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Author Topic: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc  (Read 240015 times)

Reelya

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2145 on: April 22, 2020, 04:39:51 pm »

I don't think it's necessarily silly.

If they're using grouping of 100 feet, that would be because of the available precision in their measurements. If they're that granular, it would be "fake precision" to specify them in an exact number of feet, so the tradition may have been to just specify things to the nearest 100 feet. That then indicates to the reader than there's an error margin of +- 50 feet, whereas if you always specified to the nearest foot, you'd have no idea if 114500 was to the nearest 100 or if it was an exact measurement. Basically, it's a way of indicating error margins.

Second, if you're going to use feet to start with, decimal feet makes sense when the precision is warranted since then you never have to convert units. That then scales up too, since you also don't have to deal with conversion to miles, just everything in hundreds of feet. Point being: individual feet would be too fine-grained for large scale measurements, whereas miles themselves are too coarse. 100 feet isn't far off from the square root of a mile in feet, so it's a good intermediate scale between the two. Having everything in a common base unit means the math is simpler.

It's the same reason that when dealing with farm area, it's specified in acres or hectares, no square feet or square meters, and not square miles or square kilometers. And you definitely would specify any leftovers as "decimal acres" because that avoids you having to do an unnecessary conversion to square feet. Measurements for a specific purpose are much easier when you have a unit with the right scale.
« Last Edit: April 22, 2020, 05:02:24 pm by Reelya »
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Starver

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2146 on: April 22, 2020, 04:59:09 pm »

Most people have ten toes, thus feet with exactly ten unique digits.

∴ decimal, QED!
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Iduno

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2147 on: April 22, 2020, 06:38:49 pm »

Most people have ten toes, thus feet with exactly ten unique digits.

∴ decimal, QED!

Hmmm.
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martinuzz

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2148 on: April 29, 2020, 03:59:34 pm »

Material scientist Liangbing Hu at Maryland university managed to create a lightweight construction material out of bamboo that has 6 times the tensile strenght of steel, and can withstand more pressure than concrete and brick.
It could prove useful in construction, automobiles and airplanes.

His team managed this by first using a procedure also used in the paper industry, removing lignine from the bamboo, and afterwards compressing the cellulose with microwave radiation.

Now all that's left to do is to eradicate all giant pandas for trying to eat our steel shrubs.
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Telgin

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2149 on: April 29, 2020, 06:26:28 pm »

compressing the cellulose with microwave radiation

That's cool and all, but I'm really trying to figure out how the heck this works.

I also wonder if it can be produced on industrial scales easily.
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Trekkin

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2150 on: April 29, 2020, 06:28:58 pm »

compressing the cellulose with microwave radiation

That's cool and all, but I'm really trying to figure out how the heck this works.

I also wonder if it can be produced on industrial scales easily.

The radiation probably just crosslinks the chains together.
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Starver

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2151 on: April 29, 2020, 06:45:28 pm »

If they had used Gamma Rays, they'd have had Hulk Bamboo!
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bloop_bleep

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2152 on: April 29, 2020, 09:02:36 pm »

Wait, 6 times the tensile strength?

What's the tensile strength multiplier on steel we need to make a functional space elevator again?

EDIT: Nvm, it's something like 60-100, not 6. We apparently already have some materials that are strong enough, but mass producing them may be a problem. There's also other logistical problems.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2020, 09:07:23 pm by bloop_bleep »
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Madman198237

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2153 on: April 29, 2020, 09:22:11 pm »

Wait, 6 times the tensile strength?

What's the tensile strength multiplier on steel we need to make a functional space elevator again?

EDIT: Nvm, it's something like 60-100, not 6. We apparently already have some materials that are strong enough, but mass producing them may be a problem. There's also other logistical problems.

The favorite material for the space elevator is usually carbon nanotubes, those have some serious issues with even atomic-scale defects being capable of compromising the hypothetical hundreds-of-kilometer-long-strands necessary for the elevator, IIRC.
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Starver

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2154 on: April 30, 2020, 08:21:29 am »

Obviously we need to generate nanotubing in a more precise manner than we currently can with vapour deposition/etc methods, and in cross-sectional areas that would be difficult to accumulate in a standard manufactury process.

If we can adapt biological mechanisms to exude tubing (properly supplied with feedstock) to be gathered together like some spinnerette, optimised with just enough inter-tubule binding sites to fuse the strands together without distorting their integrity, and somehow grow this out (in both directions) from a suitably supplied geostationary satellite.

Though bio-tether may be subject to all kinds of problems, if the exuding biology 'sickens' from various space conditions, bad levels of care or... topically... viral infection. There could be a novel in this, if not real science/engineering. *ponders*
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martinuzz

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2155 on: April 30, 2020, 11:19:37 am »

"Why are you late for work?"

