more sensitive over time, so bombs stored for long periods could have somewhat more sensitive explosives and react badly to an accidental drop or crash.
All of that being said... an actual accidental nuclear explosion is extremely unlikely, but not entirely impossible in the case of an accident, and it was much, much more likely back when these bombs were dropped in Spain.
Also, there was one time where a bomb was lost where all but one of the safeties had been deactivated. And that was a mechanical breaker which could well have been flipped. Luckily, that sort of thing was much more common when SAC was actually doing regular strategic deterrent missions and bomb design had not progressed as far as it has today.
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By all means, hold MS accountable and then watch what happens to everyone else.
You will be holding open source and free software creators responsible as well, because the law won't be confined to MS. So yes, by all means, hold MS responsible under law, and watch as MS pays a few billion dollars in fines (maybe), and the FOSS software market undergoes critical existence failure.
Yes, botnets are a problem, but they aren't the end of the world. Let's not burn the house down to drive out the mice.
Computer science starts whenever you have the interest and skills to learn it. Most of the early CS shit I learned in college I could have done in junior high school. The rest of it was more dependent upon being able to find resources and a teacher who was able to give me some instruction on theory. That *could* be done in high school. Maybe not my senior classes, but certainly a substantial chunk of it could have been in HS.
I think we should have more CS resources in HS... for the willing. In no way should CS be on some standardized test taught by teachers who have a class full of bored kids. That will just suck money away from use on students who are actually interested in it, and will put that money to good use.
Well they did say it only "preceded the recent smartwatch trend". I don't think they were saying that she invented it or was even a first adopter.
Okay, yeah, she's not an engineer. Still, probably not bad for a kid who previously didn't have any desire to interact with a computer at all.
My only interest in that story is whether she actually likes working with computers now enough to become a programmer. Or is she still going to be a business or art history major when she goes to college because she's not really all that interested in the field except as something she did at "Summer Camp my Mom made me go to".
As someone else said, I have a lot of trouble believing that a YouTube executive could not buy her daughter and son their own computers....
Yes, in my house, I admit, we only had one computer and I used it most of the time.
On the other hand, I was the one who asked for it, convinced my parents to get it and I paid for half of it. And back in the day $700 was no small feat for a fifteen year old making minimum wage when not in school.
However, my sisters could use the computer, I just don't remember them being all that interested in it. They probably thought all it was good for was playing video games, which I admit was a significant use for it. On the other hand, I used it to write all my high school papers and lab reports, and learned how to make use of it as a tool as well.
Whatever it is that is keeping girls out of CS, I think it is something social and something that happens when they are very young. I'm not sure that making it mandatory in a school is going to help with that. There are plenty of classes that people do well with in school and promptly forget about as soon as they are free to not be in school. And in fact, girls are using computers all the time these days, we call them smartphones. Its just that they don't use them for programming.
I enjoy my car and use all the time, but that doesn't make me interested in doing auto repair for a living.
Probably not, especially if there was no consideration for their required services. And even if it was, it would have to be a best effort scenario for a very limited reason. And this would have to be for a limited period of time. They can't give you a buck fifty and then expect you to show up to help them fifty years later.
Executives, due to their special position as an officer of the company, might be different, but they usually get a very nice severance package to begin with, so that's not really a hardship for them. And even then, like the article said, it would probably just be for legal matters.
The fact that it is the strongest in history is not really all that important. It isn't so far off the charts that it was inconceivable.
However, the fact that it's particular intensity is believed to be related to El Nino means that there is something of a climate effect. Of course, I'm not stating El Nino is a result of AGW, in fact I don't have any idea if it is supposed to be or not.
So, being the most powerful in history helps in one respect. Since it has broken an upper observed value, it becomes easier to see a more incremental effect from something like El Nino. If the storm was weaker, then it might simply be explained as a freak, but otherwise normal hurricane. This storm is actually setting a new record, and so it's higher value seems a bit more meaningful.
Nevertheless, while "OMG HUEG HURRICANE = AGW!!!!" is probably not a valid statement, if you look at the specifics of the storm, it may show a climate effect which might then be traced back to AGW.
