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Comment "Americans" and "cost" doing a lot of lifting (Score 1) 73

Be interested to see the perception in other countries with different payment systems. If the cost was 1/3 the current rate all else equal does this polling move? I imagine it does.

It's much like healthcare in that despite all the evidence out in the world Americans treat these systems as intractable laws of nature, the costs are sky high because that's how they are and always have to be. Meanwhile it's just basic economics that tells you why the costs keep going up and yet we take the route of "we tried nothing and we're all out of ideas".

There are ways to fix these systems and they are obvious once you get over the scary "socialism" talking points and our own hangups that somewhere, someone might get something you personally feel like they "don't deserve"

Comment They didn't and they won't. (Score 1) 1

Adaptation: Displaced workers successfully shifted to non-metal manufacturing and retail sectors,

So everyone got pushed off to work retail while a few were able to make a lateral shift or take a major wage cut to an unskilled position. Given that there is no lateral shift to make here, it certainly sounds like everyone is SOL. When it averages out the "average base salary of a retail sales representative is $38,240" but "a retail sales representative at a luxury clothing brand will likely earn more than a similar role at Walmart". Which means most people are going to be closer to $30K if they are lucky.

The sound conclusion is that it will push more people into poverty.

Comment Re:Directly monitored switches? (Score 1) 38

Obviously the black box can only record what the computer tells it is the state of the switches. There's no camera looking at the switches to confirm they actually were moved. No doubt the switches are wired such that a short or an open circuit will not fool the computer into thinking the switch was moved and shut the engines down. But if something caused the computer to think (pardon the expression) the switches had changed state, it would shut the engines down and the flight recorder would dutifully record this change of state.

Suppose for a moment a computer glitch did shut the engines down. The pilot, upon noticing this asks the copilot about it and he says, no I didn't shut them down. Knowing he has to do something, reaches over, flips them to off and back to on again to try to get them going again, after which the engines did restart but sadly not in time to prevent disaster.

Comment Re:yes and... (Score 1) 215

It appears Russia has won and frankly there is nothing we can do about it. There is no evidence that delaying the outcome will get Ukraine a better deal no matter how much blood is shed in the process. Trump is telling them to cut there losses.

If provocation in the modern world is so ambiguous then so is this. Ukraine has held it's lines for 3 years and there is something we could do, we could supply them with as much arms and information so long as they are willing to fight and the Ukrainian people are willing to fight. It's their blood the least we can do is supply them our iron. Also this isn't even 18th century justifications, bringing up US conflicts is just "two wrongs make a right Lisa". The US being unjustified in invading Iraq doesn't justify Russian invasion, particularly since they signed an agreement that said "we agree on borders".

The Europeans on the other hand clearly demonstrate their concern is making sure "Putin" doesn't win, even while they lack the means to prevent it. The longer Ukraine can delay things and the more damage they do to Russia the better.

Again, this is just taking all agency out of the Ukrainian people and assigning your personal opinions on Europe. Also welcome to war, where interests can be varied? You think Poland has a good reason to want to see that "Putin doesn't win"?

Fighting to the finish will be a lot more painful although, perhaps, morally rewarding.

And who's choice should that be? Russia's?

Its not a new dilemma. Read the Melian Dialog in Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War" 2500 years ago and you will see a philosophical dispute on almost the exact same theme.

Yeah it's a nice story but it's just that, a story, a justification for 18th century diplomacy. Also if Melos or Athens had nukes it changes the story doesn't it? If we're in fantasy land and a wizard disappears all of Russia's nuclear weapons tomorrow it's a different story, so if they want to pull the "it's just the way of the world" card they should bury those in the sea and let the world decide how it wants to handle it instead of hiding behind MAD.

Comment Re:Don't blame the pilot prematurely (Score 1) 38

Mods, this should not have been rated -1 flamebait! Totally inappropriate mod.

I deeply respect Captain Steeeve and his videos are great. Any nervous flyer should watch his videos (except the Air India ones!). And indeed Captain Steeeve's summary of the report is accurate. And his videos about the cutoff switches are accurate too. The chance of those switches being flipped inadvertently or on their own from mechanical wear and vibration is zero. And indeed the computer shows that inputs from those switches went from on to off and back to on again with timing suggestive of human intervention.

