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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 20th, 2023

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  • I definitely agree with you, however, I think needing to become self sustaining on earth is a goal that would be well served by trying to design a self sufficient system for mars.

    Earth is big enough that it’s really easy to forget we’re all in the same fish bowl. Entire cities can flush their shit down the river and as far as they are concerned, nothing bad ever happens to them. The scale of earth makes us blind to the problems our actions and methods cause. The ecosystems also do quite a bit to protect us from our own actions

    You can’t ignore externalities in a space colony. Everything must be accounted for. That is what makes it so difficult to design for. Any small amount of waste will still accumulate over time and eventually becomes a problem.

    The tighter scope and strict requirements of a space colony would make it easier to actually objectively measure how sustainable it is. You would know exactly how much external inputs you are delivering each year. We can then take the lessons and technologies that are absolutely required in a space settlement and use them to inform how to better be sustainable on earth. For example, solar cells used to only really be used on satellites, not because they were great on satellites, but because they were pretty much the only option that could stay operational for years. Now PV power generation is helping countries all over the world become a little more sustainable. The harsh requirements of space make us better at problem solving.

    I totally agree that earth is our only option for species survival though. Anyone selling Mars as a “backup” for humanity is either delusional or a con man. I think developing the capability to keep a settlement on Mars is a worthwhile endeavor, but there is no way for humanity to thrive there. Any large scale catastrophe on earth will still be more survivable in select pockets on earth than anywhere on Mars.


  • There’s no risk for a factory condition unit. This rumor started after people with units that had been dissasembled and reassembled had issues with vertical orientation. It turned out that it’s very easy to mess up the seals that keep the liquid metal thermal interface in place. So units that had been previously taken apart had liquid metal slowly leak, causing overheating and/or shorting.

    If you haven’t taken the cooler off the mainboard, using the vertical stand is just fine. I haven’t seen any evidence of factory assembled units suffering leaking. It does imply that user servicing of ps5’s is a bit risky, and you might need to be wary of used units where you don’t necessarily know the service history.

    To avoid unnecessary confusion, taking the covers off to add an m.2 ssd does not add any risk.


  • Do you want some discouragement?

    Stainless steel is stains less not rusts never. You would need additional measures to keep the stand from degrading over thousands of years. Your local archeology department could give you some pointers on how to accomplish that.

    Or maybe you design the stand in such a way that the tungsten object is held firmly, but still easily visible in rusty stainless jaws.



  • I notice changes in sensory processing first. Reading becomes difficult and my eyes lose focus easily/take a long time to focus. I also notice a difference in my thought patterns. My thoughts start to kind of skip around. It becomes hard to concentrate on any single thing, but not in a distracted kind of way. I very much realize that this description is vague and probably doesn’t make sense unless you experience similar migraines. I do also experience visual auras, but those aren’t apparent until the migraine is about to become very painful.

    A full blown migraine manifests as sensory processing mapping to pain. Light and sound are unbearable even in relatively moderate amounts. One of the worst migraines I had led to the pressure of my head on the pillow making every hair follicle feel like a a needle poking my scalp. You don’t realize how much your brain autonomously filters out tons of sensory input to keep your focus on a very small slice of interest until the filters break down and let everything through.

    Over the counter pain pills do nothing for my migraines. Sensory deprivation and sleep are the only things that can actually stop a migraine for me. I have blackout blinds, a well fitting eye mask, and foam earplugs ready to go. Early detection is very important. If I act as soon as I notice the warning signs, I can usually avoid a full blown migriane. A large glass of water + darkness and silence will usually have me back up in less than an hour. If a migraine gets to the point of pain, I will need sleep to get rid of it and will still feel rather off afterwards. Also falling asleep with a brutal migraine is no easy feat. A catch-22 so to say.






  • You could try looking up durability of waxed canvas. That has been a material used for centuries (millenia?) for tents and bags. A couple minutes of searching didn’t yield immediately useful numbers. Some sites say waxed canvas can last decades. However, I think that’s in context of bags which would only be exposed to the elements part of the time. One bag maker suggests that wax has to be reapplied every year or two. I found a research paper that demonstrates significant deterioration of beeswax with nitrous oxide and UV exposure. Clearly a greenhouse is going to have plenty of UV exposure. I’m not sure how to translate their numbers into a maintenance interval though.

    So my mostly uninformed opinion is that this is good in that the materials are all biocompatible and renewable (if a plant based textile is used), but I would expect it to need regular reapplication of wax.

    Glass would be longer lasting, but likely more expensive.



  • It’s all in whether management lets the engineers make a good product or pushes for cost reduction above all else. American made Toyotas are just fine.

    A similar thing is true with Chinese made goods. Companies that care enough to implement proper process and quality controls can have perfectly adequate quality come out of Chinese factories. It’s just that the companies that were quickest to export production cared more about minimizing every last cost than about quality.