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Comment Re:Compare Starship to the Saturn V (Score 1) 163

The important distinction though is if this was a "preventable" failure that is due to something the engineering community already knows but was just omitted or done carelessly, or if the failure was indeed due to some new physics or unique application.

But just saying "hey we learned that this didn't work" is only useful if you learned a new thing that didn't work - if instead you had a structural failure because you didn't employ known best practices... that's wasteful.

I don't think we know enough at this point to know which case of learning this is. Hopefully it is truly new learning and not just "oh whoops we forgot to inspect those welds."

Submission + - Rapid unscheduled disassembly of a Starship rocket (apnews.com)

hambone142 writes: I worked for a major computer company whose power supplies caught on fire. We were instructed to cease saying that and instead say the power supply underwent a "thermal event". Gotta love it. Continuing, an A.P. store about a SpaceX rocket:

It marked the latest in a series of incidents involving Starship rockets. On Jan. 16, one of the massive rockets broke apart in what the company called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” sending trails of flaming debris near the Caribbean. Two months later, Space X lost contact with another Starship during a March 6 test flight as the spacecraft broke apart, with wreckage seen streaming over Florida."

Submission + - Starship destroyed in test stand explosion (spacenews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: “SpaceX provided no other details about the explosion. It took place as Ship 36 was being prepared for a static-fire test. However, the explosion occurred before the vehicle ignited its Raptor engines.”

Comment Re:Believe it when I see it (Score 1) 200

The unfortunate aspect of that philosophy is that our society now confuses "don't censor political speech I don't like" with "don't censor falsehoods which are tied to politically-charged topics."

We should absolutely encourage discussions about things we may not agree on - but we should also not give audience to things which are demonstrably incorrect.

Comment Re:Honestly they are probably right (Score 4, Insightful) 42

How much of this, I wonder, is that Qualcomm has patents on things integral to the physics? So that inherently anyone else trying to make a modem has to use alternate means to make it work, which are basically poisoned by the standard so of course they won't work as well?

It can't really be that hard to make a radio from a physics standpoint, but I bet it can be difficult to work around patents. Especially if it's a "dumb" patent like "put a filter here" which should have invalidated the patent due to "anyone skilled in the art" of radio devices... but because of it competitors can't put a filter in that exact spot, so have to figure out some other place to put it which of course doesn't work as well because it isn't where you'd want it...or "we set this frequency so it can only be done using a component with this material's band gap, and we have the patent on this material" or something like that.

Comment Re:Lost 110 on It - Miracle Drug (Score 1) 181

There's certainly a strong brain & immune component as an appetite suppressant.

https://www.cell.com/cell-meta...

Central glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor activation inhibits Toll-like receptor agonist-induced inflammation

Summary
Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) exert anti-inflammatory effects relevant to the chronic complications of type 2 diabetes. Although GLP-1RAs attenuate T cell-mediated gut and systemic inflammation directly through the gut intraepithelial lymphocyte GLP-1R, how GLP-1RAs inhibit systemic inflammation in the absence of widespread immune expression of the GLP-1R remains uncertain. Here, we show that GLP-1R activation attenuates the induction of plasma tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-) by multiple Toll-like receptor agonists. These actions are not mediated by hematopoietic or endothelial GLP-1Rs but require central neuronal GLP-1Rs. In a cecal slurry model of polymicrobial sepsis, GLP-1RAs similarly require neuronal GLP-1Rs to attenuate detrimental responses associated with sepsis, including sickness, hypothermia, systemic inflammation, and lung injury. Mechanistically, GLP-1R activation leads to reduced TNF- via 1-adrenergic, -opioid, and -opioid receptor signaling. These data extend emerging concepts of brain-immune networks and posit a new gut-brain GLP-1R axis for suppression of peripheral inflammation.

Comment Re:Lost 110 on It - Miracle Drug (Score 1) 181

> GLP-1 slows digestion and retains food in the stomach. That MAY alter your appetite, but it may not.

The effect on the digestion is a less than desirable side effect. There's research to make variants which work only in the brain and less in the gut, which would be more tolerable.

2014:

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptors in the brain: controlling food intake and body weight

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

The peptide hormone glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) enhances glucose-induced insulin secretion and inhibits both gastric emptying and glucagon secretion. GLP-1 receptor (GLP-1R) agonists control glycemia via glucose-dependent mechanisms of action and promote weight loss in obese and diabetic individuals. Nevertheless, the mechanisms and cellular targets transducing the weight loss effects remain unclear. Two recent studies in the JCI provide insight into the neurons responsible for this effect. Sisley et al. reveal that GLP-1R agonist–induced weight loss requires GLP-1Rs in the CNS, while Secher et al. reveal that a small peptide GLP-1R agonist penetrates the brain and activates a subset of GLP-1R–expressing neurons in the arcuate nucleus to produce weight loss. Together, these two studies elucidate pathways that inform strategies coupling GLP-1R signaling to control of body weight in patients with diabetes or obesity.

