However, for any unmanned equipment you are still taking on the risk of loosing expensive machinery. Some of my coworkers in coast survey once lost an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) at the end of a survey mission and the bosses were _not_ happy being out a few million dollars.
There's a risk-benefit calculus that needs to be made in any venture, whether it is research or business. The calculus can be deathly serious when you consider putting people in harms way in order to achieve the benefit, but there are similar calculations to made when putting capital equipment at risk, too. If the potential benefit is worth the risk, then it's worth the risk. If you can't afford the potential downsides, then perhaps you should consider revisiting that calculus.
Of course, in deference to your friends, that doesn't mean you have to like it when things go sour.
At my company, we have gradually been moving away from spinning disks in favor of SSDs. My company does a lot of R&D work, so we have a lot of people doing CAD, simulation, number crunching, etc. For those users, our IT department hasn't built a machine with spinning media in over two years: the performance boost from SSD is outstanding, and the local storage needs are pretty modest. On the back end, our backup solution (daily incremental backups of everyone's machine, hourly for the network storage) uses a cabinet of HDDs, with a RAID of SSDs that contain the backup database / index. (there are tape backups in the mix, too, with offsite storage, but I forget the details). I'm sure if they could afford to create a 100 TB array of SSDs and do away with the spinning discs entirely, they would.
A single component failing will not stop your service
Correction: a single component failing should not stop your service, if you have done your job right (either in designing and building, or in finding a vendor to provide the service). But having a single component failing can and still does ruin somebody's day on a regular basis.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, Edward Teller (the so-called "father of the hydrogen bomb") advocated using nuclear exposives to undertake massive civil works projects, called Operation Plowshare. One of the blue-sky thoughts was blasting a sea-level canal clear across the Central America.
HBO could easily solve this problem by offering their shows for sale/rent online the same day or the day after it's aired on cable. They have no one to blame but themselves when they only provide a single means to watch their programs, and people resort to pirating or sharing credentials
I suspect that HBO would be thrilled to offer a standalone streaming service to anyone willing to pay, even absent a cable subscription. They would, I am sure, make a lot of money doing it. However, I also suspect that they are specifically prohibited from doing so by the agreements they have with the cable companies, who are, in the end, the real gate-keepers here. Such agreements don't last forever, however, so I suspect eventually HBO will be able to break loose, although it will be on a region-by-region basis.
The availability of HBO without cable is largely a matter of business agreements between HBO and the cable providers. I assume that in its various contracts, HBO is forbidden from offering a stand-alone streaming service to people who don't pay for cable. Government doesn't have a whole lot to do with it. It would be swell if the FCC could force cable providers to offer channels a la carte, but it isn't clear that they have the authority to do that, let alone the political will.
To get the 25-hr battery life you need to purchase and use a supplemental battery "slab" that attaches to the bottom of the laptop. So it's like pre-purchasing your replacement battery, and you get to carry it around for the whole life of the machine!
A replacement laptop battery is $100-200, depending on brand and capacity. Considering an original purchase price of $1000-2000, is it really so unreasonable to expect to have to chip in another 10% over a 4-5 year lifespan? How much do you spend on maintenance for a typical (new) automobile over the first 4-5 years of life? It's probably close to that same 10% mark. How much do you spend on home maintenance and repair (if you own your home) over a similar time period?
Although many people think of consumer electronics as bargain basement commodities, a nice laptop (and a top-end Vaio definitely counts - don't compare it in with the $200 piece of crap you saw at the local Big Box Store) is a capital investment. Like all capital investments, there are ongoing costs. Accept that the total cost of ownership is more than the original purchase price, and move on.
Wait till you get to replace those batteries and discover the real costs
In terms of a percentage of the original purchase price, replacing the batteries in an electric car, after the first 10 years of life, is not all that different to the powertrain maintenance that a conventional auto would need during or by that time: engine rebuild, tranny rebuild and fluid replacement, timing belt replacement, (ordinary, starter motor) battery replacement(s), brake maintenance and replacement (over and above what an electric vehicle needs), and 25-50 oil changes.
I should note an addendum to my comment about "this will probably get sorted out." There will be stratification in the market. By that I mean that you'll be able to sort out good producers from bad based on quality (and reputation - deserved or not), with price point being a proxy measure of that. People seeking reliability, and who are willing to pay for it, will know where they can go. Those who don't care if they get early failures, can shoulder the risk of early failures, or just can't afford better will likewise know where they can go. There will also be some paradoxical cases of companies that command a price point not at all justified by their quality.
