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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Foundation is one of my favourite books, and I hated the TV show for not following the plot of the books more closely. I didn’t mind it if I pretended it was just inspired by foundation but it is so different it almost could have been named something else and had the slight nods to the book cut. The thing that was so fun about the foundation books was the way everything ‘just worked out’ in the end according to the plan, and then seldon pops out and basically says ‘told you so’. That entire concept is missing which basically makes it not foundation. It’s also making every effort to preserve cast through eras with contrived means. I gave up on it part way through S2, though all the seasons are getting pretty decent reviews.


  • We could definitely move into industry in space, but a lot of technology still needs to be developed. I think we now have the capacity to launch factories in pieces into space, but asteroid mining remains a technical challenge due as we now know that many asteroids are not so compacted. Furthermore, refining the raw materials in space can’t really be done right now, we probably could figure it out, but parts of the production chain do depend on gravity so we’d need to figure out artificial gravity on a rotating station or do some more direct kind of centrifugal refining. All hurdles we could probably cross. Then comes the question of what you drop back down from space and how you do it. Current heat shield technologies are generally poorly reusable, and even if we were we’d have to be flying the reentry devices back into space. Unless we create a cheap means to protect something from reentry that can be manufactured in space as a disposable, most goods would never be returned to earth. Unless we just refine giant cubes of rare metals and drop them into the ocean to be collected. I think most things made in space would be limited to serving those in space, or in lower gravity locations such as the moon or other asteroid bases. I would love to work on these challenges but there’s very few companies working on these challenges outside of a couple of asteroid capture startups that seem to have no further vision.








  • Image categorisation AI, or convolutional neural networks, have been in use since well before LLMs and other generative AI. Some medical imaging machines use this technology to highlight features such as specific organs in a scan. CNNs could likely be trained to be extremely proficient and reading X-rays, CT, MRI scans, but these are generally the less operator dependant types of scan, though they can get complicated. An ultrasound for example is highly dependent on the skill of the operator and in certain circumstances things can be made to look worse or better than they are.

    I don’t know why the technology hasn’t become more widespread in the domain. Probably because radiologists are paid really well and have a vested interest in preventing it… they’re not going to want to tag the images for their replacement. It’s probably also because medical data is hard to get permission for, to ethically train such a model you would need to ask every patient in for every type of scan it their images can be used for medical research which is just another form/hurdle to jump over for everyone.


  • They don’t want to be contacted. I don’t think we have any moral obligation to supply them with medicines or technologies that they don’t want, even if they would objectively improve their quality of life.

    No they will probably never advance substantially in technology. To get to where the developed world is today took centuries of industrialisation and trade.

    But there are, presumably, happy with the status quo.


  • It shouldn’t be, but German Auto makers are extremely slow to evolve due to their ridiculous bureaucracy. They’ve had ages to get on top of it and ignored it and they should pay the price for that, but they’re too big to fail for their countries economies. They’re definitely beginning to waver in the face of competition from china, so this comes across as the EU giving them a final respite to really start competing. Then again, could just exacerbate their complacency, we’ll have to see whichever way it goes.


  • On the surface of the planet, the atmosphere is extremely dense carbon dioxide, the sulfuric acid that makes landing such a threat is pretty much non-existent at the surface. The wind is also much slower at the surface, the probes measures only 2-4kmh. The probes that landed typically fail due the the temperatures overwhelming the electronics. Most electronics we manufacture are only good up to around 100 Celsius, with specially designed stuff good to around 150c.

    I’m no expert, but as the atmosphere is mostly inert at the surface and the wind speed is relatively slow I would attribute damage to the probes over time to temperature and pressure rather than corrosion/erosion. That said, it’s been a long time and even trace amounts of sulfuric acid at surface level could lead to corrosion over time but to what extent I’m not sure.

    The temperature is well below the melting points of the metals I would assume they were made from such as titanium and steel. Aluminium however would be too weak under the pressure and temperature conditions and would be crushed, though it probably wouldn’t melt.

    Barring any major volcanic eruptions nearby, under normal conditions I’d hazard a guess that the probes on the surface are still there, perhaps largely in tact.