To be useful in deep space, you're going to have to deal with very harsh radiation, far harder than the Vikings dealt with. You really want to have some large number of computers, where the number has to be odd and exceed 5. The reason it has to exceed 5 is that you need 5 in order to be able to use the Byzantine General's Problem to discern which computers are working correctly and which are radiation damaged. Since some will be damaged over time and you want 5 computers still operating around the time the power runs out, you have to start with more than that.

Massively radiation-hardened highly-robust low-power chips could be done. If you were clever enough, you could do this as a wafer-scale system where you marked parts as bad and networked around them. Free space optical communication across the wafer might be doable.

They might well still end up being low-density CMOS discrete logic.

Lead-lining the electronics isn't as much of a problem if you've launchers capable of handling heavy objects and don't mind burning through a lot of ion drive propellant for course corrections. This would improve the hardening beyond what can be done through the usual operations.

But, yeah, you'd need defect-free microelectronics. You really can't handle F00F bugs or defective instructions once you pass Earth orbit. And I can't think of anyone who knows how to do that.

Well, not just the solar system but the heliopause as well, and the near-Sol galactic winds. We can estimate the effects of space from just about any ancient near-Earth space junk, but I'm not sure how we'd go about calculating the impact of the galactic winds on something. The Voyager sensors won't be sending back nearly enough high-quality data to establish that.

It's actually a lot harder. The fly-bys invovled gravitational slingshots, which not just steered the probes but vastly accelerated them. Without the slingshots, human rocketry of the time would not have had the capacity to get probes to solar system escape velocity.

Our understanding of asteroids is now reasonably good. We know they come in solid and rubble-pile formats. We know that several show signs of lava flows, suggesting they come from disintegrated planetoids with a liquid core. We've managed to land on some and even retrieve samples from one.

Our understanding of comets is much weaker. We know that several appear to be multiple bodies fused together with ice (the one we tried sending a lander to was of this type) and the break-up pattern for Shoemaker-Levy 9 is suggestive (but not proof) of it having been a composite structure too. The one icy body we've seen in the Kuipier belt was also two bodies frozen together. Photographs of the core of Halley's Comet also suggests two bodies fused together with ices. This leads to some interesting questions. Obviously the probability of this configuration is very high, but what is the probability of other configurations? Is it so incredibly low that the odds of finding single-body or triple-body configurations is practically non-existent?

(This is kinda important if NASA is serious about a DART-type project to redirect one.)

Our understanding of solar system captures is non-existent. If there are extra-solar objects flying through every few years, then there is a definite non-zero probability that there are significant extra-solar objects that have been captured by the solar system in the last 5.5 billion years. That would be kinda very useful to know.

Current solar system formation models don't work well, but planets have sorted their composition by mass. Studying them only tells us so much. Asteroids are more useful but hit each other too often, so we don't know how much mixing and reconstitutuing has occurred there. The Kuipier Belt is much better, from that point of view. The density is far too low and most of the objects far too small. A lander could obtain a lot of extremely useful data about how the solar system formed that we can't obtain closer.

The Oort cloud is theoretical only, at this point. The only way to find if it is real is to send something out there.

If we're to get any probes in the future to go between solar systems (and such missions are entirely possible), we need to know a great deal more about the heliopause and the galactic winds.

Well, viruses and bacteria. And that last one is critical.

We know that the microbiome alters blood chemistry and we know that this alters brain function.

I do NOT postulate bacteria cause mental illness, but I do postulate that there is a non-zero probability that bacteria can aggravate mental illness. And that is all that we need here. If we can develop a vaccine that triggers the immune system to either attack the bacteria directly OR to produce antitoxins which attack those changes in the chemistry which are harmful, then the vaccine would lessen the impact of this particular vector.

That would not prevent mental illness, but that's fine. Reducing it is perfectly acceptable.

We know that brain function is altered by the blood chemistry changes made by gut bacteria. This means that any mental illness exacerbated by this route where the chemistry added is verifiably unique to an undesirable bacterium can be targeted by the immune system.

Will this be all mental illnesses? Obviously not.

Do I know of any such chemistry? No, which is why I said "in principle". The potential for the vector exists and the potential for training the immune system to attack it exists, but the reality of such a vector actually existing is unknown and the safety of attacking it is also unknown.

"Potential" and "Unknown" are very important words here. They mean that we do NOT know if the probability of such a vaccine being possible exceeds zero, but equally we do know that a key underlying requirement has a probability that isn't zero. But that is all that we can definitely say at this point in time.

Although it would be wonderful if we could retrieve them, realisically we can't. And if we could get something to them to fit new nuclear batteries and replacements for components that cannot be revived, we could get newer probes out there with better sensors and a more powerful nuclear battery that could last a lot longer.

Having said that, I honestly wouldn't trust any of today's manufacturers to be capable of building anything with a comparable level of robustness, so a recharge mission isn't quite as stupid as it sounds. Almost, but not quite.

Still, fresh probes sent into the Kuipier Belt and the Heliopause would be extremely interesting.

So a murder suspect can appear in court and explain that someone gave him the wrong photograph, so it's not his fault?

