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  1. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    A recent Planet Money podcast recently reported that HALF of North Korea's budget for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles (which they've been expanding greatly) now comes from stolen crypto! They were reporting on the recent theft of 600 million dollars worth of crypto (BTC, I think, but I'm...
  2. daniel

    Wiki FSD’s Earliest Adopters Still Waiting

    Law and ethics are very different things. Not a suitable analogy, since a reasonable person knows that weather forecasting is a very inexact science. A better analogy would be if you live in Minnesota and a man offers to sell you a snow shovel, and you buy it but it turns out that the blade...
  3. daniel

    General chit-chat in "For Sale" threads

    Presumably your car is insured, and if it gets totaled the insurance company pays?
  4. daniel

    Wiki FSD’s Earliest Adopters Still Waiting

    At the time I bought my car, Musk was saying that if people paid for FSD it would (eventually) be capable of operating as a robotaxi, and he was even promising to provide an app (analogous to Uber) for the purpose. But being autonomous, you could simply set the car to respond to ride requests...
  5. daniel

    Wiki FSD’s Earliest Adopters Still Waiting

    Maybe I misunderstand the distinction between L4 and L5, but the promise was that the car could drive itself empty to pick up kids from school or soccer practice, and that it could work as a robotaxi with nobody in it, and that it could drive all the way across the country with nobody in it. I...
  6. daniel

    Wiki FSD’s Earliest Adopters Still Waiting

    When I bought my 2018 Model 3, I was told it had "all the necessary hardware" for what Tesla was describing as Level 5 autonomy, though they didn't use that term. They said that if I paid for "FSD" it would be capable of driving all the way across the country without any person in the car, and...
  7. daniel

    Wiki FSD’s Earliest Adopters Still Waiting

    So he's finally admitting that Tesla lied to me when they claimed that my 2018 Model 3 had "all the necessary hardware" to be a robotaxi? Not only have they had to replace hardware for purchasers of FSD, but now they're saying they cannot upgrade the hardware on my car! Offering to allow...
  8. daniel

    Discussion of Space Tourism and Commercialization

    Are they really "full service" if they're using SpaceX for the actual launch? It sounds like they're a training facility and travel booking agency.
  9. daniel

    General chit-chat in "For Sale" threads

    That sounds like a really bad deal. Sorry to hear that. I hope you can find a solution to your dilemma.
  10. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    That other thread was apparently regarded by the mods as assuming a "backup" is needed and as a discussion of the possibilities. So my posts and the replies to me were moved here, to this thread specifically about the pros and cons of colonizing Mars. This discussion was regarded as being...
  11. daniel

    General chit-chat in "For Sale" threads

    Just talking off the top of my head here: Is it possible to buy out a lease before its term? Pay Tesla for the car and become the owner rather than the leasee? If so, you could buy out the lease and sell the car rather than transfer the lease. You could use an escrow agent to protect both you...
  12. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    So a knowledge of classic science fiction is critical to discussing the plausibility of colonizing space? Very telling. I guess you have to be into make-believe to think that people could actually make a life in a place with no atmosphere to speak of, only trace amounts of water, toxic regolith...
  13. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    Whether or not a "backup home" is possible, is an absolutely essential point in the discussion. If a backup home is not possible (as I contend) then trying to create one is a waste of resources that could otherwise have been put into combating the greatest threat to our continued existence...
  14. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    No species endures forever. And in practice, a Mars (or Moon) colony would be totally dependent on Earth. If civilization crumbles on Earth (not just extinction, but global economic collapse) anybody on Mars or the Moon without a return ship available would die. There just are no "backup...
  15. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    I did say "try." :rolleyes: Which is just one more reason why a colony absolutely dependent on environmental containment in a near vacuum, and where walking away is not an option, cannot succeed. Sure, they'd start with people who've passed every sort of mental evaluation, but people change...
  16. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    The government does not protect people against every kind of loss. That's not its job. The job of the government as regards currency is to regulate the supply of it to match the needs of the economy. It also sets the cost of borrowing money by setting the rate at which it borrows and lends...
  17. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    When I look at the history of the human race, I see unimaginable cruelty to each other and utter disregard for the environment that gives us life. Every time a group of people encounter a weaker group of people, they attack them, kill them, take their stuff, and force the survivors to work for...
  18. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    You think I don't have the facts. I think you've been seduced by the fascination with science fiction, in which everything is possible and magic is merely advanced technology. As for Musk and SpaceX, he saw that there was a business opportunity. After the end of the space shuttle program NASA...
  19. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    You are confusing several things: If NASA is going to squander money going to the Moon (or Mars) it's better that they do so the cheapest way, which is SpaceX. But better still would be to use that money for robotic exploration which has a much greater ROI. I find it quite amusing that people...
  20. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    Nobody is going to fund a colony because it would cost more money than anybody has. NASA has plans to send astronauts to Mars. SpaceX will build the rockets, and NASA will pay for them. SpaceX will fund zero of it and Musk will fund zero of it. Musk says that he wants a colony on Mars but the...
  21. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    It matters because resources are limited. When children are going to bed hungry, people are sleeping on the street, and in some parts of the world children are dying of cheaply-preventable diseases, wasting money on absurd projects needs to be called out. Thank you for your constructive...
  22. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    Yep. Suggestion noted. I'll probably continue to talk about the massive waste of resources that such a project entails. You're welcome.
  23. daniel

