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That is one way to look at it.

Actually before I got the four main replacements (two knees, two hips) it was kind of a joke in the family that when I mentioned hip or knee pain I'd elaborate "old knee," "new hip," etc.

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Nasa's Orion 'Mars ship' set for test flight

A US space capsule that could help get humans to Mars is about to make its maiden flight.

Orion will be launched on a Delta rocket out of Cape Canaveral in Florida on a short journey above the Earth to test key technologies.

The conical vessel is reminiscent of the Apollo command ships that took men to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s, but bigger and with cutting-edge systems.

Given that this is a first outing, there will be no people aboard.

Nonetheless, the US space agency describes the demonstration as a major event.

Nasa has a window in which to launch Orion of about two-and-a-half hours, which began at 07:05 local time (12:05 GMT).

The launch preparations had to be stopped shortly before the opening of the window because a boat strayed into the eastern part of the launch range. After that, the countdown had to be held because of strong winds and a technical issue.

"This is huge; Thursday is a giant day for us," said Nasa administrator Charlie Bolden.
Orion is being developed alongside a powerful new rocket that will have its own debut in 2017 or 2018.

Together, they will form the core capabilities needed to send humans beyond the International Space Station to destinations such as the Red Planet.
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Lockheed Martin's Orion programme chief Mike Hawes describes the flight profile

For Thursday's flight, the Delta IV-Heavy rocket - currently the beefiest launcher in the world - is being used as a stand-in.

It will send Orion twice around the globe, throwing the ship up to an altitude of almost 6,000km (3,600 miles).

This will set up a fast fall back to Earth, with a re-entry speed into the atmosphere close to 30,000km/h (20,000mph) - near what would be expected of a capsule coming back from the Moon.

It should give engineers the opportunity to check the performance of Orion's critical heat shield, which is likely to experience temperatures in excess of 2,000C (4,000F).

They will also watch how the parachutes deploy as they gently lower the capsule into Pacific waters off Mexico's Baja California Peninsula.
Although Orion is a Nasa project, the development has been contracted to Lockheed Martin, and the aerospace giant will be running the show on Thursday.
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But the US space agency will be there in the background, keen to see that the LM designs meet their specifications.

A good example is the radiation protection built into the capsule. Radiation will be one of the major hazards faced on voyages into deep space, and Orion's systems must cope with the challenge.

"We're going to be flying through parts of the Van Allen radiation belts, since we're 15 times higher than the space station," explained Mark Geyer, Nasa's Orion programme manager.

"The ISS would not have to deal with radiation but we will, and so will every vehicle that goes to the Moon. That's a big issue for the computers. These processors that are now so small - they're great for speed but they're more susceptible to radiation. That's something we have to design for and see how it all behaves."
Thursday's mission is but one small step in a very long development programme. Unable to call upon the financial resources of the Apollo era, Nasa is instead having to take a patient path.

Even if today it had a fully functioning Orion, with its dedicated rocket, Nasa would not be able to mount a mission to another planetary body because the technology to carry out surface operations has not been produced yet.
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This worries observers like space historian John Logsdon, who doubts the policy as currently envisaged is sustainable.

He told the BBC: "The first launch with a crew aboard is 2020/21, and then nothing very firmly is defined after that, although of course Nasa has plans. That's too slow-paced to keep the launch teams sharp, to keep everyone engaged. It's driven by the lack of money, not the technical barriers."

One solution is to pull in international partners. Europe, for instance, is going to make the "back end" for all future Orion capsules.

This service module is principally the propulsion unit that drives Orion through space. Prof Logsdon wonders if additional partners might want to pick up some of the other technologies needed to help speed the exploration path.

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Yo.

I have two hip replacements, whipper snapper!

That is one way to look at it.

Actually before I got the four main replacements (two knees, two hips) it was kind of a joke in the family that when I mentioned hip or knee pain I'd elaborate "old knee," "new hip," etc.

so, wait: was this b4 or after taking that job offer working with Oscar & the OSI??










Tazer

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We can rebuild him!

[Lantern A-train Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Lantern A-train]

"But I don't want to pay a lot."

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Yo.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bridaine...on-miles-away/

New Horizons Pluto Probe Answers Its Wake-up Call Three Billion Miles Away

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http://www.newseveryday.com/articles...n-48-hours.htm

New Compound Kills Malaria in 48 Hours

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and, for BDD: http://www.vox.com/2014/12/4/7332411/fart-flatulence

Everybody farts. But here are 9 surprising facts about flatulence you may not know.

