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Author Topic: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc  (Read 239973 times)

McTraveller

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2325 on: December 31, 2020, 09:43:08 pm »

I was thinking more Horizon Zero Dawn, not The Matrix. Especially with their dog bots.
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TomJo

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2327 on: January 21, 2021, 09:16:32 am »

Just share this with you.
Scottish company Skyrora has completed final tests of an orbiting transport vehicle (OTV), which can carry out a number of space missions after payload delivery, including replacing its backup satellites or even removing space debris.
In the era of mass launching a lot of everything into orbit, such developments may turn out to be a necessary thing.
The press release states that the Skyrora XL launch vehicle was originally designed with the capabilities of the future third stage in mind.
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martinuzz

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2328 on: February 04, 2021, 06:19:38 am »

Major setback for Microsoft's quantum computer project at the university of Delft.

The research group lead by Leo Kouwenhoven reports that they cannot reproduce the results from their previous research that 'showed' the existence of the majorana particle, on which the whole concept of Microsoft's quantum computer is based. They have retracted their 2018 publication from Nature magazine.


https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2101/2101.11456.pdf
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Egan_BW

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2329 on: February 04, 2021, 10:57:59 pm »

Woohoo! Negative results! :D
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McTraveller

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2330 on: February 08, 2021, 09:47:43 am »

I'm really intrigued and baffled by the whole cryptocurrency thing.  I mean Tesla just purchased $1.5B (yes, billion) in bitcoin as a financial move.

What I don't understand about this whole movement is that what are they investing in? I feel like it's pure accounting trickery, not actual production of goods and services.  Is there any aspect to the valuation of bitcoin that isn't just accounting effects?

I understand the idea of having a distributed ledger that doesn't use the traditional forex or banking channels. What I don't understand is the huge valuation associated with the tokens used for such transactions.

I really lean toward the fact that the valuation of cryptocurrency is mass hysteria, but because it's an economic hysteria it actually has real effects in the world.

Full disclosure - although I have spare cash with which I could buy crypto and probably make some profit, I refuse to do so because I feel it's dishonest gain.
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Starver

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2331 on: February 08, 2021, 10:46:48 am »

It's pure investment. Futures trading on steroids, because there's no actual "future" thing to trade upon how you think it will, eventully, "presently" trade (or how you think others will shortly think about how yet others may think think... the actual trades will unfold).

It's therefore just "turtles all the way up"...

(Unless it's one of those ledgers that holds within its eventual 'mining' output some 'useful' data, such as the solution to some real-world problem outwith the purely ledgerising one. But I'm not sure those are better done this way than by dedicating super-/cluster-/distributed-computing MIPS/BIPS/etc to.)
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thompson

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2332 on: February 09, 2021, 12:58:52 am »

It's pure investment. Futures trading on steroids, because there's no actual "future" thing to trade upon how you think it will, eventully, "presently" trade (or how you think others will shortly think about how yet others may think think... the actual trades will unfold).

It's therefore just "turtles all the way up"...

(Unless it's one of those ledgers that holds within its eventual 'mining' output some 'useful' data, such as the solution to some real-world problem outwith the purely ledgerising one. But I'm not sure those are better done this way than by dedicating super-/cluster-/distributed-computing MIPS/BIPS/etc to.)

Pretty much this. The “advantage” is that you don’t have to worry about poor real-world performance of your asset raining on your parade, as there is no real-world asset to perform anything.

As an aside, I recall working with a man who was dabbling in Bitcoin way back at $150. I thought about it, but didn’t want to put money into something I didn’t really understand. It was the sensible move, but alas, fortune favours the brave.
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Bumber

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2333 on: February 09, 2021, 01:57:02 am »

What I don't understand about this whole movement is that what are they investing in? I feel like it's pure accounting trickery, not actual production of goods and services.  Is there any aspect to the valuation of bitcoin that isn't just accounting effects?

I understand the idea of having a distributed ledger that doesn't use the traditional forex or banking channels. What I don't understand is the huge valuation associated with the tokens used for such transactions.

It's kind of like buying foreign currency, I think. Let's give an extreme example: Imagine being a German post-WWI. You exchange your marks at the rate of 4.2 per US dollar in 1921. Two years later, marks have suffered severe hyperinflation. The exchange rate is now 4.2 trillion marks per USD.

Had you stuck with marks, you'd now be completely bankrupt. Instead, you've got USD, which have remained relatively stable. You don't really want to trade your USD back for trillions of marks (for practical reasons,) but can instead just spend your USD for goods and services.

Bitcoin is a bit like that. Since bitcoin becomes increasingly harder to mine, it has inflation controls built in. It's like the old gold standard of currency, but without tying up gold. It's not legal tender, though, so it's only valuable if people are willing to sell you stuff for it.
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Starver

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2334 on: February 09, 2021, 10:01:15 am »

Future non[1]-inflation has the interesting effect of making future scarcity inflate current pre-scarcity demand. Getting on the bandwagon with investments or datafarm mining (or nefarious hacking of one or other sort) essentially hyperinflates before the controls (increasingly) control the end-value.

