I moved from Texas to California, and shortly after crossing the border into California, I saw my first litter warning sign with fine amount posted. On this sign was also the fine for abandoning an animal. The litter fine was significantly higher than abandoning an animal. I was kind of appalled at the fact.
I guess my trip was probably biased towards states with lots of parks and forests, who probably had more incentive to protect their local environments.
Oh, mostly the forest-y and nature-y states - Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, California...I would've liked to see more of Montana and Michigan, but it gets cold up there in the winters.
Mostly I drove through Texas to avoid Oklahoma (one of my least favorite states), but the Guadalupe Mountains were very nice.
I'm not sure I'd call it 'clean' though; the air seemed awfully smoggy and I saw almost as many flaring wells as I did in North Dakota. But there were lots of open spaces and the people were friendly.
Washington, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Utah get my vote for the best places to do a parks/forests vacation, depending on your interests.
The air was “smoggy” driving through Texas? Uh huh... I’m going to go ahead and put that on the same level as your claim about Texas being lax on litter penalties.
By the way, Texas has more acres of forest land than every state you mentioned as being nature-y and forest-y and having more incentive to care about the environment. The only state with more forest than Texas is Alaska.
Like someone else said, Texas is too big to make generalizations.
Primary school in rural Texas. We'd spend an hour a day singing songs mostly about how much God blesses Texas, America, and the Marine Corps, then finish off with The Eyes of Texas song.
In our version, The Eyes ended up in the kitchen watching Dinah. She was about to blow her horn, thus ending the mandate of The Eyes. We would plead for her not to do such a thing, for her sake, for our sake, for goodness sake! The Eyes would know.
KGB doesn't exist anymore - you might mean the FSB or GRU?
Anyways, plenty of countries have security agencies whose main job is to violently protect the local kleptocrats these days. China might be a better example to point to for even worse behavior, with their balkanized net and mass surveillance being used to carry out the mass internment and repression of ethnic minorities in regions like Xinjiang.
> KGB doesn't exist anymore - you might mean the FSB or GRU?
The Russians have definitely gone back to the old ways, I'm not sure the distinction between the old and new matters much any more (The GRU is the same organization, the FSB still reside in the Lubyanka - "the tallest building in Moscow")
Some applications that don't need a complex GUI use web browsers as a frontend because they are cross-platform and they come with a bunch of 'free' UI elements like buttons, text boxes, sliders, etc. You can also style things pretty easily with CSS and JS, to a point.
It's a flexible way of writing one-off applications; you can run them locally, remotely, or on someone else's machine in the cloud. One useful example is Tabula[1], a browser-based utility for extracting tabular data from PDFs. As it is often used by journalists and other organizations that don't want to leak the data they are analyzing all over the place, it is easy to run locally instead of uploading files to their website. You just point the browser to 'localhost:port' while the server is running.
It's pretty big, but there are only so many variations on "tree", "mountain", "valley", "cave", "swimmy thing", "flying thing", "walking thing", etc etc.
It's not like you can ever expect to walk over the next hill and see an octo-monkey spiraling across the veldt.
Seems like a real stretch to compare a 5 gallon tank with one fish and one plant to an entire planet with diverse plant and animal life, biomes, geography, etc.
Sure, there’s a finite number of species that exist, but scientists discover new species fairly regularly. You never know if you’ll walk over the next hill and discover a new bird species. Try doing that in a small tank with one other multicellular organism.
If you're lucky, your language/library/etc might have a fairly active IRC channel or similar. Popular languages often have a myriad of channels dedicated to different subtopics.
They're nice because like you said, discussion can be much more helpful than a single answer.
However, one issue I've run into with the rise of chat and SO, and removal of forums, is that if your question isn't the right fit for SO, and is a bit tricky/time consuming, it's easy for your query to be buried.
I reached out to the TypeScript community via Discord about assistance on how one would add TypeScript definitions to an existing JS repo. Got a little discussion, IIRC, and then because of other factors, was buried.
The second core is meant to handle the network stack, leaving the first core to focus on program logic. With ESP8266s, it can be hard to write complex applications while keeping heavy WiFi usage stable.
Although, I'll bet the 8266 firmwares and libraries have improved a lot since I was using them.
I once made a single-transistor latch by accident. It acted as a single bit of memory and retained its value for weeks until I got bored with the project.
I had been making magnetic snap-together circuits, so I had a bunch of small PCBs with simple 2- and 3-pin footprints and holes that I soldered neodymium disc magnets into.
I put a big TO-220 N-fet on one of them, and stuck it to a laminated whiteboard so that the magnets stuck without shorting together, then I hooked it up to an LED as a simple high-side switch.
