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Comment Re:Why not focus on the obvious problems like plas (Score 1) 70

Reforestation is a thing, at least in North America. Since the 1970s, the U.S. has planted millions of acres of new forest (see United Nations FAO and USDA Forest Service for data). The U.S. currently is planting about 60,000 acres of trees annually, plus another 130,000 acres of regeneration.

The people overseeing this work are forestry experts, so one can assume they are planting the correct trees for a locale, in the right concentrations and groupings.

The real problem is that Brazilians are chopping down millions of acres of forest every year (albeit, decreasing). This is insanity. Also, because of food shortages and famines, some Africans have been stripping bark from trees, as well as harvesting the wood. Deforestation of that continent not only removes habitat for fauna (chimps, birds, etc.) but also leads to expansion of desert. Africa's just a total disaster.

Comment Why not focus on the obvious problems like plastic (Score 1) 70

About a million tons of plastics are being dumped into the oceans every year, and this material is suspected of damaging the ecosystem. Algae absorb CO and emit O quite efficiently; 60% to 70% of the Earth's oxygen is made this way. Another 10% to 20% or so comes from several huge rain forests, notably the Amazon.

We should focus on eliminating plastic and other potentially damaging substances from the ocean, and secondarily perhaps limit over-fishing that distorts the food chain.

Also, plant more trees. There's no better, or cheaper, way to de-carbon-ify the atmosphere than trees, especially during their major growth years.

This seawater-filtering scheme sounds expensive and strange, and probably would create more problems than it solves.

Comment Re:We could reach Mars at the speed of light- (Score 1) 81

I had thought quantum entanglement doesn't copy information; it actually realizes the original information at an arbitrary point in space-time (I added the "time" because I believe it's not restricted to 3 dimensions).

The teleportation you describe is much more conventional: a machine scans you down to the molecular level (the mechanism, let alone the amount of data storage, needed to achieve this is left to the imagination), transmits this data to Jupiter, which is an average of 43.2 light minutes from Earth.

The receiving machine then rebuilds a copy of you, molecule by molecule. If the checksum matches, it sends a "Success" response, and the transmitting machine then disassembles the original you.

And for the record, I will never get in one of those things.

Comment Re:We could reach Mars at the speed of light- (Score 1) 81

The gravity is a nice bonus... but acceleration would need to be maintained at 9.81 m/s to achieve one gee.

To get to 100,000 mph by the midpoint to reach Mars at its closest approach to Earth, per Grok, a = 0.0357 m/s
This is far less than one gee.

Unless I'm doing this wrong.

But luckily, we can have a spinning habitat to simulate gravity. For a six month journey, this would be a necessity; it wouldn't do for the astronauts to reach Mars with atrophied muscles and bones.

Comment Re:We could reach Mars at the speed of light- (Score 1) 81

What happens to the kinetic energy of the astronaut who is instantly transported to another point in space? Standing on the Earth's surface, we are actually moving at a rather high velocity due to rotation and orbital motion. Just plunk someone down on Mars and they might go flying up, down, or sideways at thousands of km/hour.

Comment Use a mechanical arm to push itself upright? (Score 1) 26

Given this is now twice that this company's lander fell over after making it all the way to a soft landing on the Moon, maybe they should implement robotic arms to simply push the craft upright. It would cost money and development time, but seems worth it if it salvages a $65 million project.

Alternatively, an array of attitude jets could prevent the problem, unless the craft landed partially on a crevice, in which case... launch up a couple of meters and float to a new spot?

Comment Re:I had to 'gpt' what the heck was 'google' .. (Score 0) 33

I use Grok and openai both. I've almost completely stopped using duckduckgo (switched away from google years ago except when duck fails me). AI is a slightly different experience but really saves a lot of time by distilling many information sources into a nice concise bullet list and summary.

Comment They're copying Tesla (Score 4, Insightful) 37

Tesla's Optimus is not the first humanoid robot, nor the best; Boston Dynamics has been making incredible human-like machines for years.

But Optimus has one major advantage: it has a massive software backend. Tesla recognized early on that both cars and robots are really just mobile extensions of a central processing system. The Optimus is intended to be always connected, and to share its expertise as it learns. Similarly, their vehicles are connected, and share traffic data to help drivers avoid congestion and accidents.

The Chinese humanoids look very much like Optimus, just as the Chinese EVs are basically copies of Tesla vehicles. That said, the Chinese are innovating at a mad pace, and Tesla's main advantage seems to be its advanced software (as Chinese car makers admit), at least right now.

An interesting analysis I heard recently on one of the Tesla analysis youtube channels (The Tesla Space, I think): Tesla is probably going to lease its robots rather than attempt to sell them all. It will "uber" them to companies that need such machines but can't afford to purchase a fleet of them. Just pay $50/hour per robot, train them, and put them to work on the assembly line or in the shop. The revenue stream is constant, and can grow almost arbitrarily.

Fun times ahead.

Comment Re:A used car salesman. (Score 1) 107

"it's still a decade late"
Compared to...what? Someone else's autonomous driving software? What other mainstream passenger car had this feature 10 years ago, that makes Tesla this late to the party? I'll wait...

Regarding Musk's promises about FSD, so what? The fact is that they're working really hard on this product, and the next deliverable in 2025 is likely to be very close to unassisted driving. While it's true that Waymo and a couple of others have vehicles that do autonomous driving in specific, pre-mapped urban areas, Tesla is attempting to do the entire country (and soon, Europe and China) which is a much larger project. Anyone who knows anything about big data can appreciate the magnitude of this project and how hard it is. I cut them some slack.

Regarding the rest of your drivel, you and these other children posting here are clearly just endemically opposed to Musk for political reasons, as well as jealousy, so you copy and paste talking points from MSNBC or liberal know-nothings on tiktok or whatever garbage platform you get your "news" from.

The fact is, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, solar power plants, and now a lithium refinery are solid accomplishments that are putting the U.S. in the lead in several industries where we were falling behind previously. The U.S. couldn't even launch humans into orbit for several years, but had to rely on Soyuz. The U.S. car companies are hopelessly outclassed against China's burgeoning EV/PHEV industry...but Tesla holds its own against China and in fact is the top EV in China. Neuralink is considered a miracle by people suffering from paralysis who have been lucky enough to be alpha testers, so some dweeb on slashdot bashing it is truly a punk without a cause.

In short... grow up, educate yourself, and go out and build something instead of cutting down people who do. Same to all the other junior high school debaters here. Sheesh.

Comment Re:A used car salesman. (Score 2) 107

By the same token, Steve Jobs didn't invent the smartphone, Brin/Page didn't invent Android, and Gates didn't invent DOS. Edison didn't invent the modern light bulb.

But all 5 of these great entrepreneurs saw the potential in small products, acquired and built them into vast empires.

And that is how things work in the real world. To my knowledge, the only thing that was created completely from scratch was the Universe, by God...if you accept what the Bible.Genesis has recorded.

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