Tazer

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...I thought that this was interesting. (BTW, I don't know if this was already posted; I searched for key terms and found nothing. If so, I apologize.)


The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time: Why are techno-futurists so freaked out by Roko’s Basilisk?

WARNING: Reading this article may commit you to an eternity of suffering and torment.

Slender Man. Smile Dog. Goatse. These are some of the urban legends spawned by the Internet. Yet none is as all-powerful and threatening as Roko’s Basilisk. For Roko’s Basilisk is an evil, godlike form of artificial intelligence, so dangerous that if you see it, or even think about it too hard, you will spend the rest of eternity screaming in its torture chamber. It's like the videotape in The Ring. Even death is no escape, for if you die, Roko’s Basilisk will resurrect you and begin the torture again.

Are you sure you want to keep reading? Because the worst part is that Roko’s Basilisk already exists. Or at least, it already will have existed—which is just as bad.

Roko’s Basilisk exists at the horizon where philosophical thought experiment blurs into urban legend. The Basilisk made its first appearance on the discussion board LessWrong, a gathering point for highly analytical sorts interested in optimizing their thinking, their lives, and the world through mathematics and rationality. LessWrong’s founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a significant figure in techno-futurism; his research institute, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which funds and promotes research around the advancement of artificial intelligence, has been boosted and funded by high-profile techies like Peter Thiel and Ray Kurzweil, and Yudkowsky is a prominent contributor to academic discussions of technological ethics and decision theory. What you are about to read may sound strange and even crazy, but some very influential and wealthy scientists and techies believe it.

One day, LessWrong user Roko postulated a thought experiment: What if, in the future, a somewhat malevolent AI were to come about and punish those who did not do its bidding? What if there were a way (and I will explain how) for this AI to punish people today who are not helping it come into existence later? In that case, weren’t the readers of LessWrong right then being given the choice of either helping that evil AI come into existence or being condemned to suffer?

You may be a bit confused, but the founder of LessWrong, Eliezer Yudkowsky, was not. He reacted with horror:

Listen to me very closely, you idiot.
YOU DO NOT THINK IN SUFFICIENT DETAIL ABOUT SUPERINTELLIGENCES CONSIDERING WHETHER OR NOT TO BLACKMAIL YOU. THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING WHICH GIVES THEM A MOTIVE TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON THE BLACKMAIL.
You have to be really clever to come up with a genuinely dangerous thought. I am disheartened that people can be clever enough to do that and not clever enough to do the obvious thing and KEEP THEIR IDIOT MOUTHS SHUT about it, because it is much more important to sound intelligent when talking to your friends.
This post was STUPID.

Yudkowsky said that Roko had already given nightmares to several LessWrong users and had brought them to the point of breakdown. Yudkowsky ended up deleting the thread completely, thus assuring that Roko’s Basilisk would become the stuff of legend. It was a thought experiment so dangerous that merely thinking about it was hazardous not only to your mental health, but to your very fate.

If you believe the singularity is coming, one question is whether the AIs will be benevolent or malicious.

Some background is in order. The LessWrong community is concerned with the future of humanity, and in particular with the singularity—the hypothesized future point at which computing power becomes so great that superhuman artificial intelligence becomes possible, as does the capability to simulate human minds, upload minds to computers, and more or less allow a computer to simulate life itself. The term was coined in 1958 in a conversation between mathematical geniuses Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann, where von Neumann said, “The ever accelerating progress of technology ... gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.” Futurists like science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge and engineer/author Kurzweil popularized the term, and as with many interested in the singularity, they believe that exponential increases in computing power will cause the singularity to happen very soon—within the next 50 years or so. Kurzweil is chugging 150 vitamins a day to stay alive until the singularity, while Yudkowsky and Peter Thiel have enthused about cryonics, the perennial favorite of rich dudes who want to live forever. “If you don't sign up your kids for cryonics then you are a lousy parent,” Yudkowsky writes.

If you believe the singularity is coming and that very powerful AIs are in our future, one obvious question is whether those AIs will be benevolent or malicious. Yudkowsky’s foundation, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, has the explicit goal of steering the future toward “friendly AI.” For him, and for many LessWrong posters, this issue is of paramount importance, easily trumping the environment and politics. To them, the singularity brings about the machine equivalent of God itself.