So, if this is related to El Nino, then we would need to determine if El Nino is an AGW effect. If it is solidly attributed to AGW, then this storm was intensified by AGW.
I'm still on the fence somewhat about the scope and effects of AGW, but this is the sort of thing you expect with more heat, and therefore energy, in the atmosphere. You get storms and erratic weather with wildly varying effects locally. Droughts and super-hurricanes in some places, beautiful tropical weather in others. Unfortunately, the nice weather isn't as good a thing around the icepacks at the Poles.
As someone who does believe in God, I disagree about how they are similar.
Much of what we attribute to God must be taken on faith alone and was revealed, not discovered. It is not scientific at all in the sense that it can be tested.
Dark matter is a hypothesis that has observations where it makes as much, if not more sense than any of the other scenarios. I think everyone knows that Dark Matter isn't a full fledged theory yet, but there's nothing else with predictive value either, so that doesn't disqualify it from investigation. It does, however, explain observations adequately, which is a real test of a useful hypothesis.
Actually only 23% of the universe is Dark Matter. 70+% of the Universe is Dark Energy, which is something believed to not be directly related to Dark Matter except in that we have labeled both of them as "dark".
The (likely) reasons we don't detect it on Earth are:
1. It is believed to clump in specific areas of galaxies. The density of dark matter in "our" part of the galaxy is extremely low. This is borne out by observations of other galaxies.
2. It is supposed to be very difficult to detect to begin with. We've only actually detected it because it causes gravitational effects on large scales. While that sounds "too convenient" if you don't believe it exists, this doesn't eliminate it. As someone pointed out previously, neutrinos are extremely difficult to detect even though we're showered with them constantly because they are just so weakly interacting with other matter.
Realistically, wormholes or not, even a civilization limited to light speed travel should have been able to colonize or visit most of the galaxy in just a few million years with robotic exploration. So, it is looking like there is either no one else out there, or just as likely, there is some sort of barrier to intelligent civilizations being able to launch such an effort like colonization or robotic exploration.
Obviously, this all assumes that someone would have done all of this first. We might be either the first civilization at this point, or at the very least, a member of the "first wave" of civilizations where the other civilizations do exist, but their evidence has not yet arrived here. That scenario is just as likely as any other solution, but it is less useful because then we have nothing yet to look for in order to confirm our theory, so we tend to assume that we're not a member of "the First Ones".
There is also the idea that there may be a "Great Filter", which is some sort of event or situation that all intelligent species run into before they can do interstellar exploration. It could be something like nuclear holocaust or self-destruction being inevitable, or as simple as running out of available energy to be able to maintain high technology before they could start the program. Or some combination.
Nuclear war, unfortunately, is probably inevitable. It is a more distant threat than it used to be, but the weapons are all still there, and even pariah states like North Korea have working weapons. While those states remain somewhat rational, we're probably fine, but the stakes are pretty high.
Another possibility is simple overheating. Here I'm not exactly talking about Global Warming as caused by carbon emissions, but actual generation of heat by releasing it through energy production as waste heat. Solar energy doesn't help us with this because increased capture of solar radiation will increase waste heat on Earth. Eventually, carbon dioxide or not, we might simply add more waste heat to the planet than the Earth can actually radiate out into space. In that sense, I am very much a believer in AGW, although that scenario is probably more remote in time than a CO2 based greenhouse effect. Eventually, the Earth will need a giant heat sink if we want modern civilization for ever increasing numbers of people.
You mean traversable wormholes. Wormholes can certainly still exist without aliens being here if they convert any aliens to random energy when the aliens attempt to access them.
This is true. No matter how many times I see spooky action at a distance explained to not be FTL communication method, someone still thinks it can be a FTL communication method.
That said, FTL is not only movement of information at FTL speeds, it is movement of information at speeds which are FTL relative to other points. So yes, if there was a way to warp space-time so that a normal light speed EM wave simply had a shorter distance to go, that's still FTL communication.
Of course, since no one has demonstrated that warping space time is possible in that manner, and wormholes (while still not ruled out) appear to require a sort of exotic matter that is unlikely to exist, FTL is very much a goal with fiction wrapped around it, rather than science.
