Interesting Links for 13-09-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Human drivers are to blame for most serious Waymo collisions

(tags:driving automation safety )

2. Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars

(tags:mars terraforming doom )

3. New bill introduced in Parliament to clarify the legal status of cryptocurrency

(tags:blockchain law uk )

4. UK Treasury refuses to disclose key details of £22bn fiscal 'black hole'

(tags:uk government transparency )

5. Why the Tories lost according to Tory members and the wider public

(tags:conservatives polls )

6. Video Game Developers Are Leaving The Industry And Doing Something, Anything Else

(tags:games jobs doom )

7. Ice Age study teenagers went through puberty at the same age as modern ones

(tags:teenagers puberty prehistory )

Comments

[armiphlage]

2. I agree that terraforming Mars will never happen. If you want to have habitable living space, it's far easier, faster, cheaper, and scaleable to have a small indoor area with mechanically-controlled temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels, illuminated with artificial light. Just copy the best practices of commerical marijuana growers using underground growhouses.

COLONIZING is a different thing. We have humans living in a permanent base near the South Pole for scientific research. We could have permanent bases on Mars. Not just for research, but created by a billionaire as a tax haven country with lax financial reporting laws (like many small island nations). Or they might be created by a billionaire so a country controlled by him could get a vote in the UN. Or they might be created for a billionaire to flee prosecution, if every country on Earth wants him for tax fraud.

Not that the colonies would be self-sustaining or economically wise. But billion-dollar yachts and cruise ships aren't self-sustaining either, and we have lots of those. Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas was the most expensive cruise ship in terms of production costs in 2024, costing around 2 billion U.S. dollars. I can easily see a rich billionaire spending far more than that to avoid a jail cell.

[andrewducker]

I think the cost of funneling supplies to Mars to enable people to live would be more expensive than even today's billionaires could afford for any length of time.

[armiphlage]

Agreed, even today's billionaires would find it difficult.

Musk and Bezos want to be trillionaires. And it becomes easier if 99% of the colonists are living off of fats and sugars synthesizes with the Sabatier process, with protein from yeasts grown in their own poop.

[channelpenguin]

Part of the point of the article, as I read it, was that the resources to put any permanent outpost on Mars have to come from Earth, so many that it would actually accelerate making Earth less habitable. Which is morally reprehensible to say the very least... but when did that ever stop billionaires trying? If it wouldn't wreck this planet to get them there, I would say "good riddance" and "enjoy dying of radiation exposure". The "no magnetosphere" is SUCH an important point.

(The rich uploading to live forever was a plot in Revelation Space, the process killed them ...and then their uploads all got corrupted over time. EXACTLY such a fate for Musk etc. I would no cry over)

Sigh. If only they used their powers for ACTUAL good (but then likely they would not have got where they are).

I am a massive SF fan, but it IS all fiction.

[jack]

I don't think terraforming or international shipping are at all plausible, but I think any remotely plausible off-earth colony would be something like "Biodome recycling air and water, growing food, needing spare parts from earth", which isn't *very* likely and we can't do it yet, but I think it needs to be debunked separately to terraforming.

I think terraforming is impossible in less than a thousand years, and is likely impossible, but I don't feel very sure whether it'll get more or less plausible in that time.

[bens_dad]

7. My understanding is that many 19th century girls had diets that didn't allow them to start having periods until a few years later than current women (I should read e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3287288/#5 to confirm).

There is enough variation with circumstance, that trends in a particular society and over a century or two are likely even if the age of puberty is relatively stable over the longer term.

Life in high places

[bens_dad]

I hadn't really considered that the south pole is different from just Antarctica. The authors point seems to be that it is high; higher than most alpine ski runs, and all alpine ski accomodation. Yes there are penguins breeding in winter 100km from the open sea, but they still breed at or near sea level.

Life on Earth does not make much use of high peaks, but is that because a) there is not much land up there, and b) there are better places to live ? Most niche habitats are more abundant and have some significant energy source. The is a lot of Mars; if life was put there, it would not have an adjacent better place to go. Maybe it could evolve to thrive ?

I think the examples of Everest and the south pole should make us think - they are more habitable than Mars - but they are not proof that life cannot be made to live there.

Re: Life in high places

[bens_dad]

and all alpine ski accomodation

That should be and all Alpine ski accommodation.

I mean that there are ski resorts (eg Breckenridge) with accommodation higher than the South Pole, but not in the Alps.