snrplfth

40 ms·

301.
by snrplfth 10y ago
No, this is mistaken. The large steel mills are closing across Europe because steel recycling has gotten much better - the old mills closing are generally blast furnaces, which are used for making new steel out of ore - while the mills that
302.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Uh...minerals and fossil fuels are around about 4.5% of Canada's GDP, and declining as a percentage of the total. To say that the economic growth over the last 20 years has been "almost entirely due to the commodity boom" is
303.
by snrplfth 10y ago
But the abundance of coal didn't kickstart the Industrial Revolution. Coal is abundant all over the world - especially in Eastern China, Northeastern India, the Carpathian Mountains, the Urals, and so forth. Industrialization is just
304.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Start up a munitions and mining explosives division.
305.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Well, most of the horses weren't necessarily eaten before their time - it's just that they weren't replaced, because the price of new horses went down quickly so horse breeders stopped raising so many foals. The working lifes
306.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Then they're either immediately in violation of trespassing laws or "obstruction of traffic" laws.
307.
by snrplfth 10y ago
No, instead of actually pricing in costs, we need to simply make those costs go away. It worked so well with Prohibition and the War on Drugs, so why not this time? /s
308.
by snrplfth 10y ago
It sure would. Not that you could spin up something so large.
309.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Ah, Kim Stanley Robinson. Smart guy. If only he understood any economics, at all.
310.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Well, that's a pretty common reason why people oppose market prices, isn't it: "I have done this thing in the past, therefore I have a right to do it indefinitely."
311.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Well, there's only so many people you can fit onto a rocket of a particular size. And eventually increasing rocket size gives you diminishing returns, so there's an upper limit. Once you've used a rocket a few hundred times,
312.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Right, the challenge is mainly that the first missions will have to carry a lot of cargo (priced into the cost of sending the crew) and that it'll be easier to bear the cost of development and construction if the early missions have a
313.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Yes, I expect that more advanced active shielding will eventually be developed - particularly since you can detect solar flare events before the radiation arrives. The challenge with flares is that the radiation can come in from multiple di
314.
by snrplfth 10y ago
True - over the long term it has more potential.
315.
by snrplfth 10y ago
In the presentation: https://youtu.be/IFA6DLT1jBA?t=42m29s Early trips would of course not have a large crew, since they'd be mostly focused on setting up a base, and be more about cargo and equipment. Saying "sev
316.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Not that people shouldn't go to the Moon, but there are a few 'amenities' that make Mars more attractive for a lot of people: - Water and free carbon dioxide are hugely more abundant on Mars than on the Moon. These are esse
317.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Well, it's not nice out there, but hardly crippling. Cosmic radiation on the ISS is about 150 milliSieverts a year. Interplanetary space could get up to about 800 mSv a year. Not good, but if you can get there in, say, three months,
318.
by snrplfth 10y ago
The idea of the $200K ticket price is only once the system is mature and well-tested. The early trips will have to cost a lot more. Probably a lot more than $10 million a seat.
319.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Because building a base on Mars is going to require quite a high amount of mass shipped to the planet's surface, much of which will be simple supplies and materials, like food, solar panels, methane generators, and so forth. These thin
320.
by snrplfth 10y ago
I mean, it has to! You simply cannot build the kind of permanent presence on Mars with disposable rockets and ships, unless you have some sort of super-advanced Von Neumann robots that can be sent once and set it up on their own.
321.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Most of the cost of building a base on Mars is in the transportation. If it becomes possible to reuse the launch vehicles, then the cost falls. Ideally, it falls far enough that people (and sponsoring governments/organizations/com
322.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Right - people don't realize that if people had to actually pay non-subsidized rates for water, and had to pay the same rate no matter whether they were using it for irrigation or household use, then most of these wasteful agricultur
323.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Yes, by control inputs I meant destinations and probably routes as well, depending on how the self-driving program works. Maybe instead of asserting that I'm "repeating lies" you could ask whether I mean what you think I mean
324.
by snrplfth 10y ago
But the way you challenge it is by not buying into it. The policy is restrictive and perhaps a bit paranoid, sure, but that doesn't mean that it needs to be made illegal . Tesla can't force anyone to buy its cars and if this is s
325.
by snrplfth 10y ago
No, because you can still get to all destinations, but you can't use it for certain tasks . Tesla has understandable reasons why they don't want self-driving capability used on alternate revenue-generating networks. You may disag
326.
by snrplfth 10y ago
> And in every one of those stories there are ten people asking why this is a story because battery fires are less common than gasoline fires. System working as intended. It's still FUD that they could rightfully perceive as hurting
327.
by snrplfth 10y ago
> If Tesla's APIs can't handle input spam, that's on them. That's a very predictable and easily-solved problem. The entire point of an API is to expose a limited surface area so that you can easily interoperate while
328.
by snrplfth 10y ago
You mean for society to quickly turn into technophile contractarians? I'm not holding my breath, personally.
329.
by snrplfth 10y ago
You can avoid the restrictions on Teslas by not purchasing a Tesla. You can avoid the restrictions set by government by...well, you can't really, unless you want to leave where you are.
330.
by snrplfth 10y ago
I felt that their aim in excluding third party software was reasonably clear when they noted that Tesla Network would be handling self-driving for revenue. If they really mean no self-driving for cash payment, not affecting the car otherwis

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