Maybe there is a better alternative than a test colony in Antarctica if the real problem is being able to mine and process small quantities of rocks for necessary materials. Just set up in a barren area with access to a variety of minerals and see if you can bootstrap a small mining operation utilizing solar for power and small/micro scale industrial facilities that rely on minimal oxygen (ie no combustion).

The problem statement is: Find the least amount of equipment you need to transport to the site in order to be able to utilize local resources to supply a human colony with the necessary materials it needs to become established and grow. Even better if you can establish and grow the colony so that people can arrive later to an already established infrastructure.

I would like to see one or more antarctic bases become more self sufficient as a way of moving us towards an understanding of what it would take to sustain a human colony using local natural resources in a completely inhospitable environment. Basically, Antarctica just has air, ice and some rocks once you get away from the coast. What would it take to create a self sustainable human settlement there and could those lessons be applied more generally to the moon, Mars or Venus?

Here in Massachusetts if you record audio without the person knowing it is a felony.

I've seen instances of that law being used by the police to threaten bystanders who start recording.

The Federal Government already had control of the Internet (in the US) ... net neutrality (real net neutrality) would be just a way to get better service.

I share your skepticism on what the FCC is actually doing though. I don't think for one minute that this has been a victory for Net neutrality in anything but name. Specifically excluded from regulation, in first reports about the new regulation, are the types of methods that Comcast used against Netflix to throttle performance. Peering.

If the FCC is not going to regulate peering to promote peering to satisfy the demand of customers for content, then really Net Neutrality is going to hasten the fragmentation of the "Internet" into broadband content silos and not prevent it.

Finding people is what directories are for. Pictures, Location, affiliations... whatever people want to put out there. And what is to prevent a standard protocol for people to share their friends lists with their friends?

It isn't an abuse of shared infrastructure to send multiple people emails. Facebook is just a different type of social contract. You put something out there and you know it isn't certain anyone will see it, but there is feedback "like" when they do. With emails you expected people to read them, although with some possible delay. versus Texts or IMs which usually you expect an immediate read/response.

Facebook solved the problem of contact management very nicely. I remember the days of sending mass emails to all your contacts with new contact information... unless you manually updated your contact database then it was over and you didn't have great control over who's emails you would see and you couldn't discover old friends online...

To retain some small semblance of our privacy though we really need a set of Internet communications protocols for updating and managing address books and some sort of open directory infrastructure where people could register and look up and discover friends. But keep the information about who is connected to who private and not mediated by an all knowing third party who is selling that data to the highest bidder where it is really being used against our interests.

All it would really take is some protocol for sending or attaching updated contact info in an email or over any other protocol that a client would then use to automatically update a local/server copy of your friends list. People still rely on web mail primarily so the data would likely remain vulnerable to snooping, but at least people would have the option of keeping their data on privately owned hardware.

I was wondering what was meant by the incorrect statement: "The sensor technology LIDAR is a crucial system in the design as it can easily see through vegetation and creates detailed maps of the terrain" I think 'flying under the canopy to map the ground' is probably what they should have written. LIDAR itself doesn't penetrate or "see through" foliage, but could allow the operator to "see through" foliage simply because the robot was flying below it.

The issue is not that Solar isn't useful in helping cut CO2 emissions and mitigating Global Climate Change. Solar is a useful part of the technology mix and can help. The problem is that activists and environmentalists are content that Solar is going to give us the technology we need or as you essentially say it will allow us to kick the can down the road and wait for better technology to provide a real longer term solution.

I believe based on the projections and climate modeling that the threat is more urgent than waiting a decade or two before actively pursuing contingencies based on existing technology. We need to cut CO2 emissions now. Not merely cut the growth of CO2 emissions.

I see it as incredibly dangerous for the world to tinker and hope that new technology will provide a real solution down the road when we have no idea when it could be available or how long it could take to implement.

We have a real solution that is low risk with minimal environmental impact right now in nuclear power which would give us hundreds of years to figure out longer term solutions with new technology before fuel sources became more scarce. And we are literally risking the fate of civilization because on one side people can't figure out how to make enough money from it like they do selling oil and gas and on the other side people have been fooled into thinking it is more dangerous than it really is.

I don't see much difference between denying the science of greenhouse gases causing climate change and denying the science that we need to cut our CO2 emissions significantly more than Solar alone can reasonably expected to do. Unless you cut CO2 emissions by a sufficient amount to really begin to stabilize CO2 levels in the next 20 to 30 years and forestall Global climate change then policy simply does not matter and you might as well just focus on shorter term issues and adapt as best you can when climate change occurs as it will inevitably.

At this point the easy, cheap solar is what we are doing first. The adoption curve isn't going to get easier. Solar alone just can't get us where we need to be and we can't just hope it will give us time to come up with something better when the science and economics says otherwise.

Saying Solar adoption will let us kick the can down the road makes you just as much of a climate denier as those chanting "drill baby drill". We can't afford to just let the next generation figure it out or die trying. There is nothing good about that level of ignorance. Great Solar, now how do we actually save civilization?

Doesn't have to be completely loss-less, but it does have to be some combination of cheap enough and higher efficiency because even if solar panels are cheap most land or roof space isn't. And I like trees.

Just need a big power cable and we will be all set.

So Solar means we can't actually eliminate fossil fuels and carbon emmissions... (unless you find the perfect loss-less battery for storing energy when its cloudy or at night) I'd say that is a significant gap in the ability of Solar power to ever serve as a solution for eliminating carbon emissions. But only being 1% of the solution now means it has a ways to grow before you hit that wall and realize that solar can only ever reduce carbon emissions by some percentage.

It does very much seam like Solar power subsidies are a way to throw environmentalists a political bone rather than a find a serious solution. Solar as it is conceived now would barely make a dent in carbon emissions if you assume population rise and economic development of Africa will offset any reductions in emissions from Solar. Current science says that treading water on carbon emissions is not enough to really forestall some very large sea level rises in the coming centuries and some serious climate shifts. If you want to get serious you need to go nuclear also.

I would agree that just experimenting with tissue samples outside the body shouldn't be highly regulated, but if you are talking about actual transplants I think you need to be sure that is safe.

I would think that you could make more rapid progress since this would be considered as experimenting on human tissue samples outside of the body which is less onerously regulated. It would only be when you think you are ready for transplants that it becomes a medical procedure subject to the more stringent approval process.

I agree that VR is ready for a wider mass market. I was just responding the idea that Oculus had somehow been the one to find that secret ingredient. VR has had a lot of milestones towards becoming a mass market gaming platform and technology improvements in many areas are responsible for that. And there are plenty of opportunities still.