The problem you get though is what I call the "California Cancer Warning Problem"
Basically, people can only pay attention to so many warnings. The more often people get false or trivial warnings, warnings where they have to continue to get things done as standard, the more likely they are to just plain ignore the warnings.

While hackers might be able to figure out a way to do something malicious without triggering the warning, the warnings back then were worse than useless, because they not only triggered for just about every document, users by default could not assess the document for safety without enabling the scripting. IE I couldn't by default open the document and look at the scripts to assess them (and some of them were only like a dozen lines) without enabling them.

Saying the warnings were necessary also ignores that there have been exploits that didn't even require opening a document to cause infection. Preview was enough.

Basically, if the hackers figured out something clever, just add that to the check. It would still be a better situation than what we had back then.

I’d argue that slavery wasn’t “legal because nobody banned it.” It was legal because there were explicit laws that created, defined, and enforced the institution.

There were statutes specifying who could be held as slaves, rules that the child of an enslaved woman was automatically a slave, procedures for manumission, regulations on how slaves could be bought, sold, punished, or inherited, and laws requiring that escaped slaves be returned. That’s not a legal vacuum, that’s a full legal framework.

It’s similar to how segregation laws later forced discrimination on people who might not have engaged in it otherwise. The state wasn’t passively allowing something; it was actively mandating and structuring it.

Slavery existed because the law built and maintained it, not because the law failed to forbid it.

I remember those days where it would warn if there was any scripting at all, rather than look for dangerous commands first.
Just as a thought, not bothering if the script cannot reach outside of the document itself. Functions that access other files or documents, email functionality, and such triggering the warning instead would have been more effective.

They're still in denial about that. Had one just a couple days ago saying that the gas price increases are just the regular price increase in the spring.

There's a bit of subversion here though: Going by my uncle, social security disability has made it even easier: They automatically reject every application the first time.

I was just reading a story where a woman ended up in jail six months, extradited to North Dakota from Tennessee.
The only evidence it was her was an AI facial recognition match between her social media/driver's license and the video of the actual suspect.
It wasn't until the first court date that the public defender got her financial records showing she was in Tennessee when the crime actually happened.
Then they kicked a southern state person out into ND winter without proper clothing, not even bothering to get her a ride back home.

She lost her house and car due to non-payment because she couldn't pay bills while in jail.

Looking, she'll probably end up with a $2-3M settlement.

https://www.theguardian.com/us...

I actually do, it is just that you don't understand the analogy.
Basically, by forgiving the loans, it's the equivalent of the government refunding the money the person was supposed to pay back.
Keep in mind that people sometimes have to declare loan forgiveness as income.

Double checking, the "at least double" and "slightly higher capacity factor" might be considered inaccurate.
Onshore vs offshore wind energy: types of wind energy, difference and cost
This site suggests a 43% price increase per MW, but capacity factor goes to 38% from 24%, a 58% increase.

So if we take $3.13M per MW divided by .24 = $13M per capacity factor adjusted continuous MW for onshore.
$4.49M per MW for offshore divided by .38 = $12M per MW adjusted.

Though NREL 2024 has levelized cost of energy for offshore fixed bottom wind turbines being almost 3 times the price as land based.

IRENA has on-shore at around $0.042 per kWh, and offshore around 0.062, around 50% more.

My thinking is thus that a mix of both might be good, as the more install areas we have, the more level the production is likely to be, reducing the need for storage. Plus, would depend on whether or not the power provider has good on-land areas for wind turbines, or good offshore areas. Texas has a lot of good spots on land, while states like New York, or the east coast in general, may not.

Double checking, the "at least double" and "slightly higher capacity factor" might be considered inaccurate enough to downmod.
Onshore vs offshore wind energy: types of wind energy, difference and cost
Suggests a 43% price increase per MW, but capacity factor goes to 38% from 24%, a 58% increase.

So if we take $3.13M per MW divided by .24 = $13M per capacity factor adjusted continuous MW for onshore.
$4.49M per MW for offshore divided by .38 = $12M per MW adjusted.

This makes offshore slightly cheaper.

