Yep, pretty much. Still though, I'll keep my 357 on my hip while I help out my local neighborhood 'tribe' fend off the Palinistas from the countryside.

Every time one of these damn 'neural computers' come out people tend to equate the number of neurons and synapses and think 'hey, if we can get to the number of human neurons... Presto!!!!1'

Brains are waay more complicated than just neurons and synapses. Just taking the neurotransmitters into account makes the whole charade crash down. Then there is the glial network that, surprise surprise, does an enormous amount of complex work. There's even recent research suggesting that the branching patterns of the neurons perform complex computations. There are chemical gradients in the brain that act as a sort of addressing system.



tl;dr Brain on a chip? Yeah fucking right.

Fully automated on the top of a hospital building I think is what they are referring to. A drone that can automatically recharge itself and await a package or pickup location demand is huge.

America should at the forefront of this level of innovation. Instead the FAA sticks its head in the sand while the rest of the world goes forward at an incredible pace.

You are likely correct. I suppose this is just one of the best opportunities for it to work.

Maybe Iceland would be a good place to start.

This is a great experiment that I hope the whole world is watching closely.

I hope the coins are produced somehow coupled to productive capacity. Something along the lines of open and observable ammeters on their main power plants could suffice. Of course, it'd have to be a bit more complicated than that, but it's the general idea I'm talking about.

It would really suck if they started pouring their already strained resources into bitcoin-esque server-farms lapping up megawatts guessing large numbers. Fucking waste.

The BRCK seems to be the real story here.

At $200 a pop it is fairly expensive, though considering what it is capable of it's still pretty impressive.

Considering how many connections this could handle it seems like a village could pool resources to buy one or two, connect it to a regional cell tower, and provide reasonable connectivity to all.

I haven't heard of this 'football' sport. I think they're referring to Head-Brick: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id...

Yes, what a great idea! Lets blow shit up in space making *anything* in orbit impossible.

Who needs weather satellites, GPS, and communication equipment anyway?

From what they say, it seems like it is going to be a pretty rough implementation at first. How would the system deal with multiple beacons?

There is an Israeli research group doing research into using synthesizer timbres for navigation. I hope they collaborate.

I would think a transparent and open process would go a long way to stop people from gaming the system. Of course it'd be an ongoing battle though. If the power were delivered in discrete chunks, say in large battery units or something, it'd be easier to keep track of and harder to hack.

This idea is a work in progress, but I haven't heard any serious show-stopping critiques yet.

Good points. The details are obviously scarce as I'm not sure of the best way to go about doing this. Something like the ammeters like you suggest is what I was envisioning.

As for not just selling the power...Ideally this scheme would be used to provide a basic income for those who do not have any money to start with. Sure, selling some of the power might help to provide a measure of viability. I'm thinking this would be a basis for a basic income that isn't completely detatched from reality. 'Based on the real world' means that the coins couldn't be created out of thin air like dollars.

Pie in the sky? Sure. I'm just a dude with visions of a world without slums made viable through abundant nuclear energy. Sigh...

What a colossal waste of power. Personally, I'd like to see a cryptocurrency where the production of the coins is directly related to the amount of energy produced by a particular source.

For example, a 3MW solar farm could produce N number of coins every day. But a 3GW nuclear plant could produce 3000N coins every day. This way the power can be still use productively but the currency is directly tied to the energy produced. So essentially it'd be a non-fiat currency based on the real world.

Just for fun, the folks at the CDC should combine Ebola with the rabies virus. This zombie apocalypse isn't going to start itself!