It is, again, like the consumer electronics market as a whole. If you are looking for, say, a PC power supply, you can get quality products backed by good warranties and a long track record, but you'll pay a price premium for it. You can also go bargain basement, know that you are getting a lower quality product that has a higher chance or early failure, but be OK with that. But power supplies are a relatively mature market in terms of size, growth rate, component supply chain, and R&D roadmap. Photovoltaics are still very much in flux, and it'll probably take another few years - even a decade or two - before things settle out.
Another parallel with the PC industry: things were simpler when it was small and niche. Think back to the 1970s and 1980s - PCs were not yet a commodity, lots of manufacturing was still taking place in industrialized countries to high standards, there were lots of small- and medium-sized companies that devoted a lot to the design, build, and manufacturing quality, because a bunch of warranty claims would either bankrupt them or kill their brand (which would have the same effect). Computers were purchased and used by fairly knowledgeable people. Then there came an explosion in the late 1980s and 1990s, when there was a feedback loop of commoditization: more widespread use and standardization lead companies to compete on price, which drove down costs, which allowed for more widespread use, etc. Along the way, prices went way down, but quality also suffered along the way.
I will noet that, during that same time period, value went up tremendously. Even if the reject rate of components and finished goods went up, you still got a lot more product for the same amount of money. This is also true in solar: you can get a lot more for the same amount of money these days, even taking into account the higher reject rate. This will continue into the foreseeable future.
Well, that's the problem with a race to the bottom: sooner or later you do, in fact, hit bottom. This reminds me of how things played out in the desktop PC market a decade ago: really cheap components caused a lot of problems for a lot of name-brand manufacturers. Bad electrolytic caps on the motherboard were particularly pernicious.
The good news is that, eventually, this will probably get sorted out. Producers and installers with brands and reputations (not to mention business contracts) to defend will eventually get fed up with dealing with shitty suppliers, who will either clean up their act, go out of business, or retreat to the purgatory of "known to be poor quality", where there's still plenty of business to be had (see again the desktop PC market), but not much money to be made.
By the time you add in all the extra space needed for all of that fuel, gyros to keep you properly oriented and enough shielding to protect you on the way down, you have a landing boat, not a suit
That was my reaction, too. Ironman is only slightly plausible once you suspend your disbelief about the mini arc reactor Tony Stark has stuck in his chest. In order to provide enough thrust for him to fly that suit supersonic, it would need megawatts of continuous power from, essentially, no fuel mass. Oh, and the reactor needs to produce essentially no waste heat, otherwise it would cauterize his vital organs. But, hell, if you've got a nearly 100% efficient, miniature, multi-megawatt power source, anything's possible.
So, anybody got a mini arc reactor lying around? No? OK, then: I guess this idea is shit outta luck.
Any object small enough to be destroyed this way would be best avoided by evacuating the locale where it is going to hit
In terms of having confidence that you'll save lives, you may be correct. In terms of property damage - it is difficult to be sure. An asteroid delivering even a glancing blow to a population center could easily cause several billion dollars of damage. I expect the whole cost of this program would be less than that.
A tough thing with small objects like this is that their trajectory through the atmosphere during entry is not as deterministic as much larger objects. And there's no guarantee that it'll make it all the way to the ground - you may well end up with an airburst, like in Chelyabinsk. So the size of the evacuation area would be huge: hundreds of square kilometers, and could affect millions of people. The costs of doing that kind of evacuation would also be enormous.
But who says you can't do both: prudence counsels that you try to damage/disrupt/avoid the threat in the first place, while also making preparations for what to do if that fails.
Sure the vertical force on the tires is the same when standing still, but what about the force required to stop 342kg vs 900kg of inertia if you hit a large pointy rock at 1m/s?
That's what's referred to as dynamic acceleration. Rolling along at 1 m/s and then coming to a sudden stop by running into a rock would indeed produce some big accelerations, and the difference in mass between Curiosity and Scarecrow would be pretty significant.