That said, one of Captain Steeeve's youtube collaborators, Garybpilot with whom he has done videos about Air India (Hanger Talk) has done his own videos on Air India. In one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0n3iIjvQk8) he mentioned that at Air India, there is not one pilot who believes the official report blaming the pilots. These are pilots who knew well both of the pilots in the cockpit on that tragic flight and find the suggestion difficult to believe. The Indian investigation board has been mired in political intrigue and controversy the whole time (before even). They were definitely under pressure to exonerate Air India and blame the pilots. Also to exonerate Boeing. Not that long ago a 787 had both engines shut down during landing. And there is a minor history of electrical anomalies on 787s, including RATs deploying mid flight for no discernible reason.

If the pilots did not shut the engines down, I don't think we will ever know what actually happened unless there is another accident. And given the problems Boeing has had in recent years (and other planes with engine shutdowns during flight), another accident is a possibility.

Comment WTF are you talking about? (Score 2) 31

Sounds like a lot of claptrap, "we did an experiment on ISS, but we did not measure the effective dose and our conclusions are inconclusive".

What are you talking about? Did you even read the paper?!

Experimental Setup:

The flight hardware was housed in a 4 × 4 × 8 double unit standard-size CubeLab hardware module and consisted of the following main components: two Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ (Raspberry Pi Foundation, Caldecote, Cambs., UK) single-board computers, EP-0104 DockerPi PowerBoard (Adafruit Industries, New York, NY, US), PocketGeiger Type5 (Radiation Watch, Miyagi, JP) with the PIN photodiode X100-7 SMD (First Sensor AG, Berlin, DE), Raspberry Pi Camera v2 (Raspberry Pi Foundation, Caldecote, Cambridgeshire, UK) light source (0.8 W LED-strip) for imaging, DHT22 integrated environmental sensor suite (Aosong Electronics Co. Ltd, Huangpu District, Guangzhou, CN) for temperature and humidity readings, a real-time WatchDog timer (Brentek International Inc., York, PA, US), and D6F-P0010A1 (Omron Electronics LLC, Hoffman Estates, IL, US) electronic flow-measurement system. One Raspberry Pi (“auxiliary-computer”) running Raspbian v10.18 was dedicated to photography, lighting, temperature, humidity, and electronic flow measurement (EFM) readings, while the second Raspberry Pi (“flight-computer”) controlled radiation measurements, stored in a probed Logger Memobox (Fluke Corporation, Everett, WA, US). T

Conclusion:

With a basic experimental setup implemented as a single small payload on the ISS, it could be shown that the dematiaceous fungus C. sphaerospermum can be cultivated in space while being subjected to the unique microgravity and radiation environment of LEO. Growth characteristics indicated an advantage of cultivation on-orbit compared to the ground control. This could be associated with increased radiation in space, potentially causing a radioadaptive response of the microbe, as has been suggested in analogous Earth-based studies. Further, monitoring radiation throughout the experiment indicated that the melanized fungal biomass may have radioprotective properties in space.

Comment Re:Don't blame the pilot prematurely (Score 1) 38

Those words were said, definitely. and the other guy responded, "I did not."

I don't know anything about what conspiracy theories are going around on the Internet, but I do know there among some professional pilots there is skepticism. There are no pilots at Air India who knew well these two pilots who believe they were simply suicidal. Plus there was at least one other incident this year with a 787 where both engines shut down during landing. The investigation has certainly been fraught with political tension. Obviously it's in Air India and Boeing's best interests to blame the pilots.

Comment Re:Blast off to Mars in 2026? What are they smokin (Score 2) 31

Radiation on Mars really isn't an issue.

Technologically speaking, the bigger problem is getting people to Mars as they will be exposed to a HUGE amount of cosmic radiation.

An astronaut on a mission to Mars could receive radiation doses up to 700 times higher than on our planet – a major showstopper for the safe exploration of our Solar System.

The issue of the survivability on Mars is entirely moot if you can only deliver soon-to-be corpses.

Comment It could be worth it (Score 4, Interesting) 54

If they end up somehow building strong AI, then the investment will pay off in huge multiples and will absolutely be worth it.

If they don't manage to create strong AI, but manage to create a better search engine that somehow replaces Google, then it will be worth the investment (for comparison, Google profit is on the order of $100 billion per year).

There are a lot of other potential products that could bring heavy revenue, even without strong AI. AirBnB has $2billion a year in net profit, which isn't great but it's conceivable that even with the current crappy AI product, OpenAI could make a reasonable amount of revenue. With billions of potential customers, they don't need to make a lot of money off each person.

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