    Hydrogen vs. Battery

    Honestly, Elon Musk is not a reliable source of technology information. He got it right when he bought into Tesla early on, and when he started SpaceX. Pretty much everything else (the Boring Company, Hyperloop, Twitter) has been a flop. It's been seventeen years since EEStor promised...
  24. daniel

    Hydrogen vs. Battery

    That, or carbon-neutral synthetic fuels, are the answer to sustainable aviation and oceanic transportation. The fuels can be chemically similar or identical to fossil fuels, and therefore operate the same or similar engines, but using atmospheric carbon and renewable energy. Hydrogen is too...
  25. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    See, I disagree that we could make the Earth a perfect paradise. It WAS a paradise, and WE are the reason it isn't anymore. We have gotten so good at reproducing that we've become a cancer: A thing that grows out of control and kills off the rest of the organism. Why should humanity expand and...
  26. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    The ISS is in low-Earth orbit, well within the Earth's magnetosphere, and therefore protected from cosmic rays. Solar panels provide all the energy, but air and water have to be replenished as needed from the Earth. Food is rather important, and it all comes up from Earth. Also any needed...
  27. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    Agreed. The problem of shielding is not a point against nuclear power. Just a point against the whole enterprise of sending people to Mars. A space colony is going to be completely dependent on Earth. If we screw the pooch here, a space colony will be doomed. If Earth's economy falters, some...
  28. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - General Possibilities Discussion