Comment Re:Palantir to the rescue! (Score 1) 122

I always laugh / cry when people say something about "stop indoctrination!" because what they really mean is "we don't want that kind of indoctrination, we want this kind!"

What we really need as a society is critical thinking skills, the ability to draw conclusions from evidence instead of reporting only supporting evidence for a preconceived conclusion and suppressing other evidence. We need to have people that can determine if the evidence is complete and conclusive, not just matching what people want emotionally.

Comment Re:This wasn't a UBI (Score 1) 255

I think you would see a price increase. In most food markets what happens is food is set at a price; if it sits on the shelf long enough it gets discounted. If it still doesn't sell it is thrown out. So what will happen is the the shelf-time of non-discounted prices will be longer relative to discounted price, meaning that the price level increases.

The other option is that the stock of goods at a low price sells out first, leaving only the higher-priced alternatives remaining on the shelves, also pushing up the price level.

I have never seen an example ever where increased demand leads to decreased price except where supply increases. If you have an example otherwise... I'd be interested in seeing it.

Comment Re:This wasn't a UBI (Score 1) 255

I don't disagree that this might happen in the medium to long term, as people see that prices are up (because of more money to spend on things) so they might be willing to invest to create companies to take some of that new profit margin.

But this lags the initial influx of money, meaning the final price level is more likely higher than the initial price level, even after new business come online.

Also, if there is less money in banks for the reserve ratio, or there is less money available for "investors" to create new companies, who do you think (and, with what money?) is going to be creating these new companies?

Comment Re:This wasn't a UBI (Score 1) 255

it would just be redistributing the same amount of money around. This would not cause inflation since the same amount of dollars would be chasing the same amount of goods.

Only in aggregate. It's generally the case that the ultra-rich are not buying the goods and services that the lower classes are trying to buy. This means that if you suddenly shift a bunch of money (spending power) to the lower classes, there will very likely be an increase in prices for the goods those lower classes purchase because you can increase their money supply way faster than the supply of the things they want to buy.

In fact, the argument goes that it will be a double-whammy because the thing "the rich" buy are companies that generally make stuff. So if you shift spending to the masses, you will increase demand for goods and services while simultaneously decreasing the available supply of new businesses.

An approach that actually gives the desired outcome on all fronts is to tax the rich and directly create new businesses, therefore creating new supply of all goods and services, dropping prices, and likely employing people. It also helps protect against monopoly by ensuring a steady supply of competition. Sadly, this idea is "too left" for most people.

Comment Re:I get sick of seeing these stories on this site (Score 0) 89

Do you have any evidence at all of any "green" policy "destroying the economy?" If you're going to fret about policies that have a negative impact on the economy, you'll have plenty of data from the present administration in the USA to examine in the near future.

Comment Re:legit question... (Score 2) 184

It's not about letting the iCar only drive on other roads. It's more like say Tesla having their remote app and being forced to allow anyone to make a remote app to talk to the car. Or allow anyone to write their own OS or software for the car.

The same arguments about interoperability versus security/safety apply. I mean, there are surely many companies out there capable of writing their own vehicle control software for a Tesla, or Ford, or GM or whoever, why shouldn't they be allowed to "access" the hardware features of the vehicle?

Basically the entire concept of differentiation goes away, and simply putting an arbitrary "oh it only applies when you have this many customers" per the gatekeeper status doesn't really change that. It ends up putting a damper on the large companies to innovate yet doesn't help the small companies, because mostly what the market will end up with is cheaply made copycats of the first-party features or another giant company coming in with their own flavor of rent-seeking but getting away with it because they don't meet the gatekeeper criteria.

Comment Re:Agree ... BUT (Score 1) 82

The thing that gets me with this discussion is that switching to Rust (or any other language) to address the problems that arise when using C fails to address the question of why those problems exist when using C.

That is to say: the problem isn't in the language, because the language can be used properly - that is, the language doesn't "give rise" to the issues, it merely permits them to exist.

So the question is - what insufficient mental models or processes exist that cause people to use C in a way that results in hazards? That is - what structural issue about problem solving or formulating problems causes C authors to introduce hazards into the code? Is it a misunderstanding of control and/or data flow? A fundamental misunderstanding of how our CPUs perform operations? Laziness? Something else? For example, if "unconstrained" memory accesses are fundamentally hazardous, should we not root those out at a deeper level, rather than just rely on a tool to keep us safe?

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