However, the scenario that you and an earlier comment are talking about - coming to an abrupt, rocky stop from 1 m/s - simply does not happen. You might be envisioning Curiosity as some sort of Martian ATV bouncing off the landscape and doing power slides, but the reality is far more prosaic. Curiosity's top speed on flat, hard soil is about 0.04 m/s, not 1 m/s. Let's say that, for whatever reason, Curiosity came to a dead stop from it's top speed in, say, 100 ms (the suspension ensures the stop is not instantaneous). That's an acceleration of 0.4 m/s^2. The static acceleration due to gravity on Mars is 3.7 m/s^2, or about 10x that.
In other words, the dynamic loading is going to be small compared to the static loading.
What is more: Curiosity has about a dozen people planning out its path, specifically to avoid running into things. Even beyond that: Curiosity has hazard avoidance cameras and autonomous algorithms that will slow or stop it before it hits anything.
The problem with this is that Curiosity weighs 342kg but masses 900kg. Scarecrow weighs and masses 342kg. Whatever Curiosity weighs, it hitting a rock at 1m/s is still 900 newtons of force. Scarecrow hitting a rock at 1m/s is 342 newtons. The fact it drove 12km and has serviceable wheels does not make me feel better.
That distinction is really only revelant in the case of dynamic loading: hitting things at speed, rapid straightline accerelation, or quick turning. Whether Curiosity on Mars or Scarecrow on Earth, there really isn't any of that going on. For the most part, the only loading going on is the static loading due to gravity, which they have accounted for.
You talk about hitting a rock at 1 m/s, but Curiosity's top speed on hard, flat ground is 1.5 in/sec, or about 4 cm/sec (0.14 km/h). That's only 1/25th the speed you use in your bungled calculations; 1/625 as much kinetic energy. At that slow crawl of a speed, the difference in dynamic loading between Curiosity and Scarecrow is negligible. In any event, the rover is by an large prevented from hitting anything by the route planners here on Earth and its autonomous hazard avoidance algorithms.
In other words: I trust the engineers at JPL to understand these things and account for them better than a random user on/.
But you're right, we do think so little of mass shootings that we refuse to regulate the access to firearms. And we are absolutely correct to do so. 100 deaths per year in a country of 300 million is negligable.
Although mass shootings get all the headlines, controlling access to firearms will save a whole lot more than 100 lives per year. Most of the savings will come from reduced accidental deaths and suicides.
There is a widespread belief that having a gun in the house makes you safer: this is not true.
In the 1990s, a team headed by Arthur Kellermann of Emory University looked at all injuries involving guns kept in the home in Memphis, Seattle and Galveston, Tex. They found that these weapons were fired far more often in accidents, criminal assaults, homicides or suicide attempts than in self-defense. For every instance in which a gun in the home was shot in self-defense, there were seven criminal assaults or homicides, four accidental shootings, and 11 attempted or successful suicides. source
There is also a widespread belief a person who dies from suicide would have done so no matter what method: this also is not true. Most suicide attempts are impulsive acts, and most are unsuccessful. An impulse act with pills or slit wrists is unlikely to succeed: it takes time, the person may have second thoughts, and usually recovers through medical and psychological treatment. A suicide attempt by a gun is much, much more likely to succeed. If that suicidal person did not have ready access to a gun, and had to resort to a different method, the changes are good that most (i.e., more than 50%) of those people would still be with us today.
Or you could do like most working stiffs and brown-bag it: make a simple lunch at home and bring it to work with you. Most of my lunches consist of leftover dinners, which I cooked, or a simple sandwich, which I made at home in about three minutes. To prepare and cook a nutritious 8-serving meal, from scratch, takes only slightly longer than the same meal made for 4.
My time is important to me, and I'd rather spend it enjoying my meal, making leisurely use of my lunch break, or making productive use of that time, rather than waiting in line in the cafeteria or a food truck. The notion that my time is important to me extends to the kitchen, too: I enjoy the time I spend cooking for myself and my family, it is time that is valuable to me, not a chore that I begrudge. My money is important to me, too, and bringing lunch costs me about 1/4 what it would to buy it each day.
Unfortunately, I don't think you could count on steganography. YouTube transcodes, resizes, and manipulates the raw video fifty ways till sunday - whatever information you've stored in the frames could easily be lost or corrupted. What is more, you have to worry about playback problems: dynamic bitrates, dropped frames, and the like. By the time you add in all the checksums, error correcting code, and other data to make the system robust, you'd probably end up with a 10-minute video just to transmit a few hundred bytes of data. You'd do better to do something clever with the subtitles.