    Hydrogen is notoriously difficult to contain. It tends to leak out of containers. OTOH, if there is indeed available water on Mars, then hydrogen can be procured there. You don't need to carry your return supply on the way out. But shielding is still an issue because how to shield the...
  29. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    Bitcoin has not circulated to any significant extent. It's just been traded back and forth by speculators. A minuscule amount has been spent on goods from the vanishingly-small number of merchants that accept it (due to the bother of having to track its value for pricing of their goods, and then...
  30. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    Companies set their prices in foreign currencies when their own nation's currencies are poorly managed. They do this because they have to operate in their own national currency. NOBODY in a nation with a well-regulated national currency uses a poorly-regulated foreign currency for operations and...
  31. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    Question for crypto (including btc) boosters: How would you be able to operate a business that needs to buy raw materials and set prices for finished products, when the value of money (crypto) can jump all over the place? You all complain about inflation with fiat money (which in a...
  32. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    No matter how much CO2 you melt on Mars, you cannot create an atmosphere because Mars does not have sufficient gravity to hold onto an atmosphere, and because Mars does not have a magnetosphere to deflect the solar wind, which pushes an atmosphere away. Terraforming is pseudoscience, pure and...
  33. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    Crypto is being used as a medium of exchange by criminals (ransomware hackers, drug dealers, slave traders, etc.) because the advantage of relative anonymity compensates for the disadvantage of wildly-uncertain value. Its use in legitimate trade is minuscule, between boosters willing to accept...
  34. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    So, because I live in Hawai'i, accessible without ever leaving the atmosphere of Earth, I should believe a self-sustaining Mars colony should be possible?
  35. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    The Constitution was written at a time when the speed of information was three miles per hour. When nearly everybody in the country lived on a farm. It was written by people who thought it was a good idea for people to own other people and have the right to summarily whip, brand, or kill the...
  36. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    Hawai'i is on track to be energy-independent in a couple of decades. My home and car are already 100% solar. Many of my neighbors are as well. I read that Maui is already getting 20% of its electricity from wind. I can see the West Maui Mountain windmills from my home. (Not today, though: Calvin...
  37. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    "Digital Beanie Baby" is the best, most concise, description of Bitcoin I've heard yet! And that is precisely why Bitcoin (and other crypto) don't work as currency, and why its only use today, aside from speculation, is by criminals, for whom the wildly fluctuating value is worth the anonymity...
  38. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    And I am seriously discussing why I believe that (1) A self-sustaining off-world colony is impossible because the economics don't work; and (2) It is unethical to spend the obscene amount of money it will take to send people to Mars and bring them back with their health severely damaged, for the...
  39. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    Crypto boosters are like flat-earthers or creationists or anti-vaxxers: They have zero understanding of the field they're engaged in (in the case of crypto boosters, that's economics; for flat-earthers it's geography; for anti-vaxxers it's medicine) but they're certain they understand the field...
  40. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    I have read and watched a lot of sci-fi. I enjoy sci-fi. I do not regard it as a true picture of the future. Nowadays most sci-fi is actually fantasy since it violates very-well-established laws of physics, which is why I'm not a fan of some of the popular space fantasy. I enjoy sci-fi that is...
  41. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    I watched the video. It's very poetic. It would make an excellent opening for a sci-fi/fantasy movie. It completely fails to address the practical obstacles to establishing a self-sustaining colony where there's no air, no magnetosphere, no soil, no life. And it ignores the costs. Who's going to...
  42. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    If someone had invested $100 in the S&P Index in 1913, and reinvested all dividends, they would have around $3,812,000 today. That would have the buying power that $113,000 had in 1913. In real terms, their money would have grown over a thousand-fold in buying power. If they'd put that $100 in...
  43. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    Every place that humans have effectively colonized has had air at around 1 ATM, has had abundant potable water, has had plants and animals suitable for food and clothing. Mars has an atmosphere 1% as thick as earths, it has no liquid surface water, only some ground water and water tied up in...
  44. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    That's another sci-fi pipe dream. "Terraforming" is not possible. It's a joke.
  45. daniel

    Mars and Off Planet Colonization - Pros and Cons Discussion

    I believe this is a sci-fi-inspired pipe dream. There are no worlds (planets, moons, dwarf planets, etc.) in our solar system where human life is sustainable without artificial habitats and space suits, and there are no worlds in our solar system where the conditions and resources exist for a...
  46. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    No. The gold supply does not grow by design. It grows by mining, as people and corporations dig it up as fast as they can. The supply is still nowhere near enough to mediate a global economy. A "mining ship" to the asteroids is fantasy. We won't have the technology to do that for a hundred...
  47. daniel

    Discussion of Space Tourism and Commercialization

    The commercial spaceflight industry wants to Anybody remember a certain deep-sea submersible whose CEO famously said that safety obstructs innovation? Anybody remember what happened to the CEO and the other passengers on the sub he had built without regard to safety? Yep, it imploded and...
  48. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    Most normal people do not ship large numbers of huge pallets of hundred-dollar bills into a war zone controlled by warlords.
  49. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    Another thing to note is that nobody presents cash or cash accounts as a way to store wealth. That's not its purpose. The purpose of a cash account is to have ready cash available for expenses, routine or unexpected. Investments are the way to store wealth. And investments (if you're not a...
  50. daniel

    Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

    Gold, for one. The amount of gold there is, is what there is. The gold standard was a major cause of the Great Depression, and the major reason it lasted so long. See above. Fiat cannot be perfectly regulated. Crypto (including BTC) cannot be regulated at all. The amount there is is what...