That's just uranium, which is admittedly what we use right now, but there is approximately 3 to 4 times as much thorium. If we went with thorium reactors, and reserved uranium stocks for startup operations related to their operation, we'd be better off.
The real advantage of nuclear isn't how long we'll have it as much as it is carbon neutral, can provide base load, and we're able to build those plants right now, if we set aside the money and remove NIMBY roadblocks. This would give us about a century or so, at the higher consumption rate, to get solar and other generation more mature. And possibly even fusion (finally).
I agree, however, our current consumption of fossil fuels or anything other than direct solar or fusion is probably doomed to run out or hit maximum capacity sooner or later. The problem is that we're nowhere near being able to replace 90% of our fuel consumption with solar yet. We have at least a shot at it with nuclear.
Dropping energy consumption by 90% is not insane, per se. It's just not going to happen.
Now what would be insane would be some sort of government action that seeks to try to force that consumption drop no matter what.
We need to find another way, or accept that we're going to have some flooded coastal cities. A sudden drop of 90% consumption would probably end all pretense of modern civilization unless it was offset by extremely significant technological advancement. And means not just first world problems like no iPhones, but also third world problems like starvation and economic collapse.
Yeah... I realize that not every country has the same free speech protections that the US does, but that sounds pretty extreme. Is that really the law? I have trouble believing that, and I hope that this is just hyperbole about a much less objectionable law.
Sure, you disagree with people who oppose homosexuality, and certainly religion should not be making the law, but you're pretty much telling someone that they will get arrested for believing something that they believe in good faith. That sort of precedent is the start of really bad things. You're just happy because it is working out the way you like right now. It can and will backfire.
Social acceptance of homosexuals in society is at an all time high because it is perceived that they just want the freedom to live their lives without persecution. That can easily change if the legal persecution starts coming from supporters of that viewpoint.
I'm not really trying to jump on the "women shouldn't be in combat" thing, but there have been men with small hands in the Army since it was formed. Why is this suddenly an issue? In the Continental Army, they used very heavy and very cumbersome flintlock pistols and muskets, and I bet you that, on average, men in the 18th Century had smaller hands than today's soldier.
And let's be honest with ourselves, on average, soldiers now have smaller hands than in the last century because we've added an increasing number of females.
And that's fine, but if smaller hands means that they cannot operate a weapon of the appropriate power to stop an opponent, then that's an issue.
Presumably, with greater technology, we will overcome the disadvantages of smaller hands by putting advanced and equally effective sidearms in the hands of combat troops. However, if we instead decrease the effectiveness of all sidearms to meet the requirements of a smaller hand or frame, we're less effective in combat.
In that event, while I understand the need for uniformity for logistics and training, we need to have different options available and/or set minimum requirements for those who are in the combat arms. I have no doubt that suitably trained and conditioned females could make that minimum as long as it was reasonable. I think a soldier should be able to effectively fire a .45 sidearm to be in a combat arm because I feel that we should have a .45 or .40 caliber sidearm for stopping power. I don't doubt that a woman could fire a .45 so I hope that the "smaller hands" argument isn't used for 9mm, which is more accurate, but in CQC, you're aiming at pretty short range for center of mass to put your opponent down, so accuracy isn't as important as it would be for your rifle.
True. Support troops can and do come under fire. They need weapons they can use to defend themselves.
That said, I hope they don't make the combat arms carry inferior weapons just because support needs them to be more convenient.
An updated M1911? It's not like people aren't already carrying it as a backup sidearm.
This does not permit actual communication. Communication would require that information be transmitted from one end to the other.
Knowing that the state that you observe is also appearing inverted on another particle somewhere else doesn't help you because the state of the particle is random until you observe it. Therefore, while both sides understand that they are viewing the inverse of the other particle,
1. Since, the value observed is random you can't choose what it will be ahead of time. That prevents you from having a protocol to send information.
2. Also, as a consequence, there is no way of knowing if the particle was previously observed by the other side, or for the first time by your side
3. Therefore, you not only don't know what the content of the message is, you don't even know that the person on the other side has even tried to send a message.
4. All you can be sure of is that, if and when the other side looks at their particle, it will have the expected value.
That does have uses, it just does not have uses for communication.