Steganography works quite well when you have access to the actual file, preferably in its entirety. This technique might even work under controlled conditions. But I seriously doubt that one could make it work robustly in the real world. (If you want to consider that a challenge and prove me wrong by making it work, by all means.)
A decent amplifier with powered USB fed DAC and a way to provide various horizontal docks for a variety of handheld devices would be cool. I don't really need much beyond that. A tablet with 64 gb or 128 gb solid state storage makes for a decent mobile AV system
Soooooo, you're looking for an iPad and about $50 of accessories to patch it into your car? You could wander down to a big box store and get yourself outfitted today for less than the cost of a typical OEM car stereo.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a risk-benefit calculus that needs to be made in any venture, whether it is research or business. The calculus can be deathly serious when you consider putting people in harms way in order to achieve the benefit, but there are similar calculations to made when putting capital equipment at risk, too. If the potential benefit is worth the risk, then it's worth the risk. If you can't afford the potential downsides, then perhaps you should consider revisiting that calculus.
Of course, in deference to your friends, that doesn't mean you have to like it when things go sour.
At my company, we have gradually been moving away from spinning disks in favor of SSDs. My company does a lot of R&D work, so we have a lot of people doing CAD, simulation, number crunching, etc. For those users, our IT department hasn't built a machine with spinning media in over two years: the performance boost from SSD is outstanding, and the local storage needs are pretty modest. On the back end, our backup solution (daily incremental backups of everyone's machine, hourly for the network storage) uses a cabinet of HDDs, with a RAID of SSDs that contain the backup database / index. (there are tape backups in the mix, too, with offsite storage, but I forget the details). I'm sure if they could afford to create a 100 TB array of SSDs and do away with the spinning discs entirely, they would.
Correction: a single component failing should not stop your service, if you have done your job right (either in designing and building, or in finding a vendor to provide the service). But having a single component failing can and still does ruin somebody's day on a regular basis.
I'm not defending the state of things, merely stating what may be going on here.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, Edward Teller (the so-called "father of the hydrogen bomb") advocated using nuclear exposives to undertake massive civil works projects, called Operation Plowshare. One of the blue-sky thoughts was blasting a sea-level canal clear across the Central America.
I suspect that HBO would be thrilled to offer a standalone streaming service to anyone willing to pay, even absent a cable subscription. They would, I am sure, make a lot of money doing it. However, I also suspect that they are specifically prohibited from doing so by the agreements they have with the cable companies, who are, in the end, the real gate-keepers here. Such agreements don't last forever, however, so I suspect eventually HBO will be able to break loose, although it will be on a region-by-region basis.
The availability of HBO without cable is largely a matter of business agreements between HBO and the cable providers. I assume that in its various contracts, HBO is forbidden from offering a stand-alone streaming service to people who don't pay for cable. Government doesn't have a whole lot to do with it. It would be swell if the FCC could force cable providers to offer channels a la carte, but it isn't clear that they have the authority to do that, let alone the political will.
To get the 25-hr battery life you need to purchase and use a supplemental battery "slab" that attaches to the bottom of the laptop. So it's like pre-purchasing your replacement battery, and you get to carry it around for the whole life of the machine!
A replacement laptop battery is $100-200, depending on brand and capacity. Considering an original purchase price of $1000-2000, is it really so unreasonable to expect to have to chip in another 10% over a 4-5 year lifespan? How much do you spend on maintenance for a typical (new) automobile over the first 4-5 years of life? It's probably close to that same 10% mark. How much do you spend on home maintenance and repair (if you own your home) over a similar time period?
Although many people think of consumer electronics as bargain basement commodities, a nice laptop (and a top-end Vaio definitely counts - don't compare it in with the $200 piece of crap you saw at the local Big Box Store) is a capital investment. Like all capital investments, there are ongoing costs. Accept that the total cost of ownership is more than the original purchase price, and move on.
In terms of a percentage of the original purchase price, replacing the batteries in an electric car, after the first 10 years of life, is not all that different to the powertrain maintenance that a conventional auto would need during or by that time: engine rebuild, tranny rebuild and fluid replacement, timing belt replacement, (ordinary, starter motor) battery replacement(s), brake maintenance and replacement (over and above what an electric vehicle needs), and 25-50 oil changes.