Remember when the Supreme Court ruled Biden's idea to forgive or "refund" people's student loans was unconstitutional?

I think this should be ruled unconstitutional. It is congress that has the power of the purse, Trump shouldn't be able to pay anything for something like this without their approval.
If he does cause it to be paid, it should come out of his own personal finances.

ROI for a private space station would be charging governments for access to do the research and such.

Remember, the context here was specifically cops (who in this case can also be criminals), who are less likely to be using jammers and shutting off breakers.

I'd argue that your best option would be a mix of "all the above". Yes, having cameras that don't shut off just because power is turned off, or that can be stopped by jammers is best. But part of the idea is to lure any attackers (police and/or criminal) into a false sense of security. So them jamming the visible wifi cameras and missing the much more subtly placed PoE cameras (with the switch and/or DVR on an UPS) would be perfect.

Real cameras are cheap enough today that mounting them, just not bothering to hook them up, might actually be cheaper.

My favorite though is having them all hooked up, but having hidden cameras along with the obvious ones. Have the hidden cameras specifically watching the real cameras.
Then pay the money and have a fat enough pipe to the internet for cloud storage (could even be a server you own elsewhere, to help avoid companies that bend over even without a warrant).
It can result in some absolutely shocking/hilareous footage, like the time the cops arrested a major station news reporter, not realizing that the cameraman didn't shut the camera off and that they had been in the middle of a live broadcast. The cops didn't know how to shut the professional level camera off, and the station kept broadcasting the stream to the entire city.
Even as they discussed how to fake up charges against the reporter and his crew.
I think it took the governor calling the police chief to get them to release the reporter and drop all mention of charges before things got even worse for them.

Rei, it's always this way with you. Take the chip off your shoulder.

Firstly, I see you have this notion that martian rocks must all be igneous. This is not correct. That planet has had extensive geologic hydrolysis. Noteworthy shale formations have been found at Jezero and Gale.

https://news.mit.edu/2024/stud...

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary....

The generalized composition profile for windblown dust is very high in basaltic minerals, but many noteworthy sedimentary-dominated structures have been catalogued, as above. Depending on where the regolith is sourced, its composition can vary widely. Blanket statements like 'regolith is not shale!', does not engender notions of superior knowledge. Regolith is the fine to midsized mixture of fractured rocks on the surface. Its composition will be determined by wind erosion and transport patterns, and which rocks became wind eroded. As pointed out above, large surface deposits of hydrolized mineral layers are present on mars.

Rather than pretend I dont know this, I instead correctly asserted that what you do with the collected dust after extracting the perclorate depends entirely on its composition, which will be very site-specific. The one making silly generalizations about the regolith is yourself, Rei.

But, since we are playing 'name the ignorance' in this exchange, your attestation stat perchlorate is 0.5% liberatable oxygen says 'Say i'm ignorant of basic chemistry without saying i'm ignorant of basic chemistry, and am bad at reading too.' The 0.5% statistic comes from the publication at bottom, and is the proportion of the regolith that is perchlorates. This is one of those lemons you seem to have a hard time with, so I'll hold your agitated little hand on this one.

Washing the regolith to remove the perchlorate is a requirement for *any* other use of that regolith. The chlorine it contains is a fouling contaminant for any other industrial process that you put it through. It's not optional. This stuff MUST be washed first. Even at this low of a concentration, its presence would destroy melting crucibles, and deleteriously affect the mechanical properties of resulting products.

Washing it is not optional. It's a required first step for any subsequent process.

As you have rightly pointed out, the water ice on mars is more 'frozen mud'. Cleaning the melt is going to be a necessary first step to using it *regardless*. That means either vacuum distillation, thermal distillation, or reverse osmosis filtration. Again, NOT OPTIONAL. This is necessary equipment that you need to bring, regardless. RO filtration is the least energy intensive of these.

The end products are clean water and perchlorate contaminated mud, and clean mud, with contaminated water.

Since we already have to bring the RO equipment, do it like this:

Permafrost goes in RO unit 1.
clean water and salty mud come out.