When I bent the transistor so that its metal plane rested against the magnetic whiteboard, its gate would latch after briefly tapping either V+ or ground to the magnet which was connected to the pin. When the transistor's metal plane was perpendicular to the board, it didn't latch. Disconnecting and reconnecting the LED didn't perturb the 'saved' value, and neither did removing power overnight. And the same thing happened with a similar P-fet connected as a low-side switch.
It probably wasn't a "real" latch; it was a very over-sized transistor with low gate capacitance, and I didn't try it with something like a 3904. I think it might have had something to do with the principles behind nonvolatile ferroelectric RAM, but I never did get to the bottom of it.
I think you just made a single bit of DRAM. It's surprising how long charges can stay around given suitably dry climate and insulators, and LEDs don't require a lot of power to light up either. A TO-220 package suggests a power transistor, so it will have substantially more gate capacitance than a typical logic-level one.
FWIW I'm told that decades ago latches were implemented as a tristate driver followed by an inverter or buffer. The source & drain cap, along with gate & wire cap, acted as the memory.
Cool - it's amazing how much easier FPGA development has gotten in recent years thanks to efforts like YoSys and these sorts of frontend projects.
RISC-V has also been maturing over the same timeframe, which is bringing mainstream open-source efforts deeper into the stack of general-purpose computers.
We still don't have an open-source VLSI fab, but costs are always falling and Magic has been open-source for decades, so maybe it's only a matter of time until samizdat-style CPUs become possible :)
it would be great to see it end up more like PCB fabrication, where anyone can pick up open source tools and then send files off for fabrication in a few days/weeks at moderate cost... I'd pay a few hundred just for the novelty of getting a chip of my own design.
I do think the trends in the industry may allow this to happen in the next decade or so.
That exists. If a larger process is ok you can get 10 custom packaged ICs for less than $5K. It doesn’t meet your budget but it’s about the cost of a beater car. Depending on the car. ;)
Something like a 3D printer that could produce integrated circuit dies from blank wafers; "VLSI" means "Very Large-Scale Integration". But we're still a long way from that being feasible.
Even if you had a magic box that could turn wafers into dies, you'd still need to be able to source the wafers, ensure an extremely clean environment, screen for imperfections/failures, and package the dies into chips which are robust enough to be handled, soldered, etc.
Some people like Jeri Ellsworth have managed to fabricate individual transistors in the garage, which is extremely impressive, but it's still a long way from there to a packaged integrated circuit.
Cool paper. Thanks for sharing. I’ve worked with OTFT before and this paragraph from the paper pretty much sums up my experience too.
“The operating frequency of the base-line design for OTFTs is approximately 200 Hz while for silicon it is 800 MHz. The optimized design frequency is approximately 40 Hz and 1.36 GHz respectively for organics and silicon. The modest per- formance of OTFTs can be a decent match for applications that need modest computing such as sensors, RFIDs, toys, remote controllers, etc., as described in Section 2. Many of these embedded processor use cases employ embedded processors in the kHz range [31, 35].”
I guess I was wondering what make a fab open source. I.e. say you did have a 3D chip printer, but you didn’t know how it worked and you couldn’t look inside, would that be open source? If that printer counts as open source then I would argue fabs like MOSIS are the equivalent.
You can get all the tech files for their older stuff, with no NDA, from FreePDK. It works fine with VLSI layout tools like magic, which one can git clone the source of.
That said, there isn’t really a lot of mystery in the larger technology sizes like 0.18um. Plenty of universities will tell you exactly how they do it if you look into it.
The big problem with DIY fab ideas is chemical disposal. This will have to be addressed first. Parts of Mountain View are still a superfund site because of older fabs. HF is no joke.
It's incredible how far we've fallen; the border exception is particularly terrible.
I was once driving along I-10, which is an 8-lane / 80mph interstate. CBP had blockaded the entire road, and were pulling every single car and truck off to be questioned and searched.
My truck had a canopy with heavily-tinted windows that could have easily fit a few people, but I don't "look foreign", so they waved me through without even glancing at my ID or vehicle. From the people who had been pulled off, it looked like their job was to hassle people with brown skin.
I can't fathom how it isn't a violation of the Constitution to (ostensibly) search every individual driving along a major highway. What ever happened to 'probabale cause'? Is living in the US considered evidence of committing a crime in the US nowadays?
"I can't fathom how it isn't a violation of the Constitution to (ostensibly) search every individual driving along a major highway. What ever happened to 'probabale cause'?"
How can someone possibly not 'fathom' a scenario?
There's someone shooting at people/cops, car chase, prison break out, or some kind of major violent criminal moving down the highway - they may roughly what he looks like, i.e. race and gender, hence, people who fit this profile get flagged, those that don't move on.