It's a different inflation to the "we can always print more money" one (because everyone knows/should know that less more money will be printed, vs. the wheelbarrows-of-wads-to-buy-today's-bread situation), but it also puts off anything but saving (and accumulating when you can) thus making Bitcoin/etc purchases for tangible products/viable services ever less realistic until the hype crashes.

I wouldn't call it "deflation", because it's still a commodity, and the currencies used to buy the commodity aren't themselves (notably) hyperinflating, even though they clearly are like Weimar cash vs the Dollar/etc . It's whatever you'd call the Tulip Mania/South Sea Bubble hypes, while they were still hyping.

Maybe it'll be better once it becomes more like land-investment ("...they aint making it any more!") or antiquities buying where it, generally, makes for a safe-ish sink for sufficiently surplus real-world monies, but with a more trivial bartering system built in[2].


Recently, on the subject, this man popped into the news again. Or maybe it is a new one, but there was definitely a similar quest made by someone else a few years ago. Could be different, as I think that other one was actually digging in the recently dumped area (unhindered/trivially aided by the site workers) for his drive.  - What annoys me most of all, is that someone(s) dumped a workable HDD, without any attempt at recycle, re-use or even securely wiping/physically wrecking it before recklessly (as well as erroneously) landfilling.


Sorry, mixed bag this post. But maybe some additional Tech/etc stuff beyond finance/movies. ;)





[1] Or increasingly restricted, anyhoo

[2] ISTR a 'near future' sci-fi show, maybe 10+years ago, was one of those "unusually decent human cop chosen[3] to partner the very latest human-looking robot-cop" plots and it features 'bitcoin wallet' devices where people routinely 'fistbumped' them[4] to exchange petty payments, in leiu of dollar-cash/-transfers for some future "we have robots but physical currencies have tanked" reasons. Possibly it was a standard half-apocalypse. Lighter than Blade Runner/Dark Angel. Just enough grit to be gritty, yet robotics had improved well past Boston Dynamics level, but still Chappie-like rather than Humans/Terminator, until this prototype.

[3] I think it was more others trying to get the experiment to fail, and part punishment by those above not quite so squeaky-clean in their coppishness. There was a general Elijah Bailey/R. Daneel Olivaw vibe to it, naturally.

[4] Not sure how they 'dialled' the quantities. That film with functional immortality but made Logans Run through a time-as-currency thing with Justin Timberlake later used the length of the arm-grasp relate to the transfer quantity (and relative attitude perhaps also affect the rate, as well as the direction). Probably this thing's fist-bumpers had thumb-operated microcontrols to allow presets to be activated as well as whatever biometrics/etc gave it its N-factor authentication tying the thing to its rightful owner
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McTraveller

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2335 on: February 09, 2021, 10:27:49 am »

This is awesome:  transparent wood!
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bloop_bleep

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2336 on: February 09, 2021, 01:20:37 pm »

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Quote from: KittyTac
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The trick is to only make predictions semi-seriously.  That way, I don't have a 98% failure rate. I have a 98% sarcasm rate.

EuchreJack

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2337 on: February 09, 2021, 05:26:11 pm »

It seems too easy to replicate for it to be realistic.  Only hidden component is the "Marine Epoxy".

martinuzz

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2338 on: February 09, 2021, 05:35:39 pm »

If only all research were that transparent
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Friendly and polite reminder for optimists: Hope is a finite resource

We can ­disagree and still love each other, ­unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist - James Baldwin

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=73719.msg1830479#msg1830479

bloop_bleep

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Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« Reply #2339 on: February 09, 2021, 06:17:35 pm »

This seems off. In the video nilered applied lye, sodium sulfite, and hydrogen peroxide in solution (completely submerging the wood pieces, not just brushing some hydrogen peroxide onto them) to remove the lignin and even then you could notice some brown color left in some of the pieces.

Plus they looked not nearly as transparent and much more cloudy than this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That image doesn't even seem consistent with the image at the top:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The image at the top seems more cloudy. (And even then less cloudy than nilered's synthesis. And that guy went through a whole bunch of tweaks and methods.)

Though also nilered's synthesized pieces were 3mm thick and not 1mm...
« Last Edit: February 09, 2021, 06:21:35 pm by bloop_bleep »
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Quote from: KittyTac
The closest thing Bay12 has to a flamewar is an argument over philosophy that slowly transitioned to an argument about quantum mechanics.
Quote from: thefriendlyhacker
The trick is to only make predictions semi-seriously.  That way, I don't have a 98% failure rate. I have a 98% sarcasm rate.
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