> we arrive at the interesting number of 8500 GW or 8.5 TW. This power must be sustained by a distributed radiofrequency system, or by an alternative acceleration mechanism. A power source at the level of 10 TW would thus appear to be required. For comparison, the total energy consumption for the entire Earth in 2019 corresponded to a source of ∼18–20 TW.
This reminds me of "Why Beauty Matters", a documentary by Roger Scruton, which fundamentally transformed my views on architecture and beauty in general
Not just efficiency, but degeneracy and criminality. The article fails to mention his own degenerate sex crimes, however. Much of his own work is not devoid of ornament, and ironically these works stood the test of time, in my opinion. His oversimplified work may have been startling in its day, today it looks bland next to the many many utilitarian buildings that followed this trend. Reduction inevitably leads to conformity. A cube looks like a cube, no matter who specified its dimensions.
Disclaimer: I'm the author. The concept is similar to Meshtastic, but the goal was to make more documented and clear choices at protocol level, to have a much simpler to hack and adapt implementation, and so forth.
If the UK record on anti-terror scope creep is anything to go by, not creating this backdoor is a very good idea.
In the UK, laws originally intended for surveilling terrorists were/are routinely used by local councils (similar to districts I think) to monitor whether citizens are putting the correct rubbish/recycling into the correct bin. [1]
This is a pandora's box, and the correct answer is not to debate whether we should open it just this once, it's to encase it in lead and throw it into the nearest volcano. Good on Apple for "wasting" shareholders money and standing up for this.
I post this on every satellite related thread, but if you're interested in this stuff, you can easily listen to amateur radio satellites with an RTL-SDR dongle and a simple antenna.
There's even a repeater on the ISS, and sometimes you can hear the astronauts making contact with people on the ground in their spare time.
As commercial enterprises currently are set up, they have no incentive whatsoever to preserve the ecosystem they are thriving on. Worse, they profit more when harming it. As seen here with Google, that is true irrespective of the nature of the affected system.
It's not just the quality of websites that is negatively hit either. The real victims are us, civil society and our future.
The information realm that is the internet should provide not only some basic tidbits, it should inform to the full extent of human knowledge.
Even more than that, it should provide us with the freedom to discuss among ourselves and reflect on ourselves, humans and humanity, about the future of society.
Without such self-reflection, there is only stagnation and retardation. We cannot change what we do not understand and we understand ourselves the least.
> It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, “Give me money.” Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. “Budge’s Boots are the Best” simply means “Give me money”; “Use Seraphic Soap” simply means “Give me money.” It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses.
Some others have mentioned SomaFM and the Apollo missions separately, but SomaFM has a station that combines ambient music and the Apollo mission audio: https://somafm.com/missioncontrol/
Well if you read https://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/ he is saying that we are in the "Turbulent Twenties" and compared to the recent past there is significant political and social upheaval. Essentially the US is in a "chaotic period" where a spark could start a civil war or government collapse.
But on an absolute scale, though, I guess this trend is easy to miss. The riots have only involved a few thousand people, and they haven't been incredibly violent or anything, a few people dead but not a lot. If you don't follow the news closely you could probably miss everything but the Capitol riot.
I love the audacity of this proposal.