Yet this doesn’t explain why Roko’s Basilisk is so horrifying. That requires looking at a critical article of faith in the LessWrong ethos: timeless decision theory. TDT is a guideline for rational action based on game theory, Bayesian probability, and decision theory, with a smattering of parallel universes and quantum mechanics on the side. TDT has its roots in the classic thought experiment of decision theory called Newcomb’s paradox, in which a superintelligent alien presents two boxes to you:



The alien gives you the choice of either taking both boxes, or only taking Box B. If you take both boxes, you’re guaranteed at least $1,000. If you just take Box B, you aren’t guaranteed anything. But the alien has another twist: Its supercomputer, which knows just about everything, made a prediction a week ago as to whether you would take both boxes or just Box B. If the supercomputer predicted you’d take both boxes, then the alien left the second box empty. If the supercomputer predicted you’d just take Box B, then the alien put the $1 million in Box B.



So, what are you going to do? Remember, the supercomputer has always been right in the past.

This problem has baffled no end of decision theorists. The alien can’t change what’s already in the boxes, so whatever you do, you’re guaranteed to end up with more money by taking both boxes than by taking just Box B, regardless of the prediction. Of course, if you think that way and the computer predicted you’d think that way, then Box B will be empty and you’ll only get $1,000. If the computer is so awesome at its predictions, you ought to take Box B only and get the cool million, right? But what if the computer was wrong this time? And regardless, whatever the computer said then can’t possibly change what’s happening now, right? So prediction be damned, take both boxes! But then …

The maddening conflict between free will and godlike prediction has not led to any resolution of Newcomb’s paradox, and people will call themselves “one-boxers” or “two-boxers” depending on where they side. (My wife once declared herself a one-boxer, saying, “I trust the computer.”)

I worry less about Roko’s Basilisk than about people who believe themselves to have transcended conventional morality.

TDT has some very definite advice on Newcomb’s paradox: Take Box B. But TDT goes a bit further. Even if the alien jeers at you, saying, “The computer said you’d take both boxes, so I left Box B empty! Nyah nyah!” and then opens Box B and shows you that it’s empty, you should still only take Box B and get bupkis. (I’ve adopted this example from Gary Drescher’s Good and Real, which uses a variant on TDT to try to show that Kantian ethics is true.) The rationale for this eludes easy summary, but the simplest argument is that you might be in the computer’s simulation. In order to make its prediction, the computer would have to simulate the universe itself. That includes simulating you. So you, right this moment, might be in the computer’s simulation, and what you do will impact what happens in reality (or other realities). So take Box B and the real you will get a cool million.

What does all this have to do with Roko’s Basilisk? Well, Roko’s Basilisk also has two boxes to offer you. Perhaps you, right now, are in a simulation being run by Roko’s Basilisk. Then perhaps Roko’s Basilisk is implicitly offering you a somewhat modified version of Newcomb’s paradox, like this:

Roko’s Basilisk has told you that if you just take Box B, then it’s got Eternal Torment in it, because Roko’s Basilisk would really you rather take Box A and Box B. In that case, you’d best make sure you’re devoting your life to helping create Roko’s Basilisk! Because, should Roko’s Basilisk come to pass (or worse, if it’s already come to pass and is God of this particular instance of reality) and it sees that you chose not to help it out, you’re screwed.

You may be wondering why this is such a big deal for the LessWrong people, given the apparently far-fetched nature of the thought experiment. It’s not that Roko’s Basilisk will necessarily materialize, or is even likely to. It’s more that if you’ve committed yourself to timeless decision theory, then thinking about this sort of trade literally makes it more likely to happen. After all, if Roko’s Basilisk were to see that this sort of blackmail gets you to help it come into existence, then it would, as a rational actor, blackmail you. The problem isn’t with the Basilisk itself, but with you. Yudkowsky doesn’t censor every mention of Roko’s Basilisk because he believes it exists or will exist, but because he believes that the idea of the Basilisk (and the ideas behind it) is dangerous.

Now, Roko’s Basilisk is only dangerous if you believe all of the above preconditions and commit to making the two-box deal with the Basilisk. But at least some of the LessWrong members do believe all of the above, which makes Roko’s Basilisk quite literally forbidden knowledge. I was going to compare it to H. P. Lovecraft’s horror stories in which a man discovers the forbidden Truth about the World, unleashes Cthulhu, and goes insane, but then I found that Yudkowsky had already done it for me, by comparing the Roko’s Basilisk thought experiment to the Necronomicon, Lovecraft’s fabled tome of evil knowledge and demonic spells. Roko, for his part, put the blame on LessWrong for spurring him to the idea of the Basilisk in the first place: “I wish very strongly that my mind had never come across the tools to inflict such large amounts of potential self-harm,” he wrote.