Dry, salty regolith, and the dirty mud go in an agitation and settling system. It gets completely cleaned through agitation and settling in a continuous inflow agitator, until water testing shows clean (salt free) water at the outflow. The dirty water is partially re-added to the salty mud in the RO unit, which is processing permafrost, to improve filtration. The remainder is low-sediment saline water, which is fed to another RO unit, giving potable water, and concentrated perchlorate saline solution as products.

This gets you cleaned regolith, concentrated perchlorate brine, and fresh water.

Of those, only one is a lemon. The perchlorate brine. The other two have industrial or immediate uses.

What do we do with this nasty bitter lemon? Do we complain about it, or put it to use? You seem to favor complaining about it, but that's dumb. Instead, it should be made into lemonaide.

Now that we have strongly concentrated the stuff, as a biproduct of producing other things this doomed colony needs, I remind you, the percentage of this stuff is going to be very much higher than 0.6% by weight, so kindly shove that out the airlock, and look at what perchlorate salts *are*: highly oxygenated alkali-earth and transition metal chlorine salts, with a very high recoverable oxygen value.

The very same publication that gives the 0.6% wt value, also gives us a generalized compositional makep of what perchlorates we have. They assay it as predominantly calcium and magnesium perchlorate.

Here are the percentages of oxygen (many wholly liberatable) by weight of various anhydrous perchlorate salts, including calcium and magnesium), and the thermal decomposition temperatures of each. (No electrolysis, just getting it hot enough. Though again, if we have nitrogen, we can use bioreactors for this very cheaply instead. Since thats not guaranteed, here's the thermal decomp route.)

Sodium Perchlorate (NaClO4): 52.3% liberatable oxygen by weight. Thermal decomp at 490-520C at 1atm.

Potassium perchlorate (KClO4): 46.19% liberatable oxygen by weight. Thermal decomp at 550-600C at 1atm.

Calcium perchlorate (Ca(ClO4)2): 53.56% liberatable oxygen by weight. Partial decomp at 150C(!), full decomp at 380-570C at 1atm.

Magnesium perchlorate (Mg(ClO4)2): 57.3% liberatable oxygen by weight (but requires more processing to get it all). Thermal decomp (to MgO) at 369-429C.

Aluminium perchlorate: (Al(ClO4)3): 58.9% oxygen by weight. Aluminium holds oxygen very tightly. Decomposition produces a mix of oxygen and chlorine gasses, with pure aluminium oxide as the end product. This is a useful substance, as it's a principle ore of aluminium, and a useful abrasive in manufacturing. Thermal decomposition begins at 150C, and ends at 450C. (But unlikely to be a major constituent of martian regolith)

Iron(II) perchlorate (Fe(ClO4)2): 50.24% oxygen by weight. Like Aluminium, it holds oxygen tightly. The decomposition initiates a redox reaction that turns iron(ii) into iron(iii), resulting in iron(iii) oxide (Fe2O3), and a mixture of oxygen and chlorine gasses. It functions as a catalyst in the thermal decomposition of other perchlorates. Decomposition starts at 100C(!)

Iron(iii) perchlorate (Fe(ClO4)3): 54.2% liberatable oxygen by weight. Basically the same as iron(ii), but is already oxidized to iron(iii).

Since we need to heat the now cleaned regolith to its melting point *ANYWAY*, (in order to get glasses, basalt fibre, or bisqued shales, as appropriate) we can use the same industrial plant to thermally decompose the perchlorates. If we're building sintering furnaces, we are building sintering furnaces. The decomp temps are comparatively low, compared to the temps needed for melting bassalt. The melting / bisqueing of the regolith will also evolve useful gasses we want to collect and refine later, because of local scarcities *anyway*, so having the equipment in one processing plant makes logistical sense.

Our outputs here are alkali earth oxides (mainly calcium and magnesium oxides, which are useful for making concrete) and chlorides (which are useful for an abundance of chemical processes), oxygen, chlorine, and water vapors, and industrial regolith end products (glasses, basalt fibre, or bisqued shale pellets or bricks, depending on what we fed in.)

Fractional distillation of the gasses will give you distilled water, liquefied oxygen gas, and compressed chlorine gas.

Noteworthy publications:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a...