Someone else mentioned "perfect" encryption as one use, since you don't have to worry about sending a one-time key insecurely to your correspondent, you just observe your particle and the other side instantly knows what the sending key was without the possibility of it being intercepted in transit.
However, the information about what particle you chose and the message itself still have to arrive via light speed or slower means.
Yes, but why do you think a "real" universe wouldn't be quantized? Having only seen one universe, our own, what evidence do we have of this scenario being somehow not basic?
The fact that it resembles what we do in computer simulations does not imply anything about the reality of the universe. It may be the other way around: simulations work the way they do because the real universe is naturally quantized.
It is an interesting and possibly even correct assertion that someone is running us as a simulation. But then what would the world of the "people" who are running the simulation look like? Are they in a simulation too? Are we all inferior projections from the original world of perfect forms? All possible, of course, but that's kind of like it being turtles all the way down.
What is really interesting to me is whether, being aware of the underlying nature of the universe, we're able to affect that outer domain from within. If not directly, than perhaps indirectly by means of a cosmic buffer overflow.
Of course, that assertion is just a metaphor. We may be "running" on top of a different layer of the universe, but that layer does not have to be separate from the universe. We would just define the universe as "a two dimensional information layer extruded into a three dimensional quantized space".
With Jaws 19, they merely forgot how many shitty movies there are to run through. It isn't a matter of if Jaws 19 will be made, but of when.
Hmm. Maybe it's about time for another Batman movie. Perhaps we'll just rehash his origin story again.
They have economies of scale, but battery tech and battery production are things they don't have. They would need to seriously ramp up their production of batteries or source them from someplace that has production in order to compete in the EV market.
You know who is working on a lot of battery production capacity? Tesla.
I assume that a back-up plan for Tesla is precisely what you consider to be their doomsday scenario. Yes, Tesla may not ever make a splash as a car manufacturer in that scenario, but they could be the world's largest battery producer and let the car companies worry about designing cars while they worry about battery tech and battery production. Instead of competing with Toyota, they could simply set up a lucrative supplier deal with them and any other automaker who wants EVs.
That works for the used cars, but not for the new ones.
I think CR did the right thing. They made a recommendation based on the best information they could get at the time, and then when faced with conflicting experience which only time would have exposed, they changed their recommendation to fit new data.
The fact is that despite the potential for mistakes, following someone's advice who has done the investigation is always a better strategy than the alternative.
Now if their investigations are slanted or have crappy methodology, then by all means trash them, but don't do that for simply trying to provide good advice for an important purchase (ie. a new car) where they can't have the benefit of time, because once you have tried out a new car over time, it's no longer a new car.
Strictly speaking, you're probably right.
However, you could build a very well designed car that is $100,000 which is only that expensive because it was built with the best possible parts and careful engineering. There's a lot of plastic shit in cars today where it might be better off with some good metal. Or even better, with a durable, lightweight, but absurdly expensive alloy.
Not that I am saying that this describes a Tesla, of course.
I thought the popping out handles was only an option. And a $10K option at that. Or part of a $10K package anyway.
Because nuclear weapons tend to require carefully timed simultaneous detonations of explosives in a controlled manner in order to compress the fission core to a supercritical mass, it is unlikely that simply dropping the bomb (unarmed) or even having some of the explosives used for core compression go off will create an actual nuclear scale detonation.
However, the explosives for the explosive lens can go off and distribute radioactive material over a relatively wide area. This was more of a threat in the past, when explosives used in the bombs were somewhat more sensitive. Additionally, some explosives become more sensitive over time, so bombs stored for long periods could have somewhat more sensitive explosives and react badly to an accidental drop or crash.
All of that being said... an actual accidental nuclear explosion is extremely unlikely, but not entirely impossible in the case of an accident, and it was much, much more likely back when these bombs were dropped in Spain.
Also, there was one time where a bomb was lost where all but one of the safeties had been deactivated. And that was a mechanical breaker which could well have been flipped. Luckily, that sort of thing was much more common when SAC was actually doing regular strategic deterrent missions and bomb design had not progressed as far as it has today.