"The space elevator had the flu"
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Iduno

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2156 on: April 30, 2020, 01:30:07 pm »

I understand the materials limitations of putting up a space elevator, but wouldn't the huge amount of trash (mostly non-literal) orbiting the earth be a larger concern? It's gotten to where observatories are having difficulties because of the amount that Elon Musk has put there alone, in addition to all of the communications satellites and whatever else.
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Madman198237

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2157 on: April 30, 2020, 08:25:09 pm »

Yes, it is one of the big concerns about a space elevator. You would likely end up with a massive exclusion zone around the elevator, and before you put it up you'd need to be careful to clear the orbits it would interfere with of debris, which due to orbital precession and the like would pretty much require you to clear LEO of anything that can't steer its orbit to avoid the tether.

The army of satellites Musk has launched is a probably mostly due to their reflectivity during their orbit-raising phase and the fact that there's a lot of them. They are actually really low-risk as far as collisions go because they're all capable of changing their orbits and already have collision-avoidance and deorbiting built in. It's all the fragments of things that we can't track and can't steer that are truly problematic.
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Reelya

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2158 on: May 01, 2020, 02:21:44 am »

Space Elevator is thinking small.

Just build all of the Earth's surface upwards until you're in outer space.

if you build the entire earth up 20 stories that's equivalent to 20 more Earth's of floor space. Then keep building up, and eventually you won't need a space elevator.

EDIT: Some people ask where the aliens are, why wouldn't they expand. My thinking is that once you do the math you work out there's no reason to expand. We could easily build living space for Quadrillions of humans if we want in this solar system.

Also, with the possibility of simulated consciousness that makes the need to travel to other star systems for the point of "experiencing" it pointless too.

Consider this idea: if you can simulate consciousness, then that AI would have a current-state and a future-state, and you determine that the future-state is a valid successor to the current-state so that it's the "same" consciousness. Then, if you've determined some really great future-state for your AI, why even bother with the intermediate states? After all, previous states just exist as memories, there's no reason to even have them. Just make the ideal future-state consciousness who has really good memories.

Also, consider that you might be able to give inputs to two different current-state AIs that cause them both to converge to the same future-state AI. Effectively, that new AI is a merged consciousness which would view itself as the legitimate successor-state to both original current-state AIs. You could repeat ad infinitum, and have a single future-state AI which is the legit successor of all of any number of current state AIs.

A related idea:

Scenario 1) you are simulating a consciousness in one machine, then stop that machine, copy the current-state over to another machine and then allow the simulation to keep running. We'd say that's the same consciousness, right? since the simulation is what matters, not the hardware. Copying the data to a new machine then starting it up again should not result in any loss of consciousness. So the consciousness moved over with the data, right?

However ... consider:

Scenario 2) you are running two consciousness simulations in lock step, using the same inputs. Two different machines. You then stop one of the machines. Now, from the point of view of the stopped machine, this is identical to scenario #1. So did the consciousness "jump" in this case, or "not-jump" because there was already a consciousness there. Clearly, though in different "machines", they were actually the same "consciousness" to start with. This also suggests that if you can cause the states of two conscious simulations to converge, then that is literally the same thing as merging them, as long as you don't subsequent diverge them again.

My point here is that if consciousness can be digitally simulated, then we may have to abandon the very concept of "individual identities". The final frontier of understanding consciousness itself may well be the final existential crisis of humanity, making things like evolution vs religion look like children's bickering. How this relates back to the aliens idea is that if your race has had an exitential crisis where you realize there's actually no such thing as individual consciousness then a lot of things that make sense to us such as experience itself wouldn't make so much sense: you could compute a consciousness which is a legitimate simulation successor-state to any number of existing consciousnesses. Then, why would you even bother having people let alone going anywhere? Just compute a being that's had the best version of every possible experience and be that thing.

EDIT2: another way to understand this: imagine I teleported in "you from 10 minutes in the future" and then de-materialized now-you and left future-you in your place. Is that the same you or a different you? Logically, it's exactly who you physically would have become 10 minutes from now, so it is in fact the same you. Then, you can realize there's no difference between you-10-minutes-from-now or you-10-years-from-now or you-10-million-years-from-now. As long as it can be shown that they're the legitimate successor-state to your current "AI" then they are still you. So you can compute an ideal future-you, materialize that you and immediately kill current-you, realizing that for all intents and purposes you're still actually alive and conscious. And that future-you could be merged with other future-yous for different people.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2020, 03:02:21 am by Reelya »
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Telgin

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2159 on: May 01, 2020, 05:34:50 pm »

Some people ask where the aliens are, why wouldn't they expand. My thinking is that once you do the math you work out there's no reason to expand. We could easily build living space for Quadrillions of humans if we want in this solar system.

Also, with the possibility of simulated consciousness that makes the need to travel to other star systems for the point of "experiencing" it pointless too.

This is largely what I expect to be the case too.  I expect FTL travel or communications to be fundamentally impossible, which makes interstellar empires basically impossible anyway.  To even learn that a nearby solar system has planets / resources worth using would take centuries, and nobody is going to want to waste much effort sending ships to such a system when the return on investment takes just as long.

It just makes much more sense to expand within your own solar system.  Someone might want to expand to a nearby solar system to protect the species against extinction or something, but it's a massive undertaking that takes forever and you can't control or benefit from those colonists.
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