How hard is that to imagine?
Surely it's pretty rare, but surely such situations happen.
I've literally never seen anything like that in my entire life so it's probably not like the police are likely to be acting outrageously disproportionately. But I don't know, maybe you can look it up. But it's certainly easy to see scenarios in which many might want this to be public policy given certain scenarios.
It appears the 4th amendment certainly still applies in the 100 mile zone, and if it did not that would be insane. According to that page, 2/3 of the population lives inside the 100 mile zone.
The CBP officers do apparently have more leeway as far as detaining a person roadside (see 'reasonable suspicion'), or boarding a bus/ train and the like, but probable cause is still required to search a vehicle, or arrest a suspect.
"An immigration officer also cannot search you or your belongings without either “probable cause” or your consent. If an agent asks you if they can search your belongings, you have the right to say no."
In the past, I have successfully denied an officers request to search my vehicle at a routine traffic stop. He backed off immediately. It is easier said than done, being stopped by law enforcement is always stressful. But simply saying in a polite manner, 'No, sir. I prefer you didn't search the vehicle', is one of our greatest tools the 4th amendments provides us.
Officers WILL ask and try to gain consent if at all possible. I suspect that most of the vehicles the other commenter saw being searched by the roaming patrol, either did not know they could say no, or did not have the nerve to say no in a tense stressful situation.
I know that's what the courts say, I just think it's insane and indefensible. And that erodes my trust in our judicial system and my respect for our institutions.
Or it would, if I had any left. If the law doesn't apply equally to everyone, it's not a legal system so much as a way to selectively keep people down.
The idea of individual immortality seems at odds with how the universe works. But the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of matter and energy is appealing, because it opens the door to the idea that we are all facets of the same thing.
What is 'we' to us (and whatever other life is out in space) could be 'me' to the universe, and some philosophers like Spinoza have explored the idea of a "God" which is more or less defined as the empirical laws of this universe.
And sure, eventually this universe will also die. But that's okay, because it is also probably part of some larger entity which will also eventually end, and so on. That's how I choose to interpret the infinite, and it brings me comfort because it lets me see death as a change in perspective rather than a finality. It also helps me practice empathy, by not seeing much difference between what I feel and what others feel.
The idea of collective transcendence is also interesting. One work which explored it was Alpha Centauri, a Civilization-style game where the players' colonies crash-land on a planet which eventually turns out to be sentient thanks to global networks of fungus which act as neurons. If the player is eco-friendly, they can eventually communicate with the planet and dump their citizens' consciousness into the seemingly-immortal planet. Even that would only delay the inevitable, but to quote the game's CEO Nwabudike Morgan:
>I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.
The special projects videos in that game are some of the best science fiction creative work ever made, IMO. Also, something I still think is predictive and sends chills up my neck, "as the Americans painfully learned in Earth's final century" (presumably the 21st):
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
-- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights""
All special projects video text, starting with 0-24:
Although a bit dated, I still don't see this kind of intellectual quality in most games. Paradox Interactive's Stellaris is about the closest thing to a spiritual successor to SMAC, but it's also its own beast and next-gen 4X.
> But the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of matter and energy is appealing, because it opens the door to the idea that we are all facets of the same thing.
I think it makes more sense if matter and energy emerge from consciousness though. If the universe is pure math, then only consciousness can make us think that there are real physical objects and energy. Put another way, if you think the basic explanation of the universe is consciousness, then you don't have to explain matter. If you think matter (and physics) is at the root of the universe, then you still have to explain consciousness.
> Put another way, if you think the basic explanation of the universe is consciousness, then you don't have to explain matter.
Of course you do. Consciousness observes some structure in its experience, so what is the origin of that structure? The consciousness itself? What is the nature of that structure? How does it behave if it interacts with other perceived structure?
These are the same questions that must be answered no matter what you take as ontologically fundamental.
That makes sense only as a solipsistic view. If there is only one consciousness, then it can dream up any reality it wants and it will be coherent. But if you allow for multiple conscious beings, they would agree on the existence and properties of matter and energy only if those things existed in some manner independent of those consciousnesses.
That idea assumes consciousness as emergent or made out of the energy and matter we perceive. While the content of our experiences obviously is, I'm not so sure about consciousness "itself". I personally feel it's self-evident the observer must be outside and cannot be made of what is being perceived. Like the dreamer is not made of dream "stuff", the gamer is not made out of video game code, the mirage in the mirror is not the mirror itself, etc...
So yes, "immortality" of "that which is conscious" is a given imho, because you cannot possibly be aware of non-existence (see: the thought experiment of quantum immortality). On the other hand, immortality of the individual and all its facets seems impossible given the constant change/entropy of everything.