What makes you think we don't have that kind of stratification of price/quality in our food supply?
I should note an addendum to my comment about "this will probably get sorted out." There will be stratification in the market. By that I mean that you'll be able to sort out good producers from bad based on quality (and reputation - deserved or not), with price point being a proxy measure of that. People seeking reliability, and who are willing to pay for it, will know where they can go. Those who don't care if they get early failures, can shoulder the risk of early failures, or just can't afford better will likewise know where they can go. There will also be some paradoxical cases of companies that command a price point not at all justified by their quality.
It is, again, like the consumer electronics market as a whole. If you are looking for, say, a PC power supply, you can get quality products backed by good warranties and a long track record, but you'll pay a price premium for it. You can also go bargain basement, know that you are getting a lower quality product that has a higher chance or early failure, but be OK with that. But power supplies are a relatively mature market in terms of size, growth rate, component supply chain, and R&D roadmap. Photovoltaics are still very much in flux, and it'll probably take another few years - even a decade or two - before things settle out.
Another parallel with the PC industry: things were simpler when it was small and niche. Think back to the 1970s and 1980s - PCs were not yet a commodity, lots of manufacturing was still taking place in industrialized countries to high standards, there were lots of small- and medium-sized companies that devoted a lot to the design, build, and manufacturing quality, because a bunch of warranty claims would either bankrupt them or kill their brand (which would have the same effect). Computers were purchased and used by fairly knowledgeable people. Then there came an explosion in the late 1980s and 1990s, when there was a feedback loop of commoditization: more widespread use and standardization lead companies to compete on price, which drove down costs, which allowed for more widespread use, etc. Along the way, prices went way down, but quality also suffered along the way.
I will noet that, during that same time period, value went up tremendously. Even if the reject rate of components and finished goods went up, you still got a lot more product for the same amount of money. This is also true in solar: you can get a lot more for the same amount of money these days, even taking into account the higher reject rate. This will continue into the foreseeable future.
Well, that's the problem with a race to the bottom: sooner or later you do, in fact, hit bottom. This reminds me of how things played out in the desktop PC market a decade ago: really cheap components caused a lot of problems for a lot of name-brand manufacturers. Bad electrolytic caps on the motherboard were particularly pernicious.
The good news is that, eventually, this will probably get sorted out. Producers and installers with brands and reputations (not to mention business contracts) to defend will eventually get fed up with dealing with shitty suppliers, who will either clean up their act, go out of business, or retreat to the purgatory of "known to be poor quality", where there's still plenty of business to be had (see again the desktop PC market), but not much money to be made.
That was my reaction, too. Ironman is only slightly plausible once you suspend your disbelief about the mini arc reactor Tony Stark has stuck in his chest. In order to provide enough thrust for him to fly that suit supersonic, it would need megawatts of continuous power from, essentially, no fuel mass. Oh, and the reactor needs to produce essentially no waste heat, otherwise it would cauterize his vital organs. But, hell, if you've got a nearly 100% efficient, miniature, multi-megawatt power source, anything's possible.
So, anybody got a mini arc reactor lying around? No? OK, then: I guess this idea is shit outta luck.
In terms of having confidence that you'll save lives, you may be correct. In terms of property damage - it is difficult to be sure. An asteroid delivering even a glancing blow to a population center could easily cause several billion dollars of damage. I expect the whole cost of this program would be less than that.
A tough thing with small objects like this is that their trajectory through the atmosphere during entry is not as deterministic as much larger objects. And there's no guarantee that it'll make it all the way to the ground - you may well end up with an airburst, like in Chelyabinsk. So the size of the evacuation area would be huge: hundreds of square kilometers, and could affect millions of people. The costs of doing that kind of evacuation would also be enormous.
But who says you can't do both: prudence counsels that you try to damage/disrupt/avoid the threat in the first place, while also making preparations for what to do if that fails.
Considering how overrun Everest is these days, this would be the best thing to happen to the mountain.
That's what's referred to as dynamic acceleration. Rolling along at 1 m/s and then coming to a sudden stop by running into a rock would indeed produce some big accelerations, and the difference in mass between Curiosity and Scarecrow would be pretty significant.