The US, and many other countries, need to put forward a new law -- if an excuse applies to officials, then it applies to the citizenry. This is not because officials don't sometimes need extra freedoms, but because the vast majority of manmade disasters are "perfect storms" and because this case is a perfect illustration of the banality of evil.

Legitimate causes are just that and they won't cause problems. If, indeed, they are truly legitimate. Excuses mean that they knew they were doing wrong but felt that finger-pointing would confuse the issue for long enough for the storm to die down. Innocent people do not make excuses. Innocent people don't need them.

But this isn't something officialdom will ever accept. Nor will they tolerate a loss of power. So you don't take away their power, you merely insist that powers they claim are the same everywhere for everyone, and that the powers they deny are likewise denied to all. The sensible ones will see in seconds precisely where that's going to go and will get rid of the stupid ones very quickly. Not because they're morally better, but because such a rule is highly volatile and self-interest takes on a very different meaning when the consequences are unpredictable.

Yeah. This is what Americans voted for. More expensive solar panels.

Well, better deals for domestically manufactured solar panels...

I mean, we needed to do something after China years ago dumped on the US market and ran domestics out of business....something to try to nurture back our own businesses.

We need to bring back as much manufacturing as possible to the US and be more self sufficient....

You don't consider being dependent as we are on China to be a good thing, do you?

Did you not get a taste of how bad it can be during covid?

I've dug into the story, and I don't see any substantive claim that RARE books are in fact being destroyed, other than "someone said this was happening"? Do you know of any?
My questions would be:
1) first, the oldest volumes are going to complicate reading the text by several orders of magnitude; from the shit-quality of the printing to the actually-different use of & inconsistent characters, as well as 'creative' spelling all needlessly increase the challenge for AI to get anything useful from it. How does it help if Claude's AI sees that there are (in the old works) 14 different spellings of "plow"?
2) why are LLMs eating books in the first place? My understanding is that it's mainly about learning broader human concepts, logic, and syntax than they can mine from 140 character posts or reddit. Do we think they're ACTUALLY going to be getting that from Pepys diary from 1660? It certainly won't have historical knowledge that can't be more easily retrieved from elsewhere and the syntax is borderline useless.
2) moreover, what could the "age" and "rarity" have to do with anything besides raising the costs? I have a 1st edition of Thoresby's Letters. It is ideally worth nearly $200. (Mine's nearly falling apart, so it isn't.) Or, Anthropic's AI can suck up the free online text of it in 0.001 sec clearly, cleanly, and for free.

So no, to me this sounds like someone floating a trial balloon of "what's another reason we can get people to hate AI and Datacenters"*, which then leads me to wonder why the effort?

*I think there are plenty of tangible, obvious, and simple reasons to be upset about the current surge of AI and datacenters, without inventing rather-obvious bullshit complaints from thin air.

My $0.02.

Agreed; the spans of time are so vast as to be incomprehensible. Looked at it that way, it would be hard to believe that if there ARE other pathways to "life", that pretty nearly all of them hadn't been explored, and even if failed, explored repeatedly later.

4.6 Billion Years Ago: Earth forms from cosmic dust and rock.
3.8 to 3.7 Billion Years Ago: First single-celled organisms (prokaryotes) and microbial life appear in the oceans.
2.4 Billion Years Ago: Cyanobacteria develop photosynthesis, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere (Great Oxygenation Event).
2.1 Billion Years Ago: Complex cells with nuclei (eukaryotes) evolve.
1 Billion Years Ago: Multicellular life begins to form in the seas.
540 Million Years Ago: The Cambrian explosion brings a massive surge of diverse marine animals.

So (as far as we understand) it was 1bn years to go from *a ball of magma floating in a vacuum* to a primitive but active ecosystem of organisms self-selecting to opportunistically gather whatever they needed (energy, really) from the existing environment.

And we've been here for FIVE of those spans.

I just hope we make it until I'm dead, humans are just about done. I'm glad I got to live through the 80-90s.

I was thinking same thing (the 60's-70's were GREAT too)...I hope to retire in a few years, and spend the last of my days, riding my motorcycle around, brewing beer, bbq'ing on my log burning smoker adjust generally enjoying my latter days.

PLEASE let it last till I'm done with it...after that well, who cares?

AI and viruses....What could possibly go wrong?

I've been to the ER a number of times in the past few years...again, no big deal and small charges for me.

The only thing Obama did for me, is raise my prices.

Wait, I'll give him the no existing pre-conditions, that was a good one....but other than that, all I got was high prices.

Glad I don't deal with all of that....

This has been educational to say the least. I'd not heard of places actually checking to see what comes out of your tail pipe too?!?!

That doesn't seem to allow for users to customize their cars for performance, etc...?

2017...mx5 retractable hard top

It looks like it's equivalent to the emissions tests that most American drivers have to do once every year or two

Emissions test?

Never had one of those...I would guess that's a California thing mostly?

But I've been in some states with a brake tag inspection...which is nothing, you roll in , turn on lights and wipers and you're good.

So, do they not let you mod your cars over in Europe? Flash new ECUs or aggressive cams, high flow exhausts, etc?

Are you sure you actually own your car over there if you can't play with it?