> it opens the door to the idea that we are all facets of the same thing.
> What is 'we' to us (and whatever other life is out in space) could be 'me' to the universe
> That's how I choose to interpret the infinite, and it brings me comfort because it lets me see death as a change in perspective rather than a finality. It also helps me practice empathy, by not seeing much difference between what I feel and what others feel.
I'm 100% with you on this. I've largely gotten there through introspection and "logical" thinking, but I'd love some more formal structure (or for some definition of formal). Any suggestions on other philosophers to read on this subject?
I think a lot of the desire for immortality comes from the understandable (and totally human) fear of the unknown / death. But if you change your perspective - that "me" is only "me" relative to, well, me -- and that if you go up a level in abstraction (look at all of humanity or, really, all of consciousness), you realize that any one "me" doesn't really matter all that much -- and that someone else experiencing consciousness is just as valid and relevant as your own experience of consciousness -- and that from that slightly higher level perspective, there's a LOT of consciousness happening, and it's all valid and relevant and interesting (and will continue for a LONG time!)
Just because your one perspective may disappear in N years doesn't mean there isn't a lot of other experience that will still be happening, and that, to your point, death is only a change in perspective.
You might enjoy Wait But Why's Religion for the Nonreligious post [1]. It gave structure to the thoughts I had for a long time.
I also say that my concept of God is explained in a Simpsons intro [2]. It is based on the Powers of Ten video [3], where the camera is looking down increasing its height exponentially. First at 1 meter, then 10, 100, 1000, and so on. By the end, after we pass by the planets, solar systems, galaxies, and on, we end up in Homer's bald head. In other words, we're all part of the same entity; just like the bacteria in our guts is part of us, we're part of what we call God. And Homer (aka God) is not alone, which fits nicely in the many universes theory.
Many religions came to this conclusion, but I'm yet to find a better way to explain it than that Simpsons intro.
The Logos, according to jewish-hellenistic philosophy, was the eternal emanation of the One. Philo of Alexandria (b. 50BC) allegorically referred to the Logos as the son of God. Christianity claims to provide eternal life, simply through belief in the "Logos" (incarnated in Jesus).
So if one views oneself not as a separate person but as part of this eternal emanation, then by definition you do live forever.
So this is all in line with what I think. We must remember that the human mind is not separate from the universe, it is part of the universe just like anything else.
So in essence, via your consciousness and mine, the universe is learning about itself.
Let that one sink in!
I do not believe that eternal life is something that is intended in this universe, but the Russian's are free to try.
Finite lifespan for an organism stems from the necessity to adapt to changes in the environment, thus -- generations with a cycle of life and death. Brains allow to adapt without physically having to upgrade to next gen. It seems logical that if or when we get to have updatable wetware (in software or somehow else, the options are open), the concept of individual immortality will make sense with how the universe works.
The computers would still stop working eventually; the universe as we know it also has a finite lifespan, and a machine will always require some amount of energy to function.
Well, there is a notion that there is a Darwinian evolution of the Cosmos (https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0205119.pdf), and one might argue that we can't be sure about the future of the universe (especially adding the unknowns regarding multiverse and that whole line of thought) and what future technology might bring, regarding even, let's be optimistic, potential changes to the fabric of timespace itself. Given the non-zero chance of a technological singularity happening even in our lifespan.
Well, an electron is not an "individuum" - in the sense that all electrons, being elementary particles, are exactly the same. In any case, though, should annihilation, then, be considered a fatal accident?
> In this physics thought experiment, a Boltzmann brain is a fully formed brain, complete with memories of a full human life in our universe, that arises due to extremely rare random fluctuations out of a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. Theoretically over a period of time on the order of hundreds of billions of years, by sheer chance atoms in a void could spontaneously come together in such a way as to assemble a functioning human brain. Like any brain in such circumstances, it would almost immediately stop functioning and begin to deteriorate.
> "What is 'we' to us (and whatever other life is out in space) could be 'me' to the universe..."
i'm skeptical of collective transcendence but it's pretty easy to see humans becoming the neurons of earth's brain over time. and as other planets become similarly sentient, they'd become the cells of an even larger galactic organism. and maybe galaxies form a universal being, and this universal being becomes a cell in a multiversal being.
Do you think any finite amount of time, no matter how long, will eventually seem too short? Even if you live a gazillion years, eventually you will reach the end, and you will yearn for immortality all over again. The only real solution is real immortality.
Consciousness is emergent from Milky Way chocolate bars. Until the first one was made we were all chemical reactions going about nothing, and when the last one is eaten, that's what we'll go back to.
And I chuckled at how they used the "Don't mess with Texas" phrase despite having much lower littering fines than most other states.
Like with everything else in this country, it's all about the marketing.