If you do not subscribe to the theories that underlie Roko’s Basilisk and thus feel no temptation to bow down to your once and future evil machine overlord, then Roko’s Basilisk poses you no threat. (It is ironic that it’s only a mental health risk to those who have already bought into Yudkowsky’s thinking.) Believing in Roko’s Basilisk may simply be a “referendum on autism,” as a friend put it. But I do believe there’s a more serious issue at work here because Yudkowsky and other so-called transhumanists are attracting so much prestige and money for their projects, primarily from rich techies. I don’t think their projects (which only seem to involve publishing papers and hosting conferences) have much chance of creating either Roko’s Basilisk or Eliezer’s Big Friendly God. But the combination of messianic ambitions, being convinced of your own infallibility, and a lot of cash never works out well, regardless of ideology, and I don’t expect Yudkowsky and his cohorts to be an exception.

I worry less about Roko’s Basilisk than about people who believe themselves to have transcended conventional morality. Like his projected Friendly AIs, Yudkowsky is a moral utilitarian: He believes that that the greatest good for the greatest number of people is always ethically justified, even if a few people have to die or suffer along the way. He has explicitly argued that given the choice, it is preferable to torture a single person for 50 years than for a sufficient number of people (to be fair, a lot of people) to get dust specks in their eyes. No one, not even God, is likely to face that choice, but here’s a different case: What if a snarky Slate tech columnist writes about a thought experiment that can destroy people’s minds, thus hurting people and blocking progress toward the singularity and Friendly AI? In that case, any potential good that could come from my life would far be outweighed by the harm I’m causing. And should the cryogenically sustained Eliezer Yudkowsky merge with the singularity and decide to simulate whether or not I write this column … please, Almighty Eliezer, don’t torture me.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/m...-sharing-site/

The collapse of the Pirate Bay, ‘the world’s most notorious file-sharing site’

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http://www.chron.com/business/energy...ns-5948228.php

A climate idea comes of age: Zero emissions

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http://www.hngn.com/articles/52994/2...edit-cards.htm

Quantum Physics Could Lead To Ultra-Secure Credit Cards

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A Bizarre New Species Of Fish Has Been Discovered At A Record Depth

Scientists exploring the deepest place on Earth — the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean — have captured footage of a never-before-seen fish at a record depth of 26,722 feet (8,145 meters).

As reported in New Scientist, the ghostly fish was spotted by an expedition led by Jeff Drazen and Patty Fryer of the University of Hawaii. Marine biologists suspect that the new species is a kind of snailfish, but they're not entirely sure; its body is shaped differently from other known varieties. It has broad, translucent fins, "stringy appendages," and a tail that allows it to glide gently through the water. It appears to be 'rowing' through the water with its strange fin-like appendages.
"We think it is a snailfish, but it's so weird-looking; it's up in the air in terms of what it is," said team member Alan Jamieson in a BBC article. "It is unbelievably fragile, and when it swims, it looks like it has wet tissue paper floating behind it. And it has a weird snout — it looks like a cartoon dog snout."
Whatever if is, the newly discovered animal has set a new record for a deep-sea fish. Prior to this mission, a different species of snailfish, the gelatinous Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis, was spotted at a depth of 25,272 feet (7,703 meters). During this latest expedition, the Hadal Ecosystem Studies team thought they had broken the deepest-fish record at 26,246 feet (8,000 meters), but when they moved further down another 475 feet (145 meters), another snailfish appeared.

The scientists also captured footage of another strange species, supergiants. They're amphipods that normally measure 2-3 cm (0.79-1.1 inches) long. But the ones down there can reach up to 30 cm (12 inches).

The fact that animals can survive at such depths is nothing short of incredible. They have to endure the weight of more than 5 miles (8 km) of water above them. As noted in New Scientist, "Handling the intense pressure of the deep sea is a challenge for most animals because it impedes muscles and nerves and bends proteins out of shape, disrupting the working of enzymes required for life." And indeed, the newly discovered fish is close to the limit at which fish can survive.

+ YouTube Video

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/s...new-exoplanet/

After a hardware failure, the Kepler spacecraft finds a second life — and an important new exoplanet

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supposedly, a timeline of the Sony hack




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http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/19/e...erloop-trains/

Engineers are working for free to make Elon Musk's Hyperloop a reality

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http://www.pcworld.com/article/28636...arly-2015.html

Experts: FCC will adopt net neutrality rules in early 2015

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