However, the scenario that you and an earlier comment are talking about - coming to an abrupt, rocky stop from 1 m/s - simply does not happen. You might be envisioning Curiosity as some sort of Martian ATV bouncing off the landscape and doing power slides, but the reality is far more prosaic. Curiosity's top speed on flat, hard soil is about 0.04 m/s, not 1 m/s. Let's say that, for whatever reason, Curiosity came to a dead stop from it's top speed in, say, 100 ms (the suspension ensures the stop is not instantaneous). That's an acceleration of 0.4 m/s^2. The static acceleration due to gravity on Mars is 3.7 m/s^2, or about 10x that.
In other words, the dynamic loading is going to be small compared to the static loading.
What is more: Curiosity has about a dozen people planning out its path, specifically to avoid running into things. Even beyond that: Curiosity has hazard avoidance cameras and autonomous algorithms that will slow or stop it before it hits anything.
That distinction is really only revelant in the case of dynamic loading: hitting things at speed, rapid straightline accerelation, or quick turning. Whether Curiosity on Mars or Scarecrow on Earth, there really isn't any of that going on. For the most part, the only loading going on is the static loading due to gravity, which they have accounted for.
/.
You talk about hitting a rock at 1 m/s, but Curiosity's top speed on hard, flat ground is 1.5 in/sec, or about 4 cm/sec (0.14 km/h). That's only 1/25th the speed you use in your bungled calculations; 1/625 as much kinetic energy. At that slow crawl of a speed, the difference in dynamic loading between Curiosity and Scarecrow is negligible. In any event, the rover is by an large prevented from hitting anything by the route planners here on Earth and its autonomous hazard avoidance algorithms.
In other words: I trust the engineers at JPL to understand these things and account for them better than a random user on
and Brawndo's got electrolytes. It's what plants crave.
Although mass shootings get all the headlines, controlling access to firearms will save a whole lot more than 100 lives per year. Most of the savings will come from reduced accidental deaths and suicides.
There is a widespread belief that having a gun in the house makes you safer: this is not true.
(other sources along those lines)
There is also a widespread belief a person who dies from suicide would have done so no matter what method: this also is not true. Most suicide attempts are impulsive acts, and most are unsuccessful. An impulse act with pills or slit wrists is unlikely to succeed: it takes time, the person may have second thoughts, and usually recovers through medical and psychological treatment. A suicide attempt by a gun is much, much more likely to succeed. If that suicidal person did not have ready access to a gun, and had to resort to a different method, the changes are good that most (i.e., more than 50%) of those people would still be with us today.
Or you could do like most working stiffs and brown-bag it: make a simple lunch at home and bring it to work with you. Most of my lunches consist of leftover dinners, which I cooked, or a simple sandwich, which I made at home in about three minutes. To prepare and cook a nutritious 8-serving meal, from scratch, takes only slightly longer than the same meal made for 4.
My time is important to me, and I'd rather spend it enjoying my meal, making leisurely use of my lunch break, or making productive use of that time, rather than waiting in line in the cafeteria or a food truck. The notion that my time is important to me extends to the kitchen, too: I enjoy the time I spend cooking for myself and my family, it is time that is valuable to me, not a chore that I begrudge. My money is important to me, too, and bringing lunch costs me about 1/4 what it would to buy it each day.
Unfortunately, I don't think you could count on steganography. YouTube transcodes, resizes, and manipulates the raw video fifty ways till sunday - whatever information you've stored in the frames could easily be lost or corrupted. What is more, you have to worry about playback problems: dynamic bitrates, dropped frames, and the like. By the time you add in all the checksums, error correcting code, and other data to make the system robust, you'd probably end up with a 10-minute video just to transmit a few hundred bytes of data. You'd do better to do something clever with the subtitles.
Steganography works quite well when you have access to the actual file, preferably in its entirety. This technique might even work under controlled conditions. But I seriously doubt that one could make it work robustly in the real world. (If you want to consider that a challenge and prove me wrong by making it work, by all means.)
Soooooo, you're looking for an iPad and about $50 of accessories to patch it into your car? You could wander down to a big box store and get yourself outfitted today for less than the cost of a typical OEM car stereo.
When the 2013 model year cars were being designed 4-5 years ago, consumer SSDs barely existed.
Thank you for bringing in the Blade Runner reference - very appropriate. Take it to its logical conclusion...
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe....All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."
More context: [link]